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Kitty4670
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16 Apr 2017, 5:55 pm

Do anyone like Easter?



Redxk
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16 Apr 2017, 6:04 pm

It's my favorite. But it's also part of my religion. It would probably be just another boring candy holiday if I weren't religious.



DeepHour
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16 Apr 2017, 6:13 pm

No, I don't like any public holiday period and even have problems with Sundays. Shops closed or restricted hours, public transport almost non-existent, television schedules altered, no postal deliveries, libraries closed.....I've only survived so far by drinking outrageous amounts of wine and beer, and there's still Easter Monday to survive. Cheers, everyone! :hic: :king:



AspieUtah
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16 Apr 2017, 6:16 pm

I like Easter because, even if we ignore the resurrection and ascension aspect, it reminds us to strive for individual betterment in our lives.


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feral botanist
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16 Apr 2017, 6:22 pm

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -symbolism

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.

Easter is essentially a pagan festival which is celebrated with cards, gifts and novelty Easter products, because it's fun and the ancient symbolism still works. It's always struck me that the power of nature and the longer days are often most felt in modern towns and cities, where we set off to work without putting on our car headlights and when our alarm clock goes off in the mornings, the streetlights outside are not still on because of the darkness.

What better way to celebrate, than to bite the head off the bunny goddess, go to a "sunrise service", get yourself a sticky-footed fluffy chick and stick it on your TV, whilst helping yourself to a hefty slice of pagan simnel cake? Happy Easter everyone!



AspieUtah
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16 Apr 2017, 6:45 pm

feral botanist wrote:
...Easter is a pagan festival....

Exactly right. Easter is one of those holidays that finds itself tied to the moon cycles instead of the sun cycles. Early Christian gnostics weren't ignorant of some pagan ways. The Bible tells us simply that "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven..." (Ecclesiastes 3, KJV), so there was an understanding of nature and its influences (right times to plant, harvest, rest and celebrate). Christians and pagans should recognize a lot of their believes in each other. The more cynical say that the early Christian church co-opted pagan holidays. Maybe so, but had they not done so, would the world still know much of the holidays without such a vigorous description of history? I tend to believe that each chose to celebrate thouse ideas with which it was already familiar. The rest took care of itself. For me, it isn't a matter of "this or that," but both.


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16 Apr 2017, 7:03 pm

I like easter because candy and bunny rabbits.



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16 Apr 2017, 7:32 pm

Yes, but I've had too much chocolate...


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feral botanist
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16 Apr 2017, 9:55 pm

AspieUtah wrote:
feral botanist wrote:
...Easter is a pagan festival....

Exactly right. Easter is one of those holidays that finds itself tied to the moon cycles instead of the sun cycles. Early Christian gnostics weren't ignorant of some pagan ways. The Bible tells us simply that "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven..." (Ecclesiastes 3, KJV), so there was an understanding of nature and its influences (right times to plant, harvest, rest and celebrate). Christians and pagans should recognize a lot of their believes in each other. The more cynical say that the early Christian church co-opted pagan holidays. Maybe so, but had they not done so, would the world still know much of the holidays without such a vigorous description of history? I tend to believe that each chose to celebrate those ideas with which it was already familiar. The rest took care of itself. For me, it isn't a matter of "this or that," but both.



A more accurate beginning line should be "Easter has it's roots in pagan holidays." As it is celebrated in most of Europe and the USA it is about religion, with the pagan addins of bunnies and eggs.

Pagan actually means peasant, the peasants in Rome were late adopters of christianity, so for a time it referred to the non-christians who lived outside the cities.



feral botanist
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16 Apr 2017, 9:59 pm

EclecticWarrior wrote:
Yes, but I've had too much chocolate...



does such a condition actually exist?



kitesandtrainsandcats
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16 Apr 2017, 10:17 pm

feral botanist wrote:
The date of Easter is not fixed, but instead is governed by the phases of the moon – how pagan is that?
Sounds more Jewish than pagan.
Quote:
The Jewish calendar is primarily lunar, with each month beginning on the new moon, when the first sliver of moon becomes visible after the dark of the moon. In ancient times, the new months used to be determined by observation.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-jewish-calendar

