The "easter hunt" has always confused me. As a child, I was scrubbed raw put in a blue suit given a prissy little basket and sent out with every child under 12 of our town into a field to look for hand painted eggs that supposedly were produced by of all things a bunny.
Now that I am an old man the easter hunt makes me think of the collusion between retail and religion to market and sell product and a fairytale.
Christmas-All retail and churches
Easter-The Candy/Flower/Apparel industries and churches
St. Patrick's Day- Beer/Bar industry and churches
St Valentines' Day- Candy/Floral/Gift card industries and churches
Some of these so-called religious holidays are the biggest income seasons of these industries. And the marketing has nothing to do with the actual faith that the days represent.
Christmas-is supposed to mark the day of birth of a messiah.Which was mysteriously moved to coincide with the winter solstice.
Easter-is supposed to mark the resurrection of said messiah.
St. Patrick's Day-is to commemorate a missionary that converted tribes in Ireland to catholicism.
St. Valentine's day- commemorates a christian martyr that was arrested for performing christian weddings.
The easter thing is so crazy. A bunny lays eggs? Colored eggs mind you that are filled with candy or coin. Now, how the fuck does that have anything to do with religious faith?
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@mykcob4: Religion is, first, control of ideology through morality, second, elimination of difference, third, when those two things are achieved, business, at that time, when negotiating with morality becomes normal, just does It is necessary to maintain the status quo, because there're no longer human beings, only sheeps, and turning sheep into humans again isn't easy, especially if religion catch them from children... bleeeeeat... bleeeeeeat... bleeeeeeeeeeat.
I agree it is crazy, from what I've read as well as what you mentioned, the winter solstice pagan rituals were supposed to be phased out by Christmas, but also the spring equinox. It had what I think was a hare (jack rabbit) fertility god. I don't recall the exact nature of the equinox rituals but I still think it's very funny that christians still celebrate the remnants of past pagan ways.
Easter is a "through the looking glass" kind of day. The white rabbits and the dyed eggs filled with jelly beans and confetti, and who among us hasn't bitten the ears off of a chocolate bunny? And then considered how funny rabbits look without ears? It's a psychotic holiday, even without the recently crucified zombie walking around.
Check out all the Pagan traditions that were wrapped into Easter, including Eostre, the original Easter Bunny:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/03/easter-paga...
Easter is a pagan fertility/spring festival hijacked by Christians who now bleat that their precious festival has been hijacked by the commercialism of chocolate pushers. I remember asking my teacher at elementary school what rabbits and eggs had to do with the crucifixion/resurrection. She gave me some twaddle about rabbits and eggs being symbols of new life, like the resurrection of Jesus. Bullshit. Rabbits and eggs are symbols of sex, and the festival is named after the pagan godess Eostre, whose name also appears in estrogen.
There are people on this forum for being extremely and historically accurate. You are one of those people Algebe!
It's possible to make a tie-in with the eggs to the biblical story in Isaiah 10:13-14 (MSG) =
“‘I’ve done all this by myself.
I know more than anyone.
I’ve wiped out the boundaries of whole countries.
I’ve walked in and taken anything I wanted.
I charged in like a bull
and toppled their kings from their thrones.
I reached out my hand and took all that they treasured
as easily as a boy taking a bird’s eggs from a nest.
Like a farmer gathering eggs from the henhouse,
I gathered the world in my basket,
And no one so much as fluttered a wing
or squawked or even chirped.’”
So (it might be a stretch) when kids go on Easter egg hunts they are acting out that passage from Isaiah. That makes it religious. However, the meaning of the rabbit character is currently elusive except that they aren't supposed to be eaten as food.
This is a great example of how christians twist bible verses to support their delusions. They take a tale about a war god harming and plundering actual human beings in an ongoing tribal conflict between Israel and Assyria and imagine that might explain Easter Egg hunts. One could just as easily justify Easter Egg hunts with the symbolic, figurative wisdom found in a Betty Crocker recipe. The connection is purely imagined. Christian apologists should be deeply ashamed of their own stupidity.
And I should correct the verses in question. Here is Isaiah 10:13-14 in the King James Version:
13 For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man:
14 And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.
That's hardly the pleasant outing of happy children that one imagines would inspire our modern Easter festivities. The whole project of using verses from the bible to inform one's worldview and order one's life is absurd and shameful.
Do you know how and why Christmas gifts got started? Do you know why circumcision became such a popular and persistent ritual?
People do them today because of BS biblical stories so why is it unreasonable to think that some guy a long time ago didn't use the Isaiah passage as a game for children and other people picked it up as an annual event?
