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I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported

I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.

GranularRecipe 1y ago
The first month after March equinox has great religious significance across many cultures (in the temperate zone), e.g. Pesach. When different cultures meet, they tend to syncretise.
- ithkuil 1y ago
  Yes. And this mix continues. Even traditional that originally have some common root and then diverge can later resyncretise. For example look at Halloween being introduced in southern Europe thanks to US cultural influence
larusso 1y ago
Let’s talk about Christmas then. They deliberately put it at a time where many northern folks had their own traditional end of the year / longest night (opposite to midd summer) festivals. In Germany we have Nikolaus on the 6.12 (goes back to a priest St Nikolaus who did good to people and I believe died on the 6th of December) But the name is striking to Santa Claus which is just a Anglo version of that name. Interesting is also that half of Germany the Christ baby brings the presents or the Weihnachtsmann. The Weihnachtsmann is what we would refer as Santa. But Santa and Nikolaus are depicted the same. There some other festivals like Jule from Scandinavia etc. But compared to Christmas we at least know that the end of Jesus (or whoever it was) happened at that time due to too many religions and groups in the city. When he was born and how old he even was… Edit: Also the fact that the holiday follows the moon calendar because it was the Sunday after the Paschal full moon. Which is celebrated by the Jewish as Passover.
- petesergeant 1y ago
  > They deliberately put it Who did? When?
  - knome 1y ago
    The Catholic Church. The fourth century. https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas >In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). >Although some evidence suggests that Jesus' birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival
    - petesergeant 1y ago
      The "history.com editors" using a phrase like "it is commonly believed" doesn't feel like a citation to me. My understanding is that the date is derived from the date of the Annunciation.
      - knome 1y ago
        Expecting a formally reviewed citation in response to a vague three word query in an informal conversation on a forum wholly unrelated to specialization in that topic is a bit silly, but if you do bother to do the legwork and find a citation for either what I linked or your own notion, it may be of interest to other readers.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - Amezarak 1y ago
      This is a common theory but it's almost certainly wrong. https://www.bartehrman.com/why-is-christmas-on-december-25th/ https://www.bartehrman.com/why-is-christmas-on-december-25th... > However, upon closer examination, this theory encounters several historical and contextual challenges. One of the key issues is the lack of any contemporary evidence from the early Christian period directly linking the choice of December 25th for Christmas to pagan festivals. > But several decades earlier (c. 203 C.E.), a bishop from Rome, Hippolytus, wrote: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years.” (Comm. on Dan. 23.3.) [...] > Tertullian, for example, calculated that Jesus was killed on March 25th. If Jesus had also been conceived on March 25th and you count exactly nine months later from that date, you then have Jesus’ birth on December 25th. I think this is the way early Christians came to believe that Jesus’ birth happened on December 25th. > Moreover, unlike the previous and still most popular theory, this one is mentioned in the early sources! > A treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which comes from the 4th century states: “Therefore, our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in March, which is the day of the passion of the Lord and his conception. For on that day, he was conceived on the same he suffered.” Note that regardless, December 25th was regarded as the date by at least some Christians long before the fourth century. As for the mention of shepherds in the article, we have independent attestations of shepherding in winter in the area, so the question of "why would they be there in winter" is "because that's normal".
suddenlybananas 1y ago
https://youtu.be/0m2ZQaxfpnY?si=t0zQAWhZEW8Uoa2z https://youtu.be/0m2ZQaxfpnY?si=t0zQAWhZEW8Uoa2z the Easter Bunny is not pagan, it's a much more recent tradition.
- danwills 1y ago
  Thanks for the correction there! I was not aware that Easter Bunny was much more like Santa than something associated with Eostre or Pagan. I guess the bunny still got something similar to the Coke-branding that Santa got to help product sales, but for chocolate sales instead!? I retract the 'rabbits' part of what I said, but I still think it's ultimately a fairly weird taken-over/hybrid-mythology festival! I'm only able to talk about Easter as I know it in Aus though!.. I totally acknowledge festivals and their timing/meaning are very different in other places.
- defrost 1y ago
  The video doesn't disprove a long standing non Christian association between what is now Easter and rabbits. What it does state is in agreement with the wikipedia article on the connection between Ēostre and rabbits, namely: The earliest evidence for the Easter Hare (Osterhase) was recorded in south-west Germany in 1678 by the professor of medicine Georg Franck von Franckenau ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre This is the earliest still extant written account of folk practices that had been occurring for some indeterminant time. We are aware that the brewing of beer predates by many centuries, millenia even, the earliest still extant written account of the practice of brewing beer.
  - suddenlybananas 1y ago
