Here's wishing an enjoyable holiday to the Christians in the audience! I find Peeps sort of bizarre, but I'm hoping to find myself some chocolate in a bunny shape later today.
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Happy Easter
23 Mar 2008 10:31 am
Comments (31)
Peeps are one of those things that don't appeal as a weekly treat but work just right one day a year.
When it comes to trust fund "professional Democrats" who think American politics is all about their personal amusement and/or their personal advancement, I wouldn't stop to piss on them if they were on fire.
Not very Christian of me, I know.
Happy Easter and Passover to all.
RE " I wouldn't stop to piss on them if they were on fire."
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Know what that angry, stomach-acid, bitter feeling is, Petey? It called "being a nobody".
Maybe you and your standard bearer Ralph Nader can discuss it at one of his campaign rallies. Along with the other person attending.
Christians? I thought Easter was a pagan holiday - what with all the fertility symbols (bunnies, eggs, chicks, etc.) That and it's named after a pagan goddess.
Re "Christians? I thought Easter was a pagan holiday "
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Oh, goody. Another heretic to stone. Someone bring out the rocks.
From wiki:
"After several centuries of disagreement, all churches accepted the computation of the Alexandrian Church (now the Coptic Church) that Easter is the first Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after the ecclesiastical vernal equinox.
Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover not only for much of its symbolism but also for its position in the calendar. The Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover meal, based on the chronology in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7). The Gospel of John, however, speaks of the Jewish elders not wanting to enter the hall of Pilate in order "that they might eat the Passover", implying that the Passover meal had not yet occurred (John 18:28; John 19:14).[2] Thus, John places Christ's death at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lamb, which would put the Last Supper slightly before Passover, on 14 Nisan of the Bible's Hebrew calendar.[3] "
The vernal equinox was on March 20. Or so the Druids at Stonehenge tell me.
Petey,
You're a ranting buffoon.
Not all Dems are up from their bootstraps, humble men of the soil like, um, FDR, JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Hilary.
You're raging, repeating your comments on different posts (often sans any relevance), cursing some times and just being quite the dick overall.
Also, for a guy who rants against the elite it might interest you to know you curse like a 1950s Exeter grad at a countryclub mixer (yeah, don't piss on them even if they're on fire, you cornball cliche-ridden douche.)
Well, enjoy your indignation!
Don: While you're right about the religious holiday, the marshmallow chickens and chocolate bunnies (see blog entry) are tied to the pagan spring festival.
Happy Easter and Passover to all.
Passover isn't for a couple more weeks, Petey.
And for what it's worth? If you were on fire, I'd stop to piss on you.
Re: Oh, goody. Another heretic to stone. Someone bring out the rocks.
Ah, come on. I was just kidding (as I'm sure you are about the stoning). I mean people like me see a Xmas tree and think big phallic symbol (long and pointy with balls hanging from it). Besides... I'm already stoned - it IS the weekend, ya know? ;)
Thanks, Matt! It's always nice to get a shout out from the chosen peeps.
It's not Easter for all Christians. For Eastern Orthodox Christians, it's April 20th this year. They follow the "first Sunday after Passover" rule for deciding when Easter is. Given that the Last Supper was Passover Seder, that seems appropriate. I still can't figure out how the Catholics came up with their date for Easter. It really makes little sense.
Re: That and it's named after a pagan goddess.
That only works in English (OK, and German too). In most languages the word for "Easter" is some variation of Greek "Pascha", meaning "Passover".
As for the rabbits, no, even they aren't Pagan (I never heard of a bunny-worshipping pagan cult, has anyone? That kinda sounds like "Monty Python Does Wicca") In the Middle Ages the hare was taken as a symbol of Christ in those quaint old bestiaries that tied animal behaviors to either sins or virtues. Hares (supposedly) are known for sacrificing themselves to predators to save their young, hence the asociation with Christ's self-sacrifice.
Hah! JonF is wrong yet again. Eastre's sacred animal was the hare.
Confused by the calendar? It's really easy.
Western Christians use the Gregorian, Orthodox Christians use the Julian. The equinox (sun and moon notwithstanding) is proclaimed to be the 21st of March, on the Julian that's about two weeks later than Gregorian.
Compound that with the fact that Easter is early in the west this year, as the equinox and full moon lined up.
Passover 2008 runs 4/20-4/26, Orthodox Pascha is 4/27. That makes them 4-5 weeks away, respectively.
The only true Easter calorie-splurge is hollow chocolate eggs. It's in the Bible.
(The month split between Pesach and Easter is a rare thing. It means that Coke-for-Passover arrives later. It also forced the Irish to celebrate St Patrick's Day on the Saturday before Palm Sunday.)
In honor of Easter, I am taking the day off from trying to annoy Obama's supporters.
Go Obama!
From wiki:
...Easter is the first Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after the ecclesiastical vernal equinox.
Any religious holiday whose date depends on the moon has ancient roots in pagan moon-worship.
Any religious holiday whose date depends on the moon has ancient roots in pagan moon-worship
That is much like claiming that any celebration whose date depends on a fixed calendar date has ancient roots in pagan star-worship.
The Christian Easter holiday is based off of the Jewish Passover. Everyone here seemed quicker to deride Easter as a "pagan holiday" than they were to deride Passover as a "pagan spring festival."
Tyro, it's perfectly clear that Christians were quite clever in adapting age-old pagan rites for their own purposes and there's absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging that, unless you're weirdly and mistakenly obsessed with the exclusivity, superiority and originality of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Re: Hah! JonF is wrong yet again. Eastre's sacred animal was the hare.
