Easter is one of the most misunderstood and varied holidays celebrated today. How did a story of resurrection become associated with rabbits and chocolate eggs? The pagan origins of these ancient traditions may surprise you!
This is Ancient Origins, and today we'll be exploring the surprising origins of the Easter celebration.
Easter is a festival and holiday celebrated by millions of people around the world who honor the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred three days after his crucifixion at Calvary. It is also the day that children excitedly wait for the Easter bunny to arrive and deliver their treats of chocolate eggs.
The date upon which Easter is held varies from year to year, and corresponds with the first Sunday following the full moon after the March equinox. It occurs on different dates around the world since western churches use the Gregorian calendar, while eastern churches use the Julian calendar.
While Easter, as we know it today, was never a pagan festival, its roots and many of its traditions have associations with ancient pagan customs and beliefs.
According to the New Unger’s Bible Dictionary: “The word Easter is of Saxon origin, Eastra, the goddess of spring, in whose honour sacrifices were offered about Passover time each year. By the eighth century Anglo–Saxons had adopted the name to designate the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.” However, even among those who maintain that Easter has pagan roots, there is some disagreement over which pagan tradition the festival emerged from. Here we will explore some of those perspectives. Resurrection as a Symbol of Rebirth
One theory that has been put forward is that the Easter story of crucifixion and resurrection is symbolic of rebirth and renewal and retells the cycle of the seasons, the death and return of the sun.
According to some scholars, such as Dr. Tony Nugent, teacher of Theology and Religious Studies at Seattle University, and Presbyterian minister, the Easter story comes from the Sumerian legend of Damuzi (Tammuz) and his wife Inanna (Ishtar), an epic myth called “The Descent of Inanna” found inscribed on cuneiform clay tablets dating back to 2100 BC. When Tammuz dies, Ishtar is grief–stricken and follows him to the underworld. In the underworld, she enters through seven gates, and her worldly attire is removed. "Naked and bowed low" she is judged, killed, and then hung on display. In her absence, the earth loses its fertility, crops cease to grow and animals stop reproducing. Unless something is done, all life on earth will end.
Ēostre - Everyone's Pagan Goddess for a day For all intents and purposes, in North America, this Full Blue Moon will occur on "Friday night." I suppose that it will be perhaps just as full on Friday and Saturday evenings. Technically it occurs at 8:37 AM est. It works out perfectly since it overlaps with the April 1st Pagan New Year, or "Easter" after the Teutonic goddess Ēostre (Ostara) and with all of the rich Pagan symbolism. Of course the Ostara seasonal celebration was March 19-22, so both dates would objectively work and are tied to our ancient past. I would like to think that the hollidays/festivals of Carnival, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Ostara, and finally Easter---all rooted in ancient Pagan traditions---are something of a five-week countdown to the "Pagan New Year."
Cueva de los Murciélagos (Cave of Bats) Within this
Neolithic burial chamber in Spain was discovered a seated female
skeleton surrounded by twelve others in a neat semicircle: 12+1=13
Externsteine Rocks Neolithic Astronomical Observatory By Martin Gray - WorldReviewer.com Located in the Teutoburg district, the sacred heartland of Germany, the Externsteine rocks were known as a place of pilgrimage in prehistoric, Celtic and early Saxon times. Pagan rituals were performed here until the 8th century AD, when Charles the Great cut down the sacred Irmensul tree, the German tree of life and symbol of the old religion. The earliest historical mention of Externsteine comes from the 12th century when the site came under the control of a nearby Benedictine monastery. A series of artificial caves, which had been carved into the base of the sandstone spires in ancient times, were enlarged and used as dwellings for Christian hermits and monks.
Atop the tallest rock spire are the well preserved remains of an
enigmatic prehistoric temple. Different theories have been suggested
concerning the identity of the temple's builders and the use to which it
was put. Some have described the shrine as a Mithraeum, or sanctuary
for Roman soldiers adhering to the Persian cult of Mithras, while other
scholars believe that such deities as the Germanic Teut, the Nordic
Wodan, or the Bructerian prophetess Veleda were worshipped in the
sanctuary. What is known with certainty however, is that the temple was
constructed according to astronomical orientations. The round
window-like opening shown in the photograph has been demonstrated to
have significant celestial alignments, including a view of the moon at
its northern extreme and the sun at sunrise on the summer solstice.
Externsteine was once the reputed former haunt of the prophetess Veleda. John Denver - Annie's Song Jstfmceh .
The winter and spring solstice festivals long before the Messiah and the apostles were celebrated as pagan festivals with pagan traditions. The early church/believers never did Easter bunnies, hot cross buns, eggs, etc. but today these customs have crept into much of the church. Correction: The early church itself adopted local pagan symbolism to advance the cause of conversion. .
This is the second video I have made from the Ambrosian tradition. It is an Ambrosian Rite (i.e. Milanese) hymn from, I believe, the Easter Mass. It also seemingly Gregorianized. This version seems to use minor lyrical changes, by a different translation, or else it just sounds different because of a accent. The version also ignores the "Gloria Tibi" conclusion. "Michael Vanquishing Satan" by Raphael Sanzio.
