Seen on FB: friend going completely overboard with Easter bunny haul for her kid

[joonifloofeefloo]

I google'd 'Christians that don't celebrate Easter' like jooniflorisploo suggested and read some of the results.

Hey thanks, kayvent! :)

Interesting reads. I disagree with the conclusions but I understand them...

This is beautiful.

I think that's all we can ask of each other: hear, listen, make room for, explore, attempt to understand, accept. (And if we manage to actually understand, wow, total bonus!)

I have no personal attachments -I'm not pagan or Christian (any version of) or atheist or anything else. I just like a lot of people, and love to make room for each good person on the planet!

[kimmarg]

1) When they started giving everyone trophies just for showing up. That's my guess at least. Really sucks how lame it is. Worst part is all the shitty parents that think it's necessary to help their kids snatch all the eggs.

I made the mistake of not anticipating that there would be too many kids and not enough eggs at the public hunt leading to toddlers leaving empty handed.  I made the executive decision to go to the store and buy eggs and candy for another playground that the other kids didn't know about.  After some distraction I got it settled and toddlers got some eggs.  Moral of the story is if you're going to a public egg hunt with toddlers, have a pre made stash in your bag/purse and an accomplice to hide them right out of sight after the rush.

We took the toddler to a very well done egg hunt which gave everyone an egg carton to get 12 eggs and made you sign up in advance. There was a modest $4 fee to cover the eggs etc. Result was everyone got eggs with plenty left even the toddler, who yes does need them 'hidden' directly on the ground in front on them. When you're still mastering walking, walking with a basket is a challenge. 

so yes, I paid ($4) to go to an egg hunt. totally worth it to us because kiddo had a lot of fun and has been carrying the eggs around the house all week.

[Goldielocks]

DD planned the egg hunt at church this year and did a modified scavenger hunt, including some clues and candy placed outside (west coast, nice weather). 

The shock was when the kids went outside, less than 30 minutes later, 2/3 of the foil wrapped chocolate eggs were gone, and she thought a couple of kids playing outside got them.   After a few questions, all was revealed.   *!$! Crows were taking them away.  Approximately 3 crows took away over 40 foil wrapped eggs in about 20 minutes.

LOL.    The crazy part is that another woman at the church remembers the same thing happening to her in the 90's after which she had to change tactics, then no egg hunts outside for over a decade.  Crows really do have a great colony memory.

[Hargrove]

Christianity actually has a long history of co-opting holidays.

One can view it as merciful or strategic (or both). The timing of Christmas seems to have been to make it easier to replace Mithras. Easter obviously absorbed some spring-festival components, as many local developments of Christianity tended to do. There were actually even crosses made that were one-half Thor's hammer (only thing that actually stopped those vikings!). This was thought of not as a savagery and a pagan war on Christmas, but as a positive accessory to spreading Christian values (see again: vikings stop raiding Europe).

What's fascinating about Easter is that it seems an agreed upon replacement day of celebration, the agreement of which has been forgotten.

Leviticus 23:5,6 - Day 14 is Passover, Day 15 begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread
Acts 12: 1-5: Peter was arrested and imprisoned sometime on or after day 15, and his captor intended to bring him out "after Passover" (which presumably already happened)
(source: KJB or NABRE, your choice)

Either there was agreement that Passover was part of the full string of holy days that all got referred to as "Passover" at some point; a word "sometime" was missing before "after Passover;" or else, there may have been another holiday, because it was already after Passover that Peter was imprisoned. Even those who argue that Easter is "real," are arguing that it's real in as much as they celebrate a particular list of significant events on a day they call Easter. Those who argue it is not real are celebrating those same events more closely to when they believe you're supposed to.

I think the idea that a day has a cosmic connection to itself in another year is kind of unnecessary, because days don't really match well that way! It seems more important that the celebratory (whenever) gets remembered.