    Of course it is possible that the tradition goes back more than a thousand years from when it was first attested, but we have no material evidence of that whatsoever. No statues of a goddess surrounded by eggs and rabbits, no amulets of protection, no recorded myths, no references to something similar from Greek or Roman sources, nothing. This is in contrast to beer where we have actually found remains of beer from long, long ago.
thayne 1y ago
It isn't arbitrary. The death and resurrection of Jesus happened after the Jewish passover, which happens in the spring. It is also easy to see how symbols of renewed life and fertility in the spring could be adapted to symbolize Jesus coming back to life.
LtWorf 1y ago
You realise that jewish people have had easter for a certain number of years before christ?
- fortran77 1y ago
  Ummm, Jews don't have Easter. Right now we are in the Chol Hamoed part of Passover/Pesach, with the Chag resuming and sundown tonight and continuing for 2 days.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Yes I don't speak hebrew… It's just called "jewish easter" in my language. And?
    - fortran77 1y ago
      In Hebrew, Easter is called "פסחא" which is very similar to Passover, "פסח" (Just an aleph added, and the prounciation changed a bit). However, the holidays have nothing to do with each other, despite Christian attempts to link the Paschal lamb to Jesus. Nobody would say "The Jews have Easter" because we have no holiday commemerating the ressurection of a messiah. We beleive the messiah has yet to come.
      - AStonesThrow 1y ago
        > the holidays have nothing to do with each other Well, if the holidays had nothing to do with each other, then the Early Christians reading the Gospels were all severely misled by the quite obvious references to Jesus as the Paschal Lamb, such as the Last Supper with no mention of a lamb on the table [because it was Jesus, the Lamb Himself, living among them] https://bible.usccb.org/bible/exodus/12?3 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/exodus/12?3 and the very specific mention of Nisan and the 10th day, upon which to "take an unblemished lamb from teh flock" https://bible.usccb.org/bible/mark/14?12 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/mark/14?12 https://sjvlaydivision.org/new-paschal-lamb/#:~:text=Jesus%2C%20the%20sacrificial%20lamb%2C%20made,(without%20blemish)%20by%20Pilate. https://sjvlaydivision.org/new-paschal-lamb/#:~:text=Jesus%2... was the day Pilate said "I find no fault [blemish] in this man [Jesus]" https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/18?38 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/18?38 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/23?4 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/23?4 And scholars for the last 2,000 years have colossally wasted their time, right up to and including Dr. Scott Hahn, who has staked his entire career on Jesus as the Paschal Lamb, https://paschallamb.com/products/the-fourth-cup?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=fccd7a489&pr_rec_pid=583457341472&pr_ref_pid=6727755759727&pr_seq=uniform https://paschallamb.com/products/the-fourth-cup?pr_prod_stra... And priests and bishops and cardinals and popes have been super-wrong about relating the Passion, Death, and Resurrection to the Passover feast, or the little bit about Egypt and the first-born sons and the blood on the lintels of their doors, or the incident with Moses and the Hebrews escaping Pharaoh during the Parting of the Red Sea (which is sung liturgically with psalms for the Easter Vigil as folks are being literally baptized) Man we've been wrong about all this stuff. Thank you, Horus, and thank you, Ishtar, for dispelling those silly myths about Oestre which is a pagan festival that also has nothing to do with Jews or Hebrew religion.
photios 1y ago
> I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. The Eostre connection is unconvincing. Eostre is a Saxon goddess with earliest sources about her cult from 8th century and: - Easter has been celebrated before 8th century. - And it has been celebrated by people that have never heard of Saxons or their gods.
- pkphilip 1y ago
  The connection goes further back to Asheroth - the Cannanite goddess of fertility.
  - rolandog 1y ago
    The world was not ready for such religions then [0]: > There are several reasons why the worship of Baal and Asherah was such a problem for Israel. First, the worship of Baal and Asherah held the allure of illicit sex, since the religion involved ritual prostitution. [...] The Asherahs/Ashtoreths probably needed better branding. [0]: https://www.gotquestions.org/Baal-and-Asherah.html https://www.gotquestions.org/Baal-and-Asherah.html
    - krapp 1y ago
      "the world?" Ritual prostitution was common in many ancient religions, and Baal and Asherah were commonly worshipped at the time. It only seems aberrant in hindsight because we live in a world formed from the strict patriarchy and sexual taboos of one specific Semitic religion, and a narrative of history written by its adherents. That said as far as I know the whole Easter/Eostre connection has been discredited by the actual evidence. Which is unfortunate because it would be such an enjoyable thing to annoy Christians with if it were true.
  - anon291 1y ago
    No it does not. Asheroth is a Canaanite language term. Easter comes from the Proto-Indo-European for dawn of east, the direction of the sunrise. A very fitting name for the rising of the Son of Man. The direct cognates to Easter are Usas (Indic languages), East, or Aurora.
thisislife2 1y ago
embrace. extend. extinguish. Cultural assimilation by the missionaries to spread Christianity, is one of the major reason. This is why different countries have their own "local" version of Christianity with their own unique / weird rituals or practice.
xg15 1y ago
