Easter - Progressive Rock Music Forum

Velvetclown wrote:

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE !!

"What are you going to do when that damn thing rusts?"

Actually the consumption of eggs is very relevant to Easter - the Romans took the festival from the pagan around 200 AD (I think). The word "Easter" in the King James bible is reported to be a mistranslation of Pascha (passover).

The word Easter comes from Eostre, a fertility godess. The festival of Eostre was (and still is) performed on the Spring Equinox (around 21st March), when the day and night are of equal length. This has traditionally been a festival of rebirth, and the assimilation was deliberately tailored to keep the Pagans happy.

The name Eostre comes from the Greek Oestre (same root as oestrogen), and has its roots in a word that means "frenzy", and stems words that mean "a female in heat" (estrus)... which kinda explains the rabbits...

The link to eggs here is obvious, as the symbol of rebirth but there is (allegedly) another one; The yellow yolk is said to represent the Sun, as in Sun day - or the day on which the sun is in the sky for the same length of time as the moon, and the white represents the goddess. The decorating of eggs didn't start until the middle ages in England, and appears to have no particular reasoning except that people liked the eggs to be brightly coloured. One suggestion I've heard is that the light from the Aurora Borealis used to play on the eggs laid out at the festivities - but I don't know how much truth there is in that.

As for chocolate, it's irrelevant. It's just that people like it. It's hardly a symbol of fertility, as everyone knows what it's supposed to be a substitute for...

...although you could argue that, since a Creme Egg has the yellow centre and "white", that it's the closest of the lot to a traditional Eostre Egg

So Happy Eostre!!!!