Easter started as a spring fertility ritual. Rabbits and eggs have nothing to do with christianity.

Just tell her it was a celebration of spring. The original resurrection was life returning to the world. Plants began to sprout, trees began to bud, animals that were gone all winter came out of hibernation, and birds returned.

It is an older Pagan holiday called Eostre.

Seriously. The Christian plagiarists did not even try when they stole this one.

It is about Spring and everything growing again.

Just tell her not to worry about all the religious stuff (but also to be respectful towards her grandparents' belief, of course) and to instead concentrate on the real meaning of Easter - that is, the celebration of chocolate!

Easter means candy. It's training for the kids, hey you get cool stuff for going to Church. For the adults, it's ponder your suspension of disbelief season. . It's interesting Easter falls on April Fool's Day, this year.

I don't see any more issues in explaining the falsity of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or God to my child as they are all fictional beings that we tell our kids about to make them feel better.

You could say that he came out of his tomb and saw his shadow, indicating 6 more weeks of basketball

Peter cottontail

As a lifetime ex catholic, you explain it as a family tradition. "Most of the religious world celebrates this event, and even though we're not religious, we made this holiday a fun family tradition." is what I told my son.

Go back to the pagan roots: celebrate spring, new beginning, fertility and preparing to plant.

It always meant a paid holiday for me.

It's like Christmas or Diwali or.... it's just a cultural holiday

Easter is probably easy. I mean what have bunnies or chocolate eggs got to with Jesus?

Spring Equinox, feast of new beginnings

The truth: It's a pagan holiday celebrating spring's rebirth that got hijacked by the church, to make Xtianity more palateable to pagans they were trying to convert. In a way that yur child can understand. Ex: Easter is a celebration of nature, because the winter is over, and it's time for flowers to bloom.

After the dark winter and long nights without very much to eat except what they had stored, the peopel in olden days welcomed the warmer weather and the hens, coming in to lay , giving us fresh eggs and so they made a celebration and a feast - and now we can go to a store and buy pretty fancy chocolate eggs to remember, that the seasons change and life always begins afresh The grass always greens up and we can play in the warming sun. The change from harsh winter to the green shoots of spring and the warmer days makes us feel more energetic - so we all change a little when the seasons change

Perhaps describe it as a celebration of the return of Spring and all the new born things, i.e., baby animals, budding plants and flowers, trees sprouting new leaves.

The druids called it Oestre and it was a festival more about the returning cycle of a warming sun and a spring that promised a coming fruitfulness and good harvest with the buds devleoping - I am guessing that is where we get 'oestrogen' from - the druids were aware of the oneness of all nature.

"The Easter bunny gathers up all his magical eggs in a basket and steps out into the world, and if he sees his own shadow then there will be another six weeks of winter."

Or, more soberly, "Easter is a celebration of springtime. The exact celebration comes from a pre-Christian pagan religion, and every culture and every religion around the world has some kind of holiday to mark this time of year."

Celebration of welcoming spring and a cool way to get presents and candy until you're like 12 or 13. Haha

[nobeliefs.com]
You can tell her the truth. Religion coopted this holiday like it does most everything else.

A celebration of rebirth, when winter passes and plants start to grow again.

Many cultures have a Spring/rebirth festival. While the name and festivities vary, they are common. if you know your heritages you can possibly pick one of those and "update" it a bit.

I agree with others on here. Explain the true of origin of Easter. And that it's been represented in many ways over time and in different cultures. At this current time, our time, it is represented as a Christian event. In the past, it wasn't. In the future, it most likely won't be. Some cultures celebrate it, some don't.

I don't know what the true origin of Easter. A quick search on Google resulted in this: [allaboutjesuschrist.org]

I was baptised and brought up a Catholic and did all the chruch stuff growong up but if you teach your daughter how to think and help her develop her critical thinking as she gets older she'll probably come to the same conclusion you have. Being a Catholic didn't do me any harm, if anything it gave me an insight that I wouldn't have otherwise had.

Do NOT allow her t be taken to Sunday school..... nothing good happens in those circles.... and it'll slow her development of critical thinking skills..... which most very religious people are void of.

I think it’s called spring. Explain the shifting of the seasons and how ancient people’s came up with different ways to explain it. And how we’re lucky to have science to know what’s really happening.