satan_messiah t1_iz6stc6 wrote
Reply to comment by CK2Noob in How did new emerging religions succeed despite established pre-existing religions during ancient and/or pre-historic times? by matthewlee0165
Easters date is determined by the first full moon after the equinox and you mean there is no pagan origins there? I mean I could be wrong but easter being the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox seems pretty pagany to me.
webbphillips t1_iz7anco wrote
Christianity is an ancient religion, and it's also plausible that dating things by equinoxes and moons was just a standard way of fixing a yearly event.
More difficult to explain are the eggs and bunnies, which any anthropologist will tell you are fertility symbols common to the spring festivals of many cultures before and alongside Christianity. The Iranian spring festival, Nowruz, existed long before Islam, is a popular holiday, and isn't going anywhere. Also, subjectively, but as a non-believer who enjoys experiencing different traditions, passover doesn't give me spring festival vibes, but Easter absolutely does.
CK2Noob t1_iz7xg32 wrote
Have you ever celebrated easter in a non-western context? Traditionally things such as the easter bunny or egg hunts are a very anglo-saxon thing. I reccomend celebrating easter in an eastern Christian setting as the liturgical format (and importance of easter) is much older than current western praxis. I’ve never really gotten spring festival vibes from Orthodox easter tbh.
Like the only thing I can think of are the eggs? But you just get a small red egg afterwards and That’s it. It’s a very small piece in an otherwise thouroughly Christian celebration (and well, eggs have been used as symbolism by ancient jews so it’s not even neccessarily a pagan import).
AliMcGraw t1_iz7r3dp wrote
It literally comes from the Jewish luni-solar calendar, in an attempt to keep it concordant with Passover.
But yeah, like basically every calendar in the history of the earth uses either a lunar, luni-olar, or solar cycle. So basically all holidays, events, and occurrences are going to occur based on one of those calendars. That doesn't mean people were stealing holidays from each other, although sometimes they were. It just means that the planet works the same way for everyone, and there are only so many ways to mark time astronomically when you only have naked eye observation.
CK2Noob t1_iz7wwat wrote
You phrased it really well. Almost every culture has some celebrations around the Winter or summer Solstice too. Doesn’t mean that they somehow copied eachother
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