No days such honored days as these! While yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April’s name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget. – Helen Hunt Jackson
Like so many Christian holidays, Easter is a pagan festival re-dedicated to Christian purposes. But as I explained in last year’s column for the holiday, Easter is unusual in that it has retained both the name (in English at least) and most of the symbolism of its pagan antecedents, right down to the theme of rebirth. In other European languages the holiday instead shares a name with Passover; this is because according to the Gospels Jesus was crucified the day before Passover and rose from the dead on the day after, so the Church calculated Easter by the same means used by Jews to calculate their holiday. And since the Jewish calendar is lunar, that means Easter moves around and can occur any time from March 22nd to April 25th.
Some pagan readers have wondered why I celebrate some of the sabbats on nearby Christian or American secular holidays (for example, Yule on Christmas and Litha on Independence Day). The reason is a purely pragmatic one; since my husband travels for his job and his employers have no compunction against getting him home barely in time for holidays, celebrating on the popular days ensures he can be here (he often misses celebrations which have no government-approved holiday in close proximity, such as Mabon). So our feast to greet spring is today, and that means I’m taking the day off from slaving at my blog to slave instead in the kitchen. C’est la vie. To all who celebrate today – whether for religious reasons, social reasons or just as an excuse to eat yummy boiled eggs and/or chocolate – I wish you a Happy Easter!
Happy Easter and … nice eggs! 🙂
Bet those are from the chicken coop!
Yep. That’s why they’re sort of earth-tone colors; I prefer to dye large eggs, and the only chicken I have right now which lays large eggs produces brown shells. The young ones I just got are supposed to lay large white eggs, so we’ll see next year. Speaking of chicks, here are the weekly growth pics for these:
March 7th:
March 14th:
March 21st:
March 28th:
April 4th:
April 11th:
April 18th:
I hate to tell you this … but, unless there’s been some genetic manipulation of them in the last 25 years (totally possible) – the RI Reds will lay a brown shelled egg.
For reliably large white eggs – then the way to go the White Leghorn. It’s not a very exotic or particularly beautiful bird though. 🙁
I say, stop being picky about brown eggs! 🙂
Boy, ah, say, Boy, stop being picky about brawn aigs!
Come Krulac, if you’re gonna bring Leghorns into it, ya can’t forget Foghorn!
I’ve got three white leghorns; they lay medium white eggs. I’m not picky about the shell color for eating, just for dying!
When I was young, we only had yellow eggs — dyed from the yellow of gorse flowers.
Just get the Easter Egg chickens – no dying. They were the most fun birds I ever had growing up and laid green, blue, brown, pink … I think even purple. Plus they had little feathery beards.
Happy Easter, Maggie, and lots of chocolate bunnies!
Oh, I wish! I love chocolate bunnies, but my waistline doesn’t! 🙁
“Like so many Christian holidays, Easter is a pagan festival re-dedicated to Christian purposes.”
This take-over of festivals etc by one religion from another is called “syncretism”, a delightful word I discovered via Twitter.
Happy Easter!
It also applies to the combination of one god or belief system with another, which is the way I generally use it (as on last November 1st and this coming April 23rd). 🙂
Happy Easter to everyone.
Happy Easter if we survive!!!!!
I am SO saving that pic.