Eastre
Was just reading some news and this sentence struck me as hilarious...
The Kansas church plans to return to Colorado Springs at the end of April to picket outside the headquarters of Christian ministry Focus on the Family, which it accuses of being too liberal toward homosexuals.
Damn those Gay lovin Focus on the Family types. Entire story is here.
And then while searching for information on the origins of easter egg hunts (more on that later) I found this at http://www.gotquestions.org/
There is nothing essentially evil about painting eggs, hiding eggs, and having children search for them.
Whew - I was pretty sure I was going to hell for that!
The same site told me that a good Christian should consider calling the holiday "Resurrection Day" to distance the celbration of Christ's resurrection from the holiday of the pagan goddess Eastre. Hmmm, interesting concept when you consider the fact that resurrection/rebirth holidays, mythologies and religious festivals are as old as time. Isis and Osisris anyone?
I love the internet . Seriously, I remember the days when if you wanted to know something you had to trot your ass down to the library and look it up. Unless of course you happened to have a set of 20 year old encyclopedias on your bookshelves. Not anymore man. It's midnight on Easter morning and I just spent an hour reading about Easter, pagan holidays and a variety of other tidbits without ever leaving the snuggly comfort of my bed. Can we say paradigm shift?
Unfortunately though, I didn't really find what I was looking for. I was reading someone's blog yesterday and they mentioned that their UU church had included a note about the origins of egg hunts in their newsletter. According to that egg hunts started because pagan Britains used to bury decorated eggs as offerings and the Christian church would get the children to dig up the eggs and bring them to the church. This fascinated me, but I couldn't find that particular hypothesis of origin. I did find several sources that indicated that pagans gace decorated eggs as gifts to one another during the Eastre celebrations but with the rise of Christianity this tradition had to "go underground" and so the pagans began hiding the eggs for their neighbors. The church officials then enlisted the children to rat out the pagans by showing them where the eggs were hidden. Similar but different... All round interesting though. (Sidenote for Jay - have I ever told you that Dar Williams song make me tear up nearly everytime I hear it?)
We of course did the appropriately pagan thing this evening and had friends over to decorate eggs. It was a lovely time - we drank wine and ate cookies and generally celebrated the season. It was a perfectly metaphorical day to celebrate rebirth and regeneration. Cold and snowing when we gathered for an egg hunt in the morning; when we went out you could just barely see the green of the daffodils and tulips peaking through the snow. By the afternoon the snow had stopped, the clouds had begun to part and the smell of wet fertile earth filled the air.
posted by Carrie @ 12:49 AM
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