Easter, Bunnies, Pagan roots and overly sensitive, Christians, Muslims & NRA members

So recently one of my Facebook friends posted a post on the Pagan roots of Easter and how the early Christians co-opted the holiday and turned it into what we know as Easter.  This is a common theme and I’ve blogged on it before below are the links to the similar posts I did on Halloween and Christmas.

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/twisted-christmas-the-origins-of-christmas/

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/halloween-the-devil%e2%80%99s-holiday/

The interesting thing to his posts were the responses, several of us chimed in with jokes ranging from Jesus resurrecting to give out eggs, to questioning whether or not Jesus was in fact, the original Zombie.  Now none of these comments were even remotely meant to diminish anyone else’s belief in the story of Jesus or Christianity.  However the responses that came in were vehemently defensive of the Christian religion.  Christians are not alone in this type of attitude and it reminds me of the way the National Rifle Association (NRA) members respond to any gun regulation and Muslims respond to using the image of Muhammad. 

The question that it leads me to is why are so people so damned defensive about their beliefs?  I mean really, what are Christians and Muslims so worried about, why is that someone else not sharing your beliefs is such a threat to people?  Are they all operating off of the NRA slippery slope argument, you know, that if you give the tiniest of inches all is lost!  Seems a bit silly to me.

For those of you who are interested about the Pagan origins of Easter here is a link below:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/easter1.htm

Finally, to clear up for the curious what the hell bunnies and eggs have to do with the whole thing, check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny

Happy Sunday, Easter, Estre or whatever you might be celebrating today, even if it’s just a nice sunny Sunday afternoon.

Twisted Christmas: The Origins of Christmas

I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas, to say the least, so my vision of Christmas is a little bit twisted, hence the title of my first Christmas post.  I thought like I did for Halloween it my be interesting to take a look at the origins of Christmas, so here goes.

So much like Halloween, the holiday of Christmas has its origins in the pagan religion.  I know, I know, Christmas is the celebration of Jesus’ birthday, except for one thing, no one believes that Jesus of Nazareth was born in December.  The link below provides a long and thorough accounting of the likely date of Jesus’ birth based off of the writings in the bible:

http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/ARTB/k/568/When-Was-Jesus-Born.htm

The conclusion that this author and many others have made is that Jesus was almost certainly born sometime in the fall.  So if December 25^th isn’t Jesus’ birthday why do we celebrate Christmas in December?

Well first we have to recognize that several pagan festivals were celebrated either on the winter solstice or in the case of the Feast of the Son of Isis, celebrated on December 25^th.  The entire holiday season for the Romans covering December and January was called the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.   Given this, in 350AD Pope Julius I decreed that Christ’s birthday would be celebrated on December 25^th.  He did this for political reasons; the Pope knew that the majority of Romans, who were not Christians at the time, would more easily convert to Christianity if they could still have their rituals and feasts.  Christmas or the Christ Mass seems to have its earliest origins in the 1500’s in Germany.

The most identifiable icon of Christmas, the Christmas tree has its origins as well with the Pagans of Northern Europe as the evergreen tree was symbolic in all of their winter festivals, as well, the wreath was often used as a celebratory symbol in solstice celebrations and at weddings as a sign of fertility.  The solstice holiday was called Yule and huge fires were burnt in honor of the sun-god on this holiday.  Hence our tradition of burning a Yule log, although I can’t imagine what the Pagans would think of today’s televised Yule log.  Finally, the Druids considered Mistletoe a sacred plant and kissing under the Mistletoe was a fertility ritual.  Given all of the fertility symbolism tied to Christmas, it’s amazing their aren’t a lot more birthdays in September.

So very much like Halloween, Christmas is a Christian holiday stacked on top of old Pagan holidays and traditions.  Also like Halloween, the reasons and ways we celebrate the holiday are very different, even from the holiday as it was celebrated even fifty years ago.

Halloween, the Devil’s Holiday?

