I have heard from time to time that Easter is another holiday that the Christians have usurped, for it once was a spring goddess holiday for the goddess Eastre or Oestre. I have heard that egg painting, (the egg representing rebirth of life in spring), and the rabbit have roots in this early “pagan” holiday. That is why we have Easter eggs and the Easter bunny.
It is my feeling the “Jesus rebirth” thing was usurped also, for rebirth was a common celebration theme at springtime by “pagans” for centuries.
Anybody have any thoughts or knowledge to add or share?
The resurrected god stuff comes from Egypt via Isis and Osiris, representing cereal agriculture. The tomb resurrection stuff is the same idea (basically Dionysius, an imported transmutation from the importance of Nile grain and beer to grapes and wine) culturally filtered through Phrygia (Thrace: Northern Greece, Bulgaria area) via Attis and Cybele. The blood-body sacrament part is also preserved from Osiris, but features wine.
Usurped a bit perhaps, but not nearly as much as Xmas. For a devout christian, (not me!) the death and resurrection would be the holiest of holies, the most important thing about the story of Jesus, all else paling in comparison, and should be the event most commemorated and memorialized by their faith (IMHO). That it happened in spring therefore would just be a serendipitous happenstance enabling them to co-opt and overshadow a “pagan” holiday.
Contrast this to Xmas, where his birth, a far less significant event, is deliberately moved to occur near the winter solstice, to the only time during the year when it was least likely to have actually occurred. This was clearly done to eliminate pagan “unconquered sun” holidays, AFAIAC.
Not a Biblical scholar by a stretch, but I’m just wondering…
Is there any evidence that this event actually happened in the Spring, or was it moved there because it would be a good time to celebrate death and resurrection (a la the pagan feasts mentioned in the OP)?
I think this is an elaboration on the question in the OP, but still specifics would be appreciated.
I just realized what the answer to that cosmically dumb question of mine was. I’m going to bang my head against the wall, and then I’m going to sleep.
Goodnight all!
I really don’t think that it is productive to look at this question in terms of “usurping”. Cultures build on each other. Almost all agricultural societies are going to have a mid winter and spring festival–the midwinter to eat up all the perishables and to reassure everyone that the long, warm days are coming again, and a spring one just so that the survivors could celebrate the fact that they made it. (And both festivals help keep up with the date, so asthe planting gets odne at the right time. Planting at the right time is a very big deal). As different cultures run into each other, they borrow and blend. This is not theft and it says nothing about the authenticity or the legitamacy of either culture. For what it is worth, elements of both Christmas and easter certainly pre-date the Celtic and Germanic peoples Christianity picked them up from–remember that the Celts and the Germans replaced a population themselves.
Both Easter and Christmas have very obvious pagan elements, and there have been Christians who have refused to celebrate these holidays for this very reason. For instance, the Puritans did not celebrate Christmas. Our Easter celebrations are rife with symbolism of female fertility–bunny rabbits, eggs, and the name Easter that is derived from the names of various Near Eastern fertility goddesses (Astarte, Ishtar, etc.)
Of the 66 books in the (Protestant) Bible, only one does not explicitly mention “God”. For this reason, some Christians (including Martin Luther) have suggested that perhaps it would be better if the book of Esther could somehow be excised from the Bible–after all, the protagonists Esther and Mordecai seem to be Hebrew versions of Ishtar and Marduk, who were Babylonian deities.
Perhaps pantom is banging his head on the wall because he realized, after posting, that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus took place at Passover time, and so Easter is celebrated at (approximately) the same time of year as Passover. In the northern hemisphere, that means Springtime.