CK2Noob

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).

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CK2Noob t1_iz7w7rr wrote

The concept of eggs do fertility is probably something a lot of unrelated cultures realized too, it’s the same with spring festivals. They’re common in tons of cultures. Easter being celebrated around spring also has Christian theological meaning (with the whole resurrection thing). So Yeah.. I don’t understand why the Myth gets repeated.

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CK2Noob t1_iz7vxwu wrote

As pointed out the whole easter bunny thing is a very anglo-saxon thing. The egg is more universal though, but so what? Eggs are a really tiny part of traditional (Especially early) easter celebrations. At best you can say it is evidence for pagan influence on easter, it is not evidence for easter being a pagan holiday.

Again, traditionally easter has consisted of going to Church and celebrating there. Things such a the easter bunny and egg hunts are innovations that came long after paganism had become nonexistant in what was the roman empire. You also have to remember how massive easter was in the past. In western christianity christmas became the ”main” holiday. But traditionally easter has always been the big one with many special celebrations, unique hymns, Church celebrations etc. Especially after the religion was legalized.

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CK2Noob t1_iz6m330 wrote

Easter and Christmas are not pagan at all. That's a myth that comes from 19th century scholarly opinion and is pretty outdated. If you look at traditional Christmas or Easter celebration nothing about it is pagan. Easter had a long period of fasting with various services during the period and on Easter you would go to Church and celebrate it in Church, with a big meal afterwards (this is where the eucharist would have been consumed as well).

Easter itself comes from the jewish passover tradition, which celebrates Moses taking the Jews out of Egypt to the promised land and saved them from slavery (the paralell being that Christ took His people out of the world and opened up the promised land that is the Kingdom of Heaven to people, and broke the slavery to death and sin). The only thing somewhat pagan about easter is the english name for it, most languages use some variation of "Pascha" which comes from the jewish word for passover.

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With Christmas it's basically the same thing. The only similarity between Christmas and Saturnalia is roughly the time of year and gift giving. It's just that Saturnalia was a multi-day festival that ended on the 23rd of december. Christmas would also have had a 40 day fasting period before it, so no festivals there. And on Christmas itself you would have gone to Church, then had a big meal afterwards.

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If you want actual examples of syncretism then things such as the serbian "Slava" tradition is a much better example, not Christmas and and especially not Easter which is extremely abrahamic.

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