And if you're a real language nut, I offer you German, the root for the basic structure of English, with a somewhat more convincing and recent root for "Easter":

"Because the English Anglo/Saxon language originally derived from the Germanic, there are many similarities between German and English. Many English writers have referred to the German language as the 'Mother Tongue!' The English word Easter is of German/Saxon origin and not Babylonian as Alexander Hislop falsely claimed. The German equivalent is Oster. Oster (Ostern being the modern day equivalent) is related to Ost which means the rising of the sun, or simply in English, east. Oster comes from the old Teutonic form of auferstehen / auferstehung, which means resurrection, which in the older Teutonic form comes from two words, Ester meaning first, and stehen meaning to stand. These two words combine to form erstehen which is an old German form of auferstehen, the modern day German word for resurrection.7 (Italics in original)"

This becomes more compelling when you realize everything from our simple sentences to our names of weekdays are Germanic in origin ("Wednesday" is spelled that way because it used to be Woden's Tag, or Odin's Day, and now we basically are saying "Wendz-day")

[Spork]

I will never understand how we went from the king of the Jews being hung on a Roman cross to a toddler getting a Paw Patrols t-shirt.

The gift-giving comes from the pre-Jesus Easter traditions. They didn't have Paw Patrols shirts when these were started, but the eggs, bunnies, gifting, etc, came from the pre-Jesus Easter stuff :)     A lot of people "doing Easter" are celebrating or riffing off the traditional/historical version.

This.  Easter grew out of a pagan spring fertility ritual -- hence all the rabbits and eggs and basing the date on the phase of the moon, etc. 

The name itself is from the goddess Eostre.  (The actual worship of said goddess named Eostre has been argued as fact/fiction... but it goes way back either way.)

I'm sorry mate, you are wrong. Easter grew out of Passover, a Jewish Holiday commemorating their freedom from slavery in Egypt. The timing of the holiday is not based on the moon either. It is based on the moon and sun (the Jewish calendar is a lunisolar calendar). If Easter was based on the moon, it would gradually drift by a few days each year like Ramadan.

I know it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  "Based on the sun and the moon" is still based on the moon.

Yes, there are certainly bits of Judaism in Christian celebrations... as well as Pagan.  The early Christian church was trying to incorporate all the religious holidays to try to draw folks in.  Pagan spring celebrations go back ages.  Eggs and rabbits are fertility symbols... of the "rebirth" of nature in the spring.

[kayvent]

Christianity actually has a long history of co-opting holidays.

One can view it as merciful or strategic (or both). The timing of Christmas seems to have been to make it easier to replace Mithras.

I kept reading but I should have stopped at this point. Mithraism didn't become a major thing until far after the time Christianity had its roots and started Christmas; Mirthras was still some small niche religion by the end of the first century.

I will never understand how we went from the king of the Jews being hung on a Roman cross to a toddler getting a Paw Patrols t-shirt.

The gift-giving comes from the pre-Jesus Easter traditions. They didn't have Paw Patrols shirts when these were started, but the eggs, bunnies, gifting, etc, came from the pre-Jesus Easter stuff :)     A lot of people "doing Easter" are celebrating or riffing off the traditional/historical version.

This.  Easter grew out of a pagan spring fertility ritual -- hence all the rabbits and eggs and basing the date on the phase of the moon, etc. 

The name itself is from the goddess Eostre.  (The actual worship of said goddess named Eostre has been argued as fact/fiction... but it goes way back either way.)

I'm sorry mate, you are wrong. Easter grew out of Passover, a Jewish Holiday commemorating their freedom from slavery in Egypt. The timing of the holiday is not based on the moon either. It is based on the moon and sun (the Jewish calendar is a lunisolar calendar). If Easter was based on the moon, it would gradually drift by a few days each year like Ramadan.

I know it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  "Based on the sun and the moon" is still based on the moon.

Yes, there are certainly bits of Judaism in Christian celebrations... as well as Pagan.  The early Christian church was trying to incorporate all the religious holidays to try to draw folks in.  Pagan spring celebrations go back ages.  Eggs and rabbits are fertility symbols... of the "rebirth" of nature in the spring.

I'd beg to differ whether something based on a lunar calendar is quite different than something based on a lunisolar calendar but I can agree to disagree in peace.

The early Christian church was prosecuted for being exclusivists and not partaking in Roman religious practices......To suggest they were picking up customs from groups around them is anti-historical.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Christianity actually has a long history of co-opting holidays.

One can view it as merciful or strategic (or both). The timing of Christmas seems to have been to make it easier to replace Mithras.

I kept reading but I should have stopped at this point. Mithraism didn't become a major thing until far after the time Christianity had its roots and started Christmas; Mirthras was still some small niche religion by the end of the first century.

Wasn't the big Roman winter event the Saturnalia, held on the winter solstice to max out nighttime hours?