I find it fascinating that a lot of traditional holidays seem to have acquired multiple, sometimes conflicting narratives over the ages. Christmas is the most obvious one (what does a bearded dude on the north pole have to do with the birth of Jesus? For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus, but its also a kind of spirit of its own who brings presents, and for some reason usually depicted as a girl?) But you also have a similar thing for Carnival: Traditionally, it's the last feast before Lent (where Lent is also an expanded narrative of Easter!). But there are also all kinds of local narratives layered on top of it, like the Rhineland "Session", which begins in November, is somewhat awkwardly interrupted by Christmas and ends with Carnival as its sort of "grand finale". And then Easter has the triple narrative as the death and ascension of Jesus, the feast after the end of Lent (so a bit like Islam's Eid al Fitr) and the beginning of spring. In some way, it reminds me of the sprawling lore and extended universes/fan canons around Star Wars or other Scifi or Fantasy franchises, except on a much, much larger scale. I think it's all pretty fun.
- johannes1234321 1y ago
  > For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus Well, that is a good example to see how those things develop. Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind. (And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style)
  - xg15 1y ago
    > Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind. #maliciouscompliance But really, that's interesting! I didn't know Luther was the origin of this. Even more, it's almost a Christmas ritual of its own to discuss whether the presents are brought by Santa or the Christkind, etc. Wasn't aware that those tongue-in-cheek discussions have traces of the actual Catholic/Protestant conflict in them. > (And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style) Oh yeah, forgot the Nikolaus/Weihnachtsmann duality, which I think was an attempt by the church to get their saint back from the clutches of Coca Cola/pop culture. I guess they succeeded partially, because now we have both of them as separate characters.
ckxmaz 1y ago
It holds for other christian holidays as well, like xmas. This is a tactic of zero sum conquering ideologies: - you take the symbolism of the oppressed and make it evil in your ideology, ie. the pentagram as a symbol of health and women turned into a christian satanic symbol - you take the oppressed culture's holidays and make them your own, easing the usurping, I know secularists and people of other religions who celebrate xmas "just because"
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  > I know secularists and people of other religions who celebrate xmas "just because" At this point I consider "Christmas" a global secular holiday. I put the people who whine about the religious aspect of Christmas into two boxes: Either they're playing power / politics games, or they're like the people who think that Betamax / CCS / ect were better.
blast 1y ago
Christmas trees too, and Christmas lights for that matter.
- mongol 1y ago
  This is a better case for parent's point. We know pretty well when in the year Jesus died. We don't know when he was born. That it happened Decemver 25th is a choice by the early church
  - ImJamal 1y ago
    We have a good estimate of when Jesus was born and it is around December 25th. The way this is determined is that in Luke 1:5 it says John the Baptist's father was a priest in the Abijah division. Further in Luke it says that an angel came to John's father while he was serving in the temple that his wife will get pregnant. Also in Luke, it says in the 6th month of John's mother's pregnancy Mary conceived. When you look into when the Abijah priests served (in Chronicles) and convert it to our calendar instead of the Hebrew calendar you can calculate and end up at the end of December. I don't have all the math, but you can calculate it if you want to, but there is a decent reason to think it was the 25th or thereabouts.
    - macartain 1y ago
      I had always assumed this was co-option of the Winter Equinox - otherwise it seems a heck of a coincidence.. Is there no evidence of this? EDIT - sorry, I see this is discussed below...
swat535 1y ago
I've spent a fair amount of time studying ancient Sumerian culture and religion as a hobby, and the often repeated claim that "Easter comes from Ishtar" just doesn't hold up to even minimal scrutiny. It's one of those internet factoids that sounds plausible on the surface but completely falls apart under actual historical or linguistic analysis. There's no serious academic support for a connection between the Christian holiday of Easter and the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar. The religious practices, beliefs, and festivals associated with Inanna bear no resemblance superficial or otherwise to Easter. They differ entirely in form, function, and meaning. The only myth from that tradition that bears a remote resemblance is Inanna’s descent into the underworld: she's stripped of her powers, confronts her sister Ereshkigal, is executed, and later resurrected. It’s a compelling narrative, and yes, there's a resurrection motif but it serves a totally different purpose. It was a cosmological myth, tied to the movement of Venus in the night sky, not a theological cornerstone or community wide festival. Inanna's rituals were centered on themes like war, sexuality, and divine kingship. Easter, by contrast, is about death and rebirth in a very different theological context. The comparison isn’t apples to oranges, it’s apples to machine learning models. Also worth noting that the whole "Easter sounds like Ishtar" thing is shaky at best. The similarity is phonetically weak, especially when you consider historical pronunciations. Plus, "Ishtar" isn't even the most common or original name for the goddess Inanna (Sumerian) and Astarte (Phoenician/Canaanite) were more widespread depending on the period and region. The connection between Easter and Ishtar is a modern myth. It s based more on a coincidence in English phonetics than on anything rooted in actual history or comparative religion.
- rat87 1y ago
