Easter, Easter holiday | What exactly is Easter?

The debate post expresses the writer’s opinions.

We Scandinavians have misplaced the word Easter, and overlooked that Easter is first and foremost a Jewish holiday.

Etymologically speaking, the word Easter has its origins in the Hebrew word “pesach”, which means to pass by. This corresponds to the English word “passover”.

Easter is therefore the same as Passover. To understand what Easter is, and what “passing by” means in this context, you must read the mythology in Exodus chapter 12 from the Bible.

We can now look at some important excerpts from verses 12–13 with my emphasis where the mythological figure God/Yahweh speaks to his people of Israel:

«This night I will pass through Egypt and beat to death all the firstborn in the land, both man and beast, and I will judge all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. But the blood shall be the mark that shows which houses you are in. When I see the blood, I will pass by.»

If we jump a little further to verses 29–30, we see how God/Yahweh/The Lord accomplishes this (emphasis mine):

«In the middle of the night, the Lord killed all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner in the prison, and all the firstborn of the livestock. That night Pharaoh arose, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. There was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a single house without someone dead.»

God has thus broken his own fifth commandment not to kill, and Easter is thus based on a divine mass murder of Egyptians and their animals.

God supports slavery

I don’t think this is a historical event, but probably mythology. Moreover, a supposedly omniscient god should not depend on blood-spattered door frames to know which houses to pass by in search of Egyptians.

The context of this story is that the Israelites are being held as slaves by the Egyptians, and this event is supposed to be part of their liberation. Slavery is wrong, but so is mass murder, even when it is committed by the Lord.

It should also be said that the God of the Bible, in a double standard way, himself, clearly and clearly, repeatedly in the Bible, supports slavery: «If you want to get a slave or a slave woman, you must buy them from the peoples who live around you» (From Leviticus chapter 25, verse 44).

This is what Easter is.

What Easter is not

Based on this, Easter has nothing or little to do with the resurrection myth of Jesus, other than perhaps a vague reference to him eating an Easter meal with his disciples. To this extent, the mythological resurrection can be an interesting metaphor for spring and new life.

Dead and resurrected gods are also not unique to Christian mythology. Feel free to see what biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has to say about whether Jesus rose from the dead or not, or use your common sense and deal with the probabilities.

Easter also has nothing to do with chickens, hares, eggs, skiing, candy, quizzes, spring awakening, crime entertainment, cottage or other inventive but questionable combinations of words with Easter in them.

Easter and spring

If we’re going to talk about spring, chickens, eggs and hares, it might make more sense to use a word like “oyster”, which is a far better translation of the English word “easter” than Easter. Because the word “easter” really has nothing to do with Easter.

We must be careful not to mix things up, as has long been done with Christmas and Christmas mass.

Please read about the spring goddess Ostara, who is also called Eostre. This spring goddess could just as well be called Øster, possibly Austr.

As usual, the church will celebrate its mythological and pseudo-historical Bible myths. The rest of us don’t need to be bound by such deep-rooted traditions.

Celebrating spring, oysters, yes, I’m all for it.