Hi culldav,

you asked this question.
I believe there is little to hold Choccy eggs with the Christian observance off easter.

imho, easter is a pagan festival (see ishtah, sp).
It was a fertility festival, held in spring in the northern hemisphere to hope for a good crop that coming harvest season.
A bad crop might mean starvation, so a good crop is very appreciated.

ishtah (sp) was a goddess of corn or something.
The rabbits and eggs symbolise the fertility akin with spring and a new crop.

Which is almost nothing to do with the Christain observance of easter.

Perhaps when christianity was emerging the leaders then (Constance ?) allowed christians to have their religious festival on the same days as existing ones were happenning.
It'ld mean all the religions get their fesitvals over in the same weekend, then it's back to work.
A good functional decision.

Pagan, yes, but Germanic.


The goddess Eostre in Pagan Germanic celebrations was associated with fertility, therefore also associating rabbits and eggs with the celebration. Over time, missionaries transformed these celebrations to be for religious reasons and the rabbits and eggs remained, even though their meanings have changed for most people.

The idea of rabbits and eggs first surfaced in 16th century Germany. There was a convenient symbolism between the rebirth associated with the Northern Sping and the rebirth (ressurection) of Christ. It therefore persisted along with Yule (Yule = Wheel of the seasons)  and other pagan traditions with a new Christian perspective.

http://deities1.tripod.com/deitydictionarycopy/id5.html

It would be great if that topic was moved here now (given it is very much linked to this topic here in this forum) Muso.

At the moment we basically have 1 topic split in half. Hence why people are responding HERE to questions raised over THERE.

It's a tad confusing. I'm just giving my take on this and trying to help.

What do you think .. or should Sprint be the person to ask?

In any case .. I've left a link in that other topic so people are aware that the topic is continuing down here now.

That's up to the board moderator.

muso wrote on Apr 20^th, 2011 at 3:50pm:

That's up to the board moderator.

Ahh ok. I didn't know that Muso. My apologies if I've done anything incorrectly here. I was just trying to be helpful given the posts here were responding to the posts over in the other topic ie over ---> http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1303246698

A lot of Christian special days were put in place over the top of existing pagan celebrations. IN retrospect that was a bad decision because nearly 2000 years later people still cant separate the 'present' from the 'wrapping'. The content of the celebration - Christs Death/Resurection and His birth - are overwhelmed by the usually ridiculous trappings.