Or Easter isn't Ostara and Ostara isn't Easter.
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| Eostre, the reason for the Easter Season? Oh, no, no, no... |
This blog is the result of a dilemma I had about the Ostara/Easter connection. While reading the book Solitary Wicca for Life I found out that there isn’t one. I learned Ostara is a modern holiday that probably doesn’t have an ancient equivalent and that there is very little proof that a goddess Ostara was worshiped in the ancient world. So I did a little research and found out it was true. I found out the Ostara myth that I had believe for so many years was false, False, FALSE. You know the one: “Easter like Christmas is a Christianized Pagan Holiday, used by the Church to ease Pagans into converting to Christianity. Easter was actually named after the Goddess Ostara, the ancient Germanic Goddess of Spring. Her companion was a magical egg laying hare, and this is where the tradition of dying eggs and the lore of the Easter Bunny originated.” Yup, not True, not the slightest. And honestly I felt like I was lied to, and was a bit pissed off about it too. But I'm glad I know now, so I won't open my mouth and say something stupid like, "Urg, Christians stole Ostara from us! They think they are celebrating Easter, but they are really celebrating Ostara." Because, uh, no they are not. Easter is all theirs, anyways was. Anyways I'm ranting now, let's continue on....
There’s some debate whither the ancient Anglo Saxons ever worshiped a goddess name Ostara or Eostre, but one thing I know for sure now after a little research is if they did worship an Ostara it wasn’t the Easter Goddess many Neopagans know and love (to throw in Christians’ face) today. Okay, Atheists, Muslims and oddly enough, some Christians like to throw this myth around too.
This could easily be a topic that could take pages and pages to discuss. But I’m no scholar, and I really want to keep this sort. So this is what I discovered about the Christianize Pagan holiday that never was, Easter. I’m also not going to include source info either, sorry. Believe me if you will, but either way research this yourself before you come to an opinion. This info can be found easily via google.
There’s something about Eostre.
So the earliest mention of Eostre was by a Christian Monk name Venerable Bede. He mentioned that Easter was named after the month it fell, which was named after a festival celebrating Eostre. He never mentions anything about Hares or colorful eggs. This association came way way later from the Brothers Grimm. Other than this there are no archeological finds that support the ancient worship of Eostre/Ostara, and she nor an equivalent are ever mentioned in the Norse Eddas.
Easter sounds pagan right?
Easter was less likely to be named after a goddess named Eostre and more likely named after the month it fell in, Eosturmonath. I also found out that the Anglo-Saxons were not in the habit of naming months after dieties, but after what was occurring in the natural world during that month. Eostarum means dawn, so Eostrumonath is more like to be named so, not after a goddess, but because around April is when the first signs of Spring start appearing, it’s the dawn of the Summer so to speak. During my research I also discovered that in the majority of the languages of the Christian world the word for Easter is a derivative of the word Pascha, the Greek word for the Jewish Passover or Pesach. Only English and German are unique. (Just to note Ostern is Easter in German). Linguistically this links Easter to the Jewish Passover, and not a pagan Spring festival named after a Goddess named Ostara.
What about the Easter Bunny and Eggs?
Info on the Easter Hare, was fuzzier. *seriously no pun intended* I found that the Easter Hare didn’t pop up until the 1500’s. *my subconscious must love puns today because this one wasn’t intended either * And that maybe the bunny was created by German Protestants to disassociate Easter eggs from the Catholic Lent. Once upon a time eggs were forbidden by the Catholic Church to be consumed during lent, so people would decorate them until they could be eaten at Easter. I also found that Rabbits and Hare have been symbols in Pagan cultures, but doesn’t necessarily mean they meant the same thing that they do to us modern Pagans. For example in the Aztec culture and some Asian cultures rabbits or hares they were symbols of the moon, not of fertility. I found no link for hare/rabbit symbolism being used in ancient European spring celebrations. If you have a good source linking rabbit/hare symbolism to a pagan spring celebrations (that aren't associated with Ostara/Eostre) please share it with me. Leave me a comment bellow.
