It is that time of year again. There is
chocolate eggs and bunnies in stores, and most people are getting ready for the
long weekend. It is Easter! But to whom do we owe this break? Where does it
come from? For most Namibians, the answer would be easy – Easter is a Christian
holiday. However, just like Christmas, Easter has longer history than the
Christian faith that most people do not know about.
“Aha,” you say, “It’s actually a Jewish
holiday!” Moreover, you would be partially correct. Nevertheless, even Jewish
traditions had to come from somewhere, and the Jewish people were not always of
the Jewish faith. What is now known as the Passover ritual actually comes from
something even older – apotropaic magic rituals and harvest/rain rituals.
Apotropaic magic (from Greek apotrepein
"to ward off" from apo- "away" and trepein "to
turn") was a household ritual that was supposed to ward again evil and
turn away the evil eye. In this apotropaic ritual, Hyssop was used to dab the
blood of slaughtered sheep on lintels and doorposts, ensuring that demonic
forces were kept outside the home.
Then, in the Canaanite religion, the barley
harvest was of great significance. However, the rains that made the grains grow
during the winter had to stop at just the right time, or the storms would
decimate the fields and rot the grains, starving the people. Therefore, the
rain god Baal had to be stopped – and every year, the Canaanite god of death
Mot needs to kill the god of rain, Baal. Baal then spends the summer in the
netherworld before being resurrected in the spring. Thus, Mot kills Baal by
eating him, like eating the flesh of a lamb. After the rains have stopped,
there was a ceremony made with unleavened bread, to be made as quickly as
possible afterwards, while a lamb is eaten without the bones to symbolise Mot’s
killing of Baal.
Does that sound familiar? Once the Jewish
people coalesced from the various Canaanite tribes, and the Priestly Code was
developed, these rituals were incorporated into Passover. It also explains why
Passover is at the time of year that the rains stop in the Israel area. With
the construction of the Exodus myth, great care was taken to ensure that it
would fully replace the previous rituals – a specific warning was inserted into
the myth about the dangers of Baal worship to guarantee its replacement.
Hence, the Jewish Passover was born, based
on the myth of freedom from Egyptian enslavement. Thus, when Paul the Apostle
was developing the Christian Church, he incorporated the Jewish festival of
‘freedom from the Egyptians’ into his nascent faith, as a festival of ‘freedom
from sin’, and connected it to the death of Jesus. As a result, it became the
foundation of the Christian faith. As Christianity spread, so did the new
Passover. In most of the world, that is still what it is called – Pascha, the
Greek for Passover.
When it reached Western Europe, however, it
found itself replacing another spring festival in honour of the dawn goddess
Eostre. Since Pascha was celebrated in the Month of Eostre, it gradually became
known as the Eostre festival and from there, Easter, as it is known in English.
What then of the chocolate bunnies and
eggs? They seem suspiciously absent from these accounts. Well, the Easter bunny
springs from their reputation as prolific breeders, and as such were venerated
as fertility symbols. It is popularly believed that the Easter Hare was thus
sacred to Eostre, and that is how it came to be associated with Easter, but in
fact, it was believed in ancient times to be a hermaphrodite, and as such,
could reproduce without loss of virginity, resulting in the early church
associating it with the Virgin Mary. With Easter occurring in spring in the
northern hemisphere, its association with spring fertility rituals resulted in
an easy integration with the early Easter festival.
Originally, the Easter Bunny also served as
a sort of judge – similar to Santa Claus – that judged whether children were
disobedient during Easter, and originally was depicted as wearing clothes. However,
the Easter Bunny is not a worldwide phenomenon. In Australia, the rabbit is
considered a national pest, and as such, they use an alternative – the Easter
Bilby.
Easter eggs, however, remain a firm
Christian invention, despite attempts to link it to Eostre as well. It
originally started amongst Christians in Mesopotamia, who dyed their eggs red
in memory of the blood of Christ. When the practise of Lent began, Christians
were forbidden to eat eggs during Lent, and had consumed all their eggs before
that time. However, chickens kept producing eggs during Lent, and to keep them
from spoiling they were often boiled. When Lent ended on Easter Sunday, there
was thus a surplus of eggs available.
Thus, the cracking open of eggs on Easter
was linked to symbolise the empty tomb of Jesus by the church, and a new
tradition was born. With the invention of refrigeration, it was no longer
necessary to consume all the eggs, and it was linked to the Easter Bunny, who
would only bring decorated eggs to good children. As a children’s gift, it
should come as no surprise that when Fry & Sons made the first chocolate
ones, they were immediately popular, and as such, are now the predominant form
Easter eggs take.
Yet perhaps the most famous variant of the
Easter egg is the Fabergé eggs. Commissioned originally by the Tsar Alexander
III as a gift for his wife, a tradition continued by Tsar Nicolas II, these
exquisitely crafted eggs were made from precious metals and decorated with the
most expensive of gemstones, these have become symbols of splendour and wealth.
So while we all take some time off this
weekend, we should all take some time to reflect on the wide range of cultures
and traditions that had to come together to make this long weekend possible.
Because the first answer is not always the most correct one, and once you start
to scratch the surface of any seemingly simple matter, fascinating details can
emerge.
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