What I recall having read was that when the Romans expanded into a new territory, before attacking they'd make sacrifices to the local gods. Same thing after a victory. They were co-opting other people's pantheons back in the days of the old Roman Republic, which predated Christianity, and after a couple centuries they had it down to a clean process.

"Oh, you've got a harvest goddess? That's great! So do we! Hey, maybe she's the same chick and we just call her by another name. Yeah, we're pretty tight with her: she did give us a victory over you, so maybe you need to be more like us. Of course, by all means keep worshipping her. Sure, you can keep your temple too. Stop you? Of course not, we're too busy joining you. In fact we're going to take some of her statues back to our hometown so that our families can worship her too. She's really done right by us and we know how to show the proper respect. You don't mind expanding your goddess's influence, do you? I bet she's never been worshipped in Rome. Well, now she can be. And, in the meantime, these are our laws, these are our taxes, we're building some roads and infratructure because yours suck, give us all your gold and treasure and you can have your captured relatives back, and oh by the way, if you want to have any kind of authority in your own town now you'll have to learn Latin."

"Oh, you've got a god of war? That's great! So do we!" ... and so on.

[partgypsy]

I google'd 'Christians that don't celebrate Easter' like jooniflorisploo suggested and read some of the results.

Hey thanks, kayvent! :)

Interesting reads. I disagree with the conclusions but I understand them...

This is beautiful.

I think that's all we can ask of each other: hear, listen, make room for, explore, attempt to understand, accept. (And if we manage to actually understand, wow, total bonus!)

I have no personal attachments -I'm not pagan or Christian (any version of) or atheist or anything else. I just like a lot of people, and love to make room for each good person on the planet!

I looked it up, and indeed some Christians don't celebrate Easter, which I find bizarre. And their interpretation that Jesus would not have us celebrate Easter, which I don't even know what to say how they reached that conclusion. Yes Pascha does translate to Passover, but Pascha means Easter for Christians. Even though they fall on the same time of the calendar (as do some pagan spring rites) there are different traditions and most important different meaning of the traditions.
I am not particularly religious but this is my understanding regarding orthodox Christianity:
With the liturgical calendar, the intent is not just remembering the important events of Jesus and his life, but to actually re-enact and re-live them, so we can re-experience his sacrifice and re-birth. If you remove Easter from Christianity, I'm not sure what you have remaining; Jesus as a role model but not the son of God who died for our sins? Isn't that kind of the whole point and difference between us and Judaism?

[joonifloofeefloo]

^ Yes, it is all so delicious and fascinating and diverse! How various Christians understand the being and role of Jesus, and what it means to "follow" him or to "be a Christian", what dates or events are most authentically honoured or not and why, etc. It is all quite wonderful to me! That's a whole lot of intelligent, thoughtful, sincere, pondering, conscientious people. Identical conclusions matters far less, I think, than these qualities.

[Hargrove]

If you remove Easter from Christianity, I'm not sure what you have remaining; Jesus as a role model but not the son of God who died for our sins? Isn't that kind of the whole point and difference between us and Judeasm?

As I understand it, this is way less interesting than all that. You're insisting Easter is the equivalent of recognizing the resurrection. They're saying Easter is an unimportant holiday and not the marker of the resurrection that they also celebrate. You're celebrating the same thing at slightly different times.

I kept reading but I should have stopped at this point. Mithraism didn't become a major thing until far after the time Christianity had its roots and started Christmas; Mirthras was still some small niche religion by the end of the first century.

Huh? So was Christianity.

The early Christian church was prosecuted for being exclusivists and not partaking in Roman religious practices......To suggest they were picking up customs from groups around them is anti-historical.

Again confused. You will find very different emphases in a church in Japan, Germany, Egypt, and Brazil, even if you visit them all in the same year. They could not possibly have avoided picking up customs along the way.

From the National Museum of Denmark:
http://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/religion-magic-death-and-rituals/christianity-comes-to-denmark/

The transition to Christianity in Denmark took place gradually and without major conflict. The Vikings regarded the new belief as supplementing the Nordic gods – it was not simply a choice between the old and the new religion. The Vikings’ belief in many gods meant that it was possible for the new Christian god, White Christ, to be worshipped alongside gods like Thor and Odin.