My conclusion about Easter Eggs and Bunnies? Egg, oh hell yeah they are pagan. The Easter Bunny, maybe that one really is theirs? Maybe? *shrugs*
My solution to my Ostara Dilemma, and how is my family going to do Ostara?
Okay. Something about co-oping Easter traditions into my Ostara just sits wrong with me in a way that it doesn’t with Yule. I don’t know why, but it does. Maybe it’s because we know that Christmas came from Yule and Saturnalia. We know it, everyone does and there is a lot of evidence for that one. But there is no Ostara/Easter link. Easter is not Ostara and Ostara is not Easter. It never has, and never will be. So doing Ostara Egg hunts, and gifting Ostara Baskets from the Ostara bunny to my daughter just seems wrong. Even if both the Easter Egg and Bunny do turn out to be Pagan, these elements were combined and developed into the Easter celebration in a way that’s uniquely Christian (maybe one can argue Secular, but not pagan). There never was a Pagan celebration that centered around the theme of resurrection which included egg dying, egg hunting and included a bunny giving Children gift baskets. To have my Ostara celebration mirror Easter, to me turns Ostara into Easter for Pagans. Why not just celebrate a secular Easter? Why have your child do Easter days to weeks before their peers do? I’m just not getting it.
(I know that last paragraph comes off as kinda harsh towards those who do combine Easter customs with Ostara, I don't mean it to, I'm sincerely not getting it. I'm not judging, I'm just not agreeing.)
So I have decided and I have talked to my Husband about this and he seemed cool with it, that we’ll just celebrate a secular Easter on Easter Sunday. You know with the Egg dying, Egg hunts and the Easter Bunny, sans the resurrection of Christ like the Atheist do, and we’ll do something unique for Ostara. I think I’m going to take some inspiration from the Egyptian Holiday Sham el Nessim which literally translates to “Sniffing the Breeze” and well, go out and sniff the breeze. Because when I was pre-partner and pre-child that’s pretty much summed up Ostara for me. To me Ostara has always been more about going outside and experiencing the spring than it was about the Goddess Ostara, colorful Eggs or her magical bunny.
So this year instead of doing an Easter for Pagans, I think I would like to celebrate the Spring Equinox with a Picnic, by baking a cake for the Queen of Heaven , and maybe some light free meditation on the wonderful energies of Spring. Yep, this sounds good to me.
Ostara, Eostra, Easter, Ostren, Astarte, Ishtar, Estrogen or Oestrogen, East, Oosten, Eos, Esther
ReplyDeleteAll these words are linked linguistically to each other and have a connection with sunrise, East, springtime, new life and female fertility and have no connection with the Jewish word Pesach
Eggs are symbols of the same things: new life, womb, Spring ans so forth
The hare is linked with this time of the year because they are now visible:
Wikipedia: Normally a shy animal, the European brown hare changes its behavior in spring, when hares can be seen in broad daylight chasing one another around meadows; During this spring frenzy, hares can be seen "boxing"; one hare striking another with its paws (probably the origin of the term "mad as a March hare”
Naming the sacrality of Nature, Earth and her rhythms, as a Goddess, is a neo pagan habit.
Why should Ostara be a Goddess? It’s a time of the year that’s all. It's the New Spring !
On the other hand why not call Ostara a Goddess? If that makes one happy!
Thank you for replying.
DeleteI would like to mention first that the word for Easter is only linguistically linked to Eostarum in two languages, English and German. In most other languages in the Christian World it is linked to the Jewish word Pesach.
