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Myths of Easter and other holidays
Why does a religious holiday include mythical rabbits that lay eggs and other myths?

Sunday, March 31, 2024

By DOUG THOMPSON
Blue Ridge Muse

One must wonder about celebrating a religious holiday with things like hunting for Easter Eggs supposedly laid by rabbits and not fowl like chickens and a spiritual being who is said to have walked on water after rising from the dead.

One must wonder about celebrating a religious holiday with things like hunting for Easter Eggs supposedly laid by rabbits and not fowl like chickens and a spiritual being who is said to have walked on water after rising from the dead.

To stretch the imagination` further this year, Americans are delaing with a disgraced, criminally-indicted former president hawking Bibles for $60 apiece as a gimmick to raise money he needs to halp pay for a $175 million bond appeal on a court case based on defrauding others as a way of life.

Oh, we must remember that this same former president is the declared candidate for president of one of the two primary parties and who is facing trial in two weeks on charges of paying hush money to a pornographic actress to keep quiet about an affair while married to his third wife, a former nude model.

How does a parent explain that to a child dressed in Easter finery while searching for Easter Eggs, we are told, that were laid by a rabbit and not a chicken?

“What happened at Easter is arguably the most controversial claim of the Christian faith,” mused Christian Theologian C.S. Lewis. He admits that faith is based largely on fable, not facts. On Easter, part of the celebration of a man, purported to be the “son of God” and who, we are told, died by crucifixion and then rose from the dead and walked on water. Differing faiths have opposing views.

Much of Christmas celebrates a fable of a laughing fat man driving a gift-loaded sled pulles by mythical flying reindeer.

Seventy one years ago, as a five-year-old kid whose father died in an industrial accident when before he was a year old, I realized the apartment where I lived with my mother did not have a chimney that the mythical Santa could use, When I raised that point with mom, she explained the myths of the holiday. A year later, I told my first grade classmates that Santa did not exist and explained why. Several of them cried and my teacher sent me to the principal.

When the principal sent me home for the day, my mother brought me right back and told him that no one should ever be punished for telling the truth. I was returned to class.

Over the years that followed, learned that, like the myths of Christmas and Easter, such problems come from a person’s individual faith and not lockstep adherence to mythical adherence to dogma. In Israeli in 1986, wife Amy and I walked trough the vintage fortress of Masada, the mountaintop area that came under siege by Roman troops during at the end of the First Jewish-Roman war. Jewish Sicarii rebels took over the fortress,, built by Herod, and committed suicide rather than surrender, according to reports by first-century Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, who was also a military leader.

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A video look at how Trump’s Bible scam is playing out (Courtesy of MSNBC)
“It depends on our faith,” he sad. “The different stories depends on differing faiths. It has been that way for centuries.”

Today, Fact-Checking Services determined that former president Trump told more than 30,000 lies to members of Congress, law enforcement, citizens and others during his first term in office. A senior aide dismissed those lies as “alternative facts.” In the Easter and Holy Week, he is up to this keister in lies about the Bible.

Hell of a way to celebrate Easter

However, much of what he reported was considered more conjecture than fact and historians through the ages have questioned what did, or did not, happen at Masada. An Israeli soldier at Masada told us that different theories and beliefs about what may or may not have happened there exists within his own family.

Paper Moon and Big Dan Teague in O Brother Where Art Thou.
Those two movies popped into my head the MOMENT I heard Trump was hawking Bibles.
I am surprised MSNBC didn't have the wherewithal to summon those two movies for comparison to Donald Trump's Bible Grift-o-Rama.

The Easter Bunny made its way to America, when it was first introduced in the 1700s by German immigrants to Pennsylvania, who reportedly brought over their tradition of an egg-laying hare named "Osterhase" or "Oschter Haws" from the Old Country.

The word Ostara comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess name, Eostre. Eostre represented spring and new beginnings. The celebration of spring is present in many ancient customs, across all cultures especially a religion other than one of the main world religions, specifically a non-Christian or pre-Christian religion also known as pagans.

During the 4th century, the Catholic Church replaced the most important pagan festivities with new Christian holidays on the same dates, as the calendar remained pretty much the same as before, it was much easier for the one-time pagan populace to adjust to this new faith.

By the Early Middle Ages (800–1000), faiths referred to as pagan had mostly disappeared in the West through a mixture of peaceful conversion, natural religious change, persecution, and the military conquest of pagan peoples; the Christianization of Lithuania in the 15th century is typically considered to mark the end of this process.

Since ancient times, eggs and rabbits have been a symbol of fertility, while spring has been a symbol of rebirth. So even though rabbits don't lay eggs, the association of these symbols was almost natural.