Happy Easter Everyone!

We get the word “Easter” from the name of a German Goddess of fertility, Oestarae. She is the deific equivalent of the Greco Roman Aurora, the personification of the sunrise. Her name is where East and Easter both come from. This is logical considering that the sun rises in the East. A creature associate of hers is Ostara’s hare or … the Easter bunny.

 

Modern Easter is the Christianized version of the festival of Oestara or Ostara. It celebrates the resurrection of the Christ after three days in the tomb thus associating him with the Sun gods of many other cultures who spend three days in the underworld before coming forth with a treasure or a new teaching. (See Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20)

 

Christians dropped the fertility rituals of Ostara but for some reason retained the traditional rabbit and eggs. The early Christians, many of whom had been brought up in the Hebrew tradition, simply regarded Easter as a new feature of the Passover festival, a commemoration of the advent of the Messiah as foretold by the prophets. I prophesy that every store will have a sale on chocolate bunnies and Cadbury creme eggs next week! 

 

There are no baby lambs or kids yet on the lambcam (see previous post) but I have spent way too much of my time watching them. Most of them were sheared last week so now they are kind of naked and pink but so much cleaner.  I am not much of a farmer; lambcam and the “My Farm” application on Facebook are about my speed dirt-wise.

>^..^< inga