Hic Est Dies Virus Dei is an anonymous Ambrosian hymn which is sung at Matins (Office of Readings) throughout the Easter season in the Roman Breviary. .
From YouTube user prigionierodizenda Video description: Pasqua Easter 2012 Duomo Milano - Ambrosian Exultet Preconio pasquale Ambrosiano in Latin The Ambrosian Exultet is quite different from the Roman version. Chanted in Latin according to the original Ambrosian melody. .
Apparently there are pagan links with Easter from the ancient Near East and other places over time, but I just wanted to put out a few from European traditions from Wikipedia. Etymology
The modern English term Easter, cognate with modern German Ostern, developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre, which itself developed prior to 899. This is generally held to have originally referred to the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, Ēostre, a form of the widely attested Indo-European dawn goddess. The evidence for the Anglo-Saxon goddess, however, has not been universally accepted, and some have proposed that Eostre may have meant "the month of opening" or that the name Easter may have arisen from the designation of Easter Week in Latin as in albis.
Computations
In 725, Bede succinctly wrote, "The Sunday following the full Moon which falls on or after the equinox will give the lawful Easter." However, this does not reflect the actual ecclesiastical rules precisely. One reason for this is that the full moon involved (called the Paschal full moon) is not an astronomical full moon, but the 14th day of a calendar lunar month. Another difference is that the astronomical equinox is a natural astronomical phenomenon, which can fall on 19, 20 March, or 21, while the ecclesiastical date is fixed by convention on 21 March.
Ēostre Ēostre or Ostara (Northumbrian Old English: Ēostre; West Saxon Old English: Ēastre; Old High German: *Ôstara) is a goddess in Germanic paganism who, by way of the Germanic month bearing her name (Northumbrian: Ēosturmōnaþ; West Saxon: Ēastermōnaþ; Old High German: Ôstarmânoth), is the namesake of the festival of Easter.
Jacob Grimm, *Ostara, and Easter customs
In his 1835 Deutsche Mythologie, Jacob Grimm cites comparative evidence to reconstruct a potential continental Germanic goddess whose name would have been preserved in the Old High German name of Easter, *Ostara. Addressing skepticism towards goddesses mentioned by Bede, Grimm comments that "there is nothing improbable in them, nay the first of them is justified by clear traces in the vocabularies of Germanic tribes." Specifically regarding Ēostre, Grimm continues that:
We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ôstarmânoth is found as early as Eginhart. The great christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of OHG remains the name ôstarâ ... it is mostly found in the plural, because two days ... were kept at Easter. This Ostarâ, like the [Anglo-Saxon] Eástre, must in heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries.
Hares and Freyja
In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves hares and rabbits. Citing folk Easter customs in Leicestershire, England where "the profits of the land called Harecrop Leys were applied to providing a meal which was thrown on the ground at the 'Hare-pie Bank'", late 19th-century scholar Charles Isaac Elton theorizes a connection between these customs and the worship of Ēostre. In his late 19th-century study of the hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cites numerous incidents of folk custom involving the hare around the period of Easter in Northern Europe. Billson says that "whether there was a goddess named Eostre, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island."
Some scholars have linked customs and imagery involving hares to Ēostre and the Norse goddess Freyja. Writing in 1972, John Andrew Boyle cites commentary contained within an etymology dictionary by A. Ernout and A. Meillet, where the authors write that "Little else [...] is known about [Ēostre], but it has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of the dawn, were carried by hares. And she certainly represented spring fecundity, and love and carnal pleasure that leads to fecundity." Boyle responds that nothing is known about Ēostre outside of Bede's single passage, that the authors had seemingly accepted the identification of Ēostre with the Norse goddess Freyja, yet that the hare is not associated with Freyja either. Boyle writes that "her carriage, we are told by Snorri, was drawn by a pair of cats — animals, it is true, which like hares were the familiars of witches, with whom Freyja seems to have much in common." However, Boyle adds that "on the other hand, when the authors speak of the hare as the 'companion of Aphrodite and of satyrs and cupids' and point out that 'in the Middle Ages it appears beside the figure of Luxuria', they are on much surer ground and can adduce the evidence of their illustrations."
Modern popular culture and modern veneration
Jacob Grimm's reconstructed *Ostara has had some influence in popular culture since. The name has been adapted as an asteroid (343 Ostara, 1892 by Max Wolf), a Mödling, Austria-based German nationalist book series and publishing house (1905, Ostara), and a date on the WiccanWheel of the Year (Ostara, 21 March). In music, the name Ostara has been adopted as a name by the musical group Ostara, and as the names of albums by :zoviet*france: (Eostre, 1984) and The Wishing Tree (Ostara, 2009). Eostre appears in Neil Gaiman's novel, American Gods.
In some forms of Germanic Neopaganism, Eostre (or Ostara) is venerated. Regarding this veneration, Carole M. Cusack comments that, among adherents, Eostre is "associated with the coming of spring and the dawn, and her festival is celebrated at the spring equinox. Because she brings renewal, rebirth from the death of winter, some Heathens associate Eostre with Idunn, keeper of the apples of youth in Scandinavian mythology." .
Resurrection as a Symbol of Rebirth
