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Easter (Holiday Series #4)
Want to learn more about how the holiday we now know as Easter came to be? Tune in today to learn about the ancient iconography, religious and spiritual beliefs, and cultural shifts that have created a holiday celebrated worldwide!
Source:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday
https://doi.org/10.2307/538415
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesus
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/articles/the-history-of-the-egg-hunt/
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/04/ostara-and-the-hare/
Transcript:
Lea: Hello friends and welcome back to Anthro.mp3! We’re students from UMass who love anthropology. AnthroHub is a website we help run that’s full of all things Anthro. Make sure to check it out to look at some incredible blog posts and creative works made by students from our school and others. My name is Lea, and I’ll be one of your hosts for today’s episode.
Tim: My name is Tim. I’ll be your other host for today. So Lea, first, maybe we should really establish, you know, what is Easter? Well, actually, we kind of found out from a research that’s kind of dense, and there’s a lot to unpack. Easter while today is taking a more outwardly specific religious place in like the guise of the public wasn’t really always like that. It’s important to take note that Easter is just one of many examples of holidays situated around an important time of the year, specifically around the spring equinox. This is a time to celebrate the end of difficulties associated with the winter being the freezing temperatures, low storage of food. So I mean, of course, people are going to celebrate, right? And this is exciting, the celebration of this time of the year really greatly differs from place to place. But our modern Easter’s ancestor really lies in the Indo-European people group celebrations of the holidays. We’ll get a bit more into that later. But for our modern rendition of Easter, the place to really look for a start, as it were, would be with the Germanic tribes and pagan Celts. Every spring the Germanic tribes would celebrate during the months of “Eostre month”, or literally “Easter month.” Several festivals to celebrate and honor the pagan Anglo-Saxons and greater Germanic Goddess of “Eostre,” the goddess of spring, fertility and renewal. And these festivals were several feasts, exchanging of small gifts, usually decorated eggs, which kind of symbolize fertility and rebirth—we’ll talk about that later— and spending time within one’s community or with their families. Speaking of rebirth, actually, in the modern day, the greatest association to Easter is probably the story of Jesus’s resurrection. That being said, it’s actually really interesting to see that the greater resurrection myth as we know it has been within the Indo-European mythological tradition for a very long time, taking many forms along the way.
Lea: Right? Like these, resurrection myths actually have a much longer history than people give them credit for. Although post-mortal, corporeal resurrection, or the resurrection of a person after death, wasn’t recognized until it became a central principle in Christianity; the resurrection of divine beings is common in ancient Middle Eastern religions. Take the Babylonian God of Vegetation, Tammuz, for example.
Tim: Yeah, that’s that’s a really great example.
Lea: There’s this myth that’s actually credited with being one of the world’s first love stories— the resurrection of Tammuz. The myth says that Ishtar, the goddess of fertility and war, fell in love with the shepherd Tammuz. After their marriage, Tammuz is ~like~ killed, and then many versions of the myth recount his death differently, but all the stories end the same. Ishtar descends into the underworld and is actually able to resurrect her husband.
Tim: Wow, wow. So tell me if this sounds familiar. Lea, if I can quote real quick from Crecganford, who’s an expert on Indo-European mythology and folklore, real quickly. So there was once a man who was the son of a God. He was born from a virgin, and there were many attempts made on his life when he was a baby, right? But he ends up surviving. Ends up being raised by a poor, working-class family. Now, eventually, right? He’s hailed and treated like a king or a God amongst men, if you would. So the ruling class says they don’t like this. They end up killing him. He’s too dangerous. They say he’s deemed too dangerous because this following he’s kind of garnered…
Lea: oh no…
Tim: …but get this, pretty soon, he rises from the dead, tells his friends and followers to spread the good news. After this, he rises into the heavens. Rules over men from above.
Lea: Well, you’ve got to be talking about Jesus, right?
Tim: No, actually, it’s crazy how this mythology runs deep, right? This is a story of Romulus,
Lea: Who?
