Strange facts about Easter

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Orthodox Easter is borrowed in several stages and in different places. Pagan rituals, "bolted" to a Roman holiday with a Jewish name, dated according to the lunar calendar - this explosive mixture looms even within the controversial official chronology.

Jesus and Mithra are twin brothers

The tendency of the Christian church has long been known to pass off other people's holidays as their own. So, for example, at one time the Christian church appropriated the holiday of the birthday of the solar god Mithra (otherwise - the birthday of the Invincible Sun - dies natalis Solis invicti), which took place in the Roman Empire on December 25, turning it into the Christmas of its own god, day, month and even whose birth year they did not know.

Mithra was one of the most popular gods of oriental origin. By teaching and ritual, the cult of Mithra resembles not only the cult of the Great Mother, but also Christianity. The similarity was so obvious that many Christian theologians interpreted it as the machinations of the devil. The similarity of doctrines and individual elements of Christian and Mithraic worship is really great. Suffice it to say that Mithras, just like Jesus, was sentenced to death and resurrected on the third day. The Encyclopedia Britannica points to numerous Mithraic rituals identical to those of Christianity, such as the use of holy water, communion, consecration of the resurrection and December 25, as well as a similar dogmatic basis: the atoning sacrifice, the immortality of the soul, the last judgment, the resurrection of the flesh, and so on.

But back to the birth of the Sun, which was celebrated on December 25 according to the Julian calendar. In Syria and Egypt, during the celebration of the Nativity of the Sun, the celebrants ran out of the temple at midnight, shouting “The Virgin has given birth! The light abides! and even put on display a doll that personified the born god. The Virgin, who gave birth to a son on December 25, was a great Eastern goddess, whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin and acted as the hypostasis of Astarte. Supporters of Mithraism called Mithra the All-Conquering Sun and therefore dated his birth on December 25th.

The Gospels do not mention a single word about the date of Christ's birth, so the early Christians did not celebrate this holiday. However, over time, Egyptian Christians began to consider January 6 as Christmas. The custom of celebrating this date spread to the 4th century throughout the East. But at the beginning of the 4th century, the Western Church set December 25 as the actual date. Over time, the Eastern Church agreed with this decision.

The fact that Christmas has pagan roots is tacitly acknowledged by Blessed Augustine when he exhorts the brothers in Christ to celebrate this day not as pagans, that is, because of the birth of the Sun, but for the sake of the one who created this sun. From all this it is clear that the church decided to celebrate the birthday of its founder on December 25 in order to translate the religious zeal of the "pagans" from the Sun to its own god.

God stole a holiday from God

Christians borrowed their main holiday not from the Romans, but from the Jews. This is the main Jewish holiday of Passover, in Russian - Easter. The Jews celebrated and celebrate this holiday, dedicating it to their exodus from Egypt, the liberation of "God's chosen people" from "Egyptian slavery." That is why the holiday is called "Pesach", which means "passing by" in Hebrew.

Let us recall the biblical legend underlying this holiday. Pharaoh did not let go of the Jews who wanted to leave. Then the Jewish god began to send various curses on the Egyptians. At first, these curses were in the nature of dirty tricks - toads, midges and flies. However, soon the anger of Yahweh-Jehovah grows stronger - now he sends a pestilence, inflammation with abscesses, hail and locusts. It ends with the fact that the Jewish god kills all the Egyptian firstborn - all children, including babies (so that the all-seeing god would not confuse “his people” with the Egyptians, the chosen ones smeared their doors with blood.) Then Pharaoh let the Jews go. But before leaving, God's chosen ones still managed to rob the Egyptians. The Jews asked to "revile" their Egyptian girlfriends gold jewelry, and the Jewish men borrowed from the Egyptians, initially without intending to give it back.

Well, the story is really funny and the faithful have been enjoying it for the third thousand years. However, what does it have to do with Jesus Christ? But nothing. The events described in the gospels - the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - coincided in time with the Jewish holiday. The Christians themselves, with childlike spontaneity, declared that now Easter is "the day of the bright resurrection of Christ." However, the position of Christians in Judea at the beginning of the 1st century AD was much weaker than in the Roman Empire in the 4th, when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. The Jews did not give up their holiday, and then the Christians decided to celebrate Easter on another day. To justify this decision, a complex and confusing system for calculating the day of Easter was later invented. Note that no Christian church holiday is calculated so strangely and floridly as Easter. All the rest (for example, Christmas) for some reason stand still. This means that Christians still celebrate the Jewish Passover, passing it off as their own holiday.

