Mastodawn

Lizzie 1d ago

@Natasha_Jay thanks, I needed this

Natasha 🇮🇪🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈1d ago

@Lizette603_23 I love Stephen Collins' detailed convoluted wonderful cartoons!

Lizzie 1d ago

@Natasha_Jay Don't you sometimes wish you could change the input from the world, as he and others do, in a benign way that leaves you informed aware and in tears from laughing? I get there sometimes but not often enough.

Luck Goddess 🌒🌕🌘 (They/She)1d ago

@Natasha_Jay hey at least the bunnies are a euphemism for the same thing lol

https://youtu.be/CnkpdpjGgTY

@Natasha_Jay For what it's worth, I very recently saw that this might not actually be true. I thought it was for decades though, because it does make a lot of sense.

Easter is NOT pagan

YouTube

Meerkat26 1d ago

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay darn she's pissed! Okay, the eggs and the rabbits are not easter, fine. But they're definitely tied to springtime and new beginnings. Frankly i find eggs, rabbits and little lambs quite logical to look forward to at the moment you see that finally the day starts getting longer than the night. What's her problem?

@Meerkat26 @Natasha_Jay If the biggest fault you can find is her tone, it sounds like she did a pretty good job.

Meerkat26 1d ago

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay oh i agree there, she made a good case! A lot of things we think we know about the middle ages were conjured up in the 1800s. This lady did a good job of pointing out where some notions of pre-christian "Easter" are exactly that, and lack any medieval mention or trace. The tone doesn't lessen what she has to say - her ire just puzzles me

@Meerkat26 @Natasha_Jay Considering she is a historical fiction writer and this derailed her character idea, I can imagine that being much more frustrating than what most of us might feel about this. This info doesn't change any major plans I had for my dayjob.

Pozorvlak 1d ago

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay the name "Easter" may derive from that of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, but we have almost no evidence for that - literally two lines in a history written by a medieval monk who had no first-hand knowledge of paganism. The festival (which in every non-Germanic European language is called some variant of "Pesach") is certainly not derived from Eostre's rites, if they even existed. See the series of posts starting at https://cavalorn.livejournal.com/502368.html

(I enjoyed the comic, though!)

@pozorvlak @Natasha_Jay And "paschal" which comes from pesach, which is the Hebrew word for Passover, which overlaps with Holy Week. That is not a coincidence.

Pozorvlak 1d ago

@vwbusguy 💯 @Natasha_Jay

Sveinn í Felli 1d ago

@pozorvlak @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay In Icelandic we have "Páskar" which is the same word, but until recently (meaning a couple of centuries) it was often preceded with something related to "spring" because there was another period of festivities celebrating the rise of the sun - that one was called "Vetrarpáskar" or the "winter-easter". Christmas was just one of the masses occurring at the winter-easter period, more commonly called "Jól", and plenty of other saints had their mass in that period.

@pozorvlak @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay eh, Pesach is hebrew and Pascha is Aramaic (there was a map on this recently on Fedi). Neither are used in German-speaking regions.

Pozorvlak 1d ago

@mirabilos yes, that's what I said. @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay

goedelchen 1d ago

@mirabilos @pozorvlak @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay "Paasken" is the word for Easter in Plattdeutsch

Pozorvlak 23h ago

@goedelchen oh, interesting! I think the map @mirabilos is talking about is the one at https://brilliantmaps.com/easter-name-europe/ - it's not quite as simple as "all non-Germanic languages call it some variant of Pesach" (for instance, cz/sk/pl call it "Velikonoce", meaning "Great Night"), but Eostre/Ostara is confined to Germanic languages. So, it's interesting that not all varieties of German use Ostara-variants!

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay

What Easter Is Called Across Europe - Brilliant Maps

The map above shows the name for Easter in various European languages (colour coded based on origin). Here is a full list:

Brilliant Maps

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 I’d take her more serious without the two (!) crosses on extra display.

Around 2:40 she loses the plot. Yes, age 8, but there’s still the possibility of having acquired knowledge from the household, and we all are sad that knowledge from those times was not generally preserved in writing (or whatever writing was on hasn’t endured, or was burnt by people like her, etc).

