of all the religious hollidays, easter is the one i dislike the most. all the stores are closed. no beer. 7-11 is open, but around here they aren't allowed to sell beer. but i digress... on with fun facts about easter. how do we celebrate this? it's all about jesus the clergy says. it's all about ham, eggs and rabbits the traditionalists say. you eat ham. you collect eggs, paint 'em, eat them. and rabbits jump around laying them apparantly. how did this all start? i'll do the short version... in ancient babylon there was a queen. her name was semiramis. she claimed to be the moon godess, and had a virgin birth with the sun-god, baal. the childs name was tammuz (more on him later). semiramis took the name ishtar when deified (made into a god). as ishtar she proclaimed to have been borne by the moon, coming to the earth in a big egg that fell into the euphrates river. this happened at the time of the first full moon after the spring equinox (first spring day). ishtar is pronounced easter. and the egg she arrived in, well, ishtar's egg. onto ishtar and baals son tammuz. he was very fond of rabbits. so much so that they were declared holy in ancient babylon. anyho' later tammuz was killed by a wild pig. to remember tammuz short life, the first full moon after equinox was declared holy. ishtar's period of mourning. ishtar declared that tammuz had returned to his father, baal, and now lived on for ever as "father, son and holy spirit". heard that one before so why do christians celebrate easter. clearly the tradition got nothing to do with jesus. the catholic church are believed to have hijacked the easter (ishtar) celebration from babylonian tradition to make it more palaple to potential converts. some "out there" christian sects even claims celebrating easter is herecy, a satanic act. good thing i'm not a christian then now if only the grocery stores would be open the coming week.
...oh i forgot. ishtar ordered that on ishtar (easter)sunday, worshippers must eat pig, seeing that a pig killed her son. thus the ham frenzy during easter.
xmas is an old roman tradition. parts of it anyway. the date and gift exchange are roman, as are the huge dinner. later the xmas tree was imported from german pagan tradition, and santa hijacked from viking tradition. given a new name of course, the original santa was, and i think this is the right english word, a goblin. since goblins are a part of pagan tradition, he was switched with a christian saint in stead, saint niklas.
ugh... stop taking Catholic traditions that are made up by members of that church and confusing it with the Christian religion. people who are truely Christians celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December with the rest of the world... BUT they know that Jesus wasn't really born on the 25th of December... as for easter... the holiday probably came from bablyon... but, just because it's a national holiday, doesn't mean that it's that way for the right reason. easter for true believers is a celebration of the day Jesus was resurrected. nothing more.
of course jewish holidays have similar traditions... i mean, christianity's roots are in judiasm. during their passover they have a huge feast... similar to easter in a way.
easter is celebrated at the time it is because the catholic church was trying to convert the pagans. They tried to steal the pagan's thunder by celebrating certain holidays at the same time that pagans did. Hopefully, they could distract people from the pagan ways and gain attention. Christmas is also celebrated at the same time as another pagan holiday. The time Christ was born is really in April or May (can't remember, but it was on TLC) about 6 years before the BC/AD split. Some scientists determined this through historical records and things having to do with the starts and skies. The BC/AD split is wrong because when someone (sorry I forget the guy who first put it all together) made the calendar he guessed at the year Jesus was born and missed by a little. edit: actually, now that I think about it May 20 sounds like the right date. Not absolutely sure so if anyone else saw the same thing I did please share.