Happy Easter!
Apr. 16th, 2006 01:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intrikate88I love looking into the origins of holidays- not just Christian ones, or rather, Christian ones that are celebrated under different names in different places with different traditions, in different times. Sometimes even pre-Christian times. How can I claim they’re the same holiday? Because, to me, the story is the same, the meaning is the same, the hope is the same; only the symbols are different, but they remind us of the same things. I discussed Christmas, Mithraism, and the power of myth last December; now the same curiosity’s come back and I wanted to see Easter in a few of its forms.
Standard warning applies: read the whole page before clicking ‘comment’ to tell me I’m a pagan, a witch, or I’ll Be Praying For You, Katie. There is a deeper meaning, all this reveals something about God’s nature, yada, yada, yada, so just read the thing, okay? I know I sound paranoid. I am.
Why is it called Easter? Because the sun rises in the East and Jesus is the son of God and this is a fairly overused and clichéd pun that would only work in modern English? Sounds like a doubtful etymology to me.
Easter actually comes from ‘Eostre’, an Anglo-Saxon goddess. Goddess of what, you might ask. (Or not. As far as I know there aren’t too many people I know who go in for mythology.) Well, surprise, surprise, Eostre’s the goddess of spring. A real shocker, I know. People stopped worshipping her before 600 A.D., which is why you haven’t heard much about her lately. Jesus and Allah and Lindsey Lohan are so much more popular. One of her symbols was the hare (which I’m assuming you know is a rabbit. A bunny.) because of its reproductive tendencies: spring is known as a time of birth, rebirth, and newness. Eggs were another symbol of Eostre’s. She even lends her name to the word ‘estrogen’, the hormone that makes women womanly and creates eggs.
Spring festivals, more than just the festival of Eostre, have been celebrated all over the world; something about the vernal equinox seems to stir people’s blood up to spill other people’s blood, and perhaps dance a bit. The Persians and Iranians celebrate the festival of Norouz, to remember a mythological king, Jamshid, and the creation of the earth. Japan has a national holiday where they spend the day honoring ancestors, but then, in Far East societies, they’re always honoring ancestors, so everybody, don’t get too excited. They call their holiday Shunbun no Hi.
People celebrate spring festivals all through history. Why? Yes, there’s that delightful sense of getting out of your winter-proofed house just seconds before you had to hack off your relation’s head with a dull axe, but maybe that’s not all. Before the scientific revolution where people started having the idea that maybe the entire universe doesn’t revolve around us after all or perhaps the earth is round like an orange and what happens if you drop a lead weight off this cathedral, nobody knew why the sun rose and set. They didn’t know why it was spring and then winter and then spring again. The pagans believed that if they sacrificed enough virgins maybe the gods wouldn’t plunge the world into darkness. The Christians (I’m talking medieval, here) thought that they hadn’t done anything so hideous that God wouldn’t send spring around again, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to buy some more indulgences, just in case. So by the time winter had gone on forever and people were starting to get worried about how they’d run out of virgins in January, spring finally came, and it was time to get pretty damn excited and praise God or the gods or your ancestors for sending life again.
Because, you see, God came through on his word yet again. Ever had one of those times where a friend promised you he’d do something really important for you and even though you trust him you’re still relieved and happy when he fulfills his promise? In Genesis 8:22, God swears to Noah –after sailing him through a worldwide flood- that “For as long as the Earth lasts, planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.” God promised he would save them, would deliver them, would bring them to new life.
And he does.
In another springtime celebration, the Jews, God’s chosen people, observe Passover. When the Jews are slaves in Egypt, praying for a new life, God promises them he will lead them to Israel. The Promised Land. He promises them that if they paint a lamb’s blood around their doorways, when he sends the angel of death to kill the firstborn sons, he will save their lives, and pass over.
And he does.
So isn’t it appropriate that the celebration of the fulfillment of another of God’s promises just happens to fall near the spring equinox? “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds, we are healed.” God promised this and Isaiah wrote it down seven hundred years before Christ fulfilled it. God promised to save us and give us new life. Not just as holy fire insurance, woot, we get the Stay Out of Hell Card, pass Go and collect two hundred dollars, and, oh yes, live forever. God promises to kill our personal cycles of screwing up, feeling bad, hating self and then overcompensating so as to screw self even more; he promises to give us a new life where we can allow ourselves grace because Jesus has taken our screwed-up-ness on himself and died with it. He promises life because he is Life: Life more vibrant than any we have ever known; life to the full and then some; life that, if we let our self-centered and dizzy attempts at existence die and accept his life, we will see his life everywhere, in everyone, and love it more and more. And in loving that life we’re loving God, and having new life every day, and pointing out to people the life in themselves that they might not have even noticed because they didn’t know what they were looking for; they haven’t seen yet how God fulfills his promise to give new life.
