Easter echoes the eons old human festivity to celebrate the March equinox (in the northern hemisphere) and the arrival of spring. The dark and cold days of winter are gone. The bright time of fertility has come.
Today's fertility symbols of Easter, the egg and the hare, relate to the old Germanic fertility goddess Eostre (Ostara). Ishtar, a Mesopotamian goddess of love, stepped down into the underworld of death but was revived. The Christian resurrection of Jesus is probably a transformation of this older hopeful tale.
When the Christian message spread from its eastern Mediterranean origin its incorporation of old local gods and fables helped to convert the multi-theistic societies to the new monotheistic* believe. The gods of the pre-Christian religions were not completely discarded but their tales transformed to support the new united message the Christian preachers were spreading.
But whatever. – It is spring, the darkness vanishes and it is my favored holiday. This year the Julian and Gregorian calendars coincide. We thus follow the Russian Barbarians and wish us all
Happy Easter
Faberge egg with spring flowers and music box- bigger
Please join me, v. Goethe and Dr. Faust in our traditional Easter Walk:
Look from this height whereon we find us
Back to the town we have left behind us,Where from the dark and narrow door
Forth a motley multitude pour.They sun themselves gladly and all are gay,
They celebrate Christ's resurrection to-day.For have not they themselves arisen?
From smoky huts and hovels and stables,
From labor's bonds and traffic's prison,
From the confinement of roofs and gables,
From many a cramping street and alley,
From churches full of the old world's night,
All have come out to the day's broad light.
…
How it hums o'er the fields and clangs from the steeple!
This is the real heaven of the people,
Both great and little are merry and gay,
I am a man, too, I can be, to-day.
*The Christian Trinity, the three aspects of the one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a doctrinal addition of the 4th century. It just adds an explanatory layer on top of the Abrahamic core of the monotheistic Christian message.