I want to talk about something else that happens in March and involves baskets: Easter. Even though I was raised by the unholy union of a Pagan and a very devout Atheist I love Easter. This is only contradictory if you are one of those people that are unaware that pretty much every Christian holiday is superimposed right smack on top of the older Pagan ones. So basically if you are a Republican congressman from a state that was formerly part of the Confederacy, but otherwise it makes total sense. Easter is jolly good fun, especially if you're not a Christian, because Christians have to bother with all that ecclesiastical business that is incomprehensible to the rest of us. Such as Easter week:
Manic Monday
Shrove Tuesday
Ash Wednesday
Thirsty Thursday
Good Friday
Super Saturday
and....
Easter Sunday.
Or something like that.
I recently saw a contentious debate on a religious tolerance forum the other day where folks were arguing that Easter is not a Pagan holiday, because the historical evidence was rather thin about Eostre, an alleged Anglo Saxon Goddess of Spring whence the holiday got its name. Apparently the only reference to Her in historic documents was by St. Bede, an English monk known for the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and considered to be the Father of English History. So he probably didn't know what he was talking about. I'm far from a Biblical scholar but I'm pretty sure that if during one of our school mandated annual viewings of the seminal 1961 classic King of Kings the rock on the tomb of Jesus rolled away and a bunch of rabbits and eggs came bouncing out I would have remembered.
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| Also, Jesus was a cracker, obviously |
Easter is on the first Sunday after the Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox. That couldn't sound any more Pagan if you had Bjork ululate it from the top of a volcano clad only in sheepskin and a crown of mistletoe.
Many Christians have tried to eradicate all vestiges of Paganism from their practice or revise history to pretend that there were no religions in Europe prior to the Apostles spreading the probably mistranslated word of Christ to the fur clad barbarians. This is like cutting all the pictures of your husband's old flame out of his high school yearbook. It's petty and just a tad whacko because all structures, either physical or philosophical are built on the bones of what came before, including and especially Christianity. Seriously, Christianity is a sequel to Judaism. It's like the Highlander II of religions, except that Jesus was a really nice person who made the religion friendlier and more accessible than the Old Testament, whereas Highlander II just made you want to cut your own head off.
The story of the dying God echoes through all the religions because that narrative is part of our Collective Unconscious: Tammuz, Osiris, Orpheus, Adonis, Elvis. We need to believe that heroes that are killed are reborn stronger. It's Humanity's ancient way of convincing itself that it's ok to cut down the wheat at harvest time because it will come back in the Spring. And when Spring does return, we celebrate. Let's not be stingy with this joy. The flowers are opening, the birds are singing and dark time is over. Let the God rise from the lettuce patch, roll away the stone, open the gates of Graceland, whatever. There is sunshine enough for all of us.
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