Latin - Pascha or Festa Paschalia
Greek - Paskha
Bulgarian - Paskha
Danish - Paaske
Dutch - Pasen
Finnish - Pääsiäinen
French - Pâques
Indonesian - Paskah
Italian - Pasqua
Lower Rhine German - Paisken
Norwegian - Påske
Portuguese - Páscoa
Romanian - Pasti
Russian - Paskha
Spanish - Pascua
Swedish - Påsk
Welsh - Pasg
So linguistically this tells that Easter Holiday has it's origins in the Jewish Passover, not an Anglo Saxon Spring Festival. Also to note Christianity spread first in the Roman Empire and Northern Africa then spread up from there. While the English word Easter and the German word Ostern aren't linked to a Hebrew word the Holiday itself is linked to the Jewish Passover.
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From Wikipedia's Easter Entry:
Delete"The first Christians, Jewish and Gentile, were certainly aware of the Hebrew calendar,[nb 6] but there is no direct evidence that they celebrated any specifically Christian annual festivals.[40] Christians of Jewish origin were the first to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Since the date of the resurrection was close the timing of Passover, they likely celebrated the resurrection as a new facet of the Passover festival.[18]
Direct evidence for the Easter festival begins to appear in the mid-second century. Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a mid-second-century Paschal homily attributed to Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one."
From:http://www.uta.edu/english/tim/courses/4301f98/oct12.html
"By the year 550ce, the native Britons had been converted to Christianity and the religion became firmly established within their culture. Attempts by the Britons to convert the Anglo-Saxon pagans were futile. At the end of the sixth century through the successful efforts of a Christian mission led by Augustine, a representative of the Roman church, Christianity was established within the highest echelons of English society by the prompt conversion of the kings of Essex, East Anglia, Northumbria, and Kent. Sees were then established at Canterbury, Rochester, London and York. However, the four kingdoms soon relapsed into paganism, and initially, only Kent was reconverted. The evangelistic initiative then passed to the Scottish church and by the end of the seventh century, England had been reconverted."
So Easter as a Holiday was well established by the mid second century, but the Anglo-Saxons didn't covert to Christianity until the 6th century, so the idea that Easter came from an Anglo-Saxon holiday called Ostara is totally false. One maybe can argue that some of the customs came from a Pagan Spring festival, but the Holiday itself is completely Christian. And from what I know about the Celts, they didn't Celebrate the Spring Equinox. And from what I know of the Norse they celebrated 3 holidays, the Mid Winter or Yule, a mid Summer celebration and a beginning of Summer Celebration. Could the beginning of Summer Celebration been held on the Spring Equinox, maybe but I haven't found any sources that prove that.
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It could be the Hare became a symbol of Easter, because they appeared around the time Easter fell, but that doesn't make them pagan by default. As I said in the blog, the desire to create symbolism is a human trait not a uniquely Pagan trait. Oh and I should note that the Easter Bunny is not universal in all Easter Celebrations. For example there is no Easter Bunny in Spain.
DeleteAnd on the Colored Eggs, it most likely came from Middle Eastern Paganism, not Northern European paganism like the "Easter is really Ostara" myth suggests.
As for Ostara. I hold a semi-blasphemous idea that we create the faces of the Gods. I believe that the Divine is ultimately unknowable so we create the many names of the Divine to be able to relate to It. So I would agree that Ostara is a Goddess. But it's debatable that she is a Ancient Goddess. If she did have ancient followers the way they viewed her was completely different than we do today. The idea of Ostara as an Easter Goddess who's symbols include the Egg and the Hare was created by the Grim Brother's. She's a modern Goddess. I don't think that trivializes Her worship in any way, shape or form, it just makes Her not ancient. I'm into modern Goddesses myself. I truly believe the Goddess doesn't care which name you call Her by. As long as you call Her with sincerity She'll answer. My Blog's goal wasn't to argue the validity of modern Ostara worship. My goals was to argue against the idea that Easter is really a Christianized Ostara (the Holiday), and to share my discomfort with celebrating Ostara as an Easter substitute.
The secular aspects of Easter are very attractive to many of us Neopagans. Celebration of Spring, magical bunnies, birth of new life, etc.. But it doesn't by default make Easter a Pagan holiday.
Sorry this reply was so long. I hope that clear somethings up.