Tim: He’s one of the founders of Rome. So because all these Indo-Europeans were once the same people/group, shared a common mythology (which kind of spread across the region); of course, all these descendant civilizations are going to have a similar mythological, you know, background. They might take slight variations from each other, but with an overall connecting narrative. It’s really fascinating to see how these resurrection stories can paint like, you know, such a line between these people that seemingly might be very separate. Interestingly enough, there’s actually a lot of like, folk-etymologies, you know, people out there trying to connect Eostre, the Germanic Goddess, and Ishtar, the Akkadian goddess. But these similarities are really just coincidental. Like I said, because people were in the area, mythology kind of spreads story to story, but it’s important to recognize these were separate people groups. So there’s this myth that Ishtar is the root of Easter, but that’s just coincidence. Well anyway, tangent done, right? So I’m curious Lea, what actually, you know, happened to make this resurrection so fundamental to Christianity? Why does Easter celebrate it?
Lea: Well, before we get into the whole biblical lore and history of it, I want to take a second to explain the linguistic root of the word Easter.
Tim: I’m game. I’m here. Let’s hear it.
Lea: There’s actually a very cool split in the derivatives of Easter. It’s thought to come from two separate words, the Old English Eostre, like you mentioned, and the Latin, ‘Pascha.’ It’s only speculated that Eostre is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of spring and fertility. There’s another theory that it comes from the Christian designation of Easter Week: ‘Albis.’ Which is a Latin phrase that was understood as the plural of ‘Alba.’ Alba is actually a cognate of ‘austron,’ which is proto-Germanic, also meaning Dawn.
Tim: Right. Just to kind of look at that they come from this because, again, these were the same people groups. They kind of share a common language. At some point there is this proto-indo-European root ‘aus,’ which is ‘to shine,’ which gets taken into this proto-Germanic, right, of the Germanic people tribe, or people group and tribes ‘aust,’ which means ‘east/towards the sun.’ We still hear it when we say east, which became ‘austrone,’ which, like you said, is cognate with that German word.
Lea: Yeah, this then actually became ‘eostarum’ in Old High German. So it suggests that eostarum is the precursor of the modern German and English term. The Latin root, though, is a lot more, like, concrete and evidence-based.
Tim: Right.
Lea: It’s thought that the Latin pascha is derived from the Hebrew ‘pesach’, the noun form of the verb-phrase Passover and (apologies for horrible pronunciation). So German and English are actually two languages that don’t use Pascha as a derivative, like my family, for example, we’re Brazilian, and in Portuguese, Easter is Páscoa.
Tim: Wow.
Lea: So the fact the Latin and Hebrew derivative is a basis for the English word Easter, it’s clear that Passover had a big impact on the linguistics trajectory of how we mark the holiday.
Tim: That’s really interesting. Again, it’s just so cool to see, like, how these people are connected just through things like this.
Lea: Yeah, and I mean, we’ll definitely be explaining more about Passover later, but for now, I’d like to get back to what Easter even is.
Tim: Right.
Lea: So if you don’t know, Easter is the celebration of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, according to Christianity. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem. He’s regarded as the incarnation of God or a part of the Holy Trinity. Another fun little linguistic fact is that ancient Jews had only one name, and their quote, unquote, last name was due to paternal linkage. So although Jesus was born from the Holy Spirit and Mary, he took on the title ‘son of Joseph,’ his adoptive father. So his full name became Jesus, Son of Joseph. It was interchangeable with Jesus, Son of Nazareth, since that’s where he and his family lived. It was only after his death that he was called Jesus Christ. Christ coming from the Greek word ‘Christos,’ which translated to Hebrew as Messiah. Well, anyway. Fun fact aside, he was a religious leader and focused especially on the working of miracles, casting out demons and healing people.
Tim: Well, I guess on that we should probably talk a little bit about like what Jesus did, at least in the Christian canon that made him loved by these people that followed him. So this will be like, a little like Jesus 101 course.
Lea: A little crash course?
