Long ago, in the before time, i used to dip boiled eggs in vinegar based dye and enjoy the day with friends and family searching for hidden treasures. It was a great time.
Today, there is a choice between being ultra-christian or ultra-atheist.
Both, who have destroyed Easter.
You cannot simply enjoy the day with children finding eggs. No, we need to avoid hurting people's feelings. We can no longer just be happy and come together as a community.
Today the community is divided
- Those who strongly believe that Easter is about the rising from the dead of Iasoos†
- Those who strongly believe that Ishtar† is a fertility celebration.
But, most of the community is actually
- Ambivalent. Not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings, they just do nothing.
So, Easter is destroyed. All that is left is a small push by retailers to sell more eggs, dye colorants, fake grass and chocolate. There is no large get togethers. No community.
It is all dead.
The worst thing of all is that all the stories we have of Easter have all been adopted from an earlier age. Even the old Sumerian stuff. It has always been a celebration of winter ending and spring beginning. And all kinds of things have been added and forgotten. Great hunts have given away to great harvests. Praising that your children have survived has given way to being thankful that you are fertile.
And so... what do we do? When you have a group that seems to be against having any fun. And a group that is easily cowed? What we have ended up with is blah.
I suggest that we celebrate however we like, with whatever stories we like, and ignore the party-poopers. Next year will be an amalgam of the previous years. New things will pop up every once in a while. It will always change. It always has.
† For those of you who do not know, the "I" in Ishtar and Iasoos is pronounced EEE.
So, Ishtar, is pronounced Easter. Iasoos is pronounced similar to the spanish pronunciation of Jesus.