How does that make me wrong? Nothing you said above invalidates what I posted. Moreover Eastre was a Germannic goddess. Easter did not originate in the Germannic countries, it originated in the Mediteranean world. If you're going to go looking for pagan elements in Easter you might want to forget about Eastre and instead go looking in historical Greco-Roman paganism.
Re: Western Christians use the Gregorian, Orthodox Christians use the Julian.
Well, not exactly, no. The Russian and Serbian churches, and a small number of splinter groups, use the Julian calendar. The other Orthodox churches, including most in the US, use a modified calendar devised by the Patiarch of Constantinople c 1920. It aligns with the Gregorian calendar on fixed dates like Christmas, but keeps to the older reckoning on Easter.
Re: Any religious holiday whose date depends on the moon has ancient roots in pagan moon-worship.
Tell that to the Jews, since the dating of Easter is based on the dating of the Jewish Passsover. And what would you say about a date based on a solar calendar? That it too must ber paganistic because the ancients worshipped the sun also? Good grief, how can we date anything without reference to astronomy?
Re: Tyro, it's perfectly clear that Christians were quite clever in adapting age-old pagan rites for their own purposes
How is that perfectly clear? Apart from some minor decorative features (lilies, etc) I see nothing in the celebration of Easter that has non-Christian elements. You might also want to educate yourself on the history of the festival. One should not be the typical ignorant Ameriacn who assumes that our own local folk customs in the early 21st century are universal throughout the world, and were present thus in all ages before us.
Believe me -- you don't have to be Jewish to think Peeps are weird...
The early Christian missionaries to the pagans were quite adept at pointing out similarities between Christianity and the existing paganism. Remember that real, actual pagans usually venerated their ancestors in a way modern people, including modern pagans, don't. "New" was a very bad thing until the industrial revolution. Thus, the only way to convert the pagans was to downplay the differences between their existing beliefs and Christianity. Usually only things like really obvious polygamy and, especially, human sacrifice got outright banned, and the Church nudged everyone in the right direction slowly. That the Church gave up this rational method in favor of "convert now to exactly what the Pope says or die" was one of the great trajedies of Western Civilization. Look up Matteo Ricci, and consider the differences between what China is today and what it would have been had the Pope granted Ricci's request.
Both Tyro and JonF don't seem to realize that their arguments are hopelessly circular.
Tyro, it's perfectly clear that Christians were quite clever in adapting age-old pagan rites for their own purposes and there's absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging that
I don't have trouble with acknowledging that at all. However, the specific case of Easter, its non-english name (Pascha), and the date of its celebration is one in which the Christians specifically celebrated due to their pre-existing ties to Judaism.
Now, if one wants to argue that Passover is just another pagan spring festival, I suppose that's ok, too, but the closest ancestor of Easter is Passover.
The argument that any "holiday whose date depends on the moon has ancient roots in pagan moon-worship" is particularly disingenuous since for cultures whose entire calendar was based on lunar cycles, all dates depended on the moon. I, for one, don't argue that Indepdence Day has its ancient roots in pagan sun or star worship because it is dependent on the solar calendar to calculate July 4th every year.
Those particularly excised about the need to discuss how Christianity adopted and repurposed pagan practices and even specific commemoration dates should learn to exercise a little patience and wait until Christmas.
If you are interested in eclectic Peep art, check out the entries in the annual Peeps diorama contest sponsored by the St. Paul Pioneer Press at http://extra.twincities.com/car/peeps/default.asp
My favorite: Gulliver and the Lillipeepians http://extra.twincities.com/car/peeps/details.asp?idnum=250
The Christian Easter holiday is based off of the Jewish Passover. Everyone here seemed quicker to deride Easter as a "pagan holiday" than they were to deride Passover as a "pagan spring festival."
Yes, the two holidays share the same pagan roots. But that's no reason to "deride" either holiday (just the folks who refuse to acknowledge their origins).
The argument that any "holiday whose date depends on the moon has ancient roots in pagan moon-worship" is particularly disingenuous since for cultures whose entire calendar was based on lunar cycles, all dates depended on the moon.
Any calendar based on lunar cycles has ancient roots in pagan moon-worship. It's a much more intimate, immediate, short-range kind of schedule, if you think about it, with many more cycles in the course of a solar year; and 13 moon-cycles of 28 days each are a day short of a solar year, so they get out of phase fairly quickly. It's not a very convenient schedule for longer-term planning, like when to plant crops, so lunar cycles aren't as useful as counting from the solstices and equinoxes, at least for settled peoples who depend on agriculture.
In other words, there must have been some other imperative to mark time by lunar cycles. Also note that the moon puts on a rather spectacular show as it waxes and wanes from day to day, easily adaptable to all kinds of symbolism, whereas only the position of the sun on the horizon at sunrise and sunset changes, and that quite slowly.
If you happen to have any Peeps left over after Easter, microwave them! It's fascinating and horrifying to watch.
Re: The early Christian missionaries to the pagans were quite adept at pointing out similarities between Christianity and the existing paganism.
This is true. However most of our modern Easter (and also Christmas) customs are exactly that: modern. They date back to the Victorian era, or maybe at most to the Protestant Reformation. They have no connection to the era of St Columba and the Venerable Bede, let alone to the 1st century AD.
Re: It's not a very convenient schedule for longer-term planning, like when to plant crops,
Way, way back in the Bronze Age calendars were very elitist things, kept by priests and shared out with the upper classes. Farmers knew nothing about them and simply planted when the weather was apt for it, and harvested when the crops were ready.
The egg and rabbit business is from the Zoroastrian "Noruz" spring festival. I don't think Zoroastrians are considered to be pagans though.
Comments closed April 06, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Why not have both?
Posted by J-Dub | March 23, 2008 10:49 AM