Every year Catherine gets annoyed by people quoting made up history about the origins of Easter.
Catherine explains:
The historical record of Eostre is incredibly small: a single reference written by a Christian monk named Bede, writing after the supposed worship of Eostre has already vanished from England. he comments that the word Easter, in English, comes from Eostre, or perhaps from Eostremounth, the mouth in which Easter occurs.
That's it.
Bede doesn't know anyone who worships Eostre, and no worshiper of Eostre has left any records of her at all. There is no mention of a specific holiday for Eostre, and no mention of rabbits or eggs. Most of the claims equating Eostre and Easter, therefore, are entirely made up. The only potential connection is the word Easter and the name Eostre, an issue that only exists in English. In Romantic languages, the word for Easter is based on Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover, which Jesus was celebrating at the time of his execution. And the Romantic language speakers have been celebrating Easter far longer than the English.
Stop repeating the fallacy. Please. And stop presuming world practices revolve around what went on in England.
Mouse agrees, and now you know. So next time someone tells you that Easter was originally a pagan festival called Oestre, you can set them straight.
Fair enough, but Catherine needs to avoid introducing her own fallacies. The issue is not just in English, but also in German where the word for "Easter" is "Ostern", presumably related in the same way as English "east" is to German "Ost". And she should refer to Romance languages - even English can be romantic when I use it with my wife!
ReplyDeleteSo there's an old Germanic word (I'm not sure what the official term for that group of languages is), but no confirmation that Bede was right about Eostre, or anything about her presumed cult. I'll add that to the artillery for the next time some nutter tries to tell me that Easter is pagan!
ReplyDeleteI have been looking on-line at the origins of Easter as well. I always thought it was related to a hormone called Oestrogen. Even the Swiss Germans use the pagan version, but having said that I’ve had a complaint from a parishioner who backed Theology in the 3:40 at Ascot. The nag came in last in a field of 8. I’m tempted to say that we don’t do horses and some people say we’ve been going to the dogs for 2000 years – but we’re still here.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia "The word east is derived from the name of one of the four dwarves in Norse mythology, Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri, who each represented one of the directions of the world. The etymology of east is from a Proto-Indo-European language word for dawn, *hausos." I guess the word Easter might well have originally referred to the festival of this Austri, which might well have been the Spring Equinox.
ReplyDeleteThe following is from The Online Etymology Dictionary entry for "east":
O.E. east "east, easterly, eastward," from P.Gmc. *aus-to-, *austra- "east, toward the sunrise" (cf. O.Fris. ast "east," aster "eastward," Du. oost O.S. ost, O.H.G. ostan, Ger. Ost, O.N. austr "from the east"), from PIE *aus- "to shine," especially "dawn" (cf. Skt. ushas "dawn," Gk. aurion "morning," O.Ir. usah, Lith. auszra "dawn," L. aurora "dawn," auster "south"), lit. "to shine." The east is the direction in which dawn breaks.
A word meaning the direction of the sunrise is appropriate for the celebration of the Son's rise.
Peter - I think the point she is making is not to do with the origin of the word Easter, but of the festival itself. If it did develop from the pagan festival described by Bede, that would not really explain why it is celebrated throughout the world. It is not surprising that the word for Easter is similar in many related languages, and we can guess about its relation to other similar words, but the point is about the origins of Easter itself.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post Mouse. Nice to see the whole Easter-is-based-on-paganism thing is going the way of Christmas-trees-are-based-on-tree-worship thing.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, Mouse. But Bede's point was about the origin of the word. It seems quite likely that, in Germanic countries and maybe elsewhere, the Christian Passover festival took the place, and the name, of the old pagan spring festival. This is known to have happened with Christmas.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't think anyone with any sense thinks that the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus has a Germanic origin. This festival is clearly of Mediterranean origin even if some might claim it is not based on true events. There is ample evidence that Easter was being celebrated throughout the Roman Empire long before there were any Germanic people celebrating anything in England.
So, in the absence of any link to her original blog post, I assumed that Catherine's article was about the origin of the name, not the origin of the festival. Was I wrong to assume that the proposition she was refuting was not an entirely ridiculous one?
Apologies for the lack of link - will add one now. Incidentally, this has also appeared, making the same point:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/23/easter-pagan-roots