Tim: Right. But his whole appeal was what he preached, right? We can see that in several of his parables, or in layman’s terms, of stories, he used to spread spiritual teachings. These consisted of loving thy neighbor, famous one, I’m sure everyone’s heard that a million times, as well as standing up for what you believe in, even when it’s difficult in class consciousness, that is in recognition of common standing, you know, with those peers around you, and finding footing in a world it’s more difficult alone than in standing with those peers.
Lea: Yeah, and I mean, all those those parables, all those things that he taught, was a reason why he was actually persecuted. Romans persecuted Jesus for many reasons, claims of blasphemy, betrayal of the Roman Empire, speaking words of salvation, rejecting Roman politics, speaking against Roman persecution of Jews. But they were not the only ones to discredit him. Pharisees were members of a party that believed in resurrection and then following legal traditions that were ascribed not to the Bible but to the ‘traditions of the fathers.’ And they were also well-known legal experts. They found help from Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judea, and they requested that Jesus be killed one way or another. And this is all according to the Bible. Pilate was unsure, but he gave them an option: He would grant the general public the ability to release one prisoner from death row. The people chose to let a murderer go, actually called Barabbas, I think, as they pronounce it, um, who was mentioned in all four Gospels, and then Jesus was sent to the cross. So like, why didn’t the Pharisees endorse Jesus as a savior?
Tim: Why not?
Lea: I’ll tell you. Ancient Jews did believe that a savior would come, and Christ claimed to be that savior, but who we now consider to be Jewish did not believe he was their savior, since he only spread the gospel without saving them from slavery and other major forms of persecution. Who we now consider to be Christian did believe him to be the Savior.
Tim: Oh, I see. Well, now I’m curious. I mean, what whatever could have happened after this Jesus guy was sent to the cross?
Lea: Oh, it gets juicy here. Let me tell you. So Jesus was raised from the dead three days after his crucifixion, but he was missing from the tomb. When Mary Magdalene, a devoted follower of his, visited the tomb and his body was gone, and so it was a stone that was blocking his grave. She initially believed that his body was stolen, but then he approached her, dressed as a, I think, like a like a garden maintenance person, tapped her on the shoulder and told her that he was alive. He told her to go deliver the message to everybody, kind of like, what happened with what was his name?
Tim: Romulus.
Lea: Romulus, very similar, very similar. Nobody believed her. She brought them back to the scene of the crime, basically, and Jesus allowed people to feel the imprints on his hands and feet from where he was crucified. Then they believed him. After 40 days, though it’s believed that Jesus returned to heaven. But some people actually believe that post-resurrection, Jesus visited other populations. So like Mormons, for example, Mormonism believes that Jesus visited the Americas after his resurrection and ascension into heaven and spread the gospel there as well.
Tim: Oh, and, you know, I’ve always actually been really curious about that. So early we kind of mentioned Passover, and getting back to it, I mean, tell me a bit about that.
Lea: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it predates Easter, I guess, chronologically speaking. And it’s a mythologically similar holiday celebrated around the same time.
Tim: Right.
Lea: It commemorates the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt and their freedom.
Tim: Oh, okay.
Lea: The main celebration of Passover is the Seder, which is a festive meal that takes place in the first night, and in some families, they also do on the second, and families and friends just basically get together, eat and celebrate.
Tim: That’s, That sounds really fun. I maybe in the future we could talk a bit more about this. That would be really cool to talk about. But I guess now that we’ve talked a bit about the historic precedent for celebration of Easter, I’d like to circle back to Easter today, how we celebrate and all you know. So I know for me, at least, when I think Easter, I’m thinking about iconography, symbolism, some celebratory motifs. What else? All namely, rabbit and egg themed, right? For sure, maybe candy thrown around here and there. That being said, I’d love to talk about the eggs.
Lea: I love eggs.
Tim: I’d love to talk about them. So, like I said earlier, eggs raises a symbol for birth and rebirth, fertility, right? But I think it’s really worth talking about how far back the symbolism goes. By no means is this either a new invention or symbol.
Lea: Yeah, like in ancient Egypt, they believe that the sun god hatched from an ancient egg. The sun was also sometimes described as an egg itself, laid daily by the celestial goose: Seb…
Tim: Seb!