  Note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre not Ishtar. While we don't have much evidence for a goddess called Eostre she appears to have been the origin for the name of Easter in English and maybe German. That is according to an 8th century English Monk(don't have any other sources, so I think it might not be universal believed by historians). But on the other hand there's not much evidence much besides the name (and only in English and maybe German) transferred and despite claims of some bunnies and eggs appear to be much later customs. Also in most languages Easter is related to the name for Passover which is the religous holiday most linked to Easter (in English we also have Paschal which can refer to both holidays)
rawgabbit 1y ago
The holy day of Christian Easter coincides with the Jewish Passover as Jesus celebrated the Last Supper before his death and resurrection. Passover or Seder is on the eve of the 15th day of Nisan which is the first full moon after the beginning of Spring. By the time of the first Nicea ecumenical council, Christians argued against using the Jewish calendar as by the 300s, it dated Passover before the spring equinox. The early church was now the official religion of the Roman Empire who followed the solar calendar. In other words Easter and Passover has always been associated with Spring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_Seder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_Seder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter
empath75 1y ago
> I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! This is an oft-repeated canard for which there is basically no evidence. In particular, there's no evidence for "easter bunnies" prior to 17th century protestant Germany, who then brought it to the US, when they migrated to Pennsylvania (ie: The Pennsylvania Dutch). Those aspects of the celebration aren't Christian or pagan, they're secular things that people do because it's fun for the kids, and that has always been the case.
rat87 1y ago
Easter is not a Pagan holiday. Its only named similarly in German and English. If it's linked to any other religious holiday it would be the Jewish holiday of Passover, in most languages it's name is based on Paschal/Pesach(passover) and the last supper was likely a passover meal. Early Christians timed Easter based on the Hebrew calendar/Passover
dfxm12 1y ago
I don't think it is odd at all. In a choice between "our religion can't gain the membership to survive" vs "ok, we can bend the structure of our religion a little to make it more palatable for this huge amount of people", I think the choice is obvious. You might find it odd that Christians think they came up with Easter (or Christmas, or the Epiphany...) though.
- bashmelek 1y ago
  A lot of these things come from folk practices that the Church would permit but then direct towards something acceptable.
- eitland 1y ago
  With Easter, unlike Christmas, there isn't the same doubt about which time of year it was as it was around the time of the (much) older Jewish Passover celebration.
dragonwriter 1y ago
“Easter" or something similar, is only the name in English and German, which weren't spoken at the time the celebration of the holiday began. There is some evidence that that germanic name came from a pagan goddess with a fertility celebration around the time that the resurrection celebration occurred in the Christian calendar, but the celebration itself didn't originate with that pagan celebration. (And the elements other than the name you refer to have no evidence of connection to the pagan goddess, and appear to have attached to Easter later, not been brought in with the name.)
dismalaf 1y ago
In many languages "Easter" is a variation of Passover. "Pâques" in French for example, Pascha in Greek and Russian, Pascua in most Latin languages. In others (aome Slavic languages) it's a variation of "Great Day" ("Velikonoce" in Czech for example). " And so on. English and German are the only languages I know with a weird word for Easter. Edit - also Passover is Pesach in Hebrew. So Pesach -> Pascha in Greek, then onwards to other languages. Or just "Great Day" (which finishes off Great and Holy week which is what the week leading up to Easter is in most languages).
- senko 1y ago
  In Croatian, Easter is called Uskrs, meaning Resurrection, but Good Friday is called Veliki Petak, meaning Great Friday.
  - dismalaf 1y ago
    My bad, went by Google for that one (they listed Croation as similar to Czech, which I know a bit).
  - ati 1y ago
    Same in russian - Velikaya Pyatnica, Great Friday.
- eitland 1y ago
  In Norwegian and Danish it is påske and in Swedish it is påsk.
anon291 1y ago
It's literally only called Easter in English. That being said, the actual etymology for Easter is from the month of April in the anglo-saxon calendar: Ēosturmōnaþ. Easter of course is a name for the entire season of Easter (up until Pentecost), which lasts a bit over a month and usually coincides with Ēosturmōnaþ. But fittingly, Easter etymologically comes from the Proto-Indo-European word for 'Dawn', symbolizing literally the East, from which the sun rises. The Indian name Usha literally comes from the same word, and would directly translate into Easter. The first mention of Eostre as a goddess is post-Christianity, by Bede. He writes: > Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance
eitland 1y ago
As has already been mentioned by others mostly everything except the name is different. When it comes to the name, the name isn't anything similar in for example Nordic languages: Påske (Norwegian, Danish) or påsk (Swedish). Finnish seems to have a similar sounding name. Same with Dutch. German has Ostern, but I the few others I checked were completely different. That means even the name similarity only exist in a few languages. And at the time the Christian celebration of Easter started these languages didn't even exist. The closest language I could find to early Christian history on DeepL was Greek and in Greek the name of Easter seems to be Πάσχ. With that, this idea should be debunked sufficiently I think.

