Some churches now do “Resurrection Eggs”, which apparently are plastic eggs that you open, and something inside them (say a rubber band) tells a “story” about the first easter, as it were.
Anyway, we still color eggs. Why not?
Show me an alternate theory. Every dictionary and word origin source I’ve ever seen lists the Eoster connection. The Spring Goddess was also variously called Eastre, Astarte, Eostra, Eostur, Eastra, and Eastur. I suppose it could just be a coincidence but I doubt it. The only alternate theory is the word is derived from “Ostern” or 'sunrise." The weight of scholarly consenus as well as common sense comes down pretty solidly for the Goddess.
(I meant to say equinox, btw, I do know the difference).
If by “Christmas tree” you mean the trees with the tinsel and the star on top, you’re right but it was an ancient pagan tradition to bring evergreens into homes as a token of optimism and good luck during the winter. Germany had a tradition of Yule trees (living evergreens grown in pots within household) long before Christianity.
But what about “Channukah Bush(es)”?
I thought these were the stuff of legend, but a new friend last year SHOWED me the one in their living room!
MP,
Lou
Certainly. Once again, Hutton provides a useful summary of the current academic thinking on the subject.
You can find the extensive literature on the controversy via Hutton’s notes.
You may think that the goddess theory is ‘common sense’, but the whole point about this argument is that such an assumption now seems just a preconception coloured by one particular historical fashion. It’s not only that specific ideas about the origins of specific festivals, be it Halloween or Easter, have been called into question. Rather it is that academic historians now recognise that the general theory that Christian traditions appropriated pagan ones was more often than not just an assumption and that it was therefore not ‘common sense’ to use that assumption to fill the very extensive gaps in our knowledge. The older approach was inherently circular. It is now in retreat on almost all fronts.
Hutton is also very good on the whole ‘evergreens in houses’ issue.
Funny.
Up until this thread, I’ve never come cross any literature disputing the pre-christian (i.e pagan) origins of the traditions we’re discussing.
Seems a bit like revisionist history to me.
There is no real question that Christians adopted Pagan traditions and rituals. The only people who dispute it tend to be fundie apologists.
Bede wasn’t mistaken. That’s just wishful thinking on the part of Hutton.
I should add that seasonal and asrtonomocal events (such as spring or dawn) were not seen as being distinguishable from the activities of gods and goddesses. The sun, the moon, the stars and the planets were all deified. Eos as dawn was a deity. Dawn was not seen as a mechanical, physical event but as a divine one. Hutton’s distinction is therefore completely specious.
I agree with that.
So whats wrong with adoption?
Holidays are supposed to be fun(well ,most of them)
Whether Hutton is right or wrong, I wouldn’t call him a “fundie apologist”. He’s a pretty well respected scholar.
I’'d never heard of Hutton before today, so I wasn’t sure if he was a fundie or not. I said Pagan origins “tend” to be disputed by fundies. I did some googling on Hutton and he seems to write a lot about pre-Christian, Pagan Europe. I didn’t get the impression from reading the summaries of his books that he really denies pagan influence on Christianity but just poses some alternate theories for some things.
As I said, the distinction between Eos as a Goddess and Eos as a mechanical, solar event was not the kind of distinction that was made in ancient times.
As Captain Amazing says, Hutton is most certainly not a fundie apologist - he’s a prominent neo-Pagan, arguably now the most famous neo-Pagan in the UK, although he’s always been rather coy as to whether he’s actually a practising Wiccan.
Nor does he deny that there was some pagan influence on some later folk customs. No, his point is the much more interesting one that previous generations of scholars completely misunderstood the nature and extent of that influence. Their great mistake was to start from the assumption that such influence must have occurred and then naïvely read back from the later (often much later) evidence. That approach had already been discredited among serious folklorists in Britain even before Hutton began writing on the subject. Hutton’s achievement has been to integrate that more critical approach with more mainstream academic research and, as I say, professional historians have generally been very impressed.
Hutton, I’m sure, would argue that the most important point of all is that the older approach distorted - even falsified - everyone’s understanding of pre-Christian paganism. Unsurprisingly, assumptions built upon assumptions built upon the later and unrelated evidence, all wrapped up with questionable religious agendas, did not produce accurate history. He would say that almost everything you think you know about pre-Christian paganism in the British Isles is wrong.