I would be interested in UPG from people-with-some-credibility about these, though.

What she does here is try to approach this with a double-role of christian scholar and evidence-based historian. Everything else does not count in her eyes.

Around 3:40 she completely loses it again.

As for rabbits, mediæval people associated them with the Virgin Mary because mediæval people thought that rabbits experienced virgin birth.

I have been assured by farm-type people, lady, that people living in such a setting (mediæval farm-type) know intimately well where offspring (especially of lifestock) comes from. (Now, people who’ve grown up in cloisters from age 8… might not know well, unless they were assigned to the section (out of sight, out of mind) who cared for theirs, instead of being their scholars and historians.) (This point does of course not prove a connection between rabbits and Ēostre-or-what-have you, but it does sow sufficient doubt in the presentation of a whole and her methods. (And, in fact, the whole rabbits-and-eggs to fertility link never sat well with me anyway, but hips (think of that Venus-of-someplace statue from prehistoric times) and things… are.)

Roughly a thousand years after the conversation to Christianity

She’s not aware of…

conversation because the higher-ups say so, but we believe anyway
folk belief
…

…, is she? She sounds like one of these evangelical narrow-minded ivy tower preachers here. (Again, not arguing in favour of that specific link. But, substrates exist, as does merging of “local traditions” (nice euphemism) and “christian” holidays.)

… I cannot believe I didn’t DNF this.

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 and then there’s this whole other point (which a double-crossing (literally) christian like her could not conceive):

If, over hundreds of years, enough people associated eggs and hares with Ēostre and/or fertility… it now is an aspect of this pagan goddess. (Even if those people did not self-identify as pagans. In those times, it was safer to do the christian thing (in the flavour the current people-with-the-weapons prescribed, catholic, protestant/evangelical/lutheran, orthodox, …) and call the rest “folk belief”; this has a long tradition, and lots of catholic and orthodox practices stem from it.

It’s not as if paganism were a thing of the past.

@mirabilos @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 She literally writes historical fiction about paganism. It's amazing the assumptions you have made about a woman based on one video that has a conclusion you don't agree with.

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 she presents an extremely christian standpoint though, so at best historic paganism as she can find in literature, when literature was written by monks and paganism was lived by the then-illiterate people.

@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 oh wait, you’re in the same boat, according to your profile. Look, can you just… not? Peace, and all. And not diminish threads about traditions that aren’t yours. Thanks.

Antonio Patriarca 15h ago

@mirabilos @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 It seems to me you are the one blinded by faith. You are dismissing a person giving a detailed analysis of something, someone who has shown effort in studying the topic, based on her faith. Your only argument is basically "she is Christian and thus surely biased and wrong". You are complaining that she may have ignored the possibility that something existed without being ever put into writing for centuries. While possible, believing it to be necessarily true and exactly as you think it is is basically the definition of faith. And even assuming this Eostre existed, Easter didn't come from England. So, at best, we had two distinct festivities merged into a single one when the (originally Jewish) festivity, later Christian, arrived in England. And before you start saying I am also Christian, I am atheist.

mirabilos 15h ago

@antopatriarca @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 have you read my analysis of the video and the multiple arguments I brought?

(And calling “there’s un-written-down things as well, keep an open mind, and especially if there’s people carrying this for hundreds of years it’s a pagan thing now” “blinded by faith”… I don’t think it’s justifyable even when not following the argument.)

And even assuming this Eostre existed, Easter didn't come from England.

Yes, of course not.