Moreover, so that people would not confuse the "bright" Christian Easter with the incomprehensible Jewish Easter, among the believing environment the preachers dismissed all sorts of, by no means canonical, stories. One of such terrible Black Hundred stories from a century ago can be heard even now in the Orthodox Christian environment. According to her, the Jews for Easter make a pudding soaked in the blood of a Christian baby, whom they steal for this purpose. It must be admitted that it is difficult to come up with a more vile nationalistic lie in gratitude for the borrowed holiday!

Attis is risen! In truth he is risen

Again, as in the case of Christmas (but historically earlier!), Christians decided to appropriate the joyous holiday of another religion. Since they started this business back in Judea, they tried to appropriate a local, ethnic holiday. However, Judaism was not widespread in the countries of the East, excluding, in fact, the area of settlement of the Jews. It was not widespread in the countries of southern Europe either. For these peoples, the joy of the Jews over the flight from the Egyptians was irrelevant. For them, the celebration of the death and resurrection of another Asian god, which fell on the same time of the year - spring, was more relevant. Indeed, Greek, Sicilian and Italian Easter rites are remarkably reminiscent of the cult of Adonis. The church deliberately adapted the new holiday to its pagan prototype in order to recruit as many supporters as possible. But the cult of Adonis flourished in the Greek-speaking regions of the ancient world. In Latin-speaking countries, the cult of Adonis was not widespread. But the cult of Attis was popular, whose death and resurrection were officially celebrated in Rome on March 24 and 25. The last number was considered the day of the vernal equinox, that is, the day most suitable for the revival of the god of vegetation, who had slept like a dead dream all winter.

Considering these and some other facts, the English historian Fraser comes to the conclusion that the ascent of Christ to Calvary was specially timed to this date in order to correspond to the more ancient celebration of the vernal equinox.

Down and Out trouble started

It is also worth remembering that the celebration of St. George's Day in April replaced the ancient pagan holiday of Parilius; that the day of St. John the Baptist replaced the summer pagan holiday of water (Ivan Kupala); that the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos in August replaced the feast of Diana; All Saints' Day in November was a continuation of the pagan festival of the dead. Christians in general really liked to appropriate the holidays of other religions.

But such unequivocal coincidences between the dates of the resurrection of the Christian god and the pagan gods led to violent disputes between the followers of the warring religions: the pagans ardently argued that the resurrection of Christ was a fake counterfeit for the resurrection of Attis, and Christians with the same fervor argued that the devilish counterfeit was just resurrection of Attis. The pagans argued that their god, being older in age, is not a copy, but the original, because the original is usually older than the copy. But Christians easily fought back this argument. Let Christ, they argued, is the younger God in time, but in fact he is the elder, since Satan in this case surpassed himself in deceit and turned the course of nature backwards. But let's leave these stunning theological discoveries alone and return to the equally impressive experiments in appropriating holidays. And again Easter. Now orthodox (Orthodox).

We paint eggs and rejoice

With Orthodox Easter, things are even stranger. Since in Russia Christianity is not an original religion, but was forcibly established at the end of the first millennium AD, the Jewish holiday appropriated by Christians fell on the time when the Slavs celebrated their "pagan" holidays. It was one of the many rituals of Slavic paganism that was the offering of eggs to the gods. Of course, not only eggs were brought, but also other edible products. On the one hand, an egg was a minimal gift to numerous idols, and on the other hand, it could perform a symbolic function. Much later than the Christians faced this pagan ritual, a ridiculous story was invented about the egg that Mary presented to the Emperor. This story, by the way, testifies to the spiritual and intellectual primitivism of the people who composed it, since it is a sluggish, feeble-minded and unsuccessful attempt to explicitly artificially include a pagan ritual in the mythological plot of Christianity (well, think for yourself, what relation do painted chicken eggs have to Jesus Christ ?).

Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. The spring full moon is the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Where do we use the lunar cycle? Almost all gardeners regularly buy a lunar calendar, since planting is associated with lunar cycles. According to this logic, Easter = Pashka is an ancient peasant's holiday of the beginning of field work, fertility and the spring rebirth of Nature.

Take two eggs, put them next to the correct cake, and you will receive the oldest symbol of fertility - the male reproductive organ. And what is smeared with white on top is exactly the seed.

Comparison of Easter cake and lingam - the symbol of the masculine principle in Indian mythology.

The example of Easter shows that this holiday is borrowed in several stages and in different places. To begin with, they borrowed from the Semites the name of the holiday and the system for calculating it according to the lunar calendar. Further, they borrowed from the Greeks and Romans the content and semantic load of the holiday itself. And only then they recruited various pagan rituals. To make it more fun. Here it is, the essence of Christianity: to celebrate with pagan rituals a Roman holiday with a Jewish name, calculated according to the lunar calendar!