Bunnies, Eggs and Jesus! Happy… Wait, what?
So, yeah. So the Pagan religion had very big festivals, remember, on Easter and Christmas. The Christian religion came along and had very big festivals, at Easter and Christmas. Jesus died on one and was born on the other. ( doubting sounds ) Cause Jesus I do think did exist, and he was, I think, a guy who had interesting ideas in the Gandhi-type area, in the Nelson Mandela-type area, you know, relaxed and groovy; and the Romans thought, “Relaxed and groovy?! No, no, no, no, no!” So they murdered him. And kids eat chocolate eggs, because of the color of the chocolate, and the color of the… wood on the cross.
Well, you tell me! It’s got nothing to do with it, has it? You know, people going, “Remember, kids,” the kids who’re eating the chocolate eggs, “Jesus died for your sins.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s great!”
“No, no no, it’s bad, it’s bad!”
“No, it’s bad! It’s very bad. It’s terrible! Whatever you want, just keep giving me these eggs.”
And the bunny rabbits! Where do they come into the crucifixion? There were no bunny rabbits up on the hill going, “Hey, what, are you going to put those crosses in our warrens? We live below this hill, all right?” Bunny rabbits are for shagging, eggs are for fertility. It’s a festival – it’s the spring festival!
– Eddie Izzard
If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I love to talk about the origins of holidays. It’s just “one of my things”, I guess. I’m big on the facts in general, whatever it is. So, since Easter is upon us, I thought I’d continue the trend by exploring how Easter really came to be and what it is now.
The name “Easter” originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE [AD].) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the “Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos.” Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: “eastre.”
Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25. “About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill …Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.”
Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians “used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation.”
Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus’ life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus’ life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternate explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus’ death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.
Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer’s crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.
Source: Religious Tolerance.org
Ok, groovy… but what’s with the rabbit and those crazy-colored eggs, man?
The symbols of the Norse Goddess Ostara were the hare and the egg. Both represented fertility. From these, we have inherited the customs and symbols of the Easter egg and Easter rabbit. Dyed eggs also formed part of the rituals of the ancient, pre-Christian Babylonian mystery religions. Eggs “were sacred to many ancient civilizations and formed an integral part of religious ceremonies in Egypt and the Orient. Dyed eggs were hung in Egyptian temples, and the egg was regarded as the emblem of regenerative life proceeding from the mouth of the great Egyptian god.” This practice was later Christianized. Tradition states that when Mary Magdalene visited Emperor Tiberias (14 – 37 CE [AD]), she gave him a red egg as a symbol of the Resurrection — a symbol of new life. Some believe that the Christian tradition of giving eggs to each other at Easter time came from this event.
Gotcha. Easter Lilies?
“The so-called ‘Easter lily’ has long been revered by pagans of various lands as a holy symbol associated with the reproductive organs. It was considered a phallic symbol!”
Surely having to get up for Easter Sunday Service is an original Christian thing, right?
This custom can be traced back to the ancient Pagan custom of welcoming the sun God at the vernal equinox – when daytime is about to exceed the length of the nighttime. It was a time to “celebrate the return of life and reproduction to animal and plant life as well.” Worship of the Sun God at sunrise may be the religious ritual condemned by Jehovah as recorded in:
Ezekiel 8:16-18: “…behold, at the door of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east; and they were worshiping the sun toward the east. Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen (this), O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in wrath; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.” (ASV)
Guess not.
At any rate, now you know where Easter came from. So the next time you’re dying eggs, thank an ancient Babylonian. If you find yourself munching on a Cadbury Chocolate Egg brought by the Easter Bunny, thank a Norse Pagan. As far as the Jesus crucifixion / resurrection stuff goes, thank a Mediterranean from 200 BC. What can you thank a Christian for? I guess for telling you that you have to get up and go to church to sit and listen to a condensed version nicely sewn together into their own tidy little story.
Happy “Easter”!
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