The true meaning of Easter, by Stephen Collins (who writes his own amazing #AltText)
"PAGAN GODDESS: Aisle four is full of products, with no hint of the true meaning of the festival!
BECKY: You mean β¦ Jesus β¦?
PAGAN GODDESS: I mean shagging, Vicky."
@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.
@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!)
@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 @Meerkat26 Iβd take her more serious without the two (!) crosses on extra display.
Around 2:40 she loses the plot. Yes, age 8, but thereβs 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 hasnβt 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 (mediΓ¦val farm-type) know intimately well where offspring (especially of lifestock) comes from. (Now, people whoβve grown up in cloisters from age 8β¦ 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 Δostre-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 thingsβ¦ are.)
Roughly a thousand years after the conversation to Christianity
Sheβs not aware ofβ¦
β¦, 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 βlocal traditionsβ (nice euphemism) and βchristianβ holidays.)
β¦ I cannot believe I didnβt DNF this.
@vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 and then thereβs 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 Δostre and/or fertilityβ¦ 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, β¦) and call the rest βfolk beliefβ; this has a long tradition, and lots of catholic and orthodox practices stem from it.
Itβs not as if paganism were a thing of the past.
@antopatriarca @vwbusguy @Natasha_Jay @Meerkat26 have you read my analysis of the video and the multiple arguments I brought?
(And calling βthereβs un-written-down things as well, keep an open mind, and especially if thereβs people carrying this for hundreds of years itβs a pagan thing nowβ βblinded by faithββ¦ I donβt think itβs justifyable even when not following the argument.)
And even assuming this Eostre existed, Easter didn't come from England.
Yes, of course not.
@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.
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
@Natasha_Jay pitch perfect.
Although the alt text (which is otherwise excellent) has an error: Darren is called Spring in the vis comic
E: oop I see it's already been pointed out
@Natasha_Jay Florence Scott wrote a fascinating article a few years ago tracing the origins of the myth of Eostre.
https://florencehrs.substack.com/p/eostre-pagan-fertility-goddess-or
Easter fertility goddess eostre pagan myth ishtar ostara
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