What Is Easter?
There's a lot I don't get about religion. However, one thing that I don't get the most is the popular manifestation of Easter. Supposedly, It commemorates when God in the form of a man was asphyxiated by being nailed to a cross and left to hang on the upright cross until death overcame him. A particularly hideous way to die. So in order to commemorate this grisly act, we are inundated with cute bunnies laying candy coated chocolate eggs and having our kids pictures taken at the malls with 6 foot tall rabbits who if they were real would scare the pants of kids more than the myriad of Santas during Christmas. Can anyone explain this phenomenon to me?
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When Constantine exchanged the original Greco-Roman pantheon for Christianity, he subsumed a lot of pagan holidays, some Roman, some from the provinces, into what are now Roman Catholic holidays.
Resurrectiontide got "Easter"--which actually is how you pronounce the Arabic name Ishtar. Who is the same person as Astarte in the ancient Canaanite languages. "Ishtar" is a Babylonian/Canaanite goddess of fertility. And what small mammal is more fertile than a rabbit? And the egg? That is an outward sign of new birth.
Similarly, Saturnalia became Christmas, Lupercalia became the Feast of St. Valentine...and Samhain, the Druidic festival from the British Isles, became All Hallows' Eve, or Halloween--for the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed All Saints' Day as the day after Samhain.
Now about Santa Claus--that actually is a corruption of the Dutch name Sinter Klass. That in turn is how the Dutch named "Saint Nicholas"--or Nicholas of Myra, Archbishop of ancient Asia Minor. Nicholas of Myra was a champion of justice in his own right. He got a reputation for working miracles, and for secret gift-giving. Once, according to legend, he sought to give three young women the means to buy their way out of an arranged marriage. So he tossed three gold balls into their house. And those balls happened to fall into the stockings they had hung over their heart to dry. Hence, stocking stuffing. And when he died, rumor had it that his body secreted a liquid form of "manna." Hence, Sainthood.
Different countries in Western Europe invented different versions of Nicholas of Myra: Father Christmas in England, Pere Noel in France, Kris Kringle in Germany, and Sinter Klaas in Holland. The American version has its basis in Washington Irving's famous poem, and reflects the fondness Americans then had for capitalism. Which is why Santa Claus is supposed to be the CEO of a toymaking, or at least toy-distributing, company with an order-fulfillment method no real-life company can match (though some, like Amazon.com, come close).
None of this has anything to do with the real meaning of the Birth of Christ (Christmas), the memory of a martyr of the faith (i.e., Valentinus), or the Resurrection of Christ after His execution. I never had any children, but if by some chance I were to have any, I would not hold to these customs. I would educate them in those customs, certainly, so they would know what other people's children were talking about. But I would not keep up a ten-year charade, knowing eventually I would have to disclose that I had been lying to them all that time!
Jan
Jan
I have seen, lots of scorn and derision, some fun and folly, and some poetic metaphor and symbolism, in most everything seems grounded in concrete reality.
The pagan mysticism's were embarrassing but always felt there was a bigger more mature lesson there...turns out I was correct.
It's not meant to be mystical because it's quantum physical.
Then there's a good thing getting all twisted up by the lust for power and riches.
I think we're pretty much on the same page, though the entirety of our belief systems may differ..
If you don't like what you read, feel free to move on to the next comment.
Pssst! All ya gotta do is look it up.
I suspect the eggs were not originally chocolate.
Hang on, some sleuthing ....
Stolen from Wiki:
"Orthodox churches have a custom of abstaining from eggs during the fast of Lent. The only way to keep them from being wasted was to boil or roast them, and begin eating them to break the fast."
Stolen from: http://dailyjournalonline.com/news/lo...
"In an attempt to Christianize Easter which began as a pagan holiday, is named for a Saxon goddess who was known by the names of Oestre or Eastre, and in Germany by the name of Ostara. She is a goddess of the dawn and the spring, and her name derives from words for dawn, the shining light arising from the east. Our words for the "female hormone" estrogen derives from her name.
It is believed that Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring, Eostre had a hare as her companion. The hare symbolizes fertility and rebirth. Later Christians changed the symbol of the hare to the Easter bunny."
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