EASTER

From the Spring Equinox (March) to Lent to Holy Week this is amongst the weirdest times of Christian belief mixed with the pagan even ‘heathen’ practices (so called) what is left largely based upon German Mythology (for reasons best known to someone else!) today marks the so called day of Crucifixion of Jesus and the most barbaric form of corporal punishment ever recorded and created by man (Roman) excruciatingly painful a death lasting hours the victim died from pain, shock and finally, if they managed to survive long enough, asphyxiation, the nailing of the wrists & feet ensuring a slump in the body that impacted upon the rib cage so you could not take a breath. If that didn’t come soon enough the legs would be broken to ensure the collapse of the lung! 

Eggs, hares, chocolate et al notwithstanding, largely from elsewhere but mostly German, that the Christians of the day did not dare change to absorb and subsume into the canonical whitewash of ancient celebrations of the coming of the new year with the wonderment surrounding the change in the season. Eostre anyone?

Easter has always fascinated me with its mishmash (amalgam) of customs from the Pagan to the early Christians that and its lunar influence make it quite unique. Easter is a moveable feast; in other words, it's one of the few floating holidays in the calendar year, because it's based solely on the cycles of the moon. Jesus was said to have risen from the dead on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring.  For that reason, Easter can fall as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th. As 'Palinurus' points out in 'The Unquiet Grave' [the nom de plume of writer Cyril Connolly and a favourite book of mine] there were many wandering 'wise men' in the region performing illusions turning water into wine etc and preaching their thoughts all claiming to be the son of God. Jesus the Nazarene (to distinguish him from the many bearers of the same forename at the time, the graves locally being full of over 50+ such named men) from what we can tell performed his passover plot illusion of resurrection as his grandest illusion. Easter also marks the end of the 40-day period of fasting for Lent and the beginning of Eastertide. 

The word "Easter" and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime, the renewal of the years natural life and the return of the sun after the long dark winter. According to legend Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. For a long time popular in the USA more than here in the UK but commercial influence brought us marketing for chocolate! Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century. Handy hint: don't try eating the rabbits 'eggs' they are tiny, dark and really quite bitter to taste.

As Jacob Grimm notes in his 'German Mythologies':

The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in the matter of bonfires. Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate : I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people's amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences.

Strange as it may seem, Eastertide, like Christmas, is a relic of pagan days. In former days, when the dawn of civilization was just beginning to break, that time of the year when winter was passing away and summer approaching, was made a period of festivity. The people in their blind fashion thanked the unseen beings who ruled the world for the breaking up of the frost-time and prayed for plenteous harvests and fruitful flocks and herds. When Christianity pushed its way further and further into the then barbaric world the early missionaries, not wishing to antagonize their prospective converts, took this festival and consecrated its observance to the new form of faith. In England the festival became known as “Easter” from the goddess Eostre, and in the eggs so widely looked upon as typical of Easter is a mark of the old legend of a bird that was changed into a hare in the spring.

Christians hold Easter Saturday ( a movable feast at best) to mark the crucifixion of Jesus one of the most barbaric forms of torturous corporal punishment ever invented by man (the Romans specially) being nailed to a cross having the legs broken if they continued to breathe so that death would come in hours rather than days. Unable to support the body any longer by the feet straining against the collapse asphyxiation would soon follow as no breath could any linger be taken in. Experts and historians agree it must have been amongst the most painful forms of death imaginable.