Hoppy Easter!

[vovat]

You know, the people who are intent on keeping Christ in Christmas never seem to have the same desire to keep Eostre in Easter. Strange, isn't it? :P

Yes, it's Easter today, and I'm working. Even if I weren't, though, I doubt I'd be doing anything special, aside from having dinner with bethje's family. I miss hunting for eggs. I guess it just goes to support my recurring point that holidays are no longer as fun after you leave childhood.

Thinking back on past Easters, I remember a local garden store that used to have a contest where you could guess the weight of a rabbit named Hoppy, and the person who came closest (and won a drawing, most likely, since I would imagine a lot of people would have gotten it right) would win the bunny. I was never very good at that kind of thing, though, any more than I was at guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar. That reminds me that I wouldn't mind having some jellybeans. Not the black ones, though, as I don't care for licorice. A chocolate bunny might also be nice, even though I'm usually not all that big on chocolate.

Speaking of bunnies, I saw some at a mall pet store on Friday, and this one kept jumping around the cage (well, actually more of a glass display case than a cage) every once in a while, giving no heed to any of the other rabbits in there. I've always thought bunnies were really cute, but I'm not sure I'd want to have my own. Really, bunnies can have somewhat similar markings to cats, can't they?

Finally, happy birthday to pixielust!

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

Bunnies are awesome, but they are jerks! Actually, I think they're only jerks if you really get to know them. In small doses, they seem perfectly nice. And they are really, really soft. I love bunnies.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

That one bunny at the pet store didn't seem to be too concerned with politeness.

[arfies.livejournal.com]

I <3 bunnies, as you know. Cosmo is adorable, fluffy, playful, amusing, and although he can be naughty at times, he's hardly a "jerk." :p

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

Au contraire! Easter retains lots of pagan imagery about the return of spring, don't you think? All those rabbits and eggs as symbols of fertility. The whole Jesus being resurrected in the spring? That is symbolic of what happens to the earth in spring. You can't separate the pagan stuff from Christian Easter, because they are expressions of similar religious feelings.

Baby rabbits are so appealing, aren't they? I had rabbits as pets for a while. They're different from carnivores, but can be just as lively (and destructive, depending on the animal). I was very attached to one doe we had, but she was active, curious and low-fear. She even toilet-trained herself. My mother bought an expensive one later, bred for show, a dwarf rabbit, and it was both stupid and sulky, so they vary. The doe had been a meat rabbit, maybe they're more genial?

They like sitting next to you or on you and getting their ears and heads scritched, as cats do, and they follow you from room to room sometimes as dogs do. Think it has to do with them being social in the wild, so if they accept you as a rabbit, they're thinking, why, of course we follow each other around! Why would I sit alone when we could be foraging or playing together?

Did you play with any of the rabbits?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Easter retains lots of pagan imagery about the return of spring, don't you think?

True. I guess what I was getting at is that some people think the name of Christmas is a good reason for its remaining a distinctly Christian holiday, while they keep on using a pagan name for the most important holy day of the Christian religion. (Well, most of them do, anyway. I've occasionally heard people refer to it as "The Resurrection" instead.) There are a lot of pagan roots to both holidays.

The doe had been a meat rabbit, maybe they're more genial?

Perhaps they somehow realize that they've been saved from the chopping block.

Are baby rabbits called does, by the way? I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to rabbits by gender-specific terms like that?

Did you play with any of the rabbits?

No, they generally don't seem to like that in pet stores.

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

Are baby rabbits called does, by the way? I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to rabbits by gender-specific terms like that?

Well, hm, bucks and does are male and female adult rabbits, and a bunny is a baby rabbit, I think. Does that sound right?

Sweetie, I thought of you on this one - seeing as how you enjoy a good Chick Tract, you will have a ball here:

http://objectiveministries.org/gametheory/militantatheists.html

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Okay, that site HAS to be a joke, right? I mean, I bought it at first, but all that stuff about beards and nuclear missiles is just too far out in left field.

I've always been baffled by the argument that atheists hate God, because it seems a little weird for people to hate someone they don't think exists. Granted, there ARE fictional characters that I love and hate, but not to the extent of wanting to persecute anyone who thinks differently about them.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

It's funny the Keep Christ in Christmas thing is so big when personally I find the secularism of Easter to be much more, er, offensive I guess is the word I'm looking for. I mean I'm okay with letting everybody have Christmas, but Easter, name aside, is much more a religious holiday to me. If people want to celebrate Spring in general, why don't the celebrate the Equinox instead? If people want to celebrate the actual pagan feast (or whatever) of Eostre, why not celebrate it on whatever day that is supposed to happen on? While the actual birthday of Christ could, theoretically, happen on any day of the year, the Resurrection actually DID happen on the Sunday after Passover, and it would continue to always happen then if it weren't for all the mix-ups between calendar systems over the centuries. (I suppose if I really wanted to be annoying about this topic I could make it a point to always celebrate Easter on the Sunday after Passover, but that would make going to church for Easter fairly awkward the years it doesn't match up. I think it always matches up in the Orthodox churches. But don't quote me on that), so it's not like Easter (name aside) is JUST some pagan holiday the Christians stole. While I will defend the existence of Santa Claus to my death, I don't think I EVER really believed in the Easter Bunny, and commercial attempts to turn Easter into just another gift-giving holiday for the kiddies BUG ME. Yes, we have colored eggs and baskets and yes even small presents in those baskets in my family, but the day doesn't revolve around them. We have an extended family get-together and incorporate a lot of symbolic traditions-- lately we've been gathering many from our Slovak cousins. Because everyone, with the exception of, perhaps, my husband, sister, and brother-in-law, actually believes in the Resurrection, the day never ends up being JUST a kiddie holiday about candy. This all goes back to my sadness at the Death of Myth in Our Society, but someday I actually WILL expound fully on that topic.

