I walked by a flyer yesterday while walking my dog. It was advertising a “Spring festival” in Fort Tryon park featuring games, face painting and an egg hunt.
Of course, the first thought in my mind was, “crap. Catholics and hyper-evangelicals everywhere are going to go crazy wondering why the hell we can’t acknowledge Jesus Christ – who died on the cross for our sins so children could enjoy a Cadbury – and call it Easter!”

And then I wondered how many Catholics and evangelicals and pretty much Americans of any background even realize what the heck Easter originally was. It’s certainly not about Jesus at its roots. In fact, any real historian can go back and show you all the lovely pagan celebrations which were taken over by Christianity as a way to make it palatable to transition people over to the worship of “My Sweet Lord” instead of Eostre.

Who’s Eostre, you say? Oh, yeah, she’s who people used to celebrate during, uh, EOSTRE celebrations. Then again, she might have been created by Bede (he of the Venerable title). Given that he was a church man and “invented” her in the 600s, it’s at least safe to say Easter was a spring rite/pagan celebration occurring around Germany and definitely not connected to Jesus.
Kind of like those Christmas trees and mistletoe and whatnot.
Still, it’s kind of fun to sit back and watch all the uproar as, once again, certain people (you know, Bill O’Reilly, Bill O’Reilly and, oh yeah, Bill O’Reilly) proclaim that Americans should be outraged as the PC police have once again declared war on Christianity. In fact, as I continued walking my dog, I saw one of the green “Spring Fling” flyers partially covered over by a neighborhood Catholic church’s flyer announcing Easter services.
Guess they showed Eostre, didn’t they?