I attended a wonderful family wedding over the weekend and the Shaman officiating on Saturday made a point of saying that this was a wonderful time for a wedding because of the renewal of nature theme, the Easter, that had been celebrated by peoples around the world for more than five thousand years.
His subtle reminder that long before Jews incorporated the Vernal Equinox into Pesach (the first full Moon after the Vernal Equinox) or Christians developed their own mythic structure around the astronomical event (the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Vernal Equinox) sky-aware peoples have chosen this event to mark the beginning of Spring.
Heather McDougall writes in The Guardian:
Easter is a pagan festival. If Easter isn’t really about Jesus, then what is it about? Today, we see a secular culture celebrating the spring equinox, whilst religious culture celebrates the resurrection. However, early Christianity made a pragmatic acceptance of ancient pagan practises, most of which we enjoy today at Easter. The general symbolic story of the death of the son (sun) on a cross (the constellation of the Southern Cross) and his rebirth, overcoming the powers of darkness, was a well worn story in the ancient world. There were plenty of parallel, rival resurrected saviours too.
The Sumerian goddess Inanna, or Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake, and was subsequently resurrected and ascended from the underworld. One of the oldest resurrection myths is Egyptian Horus. Born on 25 December, Horus and his damaged eye became symbols of life and rebirth. Mithras was born on what we now call Christmas day, and his followers celebrated the spring equinox. Even as late as the 4th century AD, the sol invictus, associated with Mithras, was the last great pagan cult the church had to overcome. Dionysus was a divine child, resurrected by his grandmother. Dionysus also brought his mum, Semele, back to life.
In an ironic twist, the Cybele cult flourished on today’s Vatican Hill. Cybele’s lover Attis, was born of a virgin, died and was reborn annually. This spring festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday, rising to a crescendo after three days, in rejoicing over the resurrection. There was violent conflict on Vatican Hill in the early days of Christianity between the Jesus worshippers and pagans who quarrelled over whose God was the true, and whose the imitation. What is interesting to note here is that in the ancient world, wherever you had popular resurrected god myths, Christianity found lots of converts. So, eventually Christianity came to an accommodation with the pagan Spring festival. Although we see no celebration of Easter in the New Testament, early church fathers celebrated it, and today many churches are offering “sunrise services” at Easter – an obvious pagan solar celebration. The date of Easter is not fixed, but instead is governed by the phases of the moon – how pagan is that?
All the fun things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare. Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures. Hot cross buns are very ancient too. In the Old Testament we see the Israelites baking sweet buns for an idol, and religious leaders trying to put a stop to it. The early church clergy also tried to put a stop to sacred cakes being baked at Easter. In the end, in the face of defiant cake-baking pagan women, they gave up and blessed the cake instead.
Even the Gospels are confused. An examination of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John shows that the authors (who wrote in the name of the apostles nearly a century after the reported events) were interested in telling two very different stories. Matthew, Mark and Luke wanted to focus on the last supper (a Seder celebrating Pesach) which would have occurred after the sacrifice of the Pascal lambs. John, on the other hand, wished to portray the Jesus character as the Pascal Lamb and therefore needed him to die before the Seder would have occurred.
As PZ Myers noted yesterday, dangerous revelations occur when people actually read the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. They might read Matthew 27:51-53 and see this!
