Enjoy this day celebrating the ancient festival of the resurrection of the seasons, the rebirth of the year, the celebration of the new year, or its newer interpretation as specifically about a particular one of the born-to-a-virgin, talked-to-god(s), performed-miracles, and died-to-rise-again messiah-candidates. All the popular symbols (hatching eggs, bunnies, flowers, etc.) are essentially non-denominational representations of spring and life.
Here’s a Christian site describing Old Testament biblical descriptions of the Easter holiday in the middle east.
New Year? Well, before the Romans brought their winter solstice based calendar into northern Europe, the year began on the vernal equinox. Once the militant Holy Romans began enforcing their rule in Europe, anyone rebelliously caught celebrating a vernal new year was made out to be quite a fool. A hick. Someone over whom anything was easily put.
I won’t go into a description of calendar drift here (why the Equinox is no longer April 1st, nor Christmas/New Year on the Solstice). Christian Easter follows Pesach (by definition), a lunar calendar equinox celebration.
Easter must be a very important holiday. Otherwise, why would so many people buy hundreds of plastic eggs loaded with processed sugar treats? All that plastic destined for overloaded landfills?
For many people, Easter is an exciting day—the day we find out. I’ve always wondered how so many believers manage to rev up a sense of suspense starting on “Good Friday,” ramping upwards until the Easter morning frenzy , when they celebrate that Jesus actually “rose.” Many believers talk to me as though Jesus really dies each and every Good Friday and there is some doubt that he might not make it three days later. When they talk like that I ask them to “Give me a call if he successfully rises from the tomb this year.”
I suspect that reliving religious legends in the present gives many believers more “evidence” that miracles are still happening today. That is important in modern times; ever since cameras and camcorders came along, miracles have dried up. So, indeed, each year we can celebrate “Hallelujah! He has Risen!” How are we certain that it happened? Because we said so.
Based on everyone walking toward church this morning (I see them outside my window), Jesus apparently pulled it off once again. Every year it’s ever more evidence that our Christian beliefs are true and that we are justified in forcefully taking the oil from Middle Eastern non-believers. Or something like that.
But why is this all necessary? Without this annual “miracle” of the rising of a beaten and bloodied Jesus, is it really so hard to see the logic of the golden rule or the need to treat other people with kindness and respect? For many people, apparently so. Even if the Bible passage read to congregations today (Mark 16:1-2) was concocted by someone other than the original author of “Mark’s” gospel.
Sincerely, though, we should all celebrate the spring, at least in the pagan sense. Thousands of real miracles await us outside. These natural miracles of Spring are so obvious, even small unindoctrinated children “get it.” For a thousand such miracles, each of them more incredible than any story out of any holy book, all we need are open eyes and open minds.
Piet Hein: THE MIRACLE OF SPRING
We glibly talk
of nature's laws
but do things have
a natural cause?
Black earth turned into
yellow crocus
is undiluted
hocus-pocus.