Keeping the Eostre in Easter

By:  Kenny Smith, see bio at Guest Blogger                                             

As Lauri Lebo recently noted in her March 23, 2010 Religion Dispatch post, “although most Christians assume that the ideas and practices surrounding the Easter holiday are native to Christianity, Easter’s historical origins in fact lie in the pre-Christian, pagan religious worlds of Northern Europe. “The word ‘Easter,’”  Lebo explains, “is actually the name of an ancient, heathen goddess who represents fertility, springtime, and the dawn.”  Contemporary Pagans, Wiccans, Heathens, Druids, and other such communities working to re-create, preserve, and practice various pre-Christian traditions (whom I will group together here under the term “Neo-Pagan”) agree entirely! Popular websites such as Covenant of the Goddess (http://www.cog.org/), Witches Voice (http://www.witchvox.com/), and Witchology (http://www.witchology.com/), discuss the ancient roots of the Easter holiday as grounded in Germanic goddess-figures alternately known as Eostre or Ostara. Some have also begun to suggest that we “not forget the REAL reason for the season!,” and work to “Keep the Eostre in Easter.” (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Keep-Eostre-in-Easter/308394504493) 

Now, we know that new and alternative movements, over time, typically grow more and more like the larger culture in which they live. A good example of this process (which scholars refer to as “accommodation”), can be seen in the Unificationist Church (popularly known as the Moonies).  As Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports in a recent story for NPR, with its membership “dwindling,” the Unificationist church has brought some of its teachings into greater alignment with the larger Western culture. For example, although marriages with the Unificationist community have been traditionally (and controversially) arranged by the movement’s founder, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, parents have now been granted the authority to arrange marriages for their own children. While past generations of converts were expected to sacrifice their careers and dedicate their lives to laboring on behalf of the church, personal achievement and financial success are now explicitly encouraged: “[t]oday, the church wants college valedictorians, not dropouts… [it] wants the second generation to fit into society — not fight it.”(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123805954) 

This raises a very interesting question about the direction in which American Neo-Pagan traditions are headed. When we think about 

 

Christian communities insisting that the Christmas holiday be configured in explicitly religious terms, rather than, a more secular holiday defined by bright and colorful lights, decorating a tree, giving gifts, the myth of Santa Claus, and spending celebratory time with fiends and family, images of a religious militancy seem as if they are not that far behind. Indeed, while I sometimes grow weary of Christmas shopping, I always dread the shrill religious voices demanding that I observe a Christmas defined along certain pre-approved, sectarian lines. 

Are American Neo-Pagans taking on some of these characteristics in their gradual accommodation to the larger culture? Can we expect increasingly shrill Neo-Pagan voices demanding adherence to sectarian understandings of Eostre over and above all competing others?  I would argue that this is unlikely to be case, and that efforts to “keep the Eostre in Easter” differ significantly from those to “keep the Christ in Christmas.” This is so for at least two reasons.   

Firstly, the positionality of Neo-Pagans within the broader culture differs radically from that of most Christians. While Christian communities often perceive themselves as a persecuted minority, as living in a time when all things Christian “are being discouraged and swept away,” this is a very difficult argument to sustain. As numerous sociological studies have shown, most Americans (72%) continue to self-identify as Christian, and most seats of political, economic, and social power are filled by those who see themselves as Christian. One suspects that, within some Christian communities, “being persecuted” has come to be mean “no longer enjoying an hegemonic presence” in American culture.  Neo–Pagans, however, occupy a very different position. While their numbers continue to grow at impressive rates, if grouped with all other “new movements,” they only represent approximately 1.2% of the adult population. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-03-09-american-religion-ARIS_N.htm) Consequently, they are much more likely to experience not only discrimination in various forms, but social invisibility.     

Secondly, unlike most Christian communities, Neo–Pagan traditions are not at all evangelical. They do not assume a mandate to make their worldview everyone else’s worldview, and so they do not actively seek converts. To the contrary, many such groups rebuff those who seek to join them and require the completion of lengthy periods of study (a year and a day is not uncommon), tests of competency, initiations, and group consensus as to the appropriateness of applicants, prior to admittance. In such contexts, rates of attrition may run as high as 90%.  Neo-Pagan traditions, then, tend to regard their own teachings and practices as suitable only for a small number of persons with particular interests and temperaments.   

