Snopes gets a Easter Myth wrong

Ah, ancient goddess religions and the Celts; two subjects in which tiny kernels of fact are buried under heaping middens of woo.

He was talking about rabbit holes. As the linked site confirms, but as I assumed you knew, a hare lives not in a hole but in a form. Hence the previous post.

I would argue that the more problematic issue with the Snopes article is that it doesn’t point out that Easter is only used in the English speaking world. In the rest of the world, the holiday is known as Pascha or a derivative thereof (for “the Passion”).

And this part is just headslapping:

No, it is mere coincidence that it corresponds with Spring. Easter’s date is set around Passover, not because its Springtime.

I’m calling bullshit on good, hardworking peasants not eating Lagomorphs. Bunnies grow fat on people and livestock food, then just sit there, chewing their shit and daring you to throw a rock at them. People need protein and have an appropriate attitude toward wise-ass critters below them on the food chain. I mean, what’s a guy supposed to poach, if not rabbits? His Lordship will notice missing deer, but not a hare here and there.

Maybe the limits were really just for the priestly caste.

This paper by a Cardiff University PhD student does a good job of discussing the archaeological and literary evidence for the hunting and consumption of hares in England. As it explains, that evidence isn’t entirely straightforward. For the Anglo-Saxon period, hare bones in archaeological contexts in England are relatively rare and what little literary evidence there is supports the idea that there was some sort of taboo about eating them. But some hunting of them probably did take place. You can see how this could support the idea that hares had or had had some religious significance. But there are plenty of other possibilities apart from the hackneyed modern assumptions about Eastre/Eostre/Ostara.

In particular, there is nothing to support the type of claims of which those on the Goddess Gift website cited above by Clothahump are typical. The Anglo-Saxon evidence says nothing whatsoever about hare hunting being ritualised (even although it did become so later) or about it taking place at any particular time of year. Claims like that are just post-nineteenth-century bullshit.

So yes, the whole Eastre/Eostre/Ostara theory does come down to the single Bede reference. That speculation can then be made to support that theory doesn’t really prove anything as lots of other speculation can just as easily be made against it.

Right, pairings like “fils/soleil”, “hijo/sol” and “figlio/sun” are so universal a comparison.

Well, huios and helios are a little closer…

Yes, but it’s such an Anglo-centric approach, just like “Easter is really just an adaptation of Eostre”. Terms used in English cannot be used to explain a Christian concept that originated in the eastern Med, where Aramaic, Greek and Latin were the dominant languages and English hadn’t even evolved yet.