GranularRecipe 1y ago

The first month after March equinox has great religious significance across many cultures (in the temperate zone), e.g. Pesach. When different cultures meet, they tend to syncretise.

ithkuil 1y ago
Yes. And this mix continues. Even traditional that originally have some common root and then diverge can later resyncretise. For example look at Halloween being introduced in southern Europe thanks to US cultural influence

larusso 1y ago

Let’s talk about Christmas then. They deliberately put it at a time where many northern folks had their own traditional end of the year / longest night (opposite to midd summer) festivals. In Germany we have Nikolaus on the 6.12 (goes back to a priest St Nikolaus who did good to people and I believe died on the 6th of December) But the name is striking to Santa Claus which is just a Anglo version of that name. Interesting is also that half of Germany the Christ baby brings the presents or the Weihnachtsmann. The Weihnachtsmann is what we would refer as Santa. But Santa and Nikolaus are depicted the same. There some other festivals like Jule from Scandinavia etc. But compared to Christmas we at least know that the end of Jesus (or whoever it was) happened at that time due to too many religions and groups in the city. When he was born and how old he even was… Edit: Also the fact that the holiday follows the moon calendar because it was the Sunday after the Paschal full moon. Which is celebrated by the Jewish as Passover.

petesergeant 1y ago
> They deliberately put it Who did? When?
- knome 1y ago
  The Catholic Church. The fourth century. https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas >In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). >Although some evidence suggests that Jesus' birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival
  - petesergeant 1y ago
    The "history.com editors" using a phrase like "it is commonly believed" doesn't feel like a citation to me. My understanding is that the date is derived from the date of the Annunciation.
    - knome 1y ago
      Expecting a formally reviewed citation in response to a vague three word query in an informal conversation on a forum wholly unrelated to specialization in that topic is a bit silly, but if you do bother to do the legwork and find a citation for either what I linked or your own notion, it may be of interest to other readers.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - Amezarak 1y ago
    This is a common theory but it's almost certainly wrong. https://www.bartehrman.com/why-is-christmas-on-december-25th/ https://www.bartehrman.com/why-is-christmas-on-december-25th... > However, upon closer examination, this theory encounters several historical and contextual challenges. One of the key issues is the lack of any contemporary evidence from the early Christian period directly linking the choice of December 25th for Christmas to pagan festivals. > But several decades earlier (c. 203 C.E.), a bishop from Rome, Hippolytus, wrote: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years.” (Comm. on Dan. 23.3.) [...] > Tertullian, for example, calculated that Jesus was killed on March 25th. If Jesus had also been conceived on March 25th and you count exactly nine months later from that date, you then have Jesus’ birth on December 25th. I think this is the way early Christians came to believe that Jesus’ birth happened on December 25th. > Moreover, unlike the previous and still most popular theory, this one is mentioned in the early sources! > A treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which comes from the 4th century states: “Therefore, our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in March, which is the day of the passion of the Lord and his conception. For on that day, he was conceived on the same he suffered.” Note that regardless, December 25th was regarded as the date by at least some Christians long before the fourth century. As for the mention of shepherds in the article, we have independent attestations of shepherding in winter in the area, so the question of "why would they be there in winter" is "because that's normal".

suddenlybananas 1y ago

https://youtu.be/0m2ZQaxfpnY?si=t0zQAWhZEW8Uoa2z https://youtu.be/0m2ZQaxfpnY?si=t0zQAWhZEW8Uoa2z the Easter Bunny is not pagan, it's a much more recent tradition.

danwills 1y ago
Thanks for the correction there! I was not aware that Easter Bunny was much more like Santa than something associated with Eostre or Pagan. I guess the bunny still got something similar to the Coke-branding that Santa got to help product sales, but for chocolate sales instead!? I retract the 'rabbits' part of what I said, but I still think it's ultimately a fairly weird taken-over/hybrid-mythology festival! I'm only able to talk about Easter as I know it in Aus though!.. I totally acknowledge festivals and their timing/meaning are very different in other places.
defrost 1y ago
The video doesn't disprove a long standing non Christian association between what is now Easter and rabbits. What it does state is in agreement with the wikipedia article on the connection between Ēostre and rabbits, namely: The earliest evidence for the Easter Hare (Osterhase) was recorded in south-west Germany in 1678 by the professor of medicine Georg Franck von Franckenau ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre This is the earliest still extant written account of folk practices that had been occurring for some indeterminant time. We are aware that the brewing of beer predates by many centuries, millenia even, the earliest still extant written account of the practice of brewing beer.
- suddenlybananas 1y ago
  Of course it is possible that the tradition goes back more than a thousand years from when it was first attested, but we have no material evidence of that whatsoever. No statues of a goddess surrounded by eggs and rabbits, no amulets of protection, no recorded myths, no references to something similar from Greek or Roman sources, nothing. This is in contrast to beer where we have actually found remains of beer from long, long ago.

thayne 1y ago

It isn't arbitrary. The death and resurrection of Jesus happened after the Jewish passover, which happens in the spring. It is also easy to see how symbols of renewed life and fertility in the spring could be adapted to symbolize Jesus coming back to life.

