Hare-y Christian

I've heard that some hardcore Christians shun Christmas as being a barely Christian observance mostly fouled with pagan interpolation. They claim that the apotheosis of Jesus' life is his sacrifice, death, and resurrection and not his birth. Easter, they say, is the true Christian holiday.

To them, I say, "More power to ya'. Do what you gotta' do." I'm all for the search for authenticity. However, if that's where you're going you should probably know some stuff about this whole Easter thing ...

Hesiod, an 8th century BCE farmer from Boetia, writes in his Theogeny about the descent of the gods who were worshipped in Hellas (what we now call Greece). In it, he speaks of Rhea.

Rhea is an earth goddess, a fertility goddess, daughter of Gaia (the Earth) and Uranus (the sky). (Snicker, snicker. He said, "Uranus." By the way, one of my favorite students, Miranda, just let slip that she was not named after the Shakespeare character but after -- wait for it --"a moon around Uranus." Never live that down. She will never live that down.) (Aaaaaaand that tells you all you need to know about how professional I am with my "favorite" students.) Rhea's name means both "flow" and "ease" -- the "flow" going well with her fertility role (menstrual flow, milk flow, river flow, etc.)

Like her mother, Rhea is a mother of gods. She marries her youngest brother, Kronos and begets Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, and Poseidon. Kronos had answered his very fertile mother's call to castrate his father so she would no longer have to bear him children and thus Kronos is afraid of (or has heard of prophecy that he will sufffer) a similar fate. Thus Kronos eats each of his children right after they have been born. Tired of losing her children and on the advice of her mother, Rhea takes her next child, Zeus, and hides him in Crete (in a cave on Mount Dicte), giving Kronos a swathed rock to swallow instead. Zeus is nursed by the divine goat, Amaltheia (He will eventually make one of her horns into the cornucopia.) and when he is mature he overthrows his father and makes him disgorge all his other children.

Now, as Richard Pryor said the ministers used to say, "I told you that story so I could tell you this one."

Worship of Rhea spread and met and mixed with other earth goddesses and fertility goddesses. In Phrygia, she encounters a counterpart in Cybele (or Kybele). Cybele was an earth/fertility/mother of gods goddess as well. Worship of her went on for hundreds of years, eventually spreading throughout the Roman empire. She was a goddess of caverns, who was worshipped in wild, emotional, bloody, orgiastic ceremonies on mountain tops. (Why not in caverns? I dunno', but which place would you rather have a wild, emotional, bloody orgy? -- "Oh, do me bab-- What a view! Hey Peter, I can see your house from here!" "Shut up and fuck me in the name of the goddess!")

Cybele fell in love with a youth (In at least one story he's her son.) named Attis. Stories of Attis vary widely but in most of them Cybele's love for him makes him go mad and kill himself through self-castration. (Guess who gets eunuch priests as his worshippers?) Sorry about what she has done Cybele bades her father, the Phrygian sky god to make it so that Attis's body never rots or decays.

By the time we get to the Romans, Attis is a vegetation god and a consort of Cybele. So she's the earth and the mother, he's plants. He dies every year and is reborn during the spring Equinox. Get it? In fact, there was a very popular three day Cybelian festival on Vatican Hill celebrating the death and rebirth of Attis. As Christianity grew in Rome, Christians celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date, often arguing with the Cybele/Atticans over who's god was first and/or real.

And now for something related, but different ...

The Venerable Bede (672-735 CE), an English Benedictine monk and scholar, says in his book, De Ratione Temporum, that the name "Easter" originates with the Saxon mother goddess named Eostre, who had a spring equinox fertility festival. (Oh those pagans and their spring equinox fertility festivals!) She finds a counterpart in the Teutonic dawn and fertility goddes, Ostara (or Eostra or Eastra or Eastur or ... you get the picture). It is from this mother goddess that we get the root for the word "oestrogen" and the word "east." ('Cause the sun rises in the east. 'Cause she's dawn goddess? I just want to make sure you're with me, 'cause it's about to get weird.)

Apparently Eostre (or Ostara) in some stories is a friend to all children. Well, she's got this pet bird (a perfectly reasonable pet for a goddess of the dawn). To amuse some children she changes her pet bird into a hare (a perfectly reasonable animal for a fertility goddess). The former-bird/now-hare then -- get this -- lays brighty colored eggs, which Eostre gives to the children as gifts. (Ooooh!!)

The 16th century in Germany gives us our first mention of an Osterhase (or "Easter Hare"). Two hundred years later in the 18th century, German immigrants to the U.S. bring the Osterhase tradition with them. By this time, our hare is bringing gifts of chocolate, candy, and -- You guessed it. -- brightly colored eggs to good children. (Oh the Teutonic people and their fascination with rewarding properly socialized children with presents!) German descended kids would find an out of the way corner in the house or out in the barn where they could make a nest for the hare to leave his gifts in. Boys would use their caps and girls their ... bonnets. If you really wanted to get fancy, you would use ... a basket.

So the next time you're in a club and some comedian says, "I understand the whole Easter thing, but how the hell do you get the bunny, huh? Can someone tell me that?" you can just pipe up and say, "Oh. It's from the hare, an animal known for its fertility, which was sacred to the fertility/earth/dawn/mother goddess Eostre (or Ostara) -- from whom we get the name, "easter, by the way" -- who, throughout early Christian England and Germany had a festival celebrating rebirth during the springtime equinox." ... which means I've probably totally ruined that part of the routine for you and everyone around you. Sorry. No colored eggs for me.