Sunday, March 23, 2008

IN YOUR EOSTRE BONNET

I've tried to figure it out but you pretty much have to be an astrophysicist to be able to understand when exactly Easter is going to take place. It can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25 and may or may not have something to do with the moons. The system was set up in 325 AD by men much smarter than myself, and as long as they keep doing their job I will not have a problem figuring out when to paint my easter eggs for the easter bunny.



If you're a sane person at all you might have wondered what do easter eggs and rabbits have to do with the resurrection of Christ? Well the short answer is nothing. The long answer is that it was a great way for the Christian church to get those damn Pagans to fall into line and convert. All that Christianity had to do was to absorb some Pagan practices and symbols.

Paganism can broadly refer to any religion outside of Judaism, the big C and Islam. If you've read The DaVinci Code you know that some Pagans believed in the balance of nature, and all that earth, wind and fire jazz. They were the original hippies. And if there is one thing hippies love, it is their equinoxes, especially the Spring equinox when fertility and the birth of life is celebrated. So the Christians smoothly changed the Spring equinox party into a resurrection celebration and named it Easter.

Wait there's more.

Easter comes from the ancient pagan goddess of the spring named Eostre and according to popular folklore, 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 grew up to be the Easter Bunny. The Germans added to this delusion by saying that only good children received gifts of colored eggs in the nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter.

And if you couldn't swallow that pill here is another reason we have egg laying rabbits. Eggs and rabbits were important to the Pagans because they were symbols of fertility. Eggs sure, but rabbits? You know that saying "to breed like bunnies," well its there for a good reason. Female rabbits can conceive a second litter of offspring while still pregnant with the first. That's one slutty rabbit. So the Christians took those two symbols slapped some color on the eggs and made a holiday of it.

NOW LET US PLAY,
CAN YOU SPOT THE PAGAN?
choose wisely

4 comments:

sue said...

when will the answer be posted?

dmr said...

I was born on Easter.

eagle said...

haha...according to wikipedia the answer is A. go figure...I really thought it was C.

sue said...

ha ha