In this way both religious beliefs could exist alongside each other. One religion did not exclude the other. This is shown by the find of a mould, which the smith could use to make both Thor’s hammers and Christian crosses. It was a time of great change and perhaps the Vikings sought security in both religious creeds – just to be on the safe side.

Christianity slowly won a footing without the old belief being completely abandoned. Instead, it was reinterpreted and incorporated into the new Christian faith. The old belief also survived in popular folk beliefs. Here we find descriptions of big, stupid trolls and hear about gnomes, who are small bearded men. Is it the belief in giants and dwarves that has survived here?

[kayvent]

Christianity actually has a long history of co-opting holidays.

One can view it as merciful or strategic (or both). The timing of Christmas seems to have been to make it easier to replace Mithras.

I kept reading but I should have stopped at this point. Mithraism didn't become a major thing until far after the time Christianity had its roots and started Christmas; Mirthras was still some small niche religion by the end of the first century.

Wasn't the big Roman winter event the Saturnalia, held on the winter solstice to max out nighttime hours?

What I recall having read was that when the Romans expanded into a new territory, before attacking they'd make sacrifices to the local gods. Same thing after a victory. They were co-opting other people's pantheons back in the days of the old Roman Republic, which predated Christianity, and after a couple centuries they had it down to a clean process.

.....

My beloved friend, do you know when the solstice is? One thing those two grand holidays, Christmas and Saturnalia, have in common is that neither of them were related to the solstice. For example, when my home dog GJC made his little calendar, Saturnalia ended before the Solstice (the 17th) and the Solstice was on the ~21th of December. In fact, because the Julian Calendar had 'so' many extra leap years, December 25/27th got further and further away from the solstice. Saturnalia eventually got long enough and drifted enough to contain the solstice but I've never read any primary source suggest Saturnalia was based on the solstice. (If you can find a primary source, heck a secondary source within the first four centuries saying otherwise, I'd find that a neat read.)

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Christianity actually has a long history of co-opting holidays.

One can view it as merciful or strategic (or both). The timing of Christmas seems to have been to make it easier to replace Mithras.

I kept reading but I should have stopped at this point. Mithraism didn't become a major thing until far after the time Christianity had its roots and started Christmas; Mirthras was still some small niche religion by the end of the first century.

Wasn't the big Roman winter event the Saturnalia, held on the winter solstice to max out nighttime hours?

What I recall having read was that when the Romans expanded into a new territory, before attacking they'd make sacrifices to the local gods. Same thing after a victory. They were co-opting other people's pantheons back in the days of the old Roman Republic, which predated Christianity, and after a couple centuries they had it down to a clean process.

.....

My beloved friend, do you know when the solstice is? One thing those two grand holidays, Christmas and Saturnalia, have in common is that neither of them were related to the solstice. For example, when my home dog GJC made his little calendar, Saturnalia ended before the Solstice (the 17th) and the Solstice was on the ~21th of December. In fact, because the Julian Calendar had 'so' many extra leap years, December 25/27th got further and further away from the solstice. Saturnalia eventually got long enough and drifted enough to contain the solstice but I've never read any primary source suggest Saturnalia was based on the solstice. (If you can find a primary source, heck a secondary source within the first four centuries saying otherwise, I'd find that a neat read.)

Ok, you sent me on an errand to see how much I can dig up to supplement my increasingly decaying memory. I actually appreciate this sort of thing.

I've found you Lucian of Samosata; you're in for a treat if you haven't read him. He is supposed to have died in 180 C.E. and he wrote about the Saturnalia with a fair bit of contempt in a dialogue between Kronos and one of his priests. I can only read his work in translation since my skills in ancient Greek are almost nonexistent. He describes the Saturnalia in a dialogue between Kronos and one of his priests.

The idea, apparently, was to honor Kronos/Saturn and the time to do that was when the Sun went into Capricorn. This occurred a few days before the winter solstice. That's when the Greeks honored Kronos and the Romans honored Saturn: at one point, someone (possibly Tarquinus, but accounts vary) dedicated a sizable temple to him on that day. Anyway, the Saturnalia started when the Sun entered Capricorn, and it was a multi-day party that continued right up to the Solstice and possibly even afterwards. (My bad for saying it was "on" the solstice.)

