An Astrological Allegory with a Fresh Face.
It is widely believed that the Springtime holiday known as Easter marks the alleged anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ignoring the fact that even biblical scholars disagree as to whether or not Jesus was a real man, we seem to know the exact day that he was resurrected. Strangely, the day of Jesus’ resurrection coincides with the Spring Equinox. Even stranger, the celebration of this holiday has been muddled with an anthropomorphized and particularly industrious rabbit who has taken to delivering eggs to young children on this holiday.
Easter is the holiday every dentist looks forward to — a holiday when children (and some adults) consume their bodyweight in chocolate bunnies, creme-filled eggs, and other sweets. This feast is often accompanied by the moderate exercise that is the traditional Easter egg hunt and the classic Easter egg roll.
Those who are more religiously inclined like to remind everyone else that Easter is really about the resurrection of Jesus.
But what, if anything, do these things have to do with Springtime? Was Jesus, “the son of god,” really a man who walked the Earth, was crucified, and resurrected on the day that would eventually be known as Easter? Or is it possible that the parable of Jesus is just a story, one as old as stories themselves, that personifies and anthropomorphizes the Sun and the consequences of its movement through the sky?
Since the metaphorical “dawn of man,” the sun has played a vital role at the center of developing civilizations. The sun is responsible for all life on Earth. It provides warmth, life, and safety from the predators and mysteries of the night. In the morning, the sun would rise again and deliver salvation from the unknown to the people of the Earth.
Winter was a particularly harsh time for budding civilizations. Due to what we now understand to be the tilt of Earth’s axis, daylight was less abundant; the Sun did not rise as high in the sky, days were shorter, temperatures dropped, plant life was covered with snow, and animals that provided nourishment became more scarce as they entered hibernation. To the unsophisticated understanding of ancient civilizations, the earth was in a time of dying and would eventually become barren and void of life.
To our ancient ancestors, in what we now call Spring, the sun brought rebirth and resurrection after a long and treacherous winter. The Sun would literally begin rising again in the sky. The Sun arcs higher into the sky, and days become longer. Plant life would return from the frozen and barren earth. In Springtime, animals would awaken from hibernation and once again procreate and proliferate. It wasn’t until Spring that the sun began to thaw the frozen and seemingly dead Earth, and both the land and the animals would once again become fertile and bear new life, bringing salvation to mankind.
Our primitive ancestors saw the connection between the sun and the fertility and abundance of all life. They realized the importance of this yellow orb in the sky and developed rituals, religions, traditions, symbols, and stories that personified this great bringer of life and the harvest season that followed its “resurrection.”
As the mythology surrounding the mysterious orb in the sky aged, symbols for the life and fertility it brought were incorporated into belief systems all around the world. One common symbol of fertility that developed was the egg. (While celebrating Easter, sending your progeny on a literal egg hunt seems a bit Freudian and even a little creepy.) The egg is a symbol of new life — of rebirth. Life literally bursts from the seemingly plain and inanimate egg — like the cold, dead, winter Earth.
Similarly, thanks to its… enthusiastic and frequent-breeding habits, the rabbit likewise came to symbolize fertility and new life in many cultures. (Again, in this light, a rabbit delivering eggs to children is creepy.) Both the egg and the rabbit have long been incorporated into the holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus — a resurrection that, as the myth states, also brings salvation of all mankind.
How did these things become connected?
Once these primitive people began conquering each other, culture, traditions, religions, myths, and stories began to blend in a melting pot of civilizations. As a strategy to unify and incoporate conquered peoples, it worked quite well. It allowed other cultures to be assimilated into the culture of the conquering civilization without losing their individual identities. After enough time had passed, only those who were familiar with the conglomeration of traditions remained.
Long before Christians came to celebrate the supposed resurrection of Jesus — the son of God — on Easter, ancient civilizations celebrated the Spring Equinox as the resurrection of the gods and goddesses of the sun, harvest, and fertility.
