easter

Easter is the holiest Christian festival, celebrating as it does the resurrection of Christ, but oddly enough cute bunnies and chocolate eggs have become its most recognized modern-day symbols.

The roots of the holiest day in the Christian calendar appear to lie in a pagan spring festival that celebrated the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, known as Eostre or Eastre.

Thanks to their notorious mating habits, hares or rabbits were held to be sacred animals to Eostre, and although no archaeological evidence has yet been unearthed it seems the goddess was at times depicted with a hare's head.

Second century Christians encountering such pagan rites sought therefore to incorporate them into the church's observance of the resurrection of Christ, in much the same way as Christmas was imposed on festivities marking the winter solstice.

That rule exists today — except in the Orthodox Church which follows a different calendar — meaning that Easter can fall anytime between March 21 and April 25.

Over time Eostre became Easter, and as prudish religious mores swept aside earthy pagan rituals, the bunny was turned from a symbol of fertility into one of innocence.

But as the Venerable Bede (673 to 735 A.D) — chronicler of life in Britain in the Middle Ages — observed, the pagan rituals hung on for many centuries, meaning that at times Easter was celebrated twice in one year.

Although it is uncertain when the giving of eggs became associated with Easter, they have long been symbols of life and rebirth.

Painted eggs have been found dating back to ancient Rome, while in 1200 A.D. Edward I of England is noted from royal records to have spent 18 pence on 450 eggs, which were painted in gold leaf and handed out to members of the royal family.



Most Christians are unaware of the origins of their religion or its holidays. Easter, the second-most popular Christian holiday, is actually an ancient pagan festival. In fact, Easter was celebrated hundreds of years before the supposed birth of Jesus. It wasn't until at least 300 years after the establishment of the Christian church that the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus began to be intermingled with the practices of Easter. You should know the truth. Spring Equinox is the time when day and night are equal, when plants begin to burst forth from the earth, leaves appear on the trees, and insects begin to move once again. Spring is the time when Persephone returns from the underworld as a young girl and she and her mother, Demeter, Goddess of the Grain, giver of the crops, play together in the fields and usher in new growth. The celebration of Easter occurs close to the time of this equinox.
Oestre or Eostar was a feast of the Goddess Ishtar/Astarte/Esther and celebrated her rebirth. The egg was used as a symbol for Eostar as it represented the re-birth of the Goddess and all of nature. According to the Venerable Bede (672-735), Christian historian and theologian, writing in the 8th century, the name Easter is from the festival of Oestre (sometimes spelled "Estre"), pronounced "Eestruh", the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring, fertility and rebirth. It is easy to see how "Eastre time" became "Easter time". Since ancient times, rabbits have been a symbol of sex and fertility, symbols of lust, sexual vigor and reproduction. In the traditions of Egypt and Persia there are such rabbit gods, and they were particularly honored in the Springtime. Osiris, the Egyptian god of resurrection, was sacrificed to the Nile each year in the form of a hare to guarantee the annual flooding of the river which Egyptian agriculture depended upon. The hare is an emblem of many lunar goddesses such as Hecate, Freyja, and Holda. In legend, the shadows of the moon's surface are believed to be rabbits. Hares are thought to be the moon's lovers or brothers. The hare or the rabbit were associated with the moon and the Goddess in ancient America and China, also. There is an old Christian legend about a young rabbit who, for three days, waited anxiously for his friend, Jesus, to return to the Garden of Gethsemane, little knowing what had become of Him. Early on Easter morning, Jesus returned to His favorite garden and was welcomed by His animal friend. That evening, when Jesus' disciples came into the garden to pray, they discovered a	path of beautiful larkspurs, each blossom bearing the image of a rabbit in its center as a remembrance of the patience and hope of this faithful little creature. Since eggs are also symbols of fertility and rebirth, eggs have always been an important feature of Springtime celebrations. The Orphic legend of the origin of the Universe has the Earth being hatched out of an enormous egg (the "cosmic egg"). In a broad range of ancient societies, from Egypt and Mesopotamia to the British Isles, brightly-decorated eggs were (and still are) presented as gifts and charms to bring fertility and sexual success each Spring. This all comes together in our Easter customs in the pagan tradition of Oestre (Estre), the Goddess of Spring, etc. In that pagan story, there was a great bird who intensely desired to be a rabbit. The Goddess Oestre (Estre) graciously turned the bird into a rabbit, and in gratitude the rabbit (who could still remember how to lay bird eggs) came each Spring, during the Festival of Oestre (Estre), and laid beautiful eggs for the benevolent goddess. This is exactly how we got a supernaural, egg-laying rabbit god in our Easter tradition. Since the pagan Festival of Oestre (Estre) coincided each Spring with the time of Passover, it isn't difficult to see how these pagan beliefs and customs eased into . Egypt Christianity. Ever since the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., Easter has been celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Solstice.

Easter is the holiest Christian festival, celebrating as it does the resurrection of Christ, but oddly enough cute bunnies and chocolate eggs have become its most recognized modern-day symbols. The roots of the holiest day in the Christian calendar appear to lie in a pagan spring festival that celebrated the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, known as Eostre or Eastre. Thanks to their notorious mating habits, hares or rabbits were held to be sacred animals to Eostre, and although no archaeological evidence has yet been unearthed it seems the goddess was at times depicted with a hare's head. Second century Christians encountering such pagan rites sought therefore to incorporate them into the church's observance of the resurrection of Christ, in much the same way as Christmas was imposed on festivities marking the winter solstice. In 325 A.D. Emperor Constantine sought to impose some order on the two festivals, convening the Council of Nicaea which ruled that Easter should always be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. That rule exists today — except in the Orthodox Church which follows a different calendar — meaning that Easter can fall anytime between March 21 and April 25. Over time Eostre became Easter, and as prudish religious mores swept aside earthy pagan rituals, the bunny was turned from a symbol of fertility into one of innocence. But as the Venerable Bede (673 to 735 A.D) — chronicler of life in Britain in the Middle Ages — observed, the pagan rituals hung on for many centuries, meaning that at times Easter was celebrated twice in one year. Although it is uncertain when the giving of eggs became associated with Easter, they have long been symbols of life and rebirth. Painted eggs have been found dating back to ancient Rome, while in 1200 A.D. Edward I of England is noted from royal records to have spent 18 pence on 450 eggs, which were painted in gold leaf and handed out to members of the royal family.
	The custom gradually became popular, and France's King XIV even made it an institution some 500 years later, demanding that his subjects bring him the biggest eggs laid during Holy Week, while on Easter Sunday he would distribute gold-painted eggs among his courtiers and servants.But as with all such festivals, Easter traditions vary from country to country. In Orthodox countries such as Greece, eggs are painted red, symbolizing the blood of Christ, and cracked at midnight on Saturday heralding the resurrection of Christ. With the passing of the centuries, the Easter bunny has also undergone a reincarnation. The fluffy, cute bunny recognized today has its origins in the 1500s and the German Oschter Haws — a magical rabbit which German children believed would leave them a nest of eggs in the garden. The first German and Dutch settlers brought the Easter hare to the New World and hundreds of years later, thanks to clever marketing and the growth in the chocolate trade, shop shelves now groan every year under the weight of candy rabbits and eggs.
BACK