In keeping with the season, here are a two articles about the anxiety fundamentalist Christians face this time of year.
When I was running this morning (first time in a month! yay!) I passed by the local Lutheran church and it had a banner up advertising “Trunk or Treat: An alternative to Halloween. 6-8pm.”
I had no idea some Lutherans had a problem with a Halloween. They always seemed as one of the more level-headed protestant sects.
So what? The fact remains that every single one of those sources you are familiar with go back to the SINGLE Bede speculation, with NOTHING else to back them up. I’m reminded of another bunch of hooey that managed to worm its way into a great deal of literature, the “language” of vocalizations used by a specific band of rhesus macaques. You could find source after source stating that one call had one specific meaning, another had another specific meaning, etc. This was in textbooks, on documentaries, in magazine articles, even stated in legitimate scientific review articles. This was chosen as an object lesson for a class I took years ago as an undergrad. We were to pick a source that made the claim and to a citation trace. Every trace we did went back to the same paper. This paper made NO semantic claims at all. Instead, it noted some fairly weak situational correlations. Then other authors took the weak correlations and mentioned them a little more strongly. Then it fed on itself from there.
Trace the sources back. It doesn’t matter if every single current source agrees on something if all of those sources ultimately got their information from a single flawed source.
Please demonstrate that “revisionist history” is automatically identical to “bad history”. I would like to see you work this out in steps.
Here are some examples of “revisionist history”.
Classic history: Custer was a hero and great man who was a martyr to a great cause, overwhelmed by perfidious redskins who used treachery to kill him and his soldiers.
Revisionist history: Custer was a self-serving man who put his reputation above good tactics, split his forces three times (verifiable), and virtually asked to be annihilated.
Classic history: George Washington was infallable, a veritable demigod, without flaw, all virtuous, all good.
Revisionist history: George Washington was a human being, not a demigod.
Classic history: The British government was evil for passing the proclamation of 1763, which prevented the Colonists from taking their rightful place in lands west of the Appalachians and instead gave it to a bunch of savage redskins who wouldn’t use it properly. It was a direct attempt to punish the Colonitsts.
Revisionist history: The Proclamation of 1763 was an attempt to honor promises to allies made during war against France that did not sit well with colonists who wanted to steal land from the people who were already living there.
I could keep going on, but please show me how all of the revisionist examples I stated above are inferior to their classical antecedents.
Hutton is a neopagan. Of course, I doubt you will admit to this.
Isn’t it amazing just how much anti-Christians sound like the weaseliest of fundies when their own pet dogmas get put under question?
I believe this is likely because Halloween is truly a Catholic holiday. Many protestants are starting to celebrate 10/31 as Reformation Day instead, in honor of Martin Luther’s nailing of the thesis to the church door.
The strangest thing about the fundamentalist objection to Halloween is that many of them celebrate “harvest festivals” at church instead of Halloween. It is the harvest festival that harkens back to the pagan rites. Afterall, Samhain is the celebration of the harvest. Halloween, on the other hand, or All Hallow’s Eve, has its origins in the Catholic church. Perhaps the fundamentalist objection is actually anti-Catholic, but it sounds more PC to say it’s anti-pagan.
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This itself is revisionist history depending on who you ask.
This is actually closer to what you call “classic history”(except for teh “self serving” part).Actual history is about detailing the facts surrounding events which have occured.
“Hitler was evil” is NOT history of anykind.
“Nazis under Hitler’s regime killed around six million jews during the holocaust” IS verifiable history.
“The holocaust never happened” is revisionist history.
Yes, revisitionist history is BAD HISTORY.
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I am glad I did not receive my historical education from whatever books you have been reading.Again, subjective judgements about the moral character or divine favor a person may had are NOT history.
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Again, not revisionist history by any stretch.
sigh
Fallacies, fallacies and more fallacies…
You’re hereby effectively allowing holocaust deniers to appropriate the term “revisionist”. A GQ thread on the connotations of the term as used by historians.