Easter is Pagan, You Know
It’s hard to know how much of the New Testament is based on the life of Jesus, if he existed at all. Certainly, all of the miracles attributed to him can be discarded outright. That includes the whole death and resurrection story. That pretty much gets rid of Easter.
What I find odd about Easter is that its pagan origins are even more apparent than those of Christmas. The big symbols of Easter are rabbits and eggs, which are fertility symbols in many pre-Christian cultures. Despite this, many Christians get quite indignant when you suggest this. I don’t know why they’re so upset. Many other Christians recognize this. That’s why they insist on taking the fun out of Easter by removing those two symbols and renaming their holiday Resurrection Sunday.
I found a short article over on Religious Tolerance about the pagan origins of Easter. It’s a good, but too-brief, summary of what we know.
Here’s another thing we know. Most people eat chocolate Easter bunnies head first. I didn’t save the link, but a day or two ago I came across a website with “fun facts” about Easter. It claimed (but didn’t cite its source) that 75% of people start eating the bunny at the ears. This certainly is consistent with my observations. When I used to eat Easter bunnies, I always started at the top. It’s the natural order of things. If you’ve ever watched a predator swallow its prey whole, it’s almost always head first.
The only praying preying you should be doing today is on defenseless chocolate bunnies. Make sure you do it properly.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
My birds are in full celebration of the fertility holiday of easter. Two of my love birds are mating about three times per day and I have two other love bird hens (not mating) who are regularly laying eggs. I keep looking for the virgin mary on or in one of the eggs, but it never appears. Damn. I want to make some money on Ebay before the end of Spring.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
PL,
My wife brought home some baby ducks for our kids, and I’m sure if I look hard enough I can find a pareidolia of Jesus in their droppings. If I didn’t have a conscience I could take any number of ignorant rubes to the cleaners, and maybe even get on the news. They don’t scrutinize this sort of thing seriously, and after all, my kids and I do want a Wii.
April 12th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Nothin’ like a rabbit fucking a chicken to catch the reader’s attention….I’ve been doing my best to reclaim Christmas and Easter as occasions to celebrate the changing seasons by stuffing my face with chocolate…hey, it works…
April 13th, 2009 at 5:33 am
When I was little I could never eat the chocolate rabbit the Easter Bunny brought me. Just as I would get ready to clamp my teeth down into hollowy chocolaty goodness my mom would say (in a Mr. Bill-esque voice) “OH NO! DON’T HURT ME!!!”
I would be so distressed that I was hurting the bunny I wouldn’t be able to eat it…and therefore the chocolate rabbit sat at the back of the fridge until my mom would finally get to it a few weeks later. I now think that making me feel bad was her ploy to get to my chocolate rabbit.
April 13th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Wow – your mom is evil! lol
April 13th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
PL, what do you do with the eggs if they aren’t mating? They aren’t fertile, so – you aren’t eating them, are you?
April 14th, 2009 at 5:53 am
I just toss them out.
If I was a fundie, I would have to go through the incubation process anyway. Every clump of cells is sacred blah blah.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Speaking along the lines of PL…what do fundies do when a woman miscarries in the first trimester? Do they still name it and have a funeral and what not? I can see if the baby was further along (I had a sibling die at 8 mo and my parents had a funeral) but when they still look like an alien do they have the whole rigamorale?
April 15th, 2009 at 5:48 am
I could understand significant mourning for any pregnancy, no matter how far along, if you are attached to the thought of “what would be.”
It’s a mental, not physical, thing at that point. A first trimester miscarriage can be incredibly depressing if you were only a few days ago fantasizing about your future child’s graduation, wedding, etc.
So, really, I don’t see a problem with it for anybody with any religion. Nor do I see a problem with abortion. It’s not about the unremarkable clump of cells — it’s about the dreams and hopes of the parents that are being crushed.