I’m sorry for my bad English, it not my mother tongue
ReplyDeleteThere are a few things which I would like to mention:
You say:
“ only linguistically linked to Eostarum in two languages, English and German.”
The old Germanic people populated a very big part of Europe, so their old traditions should not be considered unimportant. If they used and still do use the word Ostern for their Spring Celebration, it has to be for some important reason. So why shouldn’t that count as being “enough” proof of the use of the word Ostara/Ostern ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples
The Christians didn’t celebrate anything, ever, they just didn’t believe in celebration, if you don’t believe me read the new testament ! They certainly didn’t celebrate a spring festival.
Why is so difficult to accept that the Old Europeans had a Spring celebration before they were Christianized ? The Christian Church, in order to allow a new interpretation in the Christian sense did eradicate a lot of the old customs, but not the old Spring Celebration? That doesn’t make sense to me.
Pèsach dates from the time of Moses when God freed the Israelites from slavery, were is the connection with celebrating Spring?
The Celts didn’t celebrate Spring Equinox? Maybe so, I don't know that . But I do know that the people who lived in Europe before the Celts did. I live in Brittany, France and there is enough proof of that, a lot of their megalitic stone monuments are placed so that with Spring Equinox the rising sun could enter the main chamber.
And what about Astarte, or Asherah , one of the major West Semitic goddesses, as the name suggests was essentially related to the Babylonian Ishtar. She is the type of fertility goddess, often depicted naked on terracotta and plaques. Etymologically there is a connection with the words Easter-Ostara-East...
Your is English is good, I understand what you are saying.
DeleteCould you point me to the verse that mention that Christians doesn't celebrate holidays? I do know that Jesus himself celebrated. We know he attended at least one wedding, and the Last Supper was actually a passover seder. I also know that the first Christians were Jews, so I'd image that they would have continued on celebrating the Jewish holiday at the beginning.
I have no doubt that ancient Pagans had Spring celebrations. But what I'm doubting is that Easter has it's roots in a Norse Spring Festival, or really any pagan Spring Festival.
Yes, Passover has no connection to Spring, but it does fall in Spring. Does that make Passover a celebration of the Spring by default? No, it's a celebration of the Exodus. In similar ways the Religious aspects of Easter also have no connection to Spring either. Easter is about the Resurrection of Jesus at it's core. It's not about Bunnies, Eggs or Spring. And from we can find from the Christian Bible is that all the events involving Jesus's crucifixion happened during Passover week. To me it understandable that Easter would occur around the same time as Passover, both which just happen to fall in the Spring. Christianity is centered on the idea of Jesus's death and resurrection. That's the whole focus of the religion, it makes a lot of sense they would celebrate that. And as I pointed out Christians were celebrating Easter centuries before the Anglo Saxons or the Norse were converted. It doesn't make sense to me that the Christians would co-op a holiday from a culture centuries before that culture converted.
And as for the whole Ishtar, Eostre, Asherah connections to the world Easter. If Easter was originally from a holiday celebrating these Goddesses, when why isn't there a similarity in the world for Easter in more languages than just English and German. To me it would make sense that if Easter came from a celebration of Ishtar/Asherah/Ostara there would have been a linguistic link in Greek, Latin, the Romantic Languages, etc... But it's just not there.
I tried but couldn't find substantiation for a lot of your claims by googling. What I did find is that your assertion that the Hebrew (actually both Hebrew and Yiddish) word and the similarity to words in Romance and other European languages somehow disproves that the NAME of the Pagan holiday of Ostara, etc., has nothing to do with the word "Easter." The Hebrew is variously translated as "pass over" (referring to when the Hebrew God passed over the houses of the Hebrews marked with the blood of the lamb God told them to sacrifice before the last plague [slaying of the first-born, if memory serves]; so it also has the meaning of "protection." It also sometimes refers to the sacrifice itself (the lamb). Related (because it occurred at the same time on the Hebrew calendar) is the Last Supper (a Pesach seder), Crucifixion, and Resurrection in which Christian scripture refers to Jesus as the "Lamb of God" and the "Lamb that was slain," IOW, Jesus takes the place of the sacrificial lamb. This is how Pesach and the various names starting with P in various languages get associated. This does not, however, rule out the association and some symbols associated with the holiday with the various pre-Abrahamic practices and/or Pagan holidays in other countries, which were incorporated into the Christian observance. It's not unusual for a later religion to incorporate practices and symbols from more than one previous religion.
