Well, that’s over for another year - thank god… Easter I mean. Apart from the overindulgence on chocolate and the many and varied kinds of hot cross buns, the fawning, pathetic xtians on telly trying to ruin a welcome four day holiday for the rest of us gets on my goat.
It wouldn’t be so bad but they believe that the period is exclusively THEIR’S and no one else’s. Sorry, but Easter has bugger-all to do with christian’s (or any other modern religion) - the celebration of the Spring Equinox has been going on for far, far longer than 1AD.
To quote from The Pagan Origins of Easter on this site :
Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25. “About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill …Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.”
Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians “used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation.”
Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus’ life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn about who was first. Look - it’s just another tradition, in the same way as Christmas, Carols, Trees, Hymns, Bunnies, Easter eggs, Hot Cross buns and all the other things that are charming and fun to remember and interrupt the more boring times in our lives are. Tradition means getting together with freinds and family, having fun and above all, having a good laugh at the religious who just have to turn everything into a depressing, miserable experience for themselves and then try and force everyone else to do the same!
Give me a break. OH.. that’s right I just had one - a great four day one!
Tags: christianity, churches & cults, humour
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