Our BetterMost Community > The Holiday Forum

All things Easter, Spring Solstice, Passover, or Ostara

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Front-Ranger:
I think I'll celebrate by having fish tacos.

CellarDweller:

Front-Ranger:
Fun to review this thread about Easter foods and traditions. I wanted to study the word origin of Easter and found that it was derived from the Old German word for the goddess of Spring, Oestre. But if I'm not mistaken, she was a Greek goddess, was she not?

Anyway, here's a quote from an article in the Guardian from 2010, which is the most recent writing I could find on the subject.


--- Quote ---...In the ancient world, wherever you had popular resurrected god myths, Christianity found lots of converts. So, eventually Christianity came to an accommodation with the pagan Spring festival. Although we see no celebration of Easter in the New Testament, early church fathers celebrated it, and today many churches are offering "sunrise services" at Easter – an obvious pagan solar celebration. The date of Easter is not fixed, but instead is governed by the phases of the moon – how pagan is that?

All the fun things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare. Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures. Hot cross buns are very ancient too. In the Old Testament we see the Israelites baking sweet buns for an idol, and religious leaders trying to put a stop to it. The early church clergy also tried to put a stop to sacred cakes being baked at Easter. In the end, in the face of defiant cake-baking pagan women, they gave up and blessed the cake instead."
--- End quote ---

Jeff Wrangler:
An Easter sunrise service might appear to be "an obvious pagan celebration," but it bears mentioning that the Resurrection stories in all four gospels indicate that Mary Magdalene and others went to the tomb very early in the morning to anoint Jesus' body. Indeed, the King James Version of the Matthew account says specifically that it was "as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week," and the John account says that it was "yet dark" when Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb. Therefore sunrise services are also in keeping with the Bible stories, regardless of any pagan precedents.

(I have to quote from the KJV because I have only a KJV New Testament at hand here at work.)

Front-Ranger:
It seems to be kind of a "chicken and egg" question. Easter was strange for me. Was it that way for other BetterMostians? I blame the full moon. As I've said earlier, my mom is in the rehab hospital and although she is improving, there are many details to take care of. She had a strange dream Easter eve that I'll recount over on the dreams thread. My car was broken into although what the vandal took was odd (three sets of keys, none of them to my house and none marked) and then the person left a large tote bag full of clothes in the back and a bank statement with her name and address on it! Looks like Sherlock won't be needed to solve this case! I keep hearing of other strange things that occurred yesterday.

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