Happy Easter to All!

As at Christmas, when we are urged to bring back the "true meaning" of the holiday, so at Easter are we urged to do so, especially by letters to the editor and columns on the religious page of the newspaper.

Of course, we all have the right to use any reason we like for celebrating any holiday. But the implication that your Easter celebration is authentic only if you do it with the Christian resurrection in mind betrays an ignorance of religious history.

This holiday has been celebrated every spring all over the world in an unbroken tradition going back to many centuries before Jesus was even born, and thus cannot have had any original connection to him.

Easter was originally (and still is) a celebration of the fertility of the earth, renewed each springtime. The egg, the chick, the rabbit, the flowers, are all fertility symbols (and much older than the Christian symbol of the resurrected god). Its celebration has often been marked by sexual exuberance, as is still prominent in the pre-Lenten Carneval and Mardi Gras festivals and the phallic symbolism of the May pole and the cross.

Long before Jesus, many peoples associated this festival with the coming back to life of the god of fertility (Tammuz - see Ezek 8:14, Adonis, Osiris, Perseus, Orpheus), who had been dead in the underworld during the winter. Even the name by which Christians still celebrate the festival is a corruption of the name of the ancient fertility goddess Ishtar or Ashtoreth (whose name also survives in the name of one of the books of the Old Testament, the only Bible book that contains no reference to God - the Book of Esther).

The Christian church, because it could not eradicate the celebration of this popular festival, reinterpreted it and assigned to it a new meaning, but was unable to erase completely its original significance. Undoubtedly current attempts by Christians will have no more success. The egg and the rabbit, the phallic pole or cross (the real symbols of the festival) will continue to be loved and celebrated as long as we can marvel at the new life which the spring brings.

(continued at http://packham.n4m.org/easter.htm)

I agree that it is a celebration of much more than just the Christian belief. I think it is a wonderful holiday whether you are religious or not. The fertility symbols...eggs, chick, flowers, etc. will always be with us. I think it is cool that this yr. Earth Day was also Good Friday.

I am sure some rabid Christians wish for the celebration to be about one thing and one thing only but for most Christians we do not object to the tradition of celebrating new life each spring. That is why the tradition of egg hunts has never bothered me. Love the reminder about Mardi Gras....a celebration of sexual exhuberance. So that is what it is all about???? Whoo-hooo!!!

Lots of food and fun, eggs, candy this morning not one mention of nailing people to crosses- what a downer. Christians totally wreck the joy of the “true” Easter.

I think it's then the resurrection..those romans used the crucifixation as a behavior restraining tool and it was very effective...it was gruesome.

stormy

+1!!

I used to hate the idea of Xtian holidays when I was a pagan, but now I just celebrate the return of warmth and fertility.
I am also a spring baby, so why shouldn't I celebrate?

always appreciate your Easter offerings, sir.

Given that the impact of the story takes place in Jerusalem during Passover, which do you think came first?

That it was a story set during Passover that they later linked to pagan spring renewal using the Resurrection,

Or was it all about linking the Resurrection to spring renewal by then having it take place during Passover.

Either way, it's a damn clever and dramatic device.

Happy Easter, y'all.