Here is something someone recently sent me…thought I would repost it and ask if anyone has a refutation of these claims and ideas…I thought there were pagan roots in the worship of Astarte, with symbols of fertility being eggs and rabbits…here is another angle…
Everything you know about Easter is a lie.
Okay that’s a bit extreme, but you’ll want to read this.
This weekend, billions of people around the world will celebrate the most sacred holiday in all of Christianity – the marking of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But did you know that Easter didn’t begin as a Christian holiday?
In reality, religious scholars and historians widely agree that Easter originated as a Pagan celebration of spring.
Prior to the arrival of Christianity in Europe, pagans marked the Spring Equinox each year with a big festival full of bonfires and sword dances where they paid tribute to the Germanic goddess of dawn, light and rebirth.
The goddess’s name? Eostre. There’s our first clue.
A popular legend tells how Eostre once entertained a group of children by turning a bird into a rabbit. But this was no ordinary rabbit – it could still lay eggs like a bird!
Hmm… sound familiar?
Let’s fast forward a bit. In 596 A.D., Pope Gregory sent a mission across the channel to convert pagan Anglo-Saxons in the British Isles to the Christian faith.
But old Greg was cunning. Understanding the pagans wouldn’t simply drop their beliefs and embrace Jesus overnight, he instead gave his missionaries a blueprint for conversion through compromise.
Pope Gregory instructed his missionaries to embrace, rather than reject, pagan beliefs and customs. The goal was to slowly integrate these two religions until the new faith subsumed the old.
The insertion of Christian symbols and messages was so gradual and subtle that, like frogs in boiling water, the Pagans wouldn’t realize that everything had changed until it was too late.
“Eostre” eventually became “Easter”. The flaxen-haired goddess of the dawn was effectively erased, and her heraldry of spring after a long winter was co-opted into the message of Jesus returning to vibrant life after a cold death on the cross.
As the decades spanned into centuries, Christianity became the dominant religion across Europe. The Pagans pretty much disappeared (at least for a while… we see you out there!) And, the rest is history.
Oh, the candy! We almost forgot. That came much later and is pretty much just straight capitalism.
Happy Easter/Blessed Ostara!