It has been a while since I have tried my hand at the sonnet form. Eostre Bunny and Eostre Eggs What have eggs and bunny rabbits to do With Christian legends and such holy guff? Are they just ripped off from the pagans too? Stolen, like other sacred pagan stuff? Anglo-Saxons praised the Goddess Eostre The goddess of spring and life renewal But sly Christians rebranded her. Easter! As an annual all Christian festival Converts to the "one true god" was the game and eggs and rabbits were grist for the same. Edit: oops....I omitted a whole stanza.....consider this a work in progress...will complete on the morrow after sleep. Ä’ostre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Scratch the surface of a number of "Christian" traditions and you are just as like to uncover earlier pagan ones, appropriated, rebranded and given a Judeo-Christian varnish. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with appropriating ideas from other sources....the Bard used to do it often. Just that it is more honest to acknowledge the appropriation and its origin when it does occur. Easter rabbits and Easter Eggs have not a great deal to do with The Passion ...but the children do so love chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs...and anything that gets the children interested...well....that helps with an interest in mystery and miracles and the other doctrinal merchandising that goes with it. The pagan origins of such rituals and rites are...well...conveniently ignored or forgotten.
Ignored but far from forgotten. There are still many of us who celebrate the spring equinox with the Ostara blot.
The message is..."brand loyalty" Conveniently ignored and forgotten by the appropriaters. Of those from whom those rituals and rites were appropriated, they mostly were converted or persecuted until pretty much all was lost as living faith. There certainly are many neo pagans who observe ancient rituals and rites, but they survive in the same way as spoken Latin and Morris (Moorish) Dancing these days does...as quaint relics and curiosities to most people who are not themselves believers of the old religions. I have forebears who most probably worshiped Odin, Thor and Freya et al. They were Gods to be reckoned with back in the day, but they could not compete with the marketing team of Paul and his successors. Yes, Odin, Thor and others from the Norse pantheon had an after life...but you had to be a warrior and have died in combat to get there...Valhalla was not for the likes of women and milksops. Naturally Christianity had an appeal to the women and the non warriors...offering relatively effortless access to a wonderous afterlife ...and all that was required for admission was to just believe in the divinity and the supremacy of the God being marketed to them. Where their women / mothers went...children would follow...and...children are the real prizes for evangelists. Like big tobacco...get them young and get them naive...and you pretty much have a consumer (with strong brand loyalty) until death...Christianity's greatest strength has been its ability to market the dream...with benefits and incentives for belief...and disincentives, disparagement, and alienation for unbelief and disbelief. The spread and popularity of carrot and stick theologies such as Christianity and Islam can be attributable to getting the franchise established in every hamlet, village and neighbourhood...and persuading the secular authority that it is in their interests to enforce the franchise as a monopoly in that polity. From there it's just a matter of squeezing out and eliminating competitors for market share. I am heartened that there are some who follow the ways of the ancient pagan faiths...not that I share in such beliefs myself. I do believe in the value of cultural diversity, and I do not find the cultural blancmange of Christianity, Macdonalds, Brittney Spears, Coca Cola, etc etc all that interesting or appealing. Genuine competition keeps religions with market dominance from becoming lazy and stodgy and taking their consumers for granted. I observe the solstices and equinoxes as changes in the seasons of life...to be enjoyed and to be remembered through the observation of nature and our relationships with it...we are but part of that whole...and not separate from it. We can live life in this universe boldly, assuming our responsibilities as ephemeral stewards of the environment that we are but part of...or, we can recklessly destroy what we have by assuming an entitlement to arrogantly do as we please , regardless of the consequences, because in the end ...a better place has been "promised" us in a supposed afterlife: far better than can possibly be experienced in the present....at least that is the promise that is being sold by the clerical carpet baggers to those who are inclined to buy into it.
