The Truth about Easter

Each year Easter comes around - celebrated in our Western 'Christian' countries, a time for a break for many workers and an opportunity for a weekend away for some. But I often wonder if the holidaymakers have any real idea of what it is all about. Of course, dedicated Christians know, even if a minority do not actually approve of the Easter observances.

Some believers go to great lengths to display their faith. Among them is an Australian TV presenter and comedian, John Saffran, who in 2009 went to the Philippines to have himself nailed to a cross. Reportedly after the nails were driven into his hands he hung there moaning for five minutes before being taken down by 'centurions' and rushed to a tent for medical attention.

Getting oneself nailed (or, more often, tied) to a cross in imitation of the suffering prophet, is a widespread Easter activity. People who would eschew the proclivities of B&D enthusiasts readily participate in these shenanigans. Frankly, I cannot treat their activities with any great seriousness. Take this story:

In February 1978 Eliana Barbosa, a Brazilian girl aged 16, had a dream in which a 'kindly old man who looked like God' told he she could only rid herself of the demons within by being crucified. With the aid of her family and pious believers Eliana had a cross made of solid timber, over 3 metres tall. It was to be set up on a hillside and when the time came a crowd estimated at 6,000 gathered to see the sight.

The girl was to be bound to the cross, not nailed, so to simulate the wounds of Jesus she had her hands and feet sliced with razor blades and a crown of thornbush placed upon her head. She was then hoisted aloft while the believers dipped their handkerchiefs in her blood, in between imbibing beer and hot dogs from the convenient stalls nearby. For three days Eliana hung there and then was taken down, to be proclaimed a saint.

And what really is being celebrated on the Easter weekend? Supposedly it commemorates the death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection on the third day. I have dealt elsewhere with the specious nature of the Resurrection story but there is, I believe, something more to Easter than the commemoration of Jesus life and death. It is celebrated by Western Christians on the dates of the Jewish Passover, which is in turn linked to vestiges of lunar worship clearly evident in the Christian Bible. This is revealed by the manner in which the dates of Easter are determined: Easter Day is on 'the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.'

Easter is a curious celebration; even the word comes from the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring (Eostre) but in religion, as an old verse says, 'any god will do'. According to Bishop Charles Leadbeater of the Liberal Catholic Church, in his book The Hidden Side of Christian Festivals (1920), the name Eostre is in turn just another form of Ishtar, Astaroth, or Astarte, the Queen of Heaven.

And Easter, that all-important Christian festival, is celebrated on a date that varies from year to year, sometimes in March and sometimes in April. Christians have, in fact, come to celebrate the death of their prophet Jesus on a varying date! As an acquaintance once remarked, 'Christ is the god who dies from month to month.' And once again we find that primitive religious rites, in the form of worship of lunar deities, have profoundly influenced the development of a 'higher' religion. Moon-worship is clearly evident beneath the surface of the Jewish Old Testament and this has in turn affected the New.

In 1997 it was reported that an effort was being made by Christians on a worldwide basis to unify the date upon which Easter is celebrated. It was being proposed that a precise astronomical calculation, using Jerusalem as the basis, would be used and that the new system would begin with the Easter of April 15, 2001. There is no word as to what happened to this idea but then Christians are not all that good at co-operating with one another.