Happy Eastre everyone! Of course, these days we call it Easter, the Christian holiday that celebrates the curiously ever changing anniversary of when Christ miraculously rose from the dead.
Make no mistake, I love Easter as much as anyone else. We get a four day weekend in the UK (the longest holiday of the year) along with chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies, so who couldn’t love that, right?
I don’t really care about the fact that Easter is actually a pagan festival named after the ancient Anglo Saxon Goddess of Spring, and that it was effectively hijacked by ancient Christians who altered to suit their faith. But it’s with that in mind that I think I now understand why it is that Christians seem to have a propensity for copying and ‘Christianizing’ things from popular culture.
Last year I wrote a fairly critical post about the launch of GodTube, the Christian version of popular video sharing site YouTube, and now I think I might have been a little uncharitable in toward ‘Christian culture.’ After all, they can’t help it, being unoriginal would seem to be engrained into the Christian faith as much as the crucifix, or fish stickers for cars!
But one thing I don’t quite understand is why we don’t all eat chocolate Jesuses, or chocolate crucifixes? Maybe the thought of children gnawing off the head of Christ is offensive or sacrilegious? I’m curious though, back in the day when people were praising the goddess Eostre, wasn’t replacing her with Jesus offensive to the pagans?
In truth I don’t care that the Christians stole Eastre. It’s a four day holiday that involves feasting and chocolate, so for all I care they can steal more festivals. After all, if by doing so we get to have more long weekends then I’m all for it!
Happy Easter everyone!
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Was Jesus a pagan?
Easter is a Pagan holiday
Unoriginal sin
The Pagan origins of Easter
Wrote the following comment on Mar 23, 2008 at 11:10 pm
All though I too am bugged to no end when I see the all too often lack of originality among Xians, I do have to draw attention to other issues at work in the Xian conversion of pagan holidays.
At the heart of the Xian faith is the incarnation: God entering fully into the human condition and meeting us where we are at, to restore us to fellowship with him. The Xian adoption and conversion of pagan holidays is an extension of this principle, because it represents taking the Gospel and presenting it through the forms of the culture in which it is being communicated. In this manner, the Gospel meets people where they are at.
On the other hand, since the incarnation is the transcendent God becoming flesh, when he became immanent he brought something transcendent with him that then worked from the inside out. This ultimately is the ground of our salvation. Likewise, the Gospel often adapts to preexisting cultural forms, but from within it converts, transforms, and restores it to do what culture is supposed to do, develop our humanity to a higher plane of existence.
Often, Xians have engaged the culture they sought to bring the Gospel to by listening to their prevailing myths (the shaping and orienting narrative of a society) and in some degree allowing the Gospel to be presented through the form of those myths. The idea is that the myths were thought to be a kind of preparatory witness to the collective conscience of various people groups, for often these myths focused on issues of creation and redemption. When the Gospel was presented in these cultures it was presented as the substance and reality of which these myths were signs and shadows.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 23, 2008 at 11:17 pm
As an after thought, I do have to confess that unfortunately Xians, in an attempt to present the Gospel through prevailing cultural forms have often only embraced those forms without bringing much that was transcendent and thereby transformative. I don’t know why this is exactly. I can only acknowledge how I am likely complicit in this failure, and express my sorrow at how it horribly misrepresents the creative, original, good and glorious God we profess to serve.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 23, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Although the name “Easter” may have been a re-association of a holiday from pagan to Christian, the timing of Easter (Pasqua, Paschal, I don’t know what it was called before Easter) has to do with Passover, because in reality the crucifixion of Christ was indeed right after Passover. Ah, but now you will notice that Passover is in April this year. Well, yes. Calendars have gone a bit awry, a la Leap year and Gregorian calendars and all that. So it’s a little hard to tell why things are the way they are, but I’m just trying to say that Easter or whatever it was originally called is its own holiday in its own right.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 24, 2008 at 3:17 am
theres also a PornoTube.
just fyi.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 24, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I’m all about 4-day holidays too. Most of us here don’t even get a 3-day one for Easter, except in the schools and the occasional workplace. I just went ahead and took Friday off. Hope your celebration included lots of chocolate, in any form. Mine had some, but never enough.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 24, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I guess that all new things blend somewhat to the culture they’re in don’t they. I’m only having a friendly jab at the unoriginality of Christians really, I fully understand that such adaptations of culture are bound to happen. Wasn’t it Picasso who said “Good artists borrow, great artists steal”?
I’m not sure I can go along with your passover thing there though Anne. From what I’ve heard, the Easter holiday was very much deliberately tied to the celebration of Estra, the spring, new life, fertility and all that stuff. It was, if you like, a clever marketing move by the early church to usher in a more seamless adaptation of a new meaning for that holiday. I could be wrong though.
I do think it’s funny though when you her some preacher going on about “the true meaning of Easter” and how it has nothing to do with bunnies but is actually all about Jesus. Actually he’s wrong, it has more to do with bunnies than Jesus! :-)
Of course the most important thing about Easter are the easter eggs, right? :-)