Lea: Yeah! Who was the God of the earth. The Phoenix is also said to have emerged from this egg. And the egg is also discussed in terms of like a world egg molded by Khnum from a lump of clay on his potter’s wheel.
Tim: Oh, that’s pretty interesting. You know, that kind of reminds me of this piece of Hindu mythology that we got in our research from the Chandogya Upanishads. These are some very ancient Sanskrit texts which were integral to the modern Hindu religion. There’s a really similar egg story within. It goes like this, I’ll just read: “In the beginning, this world was merely non-being. It was existent. It developed. It turned into an egg. It lay for a period of the year. It was split asunder. One of the two eggshell parts became silver, one gold. That which was of silver is this earth. That which was of gold is the sky. Now what was born therefrom is yonder sun.” This is actually pretty similar to the short story The Egg by Andy Weir.
Lea: I think I’ve heard of that.
Tim: Right. It’s kind of recent, which is cool that it’s, um, so similar. I guess it’s just this, I guess people really love the egg as a symbol for rebirth and reincarnation and resurrection, right? But in the short story, Weir presents the concept of reincarnation as painted in dialog between the protagonist and this omnipotent creator, right? I’ll also read a short episode from this here, because it can kind of better encapsulate the gist than I can and just verbal abstract. So when you’re listening, keep in mind the pronoun ‘you’ refers to the protagonist, ‘I’ will refer to the being of which you are in dialog with, right: “‘Every time you victimized someone,’ I said, ‘you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.’ You thought for a long time. ‘Why?’ You asked me. ‘Why do all this?’‘Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.’ ‘Whoa,’ you said, incredulous. ‘You mean I’m a god?’‘No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.’ So the whole universe,’ you said, ‘it’s just…’ ‘An egg.’ I answered. ‘Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.’And I sent you on your way.”
Lea: Oh, that just like gave me chills. The egg metaphor runs really deep.
Tim: It does.
Lea: Earlier, I mentioned that the Phoenix in ancient Egyptian mythology emerged from the sun egg. Christianity has a very similar belief, actually, also having to do with the Phoenix. The Phoenix was adopted as a Christian symbol in the first century AD and appears on a bunch of funeral stones in early Christian art, churches, religious paintings, and stonework. The Phoenix being born from an egg is mentioned in the Old Testament, too. Job 29:18 says: “Then I thought, ‘I shall die in my nest and I shall multiply my days like the Phoenix.’”
Tim: Wow. The Phoenix and the egg keep coming back. Reincarnation is just this really integral thing to Easter and people, I guess. But now we should probably talk about the bunny, the elephant in the room, as it were. So there’s no getting around it, because Easter is consistently painted as this time to celebrate the second coming, if you will, of temperate weather, the well-being of people and the fertility associated with it—there’s not really a better idol for Easter than the rabbit who is known as a prolific procreator.
Lea: Way to put it!
Tim: And I know I didn’t think we’d go there, but that’s that’s what it is. It’s important to be said people of antiquity took note of this, and that actually brings us pretty neatly to where we are today in terms of rabbit iconography for Easter in the spring season, in a holiday and celebratory context, right? So bunnies are still tied to Easter celebrations and more physical examples too, rather than conceptual. Of course, today we celebrate the Easter Bunny—as we have them in the 2011 Easter movie: Hop. But also in costumes, holiday specials, and as the little critter that hides eggs filled with candy around your home for the kids to find on Easter morning. We also, interestingly enough, see more modern Germanic people celebrating the Easter Bunny by giving gifts of these small stuffed rabbits to, you know, their friends family. The Library of Congress has a really cool blog post, actually about Easter and Eostre that goes into a bit more detail about this. They say that “in Germany, and among the Pennsylvania Germans, toy rabbits, or hair is made of canton flannel, stuffed with cotton, are given as gifts on Easter morning. Then the children are told that this ‘Osh’ter Has’ (In English, meaning ‘Easter Hare,’ Easter bunny) has laid the Easter eggs.”