Most brides around the world wear white gowns today because Queen Victoria wore a white gown at her wedding. Hell, they aren't English but they are following something an English woman did in the 19th Century.
I get your point. But it seems likely that traditions involving rabbits and eggs celebrating the vernal equinox in a pagan celebration of the beginning of crop growing season were the origin of the egg based tradition. I see christians attempt to show the biblical significance of candy canes and stockings and christmas trees and have had it with the brain dead practice. Christians believe that the bible represents the core narrative of human history and they seek to identify everything as inspired by or resultant from their god and holy text. It doesn't seem likely that an obscure text in the prophet Isaiah's rantings are the proximate cause of a staggeringly ancient practice of celebrating the rebirth of nature. So I'm pushing back against the idea.
I can understand that. However, considering the fact that countless other modern day practices came from various ancient events it's easy to see the link between the Isaiah passage and the modern day Easter egg hunt. The Easter eggs are decorated like they are fancy jewels and they are scattered in the field for discovery. So I can see the link.
According to this link the tradition was started by Martin Luther. Egg hunt - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_hunt Now we know that Luther wrote his Bible so when he got to this particular passage maybe, just maybe, he decided that it would be fun for kids to do. However, he wanted to push the idea of Jesus' resurrection so instead of anchoring it to Isaiah he said that the eggs were associated with the tomb from which Christ arose. Now to me, that's a heck of a lot sillier than tying it directly to the Isaiah passage.
Therefore, I'm going with the idea that the Easter egg hunt is directly related to the Isaiah passage, Isaiah 10:13-14, rather than the tomb of Jesus.
If I recall correctly, the baby jebbus was born on easter in a manger with three wise men and some bunnies. Bunnies turds look like eggs so the tradition of the easter hunt was born... because no one likes to step on rabbit turds while visiting a manger
I can't really contribute much here. My family always celebrated Easter as a Themed American Holiday. Not really for a religious reason. As a matter of fact, It wasn't until I was in my early teens that I realized how religious all this stuff is. Which then leads to some pretty fair questions like "Mom this is about Jesus? what in the world do eggs, rabbits & goodie baskets have to do with all that?"
But again, we just focused on the fun parts of it so I can't say that I feel the dismay for it that the rest of you do. Thanks for reading my limited contribution. Happy belated Easter.
P.S. The same thing applies to me for Christmas, Haloween, ect. However, I do not care for Columbus day. I don't even think he deserved a day named after him in the first place.
Speaking of Christmas and Christmas presents, it's directly related to the Fourth Commandment in Exodus 34:19-20 (CEV) = "19 The first-born males of your families and of your flocks and herds belong to me.
20 You can save the life of a first-born donkey by sacrificing a lamb; if you don’t, you must break the donkey’s neck. You must save every first-born son.
Bring an offering every time you come to worship."
When the wise men came to see baby Jesus they brought gifts because they recognized him as God and worshiped him. So they were in compliance with the Fourth Commandment.
All of the biblical stories are based upon the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 34:10-28. Some of the Commandments take several verses so they can be hard to separate. Exodus 34:10-28 MSG;CEV;CEB;TLB;NLT - And GOD said, “As of right now, I’m - Bible Gateway
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus 34:10-28&version=MSG;CEV;CEB;TLB;NLT
Now some people will try to BS you that the Ten Commandments are the standard ones for in Exodus 20:1-17. But you can easily debunk that yourself by simply reading the story word for word and page by page from Exodus 20:1 to Exodus 34:28 and by writing down what you read in your own words. It's the easiest part of the Bible to understand because the story is linear and has no missing parts.
Here's a link to a 9:40 minute Youtube video that explains it Which 10 Commandments? - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkCJ8rb8Grw
People push the Exodus 20:1-17 version because the Exodus 34:10-28 version is so ethnocentric and the First Commandment says to invade other people's lands, kill or enslave them, and to destroy their religious artifacts. In actuality that's the only Commandment people like to follow.
The Church of England and the Prime Minister are upset because a chocolate manufacturer tried to attract non-Christian children to an Easter egg hunt by removing the word "Easter" from its promotional material. These people are insane.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/91237066/Cadbury-drops-Easter-from-n...
A Mesoamerican product originally used for aphrodiasic and ritual purposes is shaped into pagan fertility symbols, which children are invited to hunt as a commemoration of the death and resurrection of a mythological religious figure. The Aztecs thought chocolate was the blood of the gods, so perhaps it's fitting that it's now being used in the rituals of another morbid blood cult.