LtWorf 1y ago

You realise that jewish people have had easter for a certain number of years before christ?

fortran77 1y ago
Ummm, Jews don't have Easter. Right now we are in the Chol Hamoed part of Passover/Pesach, with the Chag resuming and sundown tonight and continuing for 2 days.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  Yes I don't speak hebrew… It's just called "jewish easter" in my language. And?
  - fortran77 1y ago
    In Hebrew, Easter is called "פסחא" which is very similar to Passover, "פסח" (Just an aleph added, and the prounciation changed a bit). However, the holidays have nothing to do with each other, despite Christian attempts to link the Paschal lamb to Jesus. Nobody would say "The Jews have Easter" because we have no holiday commemerating the ressurection of a messiah. We beleive the messiah has yet to come.
    - AStonesThrow 1y ago
      > the holidays have nothing to do with each other Well, if the holidays had nothing to do with each other, then the Early Christians reading the Gospels were all severely misled by the quite obvious references to Jesus as the Paschal Lamb, such as the Last Supper with no mention of a lamb on the table [because it was Jesus, the Lamb Himself, living among them] https://bible.usccb.org/bible/exodus/12?3 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/exodus/12?3 and the very specific mention of Nisan and the 10th day, upon which to "take an unblemished lamb from teh flock" https://bible.usccb.org/bible/mark/14?12 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/mark/14?12 https://sjvlaydivision.org/new-paschal-lamb/#:~:text=Jesus%2C%20the%20sacrificial%20lamb%2C%20made,(without%20blemish)%20by%20Pilate. https://sjvlaydivision.org/new-paschal-lamb/#:~:text=Jesus%2... was the day Pilate said "I find no fault [blemish] in this man [Jesus]" https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/18?38 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/18?38 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/23?4 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/23?4 And scholars for the last 2,000 years have colossally wasted their time, right up to and including Dr. Scott Hahn, who has staked his entire career on Jesus as the Paschal Lamb, https://paschallamb.com/products/the-fourth-cup?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=fccd7a489&pr_rec_pid=583457341472&pr_ref_pid=6727755759727&pr_seq=uniform https://paschallamb.com/products/the-fourth-cup?pr_prod_stra... And priests and bishops and cardinals and popes have been super-wrong about relating the Passion, Death, and Resurrection to the Passover feast, or the little bit about Egypt and the first-born sons and the blood on the lintels of their doors, or the incident with Moses and the Hebrews escaping Pharaoh during the Parting of the Red Sea (which is sung liturgically with psalms for the Easter Vigil as folks are being literally baptized) Man we've been wrong about all this stuff. Thank you, Horus, and thank you, Ishtar, for dispelling those silly myths about Oestre which is a pagan festival that also has nothing to do with Jews or Hebrew religion.

photios 1y ago

> I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. The Eostre connection is unconvincing. Eostre is a Saxon goddess with earliest sources about her cult from 8th century and: - Easter has been celebrated before 8th century. - And it has been celebrated by people that have never heard of Saxons or their gods.

pkphilip 1y ago
The connection goes further back to Asheroth - the Cannanite goddess of fertility.
- rolandog 1y ago
  The world was not ready for such religions then [0]: > There are several reasons why the worship of Baal and Asherah was such a problem for Israel. First, the worship of Baal and Asherah held the allure of illicit sex, since the religion involved ritual prostitution. [...] The Asherahs/Ashtoreths probably needed better branding. [0]: https://www.gotquestions.org/Baal-and-Asherah.html https://www.gotquestions.org/Baal-and-Asherah.html
  - krapp 1y ago
    "the world?" Ritual prostitution was common in many ancient religions, and Baal and Asherah were commonly worshipped at the time. It only seems aberrant in hindsight because we live in a world formed from the strict patriarchy and sexual taboos of one specific Semitic religion, and a narrative of history written by its adherents. That said as far as I know the whole Easter/Eostre connection has been discredited by the actual evidence. Which is unfortunate because it would be such an enjoyable thing to annoy Christians with if it were true.
- anon291 1y ago
  No it does not. Asheroth is a Canaanite language term. Easter comes from the Proto-Indo-European for dawn of east, the direction of the sunrise. A very fitting name for the rising of the Son of Man. The direct cognates to Easter are Usas (Indic languages), East, or Aurora.

thisislife2 1y ago

embrace. extend. extinguish. Cultural assimilation by the missionaries to spread Christianity, is one of the major reason. This is why different countries have their own "local" version of Christianity with their own unique / weird rituals or practice.