Taken together, these differences suggest quite varied frames of reference for Christmas and Eostre purity concerns. Christians who seek to police the ways in which Christmas is conceptualized and lived are hoping to reestablish clear cultural control. For many, this is not simply a matter of preference, but a cosmological and eschatological necessity.   

For Neo-Pagans, who are better understood as a religious species recently returned from the brink of extinction, and who practice a largely esoteric religious craft, Eostre purity concerns represent an act of resistance and a struggle to assert one’s cultural identity within a culture where such Neo-Pagan identities are often demonized or unrecognized. 

Still, when we consider the sustained rates of growth with this community, the diffusion of its symbols into popular culture (e.g., in the Harry Potter novels and films), and the tendency towards accommodation over time, one wonders whether Neo-Pagan traditions 

Eostre

might come to resemble more closely the dominant religion in ways that could shift Eostre purity concerns in a different direction. In my own research with Wiccans, more than a few have expressed concerns about precisely this issue. “I’m not sure I would be comfortable,” a Wiccan priestess remarked to me several years ago, “if Wicca became the dominant religion in our culture, the way Christianity is now. I’m not sure I would it would remain ‘Wicca’ anymore.” 

Note – Read a complimentary article from the Religion Nerd’s archive:   Easter – Christian, Jewish, or Pagan?

Easter – Christian, Jewish, or Pagan?

By:  Heather Abraham aka Religion Nerd

Easter (Pascha in Greek and Latin) is arguably the most important feast in the Christian liturgical year yet the modern Easter celebration is often associated with Jewish Passover as well as Pagan imagery and deities.  Is the modern Easter feast a purely Christian one or is there legitimacy in viewing Easter as a product of religious syncretism?   

Vernal Equinox

As the oldest of Christian feast days, after the Sabbath, the Easter observance has its roots firmly planted in Judaism. Christians originally celebrated Easter two days after the Jewish Passover but in 325 CE, by order of the Emperor Constantine, the Council of Nicaea determined to move the holiday in order to forge a new and unique Christian identity—distinct from its Judaic roots.  The Jewish Passover story of Jesus’ death and resurrection was remade into a strictly Christian narrative.  Easter would no longer be celebrated as a Passover holiday but would become a moveable feast day no longer associated with the Jewish calendar.  After the Nicene council’s ruling, all subsequent Easter celebrations would occur on the first Sunday—following the first full moon—after the vernal Equinox which usually occurs from March 20th to 21^st.  For Western Christianity, Easter can fall on any Sunday from March 22^nd to April 25^th.   

Ostara - Spring Goddess of Fertility

As the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity left its modest beginnings behind, slowly expanding, conquering, and absorbing pagan rituals, deities, myth, and imagery as it spread throughout the European continent.    For each new culture it encountered, Christianity would embrace those Pagan rituals and beliefs which complimented the Christian narrative.  Pagan goddesses were absorbed into Christianity as Saints, Pagan temples and shrines were reinvented as Christian Churches, and Pagan imagery was incorporated into the Christian narrative.   Although the origin of the English name for Pascha—Easter is still in debate, it is likely a derivative of Eostre or Ostara;  European fertility goddesses whose spring equinox festivals celebrated the triumph of life and renewal over the death and darkness of winter.   

Easter Bunnies and Their Eggs

Other elements of the modern Easter celebration such as the Easter bunny and Easter egg are without question ancient  pagan symbols of fertility and creation.  One pagan myth tells the story of a bird who so admired the beauty of the rabbit that she asked the goddess to  remake her in the image of the hare.  Granting the wish, the goddess transformed the bird into a rabbit who became her devoted attendant and continued to lay eggs to honor her divine benefactress. This egg laying hare is one of the most recognizable images of the  modern Easter celebration.  

Back to our original question; is the modern Easter feast a purely Christian one or is there legitimacy in viewing Easter as a product of  religious syncretism?  I’ll let you decide!  

Wishing everyone a happy Easter, Chag Sameach, and a belated Ostara!