The Strange (but True) Story of Easter
Easter is weird.
For religious people, this is the most sacred day of the year, a time to reflect on the main miracle on which Christianity is based. And, for the kids, the “magic bunny” side dropped by last night and left a basket full of colored eggs and candy for you.
The modern Easter celebration is rooted in many sources – the Catholic Church, paganism, Judaism, the vernal equinox – over so many centuries that it makes sense that it’s a bit disjointed. Read on as I try to unravel some of the mysteries of the “real” Easter.
Easter (or something like that) has been around for a long time.
Feasts, celebrations and/or holy days around the vernal equinox predate Christianity by thousands of years. The early Christians borrowed the date of Passover (and probably the whole “ritual eating of bread” thing known as the sacrament) from the Jews, who had observed Passover since at least the 5th century BC. The Chinese celebrated the New Year in the spring long before that. The real “source” of Easter is probably ultimately the annual spring equinox, an astronomical event that has been recognized in cultures around the world for almost forever. After all, it’s the beginning of spring, so who wouldn’t be celebrating?
How did Easter get its name?
In his book of 725, The Calculus of Time, the linguist and historian Saint Bede the Venerable mentions an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring named Eostre. The whole of April was named after Eostra and was filled with feasting. In 1835, Jacob Grimm (half of the Grimm brothers who wrote all these tales) claimed that Easter got its name from the goddess.
Although Grimm was probably wrong. This is a good theory, and there is evidence that the pagans did indeed worship Eostra, but modern historians agree that “Easter” comes from “the Christian designation for Easter week as in albis , a Latin phrase that was understood to be the plural of alba (“dawn “) and became eostarum in Old High German.”
When is Easter anyway?
There have been protracted disputes in my life, but nothing compares to a heated discussion among Christians about when to celebrate Easter. This has been raging since at least AD 195, when Pope Victor I attempted to excommunicate the Tetecostals for thinking Easter should always be celebrated on the 14th day of the Easter moon. Fools! The quintodecimans were clearly right; it must be the 15th day!
Version “when is Easter?” the argument still rages today, despite the best efforts of the World Council of Churches . The small details of the dispute are too boring to describe in detail, but the bottom line is this: Most Western Christians use the Gregorian calendar to determine the date of Easter. Eastern Orthodox Christians use the old Julian calendar so the dates do not match. This year’s Gregorian Easter will be on Sunday April 17th, while the Julian team will have to wait until April 24th.
Secular rites of Easter
The official religious observance of Easter is not difficult. Among Catholics, for example, it is “Go to Mass. Eat the transubstantiated flesh of the Savior.” (By the way , this is the Catholic Church’s answer to everything ). On the other hand, these hallmarks of the holiday are as rich, deep and colorful as the egg you left overnight in food coloring mixture.
Why eggs? Why colored eggs? Here’s one theory about the connection between eggs and Easter: Pagans liked eggs because they saw them as a symbol of new life, perfect for the vernal equinox. When the Catholic armies invaded and occupied pagan lands, they did not eradicate the pagan tradition of eggs; they swallowed it. Like the ancient version of the Borg, the early Christian invaders turned on and took away the parts of Pagan cultures they could live with (eggs at the Spring Festival) while discarding the parts they couldn’t live with (gender equality).
Some do not believe that the pagans did this and think that the association of eggs and Easter came from Lent . Many people gave up eggs during Lent, so it makes sense that they gorged themselves on them at Easter. (That would explain all the candy as well.)
Is the central postulate of Christianity, celebrated at Easter (“Our god was killed, but returned to life, and now we eat his flesh, symbolically or really, depending on your belief”), is based on pagan mythology, it could be worms won’t get in here. Instead, let’s talk about egg painting: Christians are believed to have borrowed egg decoration from Persia . In the early days of the Church, Christians in Mesopotamia began painting Easter eggs red in memory of the blood shed by Christ during his crucifixion. The trend caught on and we still do today, though thankfully we are more colorful and festive than those sickly early Mesopotamian Christians.
Why rabbit?
The rabbit is another Easter staple that some believe comes from paganism . Rabbits are legendaryly fertile, which is why it is believed that pagans associated the hare and its fertility with spring and rebirth. (Pagan symbolism—at least as described by early historians—seems pretty damn simple.)
How the character “Easter Bunny”, a sentient rabbit who delivers baskets of colored eggs to children, came about is a bit vague, but the first written record of the “Easter Bunny” is from Germany in the 1600s . Dutch settlers from Pennsylvania brought the tradition to the United States in the 18th century and it has survived.
I don’t completely trust the Easter Bunny. He/she/they/it is a recognized holiday celebrity, but her backstory is not well explored. We know everything about Santa – where he lives, who he hangs out with, how his stomach looks like a bowl of jelly when he laughs – but what do we really know about the Easter Bunny? Where does it live? Is this a Catholic? Why does a rabbit have so many eggs?
The lyrics of one well-known song about the Easter bunny, “Here Comes Peter Cotton Tail,” sheds little light on the subject, except for these lines about the motivation of the Easter bunny: “Maybe if you’re really good, he” I’ll roll a lot of Easter eggs according to you. Not only is this just a plagiarism of Santa Claus, the word “maybe” is troubling. Shit or get off the pot, Easter Bunny.
Brief history of PAAS
The PAAS Dye Company is owned by Signature Brands, LLC, but has been around since the early 1900s, when William Townley, a drugstore owner in Newark, New Jersey, invented multi-colored granules of dye that dissolves in water and vinegar for dyeing eggs. While you can just mix food coloring with vinegar and water to color eggs and get better results for about a tenth of the price, PAAS sells about 10 million of their Easter egg decorating kits each year.
According to compelling Easter research commissioned by PAAS , of the 49 percent of Americans who decorate eggs for Easter, 56 percent are interested in “creating family memories,” while 54 percent are “looking for a fun family activity,” and 53 percent. percent want “quality family time.” Surprisingly, “I’m doing all this Easter shit because I feel like I have to or I’ll be a bad dad” didn’t make the list.