xg15 1y ago

I find it fascinating that a lot of traditional holidays seem to have acquired multiple, sometimes conflicting narratives over the ages. Christmas is the most obvious one (what does a bearded dude on the north pole have to do with the birth of Jesus? For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus, but its also a kind of spirit of its own who brings presents, and for some reason usually depicted as a girl?) But you also have a similar thing for Carnival: Traditionally, it's the last feast before Lent (where Lent is also an expanded narrative of Easter!). But there are also all kinds of local narratives layered on top of it, like the Rhineland "Session", which begins in November, is somewhat awkwardly interrupted by Christmas and ends with Carnival as its sort of "grand finale". And then Easter has the triple narrative as the death and ascension of Jesus, the feast after the end of Lent (so a bit like Islam's Eid al Fitr) and the beginning of spring. In some way, it reminds me of the sprawling lore and extended universes/fan canons around Star Wars or other Scifi or Fantasy franchises, except on a much, much larger scale. I think it's all pretty fun.

johannes1234321 1y ago
> For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus Well, that is a good example to see how those things develop. Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind. (And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style)
- xg15 1y ago
  > Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind. #maliciouscompliance But really, that's interesting! I didn't know Luther was the origin of this. Even more, it's almost a Christmas ritual of its own to discuss whether the presents are brought by Santa or the Christkind, etc. Wasn't aware that those tongue-in-cheek discussions have traces of the actual Catholic/Protestant conflict in them. > (And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style) Oh yeah, forgot the Nikolaus/Weihnachtsmann duality, which I think was an attempt by the church to get their saint back from the clutches of Coca Cola/pop culture. I guess they succeeded partially, because now we have both of them as separate characters.

ckxmaz 1y ago

It holds for other christian holidays as well, like xmas. This is a tactic of zero sum conquering ideologies: - you take the symbolism of the oppressed and make it evil in your ideology, ie. the pentagram as a symbol of health and women turned into a christian satanic symbol - you take the oppressed culture's holidays and make them your own, easing the usurping, I know secularists and people of other religions who celebrate xmas "just because"

gwbas1c 1y ago
> I know secularists and people of other religions who celebrate xmas "just because" At this point I consider "Christmas" a global secular holiday. I put the people who whine about the religious aspect of Christmas into two boxes: Either they're playing power / politics games, or they're like the people who think that Betamax / CCS / ect were better.

blast 1y ago

Christmas trees too, and Christmas lights for that matter.

mongol 1y ago
This is a better case for parent's point. We know pretty well when in the year Jesus died. We don't know when he was born. That it happened Decemver 25th is a choice by the early church
- ImJamal 1y ago
  We have a good estimate of when Jesus was born and it is around December 25th. The way this is determined is that in Luke 1:5 it says John the Baptist's father was a priest in the Abijah division. Further in Luke it says that an angel came to John's father while he was serving in the temple that his wife will get pregnant. Also in Luke, it says in the 6th month of John's mother's pregnancy Mary conceived. When you look into when the Abijah priests served (in Chronicles) and convert it to our calendar instead of the Hebrew calendar you can calculate and end up at the end of December. I don't have all the math, but you can calculate it if you want to, but there is a decent reason to think it was the 25th or thereabouts.
  - macartain 1y ago
    I had always assumed this was co-option of the Winter Equinox - otherwise it seems a heck of a coincidence.. Is there no evidence of this? EDIT - sorry, I see this is discussed below...

swat535 1y ago

I've spent a fair amount of time studying ancient Sumerian culture and religion as a hobby, and the often repeated claim that "Easter comes from Ishtar" just doesn't hold up to even minimal scrutiny. It's one of those internet factoids that sounds plausible on the surface but completely falls apart under actual historical or linguistic analysis. There's no serious academic support for a connection between the Christian holiday of Easter and the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar. The religious practices, beliefs, and festivals associated with Inanna bear no resemblance superficial or otherwise to Easter. They differ entirely in form, function, and meaning. The only myth from that tradition that bears a remote resemblance is Inanna’s descent into the underworld: she's stripped of her powers, confronts her sister Ereshkigal, is executed, and later resurrected. It’s a compelling narrative, and yes, there's a resurrection motif but it serves a totally different purpose. It was a cosmological myth, tied to the movement of Venus in the night sky, not a theological cornerstone or community wide festival. Inanna's rituals were centered on themes like war, sexuality, and divine kingship. Easter, by contrast, is about death and rebirth in a very different theological context. The comparison isn’t apples to oranges, it’s apples to machine learning models. Also worth noting that the whole "Easter sounds like Ishtar" thing is shaky at best. The similarity is phonetically weak, especially when you consider historical pronunciations. Plus, "Ishtar" isn't even the most common or original name for the goddess Inanna (Sumerian) and Astarte (Phoenician/Canaanite) were more widespread depending on the period and region. The connection between Easter and Ishtar is a modern myth. It s based more on a coincidence in English phonetics than on anything rooted in actual history or comparative religion.