Lea: That’s so cute.
Tim: It is, it really is.
Lea: Well, since we’re talking about bunnies and eggs and all that joyous stuff, I guess we should talk about how Easter is actually celebrated today.
Tim: Right.
Lea: Obviously, it’s very culturally specific, and even family or individual specific. There’s no one right or wrong way to celebrate Easter, and how you do so is super relative. Like in Macedonia, for example, there’s a tradition where you bring a red egg to church and eat it once the priest says Christ is risen at the Easter Vigil, marking the end of Lent fasting. And Lent actually is a 40 day season of prayer and fasting that begins on Ash Wednesday, and it ends at sundown on Holy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter. So it’s a period of preparation to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at Easter. Lent began actually as a Catholic-specific holiday, but since it’s been popularized in other Christian dominions, like Western Orthodox churches, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans.
Tim: Yeah.
Lea: Lentan-fast was actually adopted in the third and fourth centuries. Christians abstained from consuming dairy products, and in England, on the Saturday before Lent, it was common for children to go from door to door begging for eggs.
Tim: Wow, that’s a different kind of Easter egg hunt. Wow.
Lea: It was like the last little treat before the fast began,
Tim: Right.
Lea: Since eggs were actually formally a forbidden food during Lent, people would paint and decorate them to mark the end of the period of fasting, and red symbolized the blood of Jesus. It’s actually the same reason for the Macedonian tradition I just mentioned.
Tim: That’s really neat. I never knew any anything about that. That’s really interesting. Um, I know for my family celebration, Easter, the egg hunt is probably the most significant thing we do celebrate. Other than that, it’s kind of just a day where we hang out. Like I said earlier, the egg hunt is when parents will hide eggs around the house, usually filled with small amounts of money or candy for their kids to look around and reap the bounty out of, right? So this, this does stem from the German-Lutheran traditions, which it was said that Easter Hare brought a basket of brightly painted eggs as a gift for the children who behaved well throughout the year, like a Santa kind of thing, and then would hide them all around the house as a game for those well-behaved children to find and keep them. It’s also interesting to take note that some people believe that the tradition traces back, instead of Protestant Martin Luther of Enlightenment fame, who would organize an egg hunt for his congregation. And these hunts would be eggs hidden for the women and children to search for. Some sort of nod back to how Jesus’s empty tomb was discovered by women, by Magdalene. It’s really interesting to think about how the Easter Bunny is kind of like this remnant of earlier celebrations of Easter as compared to Jesus, which he is a more recent innovation, I guess. So the celebrations of Easter, at least, iconography wise, the rabbit and eggs as a symbol to have been historically significant to the celebrations of Easter as far back as festivals held in Eostre’s name. It’s really interesting to think that in some ways, there’s two key icons for Easter: that being the Christian representation side of things, with Jesus, the Indo-European resurrection myth still going strong, and then the humble rabbit and egg combo right, which called back to this pre-Christian/pagan celebrations, just those which have like, you know, remained in the public eyes as being significant to the celebration of Easter. Even if most people have absolutely no idea about the connections, you know, between rabbits, eggs and Eostre, I think one of the most fascinating things about culture is that it never disappears. You know, it only co-ops and variates itself to follow the times. And if this means, you know, for some weird reason, Easter is a day where a big rabbit with a basket and Jesus shares, you know, the top spot for celebration. I am totally here for it. It’s great. So, yeah, I think maybe we should, you know, talk a bit now here at the end about what our families do to celebrate Easter or Páscoa. What do you usually end up getting up to? You know?
Lea: Yeah, well, actually, I mean, Páscoa is a very, it’s really big in Brazil. I think Brazil is, you know, very Catholic, very religious. It’s like, a huge thing. A lot of people like to, like go on many vacations during Easter. Now that my family lives here, though, it’s a little bit different for us. When we would go to church service when I was little, it was a very like, get up super early, stay at church, talk about, we would actually talk about the bunny and the egg.
Tim: Oh, really, that’s cool.
