101–110 of 154 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You realise that jewish people have had easter for a certain number of years before christ?
Ummm, Jews don't have Easter. Right now we are in the Chol Hamoed part of Passover/Pesach, with the Chag resuming and sundown tonight and continuing for 2 days.
Growing up Catholic, I always figured that it was meant to be paradoxical, to drive home the Christian message. This horribly sad event that is so painful to imagine happening, this event was the most important Good thing that happened in human history. So we have to call it Good Friday. Like many folk etymologies, it sounds like it's not quite right, but it was intuitive at the time...
> to drive home the Christian message For "the Christian message" the death of Christ is the ultimate good thing. According to Christianity his death brings everyone's salvation, not the resurrection. This is my body which is given for you. Sad so many Catholic churches fail at actually sharing that message.
Im german it is Karfreitag (Karfriday) btw. and the whole week, Karwoche (Kar week). And that means sadness. Lamenting.
> (…) the meaning of the name Good Friday can be understood as historically meaning ‘holy’. The use of ‘good’ denotes that this is a day of religious observance (…)
Growing up Catholic, I always figured that it was meant to be paradoxical, to drive home the Christian message. This horribly sad event that is so painful to imagine happening, this event was the most important Good thing that happened in human history. So we have to call it Good Friday. Like many folk etymologies, it sounds like it's not quite right, but it was intuitive at the time...
> to drive home the Christian message For "the Christian message" the death of Christ is the ultimate good thing. According to Christianity his death brings everyone's salvation, not the resurrection. This is my body which is given for you. Sad so many Catholic churches fail at actually sharing that message.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Catholic Church. The fourth century. https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas >In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). >Although some evidence suggests that Jesus' birth may have occurred in the sprin…
Hmm... why would the church in asia have chosen jan 6 as their epiphany date and main celebration of christmas if it were for Saturnalia. These are questions no one can answer, and we all just assume a Euro-centric perspective for little reason.
I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.
I find it fascinating that a lot of traditional holidays seem to have acquired multiple, sometimes conflicting narratives over the ages. Christmas is the most obvious one (what does a bearded dude on the north pole have to do with the birth of Jesus? For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus, but its also a kind of spirit of its own who brings presents, and for some reason usually depicted as a girl?)…
Wait, tell me more about this? I've never heard of it but this sounds much more similar to what is practiced by eastern christians. Where there is also a 40 day fast before christmas, then the twelve day feast ending with epiphany/theophany. And in those branches lent itself is preceded by a 3-week period of increasingly strict fast. So in some years depending on when easter lands you can start fasting again very shortly after christmas ends but is still understood as a completely separate thing.
I don't know anything about the rhineland one but I could see how this could eventually mutate into one super long fast with a break for christmas, but also maybe isn't seen that way by the people doing it.
> (…) the meaning of the name Good Friday can be understood as historically meaning ‘holy’. The use of ‘good’ denotes that this is a day of religious observance (…)
It's actually called holy Friday (Vendredi Saint) in France.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But this was about Eostre. Whatever the name meant and wherever it came from, it was pretty clearly the origin of the word "Easter". And there is reasonable evidence of a Germanic goddess with a name something like Eostre or Ostara, related to various Indo-European dawn goddesses, such as Eos, Aurora, and Ushas.
The 'evidence' of a Germanic goddess named Eostre comes from Christian writings who concede that this is where the name comes from. This entire 'conspiracy' is utterly made up
The English word "east", and the equivalent words in most European languages, ultimately mean something related to the dawn or sunrise. There is plenty of evidence for various Indo-European dawn goddesses with names linguists generally consider related to Eostre.
Dawn goddesses were generally part of an older layer of mythology that became less relevant over time. They were often replaced with other deities that inherited some of their aspects, or they gained new aspects while keeping the name.
We know that both Old English and Old High German had one of the spring months named after something related to the east and/or dawn. We know that European agricultural societies tended to have spring festivals. We know that as Christinanity spread, it absorbed pagan festivals and pagan traditions, and sometimes even kept the names. Such as something similar to "Yule" instead of "Christmas" or "Navidad".
Maybe Anglo-Saxons never had a goddess specifically called Eostre, and maybe their spring festivals were not specifically about worshipping a particular god. But some European languages chose to use a Germanic name for the Paschal season, and that name seems to be connected to some pagan spring festivals. Whose names are ultimately related to a dawn goddess their distant ancestors worshipped.