rat87 1y ago
Note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre not Ishtar. While we don't have much evidence for a goddess called Eostre she appears to have been the origin for the name of Easter in English and maybe German. That is according to an 8th century English Monk(don't have any other sources, so I think it might not be universal believed by historians). But on the other hand there's not much evidence much besides the name (and only in English and maybe German) transferred and despite claims of some bunnies and eggs appear to be much later customs. Also in most languages Easter is related to the name for Passover which is the religous holiday most linked to Easter (in English we also have Paschal which can refer to both holidays)

rawgabbit 1y ago

The holy day of Christian Easter coincides with the Jewish Passover as Jesus celebrated the Last Supper before his death and resurrection. Passover or Seder is on the eve of the 15th day of Nisan which is the first full moon after the beginning of Spring. By the time of the first Nicea ecumenical council, Christians argued against using the Jewish calendar as by the 300s, it dated Passover before the spring equinox. The early church was now the official religion of the Roman Empire who followed the solar calendar. In other words Easter and Passover has always been associated with Spring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_Seder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_Seder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter

empath75 1y ago

> I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! This is an oft-repeated canard for which there is basically no evidence. In particular, there's no evidence for "easter bunnies" prior to 17th century protestant Germany, who then brought it to the US, when they migrated to Pennsylvania (ie: The Pennsylvania Dutch). Those aspects of the celebration aren't Christian or pagan, they're secular things that people do because it's fun for the kids, and that has always been the case.

rat87 1y ago

Easter is not a Pagan holiday. Its only named similarly in German and English. If it's linked to any other religious holiday it would be the Jewish holiday of Passover, in most languages it's name is based on Paschal/Pesach(passover) and the last supper was likely a passover meal. Early Christians timed Easter based on the Hebrew calendar/Passover

dfxm12 1y ago

I don't think it is odd at all. In a choice between "our religion can't gain the membership to survive" vs "ok, we can bend the structure of our religion a little to make it more palatable for this huge amount of people", I think the choice is obvious. You might find it odd that Christians think they came up with Easter (or Christmas, or the Epiphany...) though.

bashmelek 1y ago
A lot of these things come from folk practices that the Church would permit but then direct towards something acceptable.
eitland 1y ago
With Easter, unlike Christmas, there isn't the same doubt about which time of year it was as it was around the time of the (much) older Jewish Passover celebration.

dragonwriter 1y ago

“Easter" or something similar, is only the name in English and German, which weren't spoken at the time the celebration of the holiday began. There is some evidence that that germanic name came from a pagan goddess with a fertility celebration around the time that the resurrection celebration occurred in the Christian calendar, but the celebration itself didn't originate with that pagan celebration. (And the elements other than the name you refer to have no evidence of connection to the pagan goddess, and appear to have attached to Easter later, not been brought in with the name.)

dismalaf 1y ago

In many languages "Easter" is a variation of Passover. "Pâques" in French for example, Pascha in Greek and Russian, Pascua in most Latin languages. In others (aome Slavic languages) it's a variation of "Great Day" ("Velikonoce" in Czech for example). " And so on. English and German are the only languages I know with a weird word for Easter. Edit - also Passover is Pesach in Hebrew. So Pesach -> Pascha in Greek, then onwards to other languages. Or just "Great Day" (which finishes off Great and Holy week which is what the week leading up to Easter is in most languages).

senko 1y ago
In Croatian, Easter is called Uskrs, meaning Resurrection, but Good Friday is called Veliki Petak, meaning Great Friday.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  My bad, went by Google for that one (they listed Croation as similar to Czech, which I know a bit).
- ati 1y ago
  Same in russian - Velikaya Pyatnica, Great Friday.
eitland 1y ago
In Norwegian and Danish it is påske and in Swedish it is påsk.

anon291 1y ago

It's literally only called Easter in English. That being said, the actual etymology for Easter is from the month of April in the anglo-saxon calendar: Ēosturmōnaþ. Easter of course is a name for the entire season of Easter (up until Pentecost), which lasts a bit over a month and usually coincides with Ēosturmōnaþ. But fittingly, Easter etymologically comes from the Proto-Indo-European word for 'Dawn', symbolizing literally the East, from which the sun rises. The Indian name Usha literally comes from the same word, and would directly translate into Easter. The first mention of Eostre as a goddess is post-Christianity, by Bede. He writes: > Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance

eitland 1y ago

As has already been mentioned by others mostly everything except the name is different. When it comes to the name, the name isn't anything similar in for example Nordic languages: Påske (Norwegian, Danish) or påsk (Swedish). Finnish seems to have a similar sounding name. Same with Dutch. German has Ostern, but I the few others I checked were completely different. That means even the name similarity only exist in a few languages. And at the time the Christian celebration of Easter started these languages didn't even exist. The closest language I could find to early Christian history on DeepL was Greek and in Greek the name of Easter seems to be Πάσχ. With that, this idea should be debunked sufficiently I think.