Eggs, rabbits, chicks - and a wooden cross??

I've just read a friend's blog in which she laments that Jesus bloke taking over her birthday celebrations, and I have sympathy because my daughter's birthday is very close to Christmas so it happens to her every year. But that Jesus bloke actually has taken over the original spring festivals - I mean, what have the 'traditional' Easter celebration rites - chocolate eggs, Easter bunnies and chicks - got to do with a torturous death by crucifixion and a resurrection three days later?

The answer of course is: nothing! These accoutrements were appropriated by the early Christians from the pagan spring fertility celebrations. As was much else.

Note, I said the early Christians - not Christ himself. Whoever and whatever Jesus was, I absolve him from any guilt in this regard - I can find no Bible verse in which Jesus holds up a chocolate rabbit and exhorts his followers to eat it in remembrance of him (and if I could find a religious excuse for eating chocolate, believe me, I would!) In fact, there is no instruction in the Bible on how Jesus' death and resurrrection should be celebrated at all.

The clue is in the naming of the festival: Easter is actually an updating of Eostre, the Saxon mother goddess repreesenting fertility. It is from the same root we derive oestrogen, the female hormone. The festival of Eostre was originally a fertility rite in her honour, held to celebrate the return of life to the world in spring.

Thus, eggs and chicks represent new life and rebirth, and of course we all know what rabbits are known for, which is why there are so many of them. Admittedly, go for a walk and you won't see too many, because they scent humans and fear them - probably because they know we are the creatures who inhabit those huge metal machines that tend to squash them if they venture on to roads. But go for a horse ride, and magically there is a hopping rabbit carpet over the field. The hare is also the symbol of the moon and the mother goddess, again representing life and fertility.

Eostre was one of a pantheon of mother / fertility goddesses in various traditions (Aphrodite, Ishtar, Astarte, Venus, Cybele) who represented feminine power as the source of life. In stark contrast to the modern pressure on women to be youthful, thin and passive, these goddesses were portrayed as older, maternal, curvaceous and dominant over their younger lovers, who were seen as gorgeous young men devoted to the service of the divine womb.

In later mystery cults this young male consort took on the role of earlier 'green man'-type gods of fertility; he was portrayed as having been born of a virgin, and represented the cycle of the seasons by dying and returning to life around the spring equinox, usually over a three day period starting with Black Friday. Hmm,sound familiar?

Spring celebrations in older times varied in different places and cultures, but they centred on fun, enjoyment - and often, being fertility rites, sex. When the patriarchal religions took hold they repressed this aspect of the festival along with the celebration of the feminine, but left us with such innocent pleasures as decorating eggs and giving fluffy bunnies and chicks. The naugtiest thing we are left with is chocolate, so excuse me now while I go and celebrate the season by indulging myself with a packet of Lindt mini-eggs...