I also hate black jellybeans. A lot of jellybean bags nowadays come without them, though.

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

Easter is something crazy like the first Sunday, after the full moon, after the solstice. That sounds pretty pagan to me :-P

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Or the result of a culture that used a lunar calendar, anyway.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Like the Hebrews?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I'm not really sure what the link is between pagans and lunar calendars. But then, I'm not all that keen on the term "pagan" anyway, since it lumps a lot of very different religions under one umbrella.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

If people want to celebrate the actual pagan feast (or whatever) of Eostre, why not celebrate it on whatever day that is supposed to happen on?

I'm not sure anyone knows what day that was. The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eostre) says that the fourth month of the Anglo-Saxon calendar, roughly equivalent to April, was dedicated to her. I think neo-pagans celebrate her at the vernal equinox, but the Germanic cultures that originally worshiped the goddess might well not have known exactly when that was.

I've seen it proposed that Passover was originally named after the sun passing over the equator, and the whole thing about God killing the first-born sons of the Egyptians but not the Hebrews was sort of a folk etymology. An intriguing idea, certainly, but this was just on some website that I don't think was a totally reputable source.

Easter was celebrated as the major holiday of Christianity long before Christmas was introduced. I've heard that it was a popular notion at one point that Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day of the year, March 25th, which would account for the date of Christmas. But this might well have just been working backwards after appropriating the date of the Sol Invictus. I'll admit that I don't know that much about Jewish holidays, but it's interesting to me that there's a major Jewish festival around the time of the vernal equinox, but only the relatively minor (from a religious standpoint, anyway) Chanukah around the winter solstice. I'm sure there's some cultural significance to that, but I don't know what it is.

I don't know how widespread actual belief in the Easter Bunny is. Maybe it has something to do with how, despite all the differences in the Santa myth and the appearance of St. Nick himself, it's still a lot more consistent than anything to do with the Bunny. I don't think it's even been totally established whether he's a normal-sized rabbit, a human-sized bunny, or something in between. Besides, I'm sure kids who are fooled by fake beards on mall Santas aren't as likely to buy that a guy in a bunny suit is an actual rabbit.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I've seen it proposed that Passover was originally named after the sun passing over the equator, and the whole thing about God killing the first-born sons of the Egyptians but not the Hebrews was sort of a folk etymology. An intriguing idea, certainly, but this was just on some website that I don't think was a totally reputable source.

Eh, the ancient Hebrews never struck me as caring so much about math and astronomy to care when the sun passes over the equator, or even to know where the equator is. I really don't think it's fair of the neo-pagan types who try to reclaim all holidays for themselves to try to steal another true ancient culture's history like that. Christianity's only 2000 years old, I can see them getting snippety about our holidays, but Judaism goes back a little farther!

I'll admit that I don't know that much about Jewish holidays, but it's interesting to me that there's a major Jewish festival around the time of the vernal equinox, but only the relatively minor (from a religious standpoint, anyway) Chanukah around the winter solstice. I'm sure there's some cultural significance to that, but I don't know what it is.

Maybe living in a climate that doesn't get harsh winters has to do with that. Most solstice traditions seem to come from northern climes...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Eh, the ancient Hebrews never struck me as caring so much about math and astronomy to care when the sun passes over the equator, or even to know where the equator is.

Well, Genesis says that the Sun and the Moon were "for signs, and for seasons," so astronomy was apparently of some importance to them, although it was the Babylonians who were the real astrologers of the region. That said, now that I think about it, a society that thought the world was flat (as most of them did at that point, I'm sure) certainly wouldn't have known what an equator was. It's possible that they decided, as other cultures did, that the time when the day and night were of equal length had some significance and was a good time for a festival, but there's nothing about passing over in that.

Judaism goes back a little farther!

True, although it underwent many changes over the centuries. Some people think it wasn't totally monotheistic until after the Babylonian captivity, despite the best efforts of the priests and prophets. Some elements of the old fertility cults might well have been altered to fit better with what the religion developed into. We have no way of knowing for sure, though, and I don't think it would be reasonable to argue that EVERY spring holiday can be traced back to a celebration of the equinox.

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

"I guess it just goes to support my recurring point that holidays are no longer as fun after you leave childhood."

I theorize that this is a secret and or sub-conscious reason why people choose to have children. Then you get all that magical holiday fun back :-P

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I guess I can see that, although I'm sure it's a different experience for the people setting up the festivities than for the young participants in them.