Um, the issue is that ‘spring’ in a Mediterranean climate zone (which includes much of the middle east and certainly Israel, as an ecologist would define it) means something entirely different from ‘spring’ in northern Europe. In northern Europe agriculture is limited by cold, in the Mediterranean it’s limited primarily by rainfall, and Mediterranean climates are defined by rainfall happening in the winter. In other words, in a place like England or Germany, ‘spring’ means the start of the main rain fed growing season, in the middle east it means its end. As the very quotation you cite makes clear. (One can certainly start growing things in the spring in the middle east, but that would be from irrigation or recessional water, not from rainfall).
The idea that ‘easter is a historicization of a spring festival’ has the problem that it’s almost unfalsifiable. There are only a limited number of seasons in the year. If Easter happened in January you could argue it was a ‘mid winter’ festival, if it was in summer you could argue it’s a ‘mid summer’ festival, etc…
There is very little confusion about the date of Easter depending upon the vernal equinox, except in this thread. It has evidently been that way since the earliest days of the church, to the point where one of the results of the Council of Nicaea was breaking with the Jewish determination of Passover, in order to ensure that Easter followed the equinox:
"To determine which lunar month was to be designated as Nisan, Christians relied on the Jewish community. By the later 3rd century some Christians began to express dissatisfaction with what they took to be the disorderly state of the Jewish calendar. They argued that contemporary Jews were identifying the wrong lunar month as the month of Nisan, choosing a month whose 14th day fell before the spring equinox.[51]
Christians, these thinkers argued, should abandon the custom of relying on Jewish informants and instead do their own computations to determine which month should be styled Nisan, setting Easter within this independently computed, Christian Nisan, which would always locate the festival after the equinox. They justified this break with tradition by arguing that it was in fact the contemporary Jewish calendar that had broken with tradition by ignoring the equinox, and that in former times the 14th of Nisan had never preceded the equinox.[52]"
Note that the vernal equinox, AKA the first day of spring, does not depend on rain, or temperature, or crops, or anything else but the position of the earth in its orbit.
No, that’s one definition of spring, among others, although it’s the version that Americans seem to refer to most often, for some reason. Probably the most functionally important definition of spring is this one:
or perhaps this one:
Certainly if I’m writing a paper for work based on field measurements I would consider anything in the month of March to be ‘spring’, regardless of whether it’s before or after the equinox.
In any case, my point was that spring means something entirely different in the Mediterranean basin than it does in northern Europe. We consider it the start of the growing season: in the Mediterranean for many plants it’s the end.
Hector, take a step back and look at what you are saying.
We have well-documented holidays from up to 4500 years ago, and from various regions with various different climates, whose dates depend on the vernal equinox, where people colored and decorated eggs. We have a holiday today whose date depends on the vernal equinox, where people color and decorate eggs. And you (and tomndebb) are trying to argue that it’s just coincidence? That there was no assimilation of the pagan holiday into the celebration of the resurrection?
“For Christians, the Easter egg is symbolic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Painting Easter eggs is an especially beloved tradition in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches where the eggs are dyed red to represent the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on the cross. Easter eggs are blessed by the priest at the end of the Paschal vigil and distributed to the congregants. The hard shell of the egg represents the sealed Tomb of Christ, and cracking the shell represents Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.”
Gee, what a coincidence.
tomndebb says Easter wanders all over the calendar, which is wrong. It falls within a 33-day range, which is exactly the way it MUST be for a holiday that depends on both the solar and lunar calendar. And you say heck, if it was in mid-winter or in mid-summer, it would be a winter or summer festival. Well, yeah, but it’s not in mid-winter or mid-summer, so why can’t you guys just accept that it’s a spring holiday, that assimilates pre-Christian traditions? I don’t see how conceding that damages the Christian faith in any way.
Do you have a cite that people *commonly *colored and decorated eggs for a spring holiday before the early Christians of Mesopotamia did so? The ancient Zoroastrians did paint eggs for Nowruz, their New Year celebration, but that was about 2000 years ago. Not 4500.
Really, ironclad dating and tracing of ancient traditions is nigh impossible. It’s possible the early Christians of Mesopotamia borrowed the tradition from the Zoroastrians , of course. Possible, but “well-documented” Got a cite?
The Neo-Pagan holiday of Ostara is very recent and took their tradition from Christianity, not the other way around.
Certainly it is possible that Passover had it’s roots in some sort of earlier Pagan Spring festival, but that would likely be before recorded history. And Easter comes from Passover, that is doubtless. And a hardboiled egg was part of Passover tradition going way back, perhaps before the Zoroastrians.
The Judaeo-Christian faith goes back so far into antiquity that no one can say for certain who borrowed what from who.
I have never claimed that the relation between Easter and the equninox was a coincidence. I noted that Easter was not a hijack of the equinox.
33 days is pretty much a matter of wandering. That is a period greater than either a lunar or a solar month.
And Easter is still not a “hijack” of the equinox. Are you trying to argue that it is? Or are you simply trying to ignore my actual statement so as to have something to argue over?
I’ve never considered myself to be very good with Google, so you guys must really suck at it. This took me about ten seconds to find — much less time than it took you to post, let alone to wait for me to do it for you:
"More than a few Egyptian traditions today derive from very ancient times, including the holiday known as Sham el Nessim, which may have been celebrated as early as 4,500 years ago. For Egyptians, Sham el Nessim (Sham el Nisseem, Sham el Niseem), literally meaning sniffing the breeze, marks the beginning of the spring. It falls immediately on the first Monday following the Coptic Easter and it was related to agriculture in ancient Egypt which contained fertility rites that were later attached to Christianity and the celebration of Easter. It is believed that the Egyptians were the first to celebrate this occasion.
