Website of Joshua McGee

One of my favorite words is “syncretism”.  It means the amalgamation, or attempted amalgamation, of different religions or schools of thought — especially when the merger is incomplete.  One sees this at numerous points in the Christian ecclesiastical calendar, but never more apparently than with Easter.

So what’s with Easter?

To the pagan Norse, “Eostre” was the name of a goddess of the dawn.  In north-western Europe, where there are bitter winters, the “Festival of Eostre” would be held in the springtime to celebrate the annual rebirth of the world.  That which had lain dormant for months was coming back to life: animals were being born; trees and flowers were starting to grow again; the days were getting ever longer.  Totems of birth — eggs and rabbits for their symbolism of fertility and fecundity — were celebrated.

Cultural traditions and rituals are very hard to change.  It’s tough to get people to give up their rituals.  It’s easier to get them to substitute one object of their worship for another, but keep the trimmings.  And this happened with Easter.

Christianity came in as a massively successful Mediterranean Mystery Religion with a god-man who is killed and reborn.  His resurrection was a deeply important part of the religion’s memeplex.  So, the Christians got the Western Europeans to start celebrating it, with a couple of minor changes.  For instance, instead of celebrating it on the first full moon after the vernal equinox, they started celebrating it on the first Sunday after the … first full moon following the vernal equinox.  That’s the calculation of Easter to this day, based on sun-worship and a lunar calendar, and explains why Jesus dies and is reborn on a different date each year.

They made some other changes.  For instance, they decided to ditch the bunnies and the eggs, because using symbols of sex in a liturgical holiday was unseemly.  Also, they changed the name: you can’t really have the name of a pagan goddess for your celebration.  Third, they totally played down the symbolism of the rebirth of their man-god being the rebirth of the world itself.

Actually, I may be entirely wrong about that last paragraph.  They may have made none of those changes.

Perhaps Eddie Izzard said it best, in the role of the Holy Ghost, criticizing Jesus for dying and rising at Easter: “If people don’t figure out that’s pagan, I’m just going to eat my hat!”

Happy Stolen-Pagan-Fertility-Festival.  And have courage, little bunnies.  You may yet escape.