Quote:
The entire cycle takes approximately 29½ days.3 Since a month needs to consist of complete days, a month is sometimes twenty-nine days long (such a month is known as chaser, “missing”), and sometimes thirty (malei, “full”).
Knowing exactly when the month begins has always been important in Jewish practice, because the Torah schedules the Jewish festivals according to the days of the month.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_c ... -Month.htm

Quote:
The holiday of Pesach, or Passover, falls on the Hebrew calendar dates of Nissan 15-22. Here are coinciding secular dates for the upcoming years:

http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover ... d-2020.htm


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Lace-Bane
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16 Apr 2017, 11:05 pm

actually can't particularly handle the taste of sweet things like soda, chocolate, cake, ice cream, pudding, cookies or candies anymore, so none of the sweet perks of the holiday were missed this year in choosing to spend the day alone instead of at a family get together(31 people to meet in one house this year... too daunting with recent health). also, kinda wanted to walk to the grocery store today as routine would normally dictate for sunday around noon, but didn't in concern that the store might be far busier and more disorienting as a result than comfortable... though, whoever can actually enjoy the holiday, or most any other for that matter, at least there's that silver lining that others can find their own enjoyments in such things.


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kitesandtrainsandcats
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16 Apr 2017, 11:16 pm

That kinda does make sense,

Quote:
This view presumes—as does the view associating the origin of Christmas on December 25 with pagan celebrations of the winter solstice—that Christians appropriated pagan names and holidays for their highest festivals. Given the determination with which Christians combated all forms of paganism (the belief in multiple deities), this appears a rather dubious presumption.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday

But then, what about languages other than Germanic ones?
Quote:
Etymology
There are two possibilities for the source of the term “Easter”. One is that the name comes from the Saxon fertility goddess Eostre (sometimes spelled Eastre or Ostara). The legend goes that Eostre owned an egg-laying rabbit or hare and the story symbolized fertility and life. In the 8th century CE work De temporum ratione, written by an English monk named Bede, the author claims that, during the month of April, the pagan Anglo-Saxon community used to have feasts to honour Eostre, but that custom had died out by the time of his writing, replaced by the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Another accepted origin of the term Easter is that it comes from the German “Ostern”, which comes from the Norse word “Eostrus”, meaning ‘Spring’.

The pagan holidays of the goddess Eostre (or Ostara) celebrated fertility and new life: The egg symbolized perfection and wholeness in its natural state and the rabbit was a symbol of fertility. For many cultures, the beginning of the spring season was a symbol of rebirth. This relates to the fact that after the darkness of winter, nature gains a new strength that was symbolized as the ascent of life from the realm of darkness to the world of light.

The Connection between Passover & Easter
Romance languages derived the term Easter from the Greek “Pascha” (Pâques in French, Pasqua in Italian, Páscoa in Portuguese, Pascua in Spanish), which comes from the Hebrew “Pesah”, meaning ‘Passover’, the Jewish celebration which early Jewish-Christian communities used to celebrate jointly with Easter.

http://www.ancient.eu/Easter/

And, for example, Easter is Великден, Velikden, in Bulgarian; Uskrs in Croatian, Vaskrs in Bosnian, which comes from where? I don't know those languages to be able to research it.

There is only that one language family where Eostre figures in, so I have a difficult time associating the overall origin of the term Easter with a pagan goddess.


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17 Apr 2017, 4:11 am

Not religious,but a good excuse to lap up the public holiday and hermit further.


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17 Apr 2017, 9:07 am

Easter is one of my favorite holidays. My favorite holiday is New Year's Day but Easter is my third favorite. I got stuff from Sephora for Easter and my basket was a Sephora shopping bag.


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lostonearth35
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17 Apr 2017, 1:20 pm

I do!. Bunny rabbits, chocolate, eggs, spring. What's not to like? :D

Although I only really celebrate it in secular fashion. I know it's supposed to be the most holy of Christian holidays, but I really couldn't care less, it's just a excuse to have some fun.

I went home to my parents this Saturday to spend Easter with them. My dad and I both got some really nice Easter treats, and we had a lovely roast turkey dinner on Sunday. It's kind of hard to believe it's come and gone. Mother's Day will be the next big thing...