The Origins of Easter
Happy Easter! My favorite thing about our modern holidays is there strange origins. They never come from where we think they did. History is a strange thing. Here is my story about another pagain holiday wrapped in Christian paper and decorated with years of traditions no one understands.
Holiday are off topic, but I love them. Almost all our modern Christian holidays are just pagan holidays in different paper. So many Christians won't celebrate Halloween because it is pagan, but the Easter bunny has nothing to do with Christ. Where does the bunny come from? It comes from the goddess Eostre. Eostre was a European fertility goddess. During the Spring, her favorite Holiday, named for her, Easter, was celebrated across Europe. Her totem animal, the bunny, was intrinsic in the celebration of her holiday. Easter was a fertility holiday and it isn't just a coincidence that estrogen, the hormone often associated with fertility and sex is also named after Eostre.
Ancient Christians were quite brilliant. They knew that if they wanted to convince the old pagans to convert they shouldn't ask them to abandon their old holidays and traditions, so the merely Incorporated their holidays into Christian beliefs. So Easter was absorbed into the early Christian faith and linked to the celebration of the death of Christ. So the totem animal of Easter became Eostre's totem animal, the bunny and other fertility rituals were also made part of the Christian Holiday. Eggs, also associated with old fertility rituals, became part of holiday traditions.
By the fifteenth century, in many parts of Europe, it had become normal for children to build nests for the magic bunny to lay eggs in on Easter morning to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Over time, this evolved into the putting out of Easter baskets for a magic bunny to put chocolate eggs and other treats in. So, the resurrection of Christ and the fertility rights of Eostre became one to make the holiday we celebrate today, which is a beautiful fusion of Christian and pagan.
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