Good point.
Astarte/ Ishtar/Ashtaroth have nothing whatever to do with Easter. They are Semitic goddesses from the Middle East, goddesses of war and sex.
Eostre was a Germanic goddess from Northern Europe and had to do with spring (presuming she actually “existed” — there is only one ancient mention.)
The name, Eostre, is related to other Indo European (not Semitic) terms, like aurora, and other words having to do with “dawn” (*aus- *aur-). There is evidence that Indo-European groups apart from the North Sea Germans, worshipped goddesses with those names, so the idea of a goddess named Eostre is plausible.
There is no record at all of Ostara before linguistic writings in the 19th Century — the name was postulated by the Grimm brothers, based on the German term Ostern and The Venerable Bede’s report that Easter occurred during a period known as Eastormonaþ, when there had formerly been celebrations in honour of Eostra.
All of this is easily researchable using online sources.
Easter was celebrated for several hundred years before the Germanic tribes got to England, and, everywhere but England and Germany (and parts of the Netherlands) it long had another name before anything like “Easter” was attached to it.
The other name was derived from Aramaic
pesach (“passover”), which is why Russians call the season
paskha, and French call it
pâques, The early Christians were Jews, they celebrated pesach, and, because they associated the pesach meals with Jesus and the last supper, their pesach meal was part of their “Easter” celebration where they now remembered not only the escape from Egypt but also the death and resurrection of Jesus.
As more Gentiles became Christians, they continued sharing a “pesach meal”, even though they were losing the more Jewish features.
Dyed hardboiled eggs were a Mesopotamian introduction before the 3rd century (again, nothing to do with the Germanic tribes!) partly as a way to preserve eggs during the Lenten fast, when eggs were forbidden, and partly to make them part of the Easter celebration.
Hares were a traditional part of continental German spring celebrations, first recorded in the 15th Century. As there is no record of Ostara, there is no record of any association between Ostara and hares, but, by the 18th Century,
Lutheran migrants to the US were talking about the Osterhase (Easter hare).
Easter Rabbits first appear in writing in English in 1880 and the Easter Bunny was mentioned in 1902.
Eggs and rabbits are very much an afterthought and had nothing at all to do with the Easter traditions applying in the ferociously anti-pagan early church.
All this talk of Eostra and rabbits and eggs is just confected nonsense and religious legend invented mainly in the 19th and early 20th century
to undermine the history of Christian origins.
by Peter Green, Quora