Consider the following myths and note their literal and symbolic similarities to Jesus:
Ēostre: Ēostre, Ostara, or Eastre (pronounced similarly to “Easter”) is a Germanic goddess of the Spring, dawn, and of light. She is the anthropomorphisation of the warm Spring wind, the animals that return, and the trees and flowers that bud in the Springtime. She represents the awakening of the earth, rabbits, hares, and eggs that appear after a winter with little sunlight. She is the rebirth of life that occurs after the passing dead of winter.
Osiris: Osiris is the Ancient Egyptian god of resurrection and fertility. Osiris was not initially a god in his own right, but was considered only partially divine. Some sources state that Osiris is the son of the Sun God, Ra. As the myth states, Osiris was killed and resurrected. It was believed by Ancient Egyptians that Osiris actually gave them the gift of barley — one of their most important crops.
Persephone: Persephone is from the Greek pantheon. Persephone is the goddess of harvest and growth. Hades, the god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone and carried her into death. As a result, the plant life on Earth began to wither and die. To prevent the death of all life on Earth, Zeus (the God of Gods) commanded Hades to release Persephone and bring life back to Earth. Evidently, one does not return from death without strings attached. According to Greek mythology, Persephone must return to the underworld for one third of every year.
Tammuz: Tammuz is the Sumerian god of vegetation who, like Osiris, started off as a partial mortal. According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tammuz, too, ended up in the underworld as the result of a torrid love affair. Eventually, Tammuz was released from death and brought new life to the vegetation on Earth. Once a year, Tammuz dies and must be resurrected again. When the seasonal rains come and crops begin to grow, it is believed that Tammuz has been resurrected.
Attis: A Phrygian god who was eventually annexed into Greek and Roman mythology, was the god of vegetation and represents the “fruits of the earth.” Naturally, with Attis’ death, the vegetation on the earth began to wither and die. Luckily for both Attis and mankind, the gods agreed that he should be resurrected again each Spring. As part of an annual Spring festival, the Romans would celebrate and honor Attis’ resurrection by cutting down a pine tree and adorning it with flowers and decorations. (A tradition that has been transferred to the holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus.)
When learning about the mythology of other civilizations, it quickly becomes clear that the story of the ressurection of Jesus mirrors the numerous stories of various cultural sun gods (rather than the Son of God), and harvest, resurrection, and vegetation gods that have developed independently across just about every primitive civilization that has existed on Earth. The story of Jesus — and the way his birth, death, and rebirth are celebrated — is a conglomeration, adaptation, and retelling of the traditions of numerous other cultures around the world.
It is simple for most adults in the 21st century to recognize the farcical and absurd nature of the gods of Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. An ancient Mesopotamian could be excused for needing to invoke an authority beyond their comprehension in order to explain something like the Spring or the Winter, or rain, or fire, or sickness, health, life, and death. But modern Homo sapiens have no excuse for clinging to ancient ideas when we have an understanding of tilted axes, molecular theory, germ theory, and Natural Selection, etc. However, over six billion people in the world still believe in a god despite the fact that our knowledge of science makes each and every one of them more and more impotent with each new discovery.
Eventually — and usually despite their parents’ best efforts to keep them as “innocent children” — kids outgrow the need for fictional characters like the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and their counterparts around the world. Perhaps one day, and hopefully soon, mankind as a whole will likewise outgrow its need for fictional characters. Despite what their holy books claim about their respective figureheads, not one of the main monotheistic religions offers salvation for mankind. They offer no real ways of coexisting with other ideas and belief systems. Their doctrines offer only intolerance, increasing chaos, anarchy, hatred, torture, suffering and, eventually, the complete and total annihilation of humanity. Each organized religion is a doomsday cult destined to become a self-fulfilling prophecy unless logic and reason prevail.
If and when the day arrives that mankind is no longer shackled by the silly ideas of the past, and when science, logic, and reason are elevated to new heights, it is likely that we will see a totally new “dawn of man.”