Antonio Patriarca 15h ago

@mirabilos @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 I did, and it looked extremely biased and angry. As much as the video. To be honest, the entire argument is quite moot. Most festivities have elements borrowed from many sources. The way Easter is celebrated varies widely around the world, for example. The Easter Bunny basically doesn't exist where I grew up (Italy). From what I read, it seems to be a mostly Protestant variation born in Germany in the 1600s. It may or may not come from an originally pagan tradition. It certainly doesn't define Easter, however. Easter existed way before it. Eggs are also celebrated in Italy, and it seems to be a much older tradition. There is no consensus on the origin. It does, however, seem unlikely that both the bunny and the eggs share the same origin and are thus associated with the same Pagan deity. If they were, why was one well documented from the Medieval times and the other has only appeared in more modern times and only in Germany? I would then think that what those German folklorists said was mostly BS. The original Bede text may be, however, true. The etymology of the word Easter may have originated from a previous festivity or a deity's name. It is, in fact, very different from the Hebrew and Latin name.

mirabilos 15h ago

@antopatriarca @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 that is… not very different from what I wrote, though? The Bede thing may be true, everything else came later. Only you don’t want to allow for modern paganism.

Antonio Patriarca 15h ago

@mirabilos @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 That is not very different from what the video said either.

mirabilos 14h ago

@antopatriarca @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 she was not even willing to keep eyes open (only historic accounts as written proof).

Antonio Patriarca 13h ago

@mirabilos @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 You seem equally unwilling to accept that there is little evidence for your belief.

@Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 @vwbusguy @antopatriarca that is something only atheists need

@antopatriarca @Meerkat26 @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay (and historically informed practicians, and reconstructionists)

@Meerkat26 @antopatriarca @Natasha_Jay @vwbusguy you’re also continuing to ignore the "modern paganism is a thing" part

@Natasha_Jay @vwbusguy @antopatriarca @Meerkat26 but, icba, kindly move out of this thread, I’m not going out looking to actively derail atheistic threads either

luca 1d ago

@Natasha_Jay I imagine that the christian holiday went mixed with a an already present ritual over there. By those times religions and conquers were surely predating existing deities and rituals, to be accepted like "how do you call it? Easter, Eostre, ostrich, allright, is the same of ours, trust me. Now let's talk again of that gold"

ZenHeathen 🇨🇦1d ago

@luc0x61 The Jesus story was deliberately placed on the calendar where spring rites already were, in order to co-opt them and begin the process of conversion, just like Christmas. @Natasha_Jay

Simon B 1d ago

@ZenHeathen @luc0x61 @Natasha_Jay except that's not what happened.

luca 1d ago

@ZenHeathen @Natasha_Jay I couldn't say it any better (I'm limited by language).

Rachel_CxY 1d ago

@luc0x61 As far as I'm concerned, you won the internet today. I'm switching off my phone, I won't read anything better than this in the next few hours.

Thank you for your service.

@Natasha_Jay

Robert Pickering 1d ago

@Natasha_Jay
Wow, I remember seeing that in the a good while ago. Brilliant cartoon. Thanks for posting it!

Peter Phillips 1d ago

@Natasha_Jay TIL - thanks to the great #alttext - that I can now refer to Spring as “Darren”! 🤣

Natasha 🇮🇪🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈1d ago

@tickboxrobot
Oh my! I copied it straight from his, with a few tweaks for char limit. But the "Darren" was his!!

aoanla 1d ago

@Natasha_Jay @tickboxrobot one wonders if the Alt-Text is from a first draft with Darren, or if the artist is enjoying creating parallel "Alt-Text" version of their comics in general

@Natasha_Jay spring being a moody teenager at this time of the year does explain the weather!

@Natasha_Jay (the alt text is of course misleading, the son is introduced as Spring itself and also green with flowers, still hoodie and embarassed though)

Gina Intheburg 🇺🇦 🌻 🥥🌴1d ago

@Natasha_Jay

So cool. As a history major, I love stuff like this!
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-att-us-rvc3&hs=CKep&sca_esv=29b6600cccac4cb2&sxsrf=ANbL-n6hnDiMKlc5NTy01QXgWYc0e85iuA%3A1775349550170&q=who+is+%22Eastre%22&nfpr=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwik3ai6vNWTAxWHEjQIHaLfMaUQvgUoAXoECA4QAg&biw=360&bih=649#lfId=ChxjMe

Bevor Sie zur Google Suche weitergehen

Tito Swineflu 1d ago

@Natasha_Jay my kid went to a swedish school, where we learned that the easter witch goes to a high field to have an orgy with the devil and then returns to poop out eggs for the children. So some people are keeping the reason for the season in mind.