ReplyDeleteSorry about that. I was doing this research for about a month and wasn't originally planning to do a blog about it, so I have forgotten when some of my views came from. I'll post some of my sources below:
Deletehttp://jerome23.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/eostre-neveristed-why-easter-is-not-a-pagan-holiday/
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/bytopic/holidays/easterborrowedholiday.html
http://www.manygods.org.uk/articles/essays/Eostre.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny
These aren't all of them, the other I forgot. But I found sources from both Pagans, Christians and none religious sources claiming the same thing. That the Ostara/Easter connection's pretty weak. Some of the search words I typed were, "Easter is not pagan," "Easter is not Ostara," "Ostara is not ancient," "origins of the Easter Egg."
I forgot to say, about the Grimm brothers being the "inventors" of the Egg and the Hare stories, may I refer to the work of Marija Gimbutas and Clarissa Pinkola Estes who both advocate that the folkore stories always came from the very ancient mythological stories and were carried by the collective memory of the people
ReplyDeleteWikipedia about the brothers Grimm:
The rise of romanticism in the 19th century revived interest in traditional folk stories, and represented a pure form of national literature and culture to the brothers. With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folk tales, the brothers established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies.
The 19th century rise of romanticism, Romantic nationalism and trends in valuing popular culture revived interest in fairy tales, which had otherwise been in decline since their late-17th century peak.[12] In Germany a popular collection of tales by Johann Karl August Musäus had been published between 1782 and 1787;[13] the Grimms aided the revival with their folklore collection, built on the conviction that a national identity could be found in popular culture and with the common folk
When it comes to stories passed word of mouth, I was think of the game Telephone. The orginal phrase starts out as "The Dog eats Dog food." But by the time it gets around the entire class it turns into something like, "The teacher eats dog food every day for dinner."
DeleteWhen stories get pass around via word of mouth, things tend to get exaggerated, important elements get lost, and elements get added. Often there is a kernel of truth, but the original story is lost forever. Several hundred years is plenty time for ancient stories to be warped into something very different from the original.
Marylene makes some very good points here, although I agree that Ishtar and Easter are not linguistically related. You've set the bar impossibly high here, by rejecting out of hand any oral or surviving folk traditions. Why is it that Christianity can evolve, but Pagan customs cannot? Why do Native American oral myths have credence, but European folk tales do not? Also, you have not considered the link between nature and the traditions. You can read my article http://hearthmoonblog.com/eostre-and-the-egg/ to get a better of idea of what I mean here. Celtic spring traditions of the hare (associated with Beltane) are well documented. This does not mean (in an of itself) that there are Germanic hare traditions, but the hare definitely was borrowed from Paganism into Christianity and not vice versa. Read the Hare book I cite in my bibliography. As you noted, the egg is a pre-Christian symbol. Of course we do not know exactly how the Germanic tribes celebrated spring, or exactly on what day, but we do have a continuity between the pre-Christian and the modern Pagan. It's the continuity that is most important, not the "original story."
ReplyDeleteI don't really consider myself a skeptic, but I guess I am to a point when I really think about it. I know that the many claims made about Christianity and their Bible isn't true because I have looked into what the scholars have to say about these topics. I do the same with my Paganism, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. I know that the Bible isn't what the Christians claim it to be because the OT obviously borrowed text from the Jew's pagan neighbors. I know that the NT isn't a reliable source on what really happened in Jesus's life because not only do the gospels contraction each other on important details, but they were written decades after Jesus died by people who haven't even been born yet during his life time. It's hear say therefore not a reliable historic record. The Telephone Game analogy is applicable here too. We also know the story in the Bible is unlikely to actually happen, because outside of the Bible there is no reliable sources mentioning Jesus. The Greeks and Romans recorded everything, if he really was as big of a deal as he's made out to be in the Bible there would have been a lot more written on him, but their isn't. Therefore we can assume that the Jesus as mentioned in the Bible probably didn't exist. In the same way there is only one source mentioning Eostre and nothing else to support what what was said there.