And he does.
Eostre, with her hares and eggs. Passover, with its blood and exodus. Easter, with Christ’s death and resurrection. Symbols to remember God’s faithfulness by.
I still don’t know about the chocolate and jelly beans, though.
Standard warning applies: read the whole page before clicking ‘comment’ to tell me I’m a pagan, a witch, or I’ll Be Praying For You, Katie. There is a deeper meaning, all this reveals something about God’s nature, yada, yada, yada, so just read the thing, okay? I know I sound paranoid. I am.
Why is it called Easter? Because the sun rises in the East and Jesus is the son of God and this is a fairly overused and clichéd pun that would only work in modern English? Sounds like a doubtful etymology to me.
Easter actually comes from ‘Eostre’, an Anglo-Saxon goddess. Goddess of what, you might ask. (Or not. As far as I know there aren’t too many people I know who go in for mythology.) Well, surprise, surprise, Eostre’s the goddess of spring. A real shocker, I know. People stopped worshipping her before 600 A.D., which is why you haven’t heard much about her lately. Jesus and Allah and Lindsey Lohan are so much more popular. One of her symbols was the hare (which I’m assuming you know is a rabbit. A bunny.) because of its reproductive tendencies: spring is known as a time of birth, rebirth, and newness. Eggs were another symbol of Eostre’s. She even lends her name to the word ‘estrogen’, the hormone that makes women womanly and creates eggs.
Spring festivals, more than just the festival of Eostre, have been celebrated all over the world; something about the vernal equinox seems to stir people’s blood up to spill other people’s blood, and perhaps dance a bit. The Persians and Iranians celebrate the festival of Norouz, to remember a mythological king, Jamshid, and the creation of the earth. Japan has a national holiday where they spend the day honoring ancestors, but then, in Far East societies, they’re always honoring ancestors, so everybody, don’t get too excited. They call their holiday Shunbun no Hi.
People celebrate spring festivals all through history. Why? Yes, there’s that delightful sense of getting out of your winter-proofed house just seconds before you had to hack off your relation’s head with a dull axe, but maybe that’s not all. Before the scientific revolution where people started having the idea that maybe the entire universe doesn’t revolve around us after all or perhaps the earth is round like an orange and what happens if you drop a lead weight off this cathedral, nobody knew why the sun rose and set. They didn’t know why it was spring and then winter and then spring again. The pagans believed that if they sacrificed enough virgins maybe the gods wouldn’t plunge the world into darkness. The Christians (I’m talking medieval, here) thought that they hadn’t done anything so hideous that God wouldn’t send spring around again, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to buy some more indulgences, just in case. So by the time winter had gone on forever and people were starting to get worried about how they’d run out of virgins in January, spring finally came, and it was time to get pretty damn excited and praise God or the gods or your ancestors for sending life again.
Because, you see, God came through on his word yet again. Ever had one of those times where a friend promised you he’d do something really important for you and even though you trust him you’re still relieved and happy when he fulfills his promise? In Genesis 8:22, God swears to Noah –after sailing him through a worldwide flood- that “For as long as the Earth lasts, planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.” God promised he would save them, would deliver them, would bring them to new life.
And he does.
In another springtime celebration, the Jews, God’s chosen people, observe Passover. When the Jews are slaves in Egypt, praying for a new life, God promises them he will lead them to Israel. The Promised Land. He promises them that if they paint a lamb’s blood around their doorways, when he sends the angel of death to kill the firstborn sons, he will save their lives, and pass over.
And he does.
So isn’t it appropriate that the celebration of the fulfillment of another of God’s promises just happens to fall near the spring equinox? “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds, we are healed.” God promised this and Isaiah wrote it down seven hundred years before Christ fulfilled it. God promised to save us and give us new life. Not just as holy fire insurance, woot, we get the Stay Out of Hell Card, pass Go and collect two hundred dollars, and, oh yes, live forever. God promises to kill our personal cycles of screwing up, feeling bad, hating self and then overcompensating so as to screw self even more; he promises to give us a new life where we can allow ourselves grace because Jesus has taken our screwed-up-ness on himself and died with it. He promises life because he is Life: Life more vibrant than any we have ever known; life to the full and then some; life that, if we let our self-centered and dizzy attempts at existence die and accept his life, we will see his life everywhere, in everyone, and love it more and more. And in loving that life we’re loving God, and having new life every day, and pointing out to people the life in themselves that they might not have even noticed because they didn’t know what they were looking for; they haven’t seen yet how God fulfills his promise to give new life.
And he does.
Eostre, with her hares and eggs. Passover, with its blood and exodus. Easter, with Christ’s death and resurrection. Symbols to remember God’s faithfulness by.
I still don’t know about the chocolate and jelly beans, though.