Now several years ago working at a college I won’t name I had several of my Christian student raise a stink over the fact that we were celebrating Halloween by decorating the office.  Their main objection was that we were celebrating a Satanic Holiday.  I disallowed their complaint and did a quick history lesson with them about Halloween.  So here in a little more detail with a few links are, as best as I can figure out, the origins of Halloween.

First the date is essentially another co-opted Celtic Pagan holiday that Christians took over.  Early Christians very smartly incorporated their traditions onto Pagan holiday dates, also often incorporating some of the traditions as well as a way to more easily gain Christian converts.  It worked, there are a lot more Christians than Pagans running around these days.  The holiday the Christians stole was Samhain which was a harvest festival that was also rumored to be a time when the past, the spirit world and the present often co-mingled.  A link to the history of Samhain is below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

There is an even tighter connection to Christianity and Halloween thanks to early Christians, most religions and cultures have a day where they celebrate the dead.  Another Pagan festival Lemuria a time in which the Pagans drove the unwanted spirits from their homes occurred on May 13 which the Christians co-opted it in the 7^th century to  be All Saints Day, you can read more about Lemuria below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Lemures

Then to try to drain the strength out of the Samhain holiday the church moved All Saints Day to November 1^st and it became known as All Hallows Day, thus turning the evening of Samhain into All Hallows Evening and eventually shortened to Halloween.  So this is the origin of the name of Halloween and how the holiday kept it’s connection to the dead.  Priests also asked the faithful to pray for souls in Purgatory during this time, so on Halloween, poor children would beg door to door for soul cakes, and in return they would pray for souls in Purgatory.  Sounds a lot like trick or treat.

So where do our iconic Halloween images come from?  Witches are an easy one as this comes from the witch scares, particularly in the 1600s.  The things associated with their homes make up the cliché witch, the hat was what a country woman’s hat looked like in 17^th century Europe, cauldron’s were fireplace cook pots and brooms of course were part of the household.  Finally cats, well heck, single outcast women living alone always have cats, even today.

The rowdy and masked elements of the holiday most likely come from rowdy All Hallows Eve beggars who drank ale as they went door to door and as the night wore on got more demanding and caused trouble, masks helped retain their anonymity.  Guy Fawkes lent some help to the mask bit as his November 5^th attempt to blow up parliament was celebrated each year with masks and fires.

As immigrants came to the new world they brought snippets of their individual traditions around this holiday to the new world and they were incorporated into Halloween celebrations.  At the time of the Civil War, the massive amount of death as well as people lost, not knowing if they were dead or alive led to many ghost stories related to the missing and dead from the war.  Add into this mix the Bogey, brought by Scots from their lore and legend and now we get the Bogey or Boogeyman.  The Jack O’Lantern mythology comes from Europe as well and transforms from kids hollowing out turnips in Europe and uses what was more at hand in the US, pumpkins which are harvested the same time of year.  A link to some of the legends and history of the Jack O’Lantern is below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack-o’-lantern

Additionally Scots and Irish immigrants also brought the begging and rowdy prank filled Halloween celebrations of the old country with them.

The turn of the twentieth century saw artists starting to use the images of fear, ghosts, skeletons, witches and devils.  All which drew from the images of death, ghosts wrapped in their death shroud, pumpkins carved to resemble the rigor mortis smile and triangle nose area of a corpse.  This really finalized the look of Halloween that we still have today.

Halloween has also at times gotten out of hand with pranks that derailed street cars, release livestock, and as most of us aware even continues to this day in places like Detroit where hundreds of fires often occur over the three night period referred to as devil’s night, a link covering the history of devil’s night is below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil’s_Night

As a response to the vandalism and rowdiness of Halloween cities began looking for ways to distract and engage kids on Halloween.  So up came Halloween parties, costume contests, parades and bobbing for apples lots of the Halloween standards we all know.  Finally, in the early 20th century people began doing open houses where they gave away treats to keep from getting pranked on Halloween and thus the phrase and the tradition of “Trick or Treat” was born.