Macrobius wrote about the Saturnalia in the present tense and he quotes some early authors, but there's controversy as to exactly who he was and when he lived. Attempts to date his work from the Codex put him in the 4th Century. What he describes is was a kind of an all-purpose holiday that involved role playing, gift giving, freedom from work, and other celebrations purportedly of older traditions. But his descriptions do reflect some of the conduct Lucian described.

The relationship between the sun entering Capricorn and the winter solstice is pretty solidly fixed and has nothing to do with human-made calendars except to the extent that someone picked out specific groups of stars, called them constellations, identified one as Capricorn, and associated it with Saturn. The winter solstice happens to fall a few days after.

[Goldielocks]

I google'd 'Christians that don't celebrate Easter' like jooniflorisploo suggested and read some of the results.

Hey thanks, kayvent! :)

Interesting reads. I disagree with the conclusions but I understand them...

This is beautiful.

I think that's all we can ask of each other: hear, listen, make room for, explore, attempt to understand, accept. (And if we manage to actually understand, wow, total bonus!)

I have no personal attachments -I'm not pagan or Christian (any version of) or atheist or anything else. I just like a lot of people, and love to make room for each good person on the planet!

I looked it up, and indeed some Christians don't celebrate Easter, which I find bizarre.

One group that is mentioned a lot don't call it "Easter" and use a different date to commemorate the events (per their interpretation).   it is sort of like saying that they celebrate "Easter" on a different day, not that they don't observe Easter per se.

[401Killer]

Has anyone else seen crazy displays of holiday-driven materialism?

Every single holiday....

[MrsPete]

I don't understand when Easter became a gift giving holiday.
We used to get a chocolate bunny, go on an egg hunt to get a few quarters and a couple pieces of candy.  Now I see kids unwrapping presents!

Two other notes:
1) when did egg hunts become wild scrambles to pick up easily visible eggs spread around?
2) people asked me what I got my daughter: nothing. She's 3 weeks old.

I LOVED Easter egg hunts when I was a kid.  We always went to my Auntie D's house, and she did the best stuff.  While we ate lunch, we kids were always squirming in our seats because we were so eager to get out there and start hunting.  She'd hide about two dozen real eggs plus another dozen plastic eggs (which contained change), and there was always one "special egg" that was wrapped in aluminum foil ... whoever found it received a chocolate bunny. 

Yes, we kids always put out our Easter baskets the night before Easter, but all we ever expected was a bit of candy and maybe a new box of Crayons or a small stuffed animal ... when we became teens, we'd get a couple fancy pencils and a chapstick.  I'm sure the total cost per basket was $3-4.  If you'd have suggested to us that Easter was an "unwrapping presents" holiday, we'd have been confused.  \

Oh, and the other thing I LOVED about Easter as a kid:  My grandfather always got all the ladies -- adults and girls past toddler age -- an Easter corsage.  I always felt so grown up wearing my corsage.  He did it on Mother's Day too -- the old fashioned way:  always red and white, depending upon whether your mother was living or not.  No one ever gives corsages anymore. 

I'm sorry mate, you are wrong. Easter grew out of Passover, a Jewish Holiday commemorating their freedom from slavery in Egypt. The timing of the holiday is not based on the moon either. It is based on the moon and sun (the Jewish calendar is a lunisolar calendar). If Easter was based on the moon, it would gradually drift by a few days each year like Ramadan.

Well, Easter didn't exactly "grow out of" Passover.  As you say, Passover was a major Jewish holiday commemorating the escape from slavery in Egypt /the angel of death having "passed over" the Jewish homes and not killing the first-born son (you must understand that historically the whole family's future was tied up in the first-born son ... but that's another topic).  As a part of that holiday, each family sacrificed an animal ... but God sacrificed His son (thus, Christ is called the Lamb of God) while others were sacrificing animals.  Easter commemorates His renewal and return to the world of the living.  So, yeah, they're connected ... but "grew out of" isn't quite the phrase I'd have used. 

[Warlord1986]

Oh, and the other thing I LOVED about Easter as a kid:  My grandfather always got all the ladies -- adults and girls past toddler age -- an Easter corsage.  I always felt so grown up wearing my corsage.  He did it on Mother's Day too -- the old fashioned way:  always red and white, depending upon whether your mother was living or not.  No one ever gives corsages anymore. 

That is an absolutely lovely tradition! That is so sweet it made me smile to read it. :)

[Just Joe]

Has anyone else seen crazy displays of holiday-driven materialism?

Every single holiday....

It's an American tradition....