Lea: Yeah, not in the same way here, though, it was more of a: “Yes, bunnies and eggs are cute, but…”
Tim: “..don’t forget about JC!”
Lea: Exactly. And then we would go to, like, some restaurant, I think, with, like a big church group, eat. And then I think at some point during the day, my parents would have brought me to this Brazilian supermarket.
Tim: Right.
Lea: Where, if you look up at the ceiling during Easter season, there are these, like, huge chocolate eggs hanging on, like, these overlaps, yeah? And they’re like, wrapped in this huge, like, just like gold tin foil.
Tim: Yeah.
Lea: And so you just, like, pluck it from the ceiling, and then when you open it up, it’s this big chocolate egg. And then you like, punch it, like, really hurt like…to get it open.
Tim: That’s awesome!
Lea: And then you can eat the crust of the egg. I guess that sounds gross, but the crust of the chocolate egg.
Tim: Sounds awesome.
Lea: And then there’s a little wrapped candy inside. And that’s was, that was my like, Easter treat.
Tim: That’s so fun.
Lea: Yeah, it was fun. I really craving one of those right now, but that’s the closest I got to ever doing an Easter egg hunt, actually. So okay, I’d like to know more about that. If you did that as a kid?
Tim: Um, so when I was a kid, that was, like, probably my favorite thing. I’d, you know, go to bed and be like: “Oh, Easter Bunny is coming tonight. Yes! Yes!” Um, and then I’d wake up in the morning all excited, and the very first thing I did was, you know, before breakfast…so my brother and I would be, my mom would give us baskets, “all right, go, look.” And in our house, there was always, like, one egg that was, like special, like it was gold, and it would have, like $1 and it was a big special egg, and the rest would have, like tootsie rolls or whatever. But, um, yeah, no, it was, it was so much fun. I remember it just getting to look over every nook and cranny in my house. One year, my mom hid it in, like a cereal box. And I thought that was really good. But yeah, that was definitely my favorite thing. My family, apart from the Easter egg hunt, will usually kind of get together and eat, like, you know, some sort of bigger meal. It’s like a mini-Thanksgiving kind of thing, or just like a smaller feast situation. So we’ll have, like, ham and some veggies, and it’s very fun. Sometimes my uncle will come.
Lea: Aw…So fun. And with, I mean, with the Easter egg hunt too. Like, did you when you pictured the Easter Bunny…was he a small bunny that just carried a little basket? Was he a human-sized bunny who had, like, a lot of baskets? Like, what did you picture?
Tim: Well, so a bit of a mix. He wasn’t a human-sized bunny. He with, like, one basket. But I don’t really know where he got the candy from, really. I really have not…I just made sense in my mind. And I was little.
Lea: And I mean, you had mentioned too, before the podcast, I think, a flying Bell?
Tim: Yep, yeah. So I learned French as a Second Language. And my French teacher, Monsieur Balcaen, he, he got us really excited about Easter in France, which is Pâques, which is actually cognate with Páscoa. And so instead of an Easter Bunny in France, they have like bunnies, you know, and that’s iconography. But instead of an Easter Bunny that brings candy, they have big flying bells…
Lea: Okay.
Tim: …that will shake out candy for all the kids to catch, which is really cool. Yeah, he was really excited to, like, share that with us, and he would always bring, like, Cadbury eggs. It was a very fun time. Well, I think we’re kind of running out of time here.
Lea: Wow, yeah, this episode flew by. It was really great to work on. Super fun to record.
Tim: Yeah, it was super fun. It was it was a really good episode. So much stuff to talk about for Easter It was very cool. Well, everyone, thank you for tuning in to our show today. Another thanks to our team members and our collaborators with AnthroHub, especially our tech group, of course. And you know, if you guys want to stay connected, you can find us on Instagram @Anthro.mp3! You can also find our sources, transcripts for each episode, and more in our AnthroHub show notes. I was one of your hosts today, Tim, joined by our other host…
Lea: Lea!
Tim: …and our awesome tech crew. Keep an eye out on our Instagram for future updates on shows, specials and events. Catch us next time and friends, have a great day.