Is Easter Pagan?
Every year fundamentalist Christians, New Agers, neo-pagans and many atheists loudly agree that Easter was not originally a Christian feast and was a pagan fertility festival stolen by Christianity. Unfortunately, despite what endless memes and pop history articles claim, this idea is complete nonsense. So is the claim that Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny are also originally pagan. It is rather ironic that a set of false historical claims about the origin of Easter and its customs are propagated by supposed rationalists, despite them having their origin in a book of pseudo historical nonsense by a nineteenth century Scottish preacher.
11 thoughts on “Is Easter Pagan?”
I don’t want to carp on a great and accurate video but you use the pronunciation “Pash” for terms derived from Pesach in Hebrew or its transliteration in Greek related to Passover. (15:19) the “ch” in the Latin alphabet here id pronounced like the ch in German ich. Better if not wanting to make that sound to say Pask or paskal (as you do when quoting Bede. In current english Catholic liturgy, “Paschal mysteries” is used and pronounced as paskal. Also this more correct pronunciation is close to Easter as rendered in other languages (eg French Pâcques) which use a hard guttural sound like g or k. Because the name is important to the argument, and the overall argument of the video is so good and necessary,I think the issue is worth raising.
There is no ‘c’ in Pâques. In Old French there was an ‘s’: Pasques.
Thank you for your usual high standard of (entertaining) scholarship.
May I correct one typo (or whatever the video equivalent of a typo might be). At 8:00 you talk about the gospels’ claim that Jesus died on a Sunday; you meant to say, of course, the claim that he rose/was resurrected on Sunday. Perhaps the same slip occurs a little earlier?–I didn’t note the time.
Wrt the untypical English name for Easter: the fast before Easter is, also untypically, called Lent in English. The word “lent” means “spring” in early English, and the Middle English poem “Lenten is come with love to toune” manages to celebrate the spring burst of life in the vegetable and animal kingdoms which is so explosive in high latitudes, without an oblig. religious coda, though the persona of the poem does put himself perilously close to being an incel. In the Romance languages, the name of the pre-Easter fast references its 40 days effective length. So two calendar names in English, rather than liturgical ones.
I sometimes speculate what a future civilisation might make of current practices if all textual records were lost, but material culture survived. If the Southern Hemisphere were better preserved, would they even grasp that the rabbit/egg/chocolate season, running for about three months from the holly/reindeer/fat man season, had anything to do with spring.
And for a final piece of syncretism: there used to be a women’s bakery in Auckland, connected to a rather dodgy Indian politico-religious movement. They had a nice little shop near me, and one March day I went in to discover their speciality of the day was hot cross bagels. Oy veh.
Further to the “no egg-eating in Lent”, a bit of speculation. Easter is associated not only with eggs but with chicks. If you’re not eating eggs during Lent, why not let them hatch, (at least until you’re close enough to Easter to keep them fresh or hard-boiled), so renewing the stock of chickens?
A non sequitur, an ad hominem, and a diversion. Truly a marvel at fallacious argument. You won the $1.98 award!
What the hell are you talking about?
As long as you don’t provide evidence for your accusations you yourself are guilty of the fallacy called poisoning the well.
You know what I think would be an important topic in taking on Dawkins-styled Atheism bad history? The Ottoman Empire’s decriminalization of homosexuality in 1858 and the fuller context around it. Basically everything covered here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4r17fc/what_lead_to_the_ottoman_empire_decriminalizing/d4xwz1l/ just more elaborated on. I feel like this would be an important because it just so utterly flies in face of the arguments of those guys.
Hi. I’d like to say that though I’m a Christian, I love hearing the opinions of the other side, and you are evidently one of the more reasonable atheists I’ve encountered. Loved the way you tackled Richard Carrier and called him a pseudo scholar. That was shocking, but also super elating. That being said, I’m new to the history game, especially concerning Christianity. Can you suggest any good books or resources I should use to start with?
Personally, I’d suggest looking through Rodney Stark’s books, and Tom Holland’s book, “Dominion.”