Or is it merry? Whichever it is, best wishes to the Christians in the audience.
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Happy Easter!
08 Apr 2007 12:11 pm
Comments (30)
Happy. Merry is for Christmas, everything else is happy. Pretty simple solution, much easier than all those foreign words I have to relearn every year come Septemberish.
A dark day for reason, a good day for superstition. Shoot me now.
I cannot believe than no one from the Christian portion of the audience has thanked MY, as a representative of the Jewish community, for making this particular holiday possible. Bad show. I guess it falls to me, so thanks. (Where's Weiner?)
I watched the 10 Commandments on tv last night: thanks Moses!
You're going to burn in hell for that, Tim.
The name "Easter" has its roots in ancient polytheistic religions (paganism). On this, all scholars agree. This name is never used in the original Scriptures, nor is it ever associated biblically with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Bruce, so what?
many thanks matt, and have a happy last few days of passover
Right On,
I just find it amazing that most Christians as well as the secular world all get it wrong, Equating eggs and the name of a Babylonian Goddess of fertility with the resurrection of Christ.
Don't even get me started on Christmas trees . . .
Bruce, you've clearly never read the Bunnynthians 13: 7-9.
"And if I dole out all my chocolate goods, and
if I deliver my eggs that I may boast
but have not jelly beans, nothing I am profited."
Well, new life/resurrection dovetails quite nicely with the emphasis of the original pagan rituals of spring. I'm actually pleased by the fact that our updated and expanded Easter has pagan roots. . .
Technically, Eostre was Anglo-Saxon/Germanic, not Babylonian. And it's been suggested that Bede (the original source) made her up while trying to explain why on earth Anglo-Saxons called "Easter" what all the romance languages call some derivation of "Pascha" for Passover. Wikipedia suggests that some scholars have suggested instead that it just happened to be the Anglo-Saxon name of the month. All that has nothing to do with the eggs and bunnies and what not. I have no idea where they came from.
South Park's Very Special Easter Show this week is worth catching.
Not being a Christian, I hope there are many more Christians who do not feel the need to validate their faith by having hapless Muslims (or Hindus or Buddhists or Jews or atheists) converting to their religion.
From The Corner:
Understatement of the Millennium [Mark Krikorian]
In a nice front page Easter story in the WaPo on converts at a local Roman Catholic parish, a former Muslim explains that she was attracted to the faith by the Lord's message of compassion and forgiveness: "You don't hear that as much in other faiths compared to Christianity."
And a Happy Zombie Jesus day to you too, Matt.
Thanks, Matt, on behalf of all the Christians who read you.
Right on, Gregor. As a Christian, I think an important aspect of the compassion my faith espouses is to respect the conclusions others reach in their search for truth. Otherwise, we'd just be berating people who are different from us. I hope Krikorian gets plenty of hell for that.
If you want a fun spring ritual, look up on Holi. Complete free for all hilarity all over.
Seriously, no one saw South Park this week? Jesus kills Bill Donohue to save Easter. Good times.
I saw it and wondered if Parker and Stone had followed the Edwards/Marcotte/Donohue story, of if they had just picked him for some of his other myriad sins.
A dark day for reason, a good day for superstition. Shoot me now.
Of course, no darker than the Holy Days of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sufism, etc. But hey, who's counting.
Thanks Matt. From an agnostic Catholic.
And as to the discussion of pagan roots--well, most Christian holidays and lots of Saints have pagan roots. I think that this is cool and find a protestant focus on "what's in the Bible" to be dreary and facile. All religions have other impulses besides their scripture--even protestants; Catholics and some others just admit it. Why shouldn't we cherish tradition? And, moreover, Catholic theology, which has pagan roots too (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, etc.), allows for a religion that doesn't have to rely on the literal interpretation of the Bible to hold it together. Fundamentalist evangelicals, the Bible-thumping kind, need a literal interpretation to hold their belief system together. Give me pagan roots any day.
Occasional Christian said "Technically, Eostre was Anglo-Saxon/Germanic, not Babylonian."
You are correct that Easter is derived from Eoster but many scholars (not all) have concluded Eoster is derived from Ishtar. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar
"The name Ishtar derives from the Babylonian word for "star." The name is Semitic in origin, and is cognate with Canaanite `Ashtoreth (e.g. Biblical Hebrew עשתרת). She is referred to in the Bible as Ashtoreth or Anath, and the name Esther is an apparent late borrowing of Akkadian "Ishtar" into Hebrew. Some who seek to trace Christian practices to pagan origins claim that Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring (whose name later gave rise to modern English "Easter") may be etymologically connected to that of Ishtar, though there is no linguistically-meaningful evidence to support such a link."
A dark day for reason, a good day for superstition. Shoot me now.
Of course, no darker than the Holy Days of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sufism, etc. But hey, who's counting.
Posted by: Freddie on April 8, 2007 06:54 PM
No shit Freddie, but we live in a nation in which the majority of the people are Christian. Now if this was Israel, Saudi Arabia, or India it would be different. Not everything revolves around Christians.
No shit Freddie, but we live in a nation in which the majority of the people are Christian. Now if this was Israel, Saudi Arabia, or India it would be different. Not everything revolves around Christians.
So, by mentioning the superstitious aspects of other religions, that makes me... Christian-centric? Wha?
Think before you type, please. Seriously.
For those of you without children, jelly beans have really come a long way in the last 20 years. They are fantastic. No more of that black licorice bullshit.
And a happy belated Passover to you, MY
"All that has nothing to do with the eggs and bunnies and what not. I have no idea where they came from."
I was 40 before I connected rabbits, eggs and the start of spring to a fertility celebration. I probably would have caught on sooner if we still erected giant phallusses and danced around them with ribbons, but that was before my time.
And back in the day, the black jelly beans were the only ones worth eating.
Eggs aren't actually a part of any religious ceremony, FYI. They're just something you give out to kids for fun.
Freddie, I got the impression from your first post in response to Azura's that you were bothered because they singled out a Christian holiday. If this assumption is incorrect, I'm sorry. And the best way to reply to snark is not with more snark if that's what you were going with "Think before you type, please. Seriously."
Comments closed April 22, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Yeah, I'll give the Christians a thumbs up.
Posted by jerry | April 8, 2007 1:05 PM