…
“The spring festival coincided with the vernal equinox, and the ancients imagined that that day represented the beginning of creation. The date of Sham El Nessim was not fixed. Rather, it was announced every year on the night before the feast at the foot of the Great Pyramid. The feast of ‘Shamo,’ means ‘renewal of life’ which was later corrupted during the Coptic age to ‘shamm’ (smelling or breathing) and the word ‘nessim’ (breeze) was added. The ancient Egyptians first celebrated the feast of Shamo in 2700 BC, towards the end of the 3rd Dynasty.
…
Sham el Nessim is also celebrated by eating traditional foods. It is associated with several types of food that are eaten together yet are much diversified. Fiseekh (Salted fish), boiled colored eggs, termis (lupin seeds), and green onions are some of the types of food eaten on this day, each backed by a different myth…
Dyed eggs from pharaonic times are a direct predecessor of our Easter eggs today.”
If it will save time, before somebody jumps on the date not being fixed, I’ll note that the date of the vernal equinox is not fixed in our modern calendar, either, and much like ancient Egypt, we depend on the astronomers to tell us the date spring begins each year.
The basic definition is, “the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.” So you would expect the range to be a couple days less than a lunar month plus a week, and guess what, it is. It’s certainly not “all over the calendar.”
I am arguing, IMO successfully, that Easter has assimilated elements of pagan equinox festivals, such as the colored eggs. I have not argued against your objection to “hijack,” as you know. As you also know, I have argued against your erroneous statements, namely that it wanders all over the calendar, and that it is not tied to the equinox. It is tied by a leash 33 days long, which prevents it from wandering all over the calendar.
Funny, I’ve seen you post disparaging comments about Fox News, but you certainly seem to have embraced their technique of accusing someone of doing something that, in fact, you are doing and they are not.
I have not declared myself a winner; that is a statement I never made.
OF COURSE I am arguing against some statements you never made, but I never said you made them. I was trying, with IMO infinite patience, to make my position clear, in response to your question about what I was arguing about. There are other people in this thread, and I am arguing against some statements that they made. I explicitly listed the statements that* you* made that I am arguing against – that Easter wanders all over the calendar, and that it is not tied to the equinox, so I don’t see why this is so confusing to you.
Or do you deny making those statements? And what errors of mine am I deciding are facts, as opposed to citing credible sources in support of my argument?
Well, that cite has nothing in the way of sources. According to wiki:
*Sham ennisim (Egyptian Arabic: شم النسيم, IPA: [ˈʃæmm ennɪˈsiːm], from Coptic: Ϭⲱⲙ ̀ⲛⲛⲓⲥⲓⲙ shom ennisim) is an Egyptian national holiday marking the beginning of spring. It always falls on the day after the Eastern Christian Easter (following the custom of the largest Christian denomination in the country, the Coptic Orthodox Church). Despite the Christian-related date, the holiday is celebrated by Egyptians regardless of religion.[1]
The name of the holiday is derived from the Egyptian name of the Harvest Season, known as Shemu, which means a day of creation. According to annals written by Plutarch during the 1st century AD, the Ancient Egyptians used to offer salted fish, lettuce, and onions to their deities on this day.[2]
After the Christianization of Egypt, the festival became associated with the other Christian spring festival, Easter. Over time, Shemu morphed into its current form and its current date, and by the time of the Islamic conquest of Egypt, the holiday was settled on Easter Monday. *
In other words, the dyed eggs were added after it became Christianized.
So your cite sez the eggs predated Christianity, mine sez they came from Christianity. As I said: “Really, ironclad dating and tracing of ancient traditions is nigh impossible.”
No, it is not “a matter of wandering”. The Easter computus ties Easter to the vernal equinox as closely as possible given the very clumsy constraints of the luni-solar calendar and the seven-day week.
That 33-day spread is not just a random “wandering” through the approximate seasonal designation of “spring”. It is the necessary range of fixed-calendar date variation produced by requiring that Easter must fall on a Sunday and must sync to the vernal equinox while also syncing to a particular lunar phase.
This completely ignores the important astronomical impacts of “spring” as associated with the vernal equinox, namely, that days become longer than nights, with all the associated seasonal changes. This aspect of spring is qualitatively just the same in the ancient Near East as in northern Europe, and inhabitants of both regions were thoroughly aware of it.
You simply cannot make a valid case that there wasn’t a common fundamental seasonal concept of “spring” associated with the vernal equinox among ancient cultures throughout temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, irrespective of their regionally varying precipitation and temperature patterns.
That is not a paraphrase; it is your own fabrication.
No, it doesn’t. Plutarch was listing the foods offered to the gods, not the foods that people decorated and ate themselves. “Eggs” appears nowhere in the entire lengthy excerpt you quoted, and the article it comes from has “eggs” only once, as the very last word of the main text, as a food eaten on that day.
It doesn’t say anything about eggs coming from Christianity. What it does say is this:
“After the Christianization of Egypt, the festival became associated with the other Christian spring festival, Easter.”
which is what I and others have been trying to tell you - pagan practices were incorporated into Christian celebrations. I still don’t see why that is the least bit controversial.
FFS, use some common sense. Humans have associated concrete objects with abstract concepts since long, long before Christianity was established. What is more natural than to associate eggs and rabbits with the fertility of spring?
Conversely, if that’s the best you can do, then this thread has become barren, and I am through with it. I have made my case as best I can, and it’s clear that you have made up your mind.