DeleteIf I can't be skeptical about Eostre then I can't be skeptical about the Biblical Jesus either. I think it's healthy to be skeptical of oral lore, especially if their aren't second sources to back up the claims. Why wouldn't I hold the same standards to my religion than I would to another religion, especially when untruths being touted as fact was one of the things I most despised in the form of Christianity I was raised in.
One of most tragic things about Celtic paganism is that the practitioners themselves never left a written record. The Celtic mythology and Norse mythology we have today was recorded by Christians. This is a big issue especially in Celtic mythology. One example is, Rhiannon. She is viewed by many neopagans today as a Goddess, but in the myths written about her it's never mentioned that she is a Goddess. We can't totally trust the Christian Monks have to say on this topic because they are bias. In Celtic mythology you have characters from a pre-Christian culture praising the Christian god all over the place, so we know they changed up the myths to better fit their Christian beliefs at least is some ways. So we really don't know if the Celt considered Rhianon a Goddess and the Christian monks were down playing her importance or if the Celts really did just see her as a woman with magical powers. We don't know.
DeleteIf Christians can plant their morals and beliefs into Pagan mythology, than why wouldn't they also be able to plant their traditions into it as well. Are the associations with Ostara and the Bunny and the egg pagan, or was it a Christian tradition that someone planted into an ancient pagan story? We don't know, especially without any secondary sources that back that claim up. It also seems to be that the Easter Bunny didn't appear until after the 1500's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny). That leaves the claim that the Easter Bunny is ancient and pagan doubtful to me.
I guess the biggest difference between Native American folk lore and Northern European folk lore is that many Native American traditions are still alive today. The Native Americans telling us their traditional stories are practitioners of that tradition. If they are not then at least there would still be plenty of people in their community that still practice the traditional religion. Or at the very least their parents or their grandparents, were probably practitioners.
On the other hand European folk lore is being told to us by Christians who never followed the Traditional religion. There a several hundreds of year gap between the ones telling us the tales and those who actually practiced these religions and worshiped these gods. Because Native American traditions are still alive the folk lore is a good reflection of the Native Tradition. We don't have this same situation going on with Northern European folk lore.
Living religions are the only ones that can change and evolve, dead religions can not. Secular Scholars aren't our priest, nor necessarily our friends, but they tend strive to be as unbiased as possible. They change their opinions when new evidence presents itself. They don't have a religion they are trying to protect, I tend to trust them.
Any viewpoint can be "supported" if one is trying to find proof of support, the question is what are you celebrating and how? I am not one to incorporate all religions and their deities, I have chosen my beliefs and I follow them, I do not celebrate Ostara but the Spring Equinox, but that is of my own chosing as I follow a Celtic/Native American path, from either side of my family tree. I have found a personal combination that works for me and that is all that matters. I will wish both a Happy Easter to those in my family that believe in the Christian faith, and Happy Ostara to those that celibrate it, and so forth, It is not to me so important what path one has chosen in their faith in as that they are faithful to it whatever it may be and allow me to me faithful to mine. I may have had it easier as I was taught two pagan faith from a very young age, so my path was easy to find, I was also taught Christianity as well, and was allowed to chose my own beliefs, I have studied many religions and think that everyone should question and seek answers, but unfortunately especially in this day and age, you can not trust all you read, and all written even long ago was not true
ReplyDeleteHi, great post. Just breathing the air on the first day of Spring seems to work for me. May I add your post to my blog? concordriverlady.com
ReplyDeleteBlessed be, Tinthia