Although we all know Easter is a variant of a pagan goddess called Oester, Esther, Ostara, Ishtar, etc. This goddess is Venus or Diana Lucifera as the Romans called her (yes, Lucifer if female). Lucifer means "light-bringer" because that is the role of Venus--she rises early in the morning bright in the east to announce the coming of the sun. Hence, Easter can be broken up as "east" which means "rise" and that is why the Easterners are called "Oriental" as the word "orient" means rise as in "get yourself oriented." As in rise up and get your bearings. Meriam-Webster defines Orient as meaning "East" and gives the following etymology:
Etymology:Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin orient-, oriens, from present participle of oriri to rise; akin to Sanskrit **oti he moves, arises, Greek ornynai to rouse, oros mountain
Date:14th century
The other word buried in Easter is
aster which, of course, means "star" so Easter means "rising star" which is Venus.
Where did the Easter bunny come from? From the hare which is one of the first animals seen in the spring. Of course, hares were far more plentiful then than now but there are still around--I see them occasionally even in Southeast Michigan. There is the story that hare veneration was so widespread in pagan Britain that the early Church Fathers of England couldn't stamp it out and so turned to ridicule by creating Peter Cottontail--a cute, li'l bunny-wunny with rosy cheeks and a dainty smile--hopping down the bunny trail in hopes of discouraging hare-veneration. British children fell in love with the bunny image so instead of stamping out hare veneration, the Church cemented it in place seemingly forever. Be that as it may, the bunny is really a hare venerated by pagans as the harbinger of spring.
So what about the Easter basket and eggs? And what has that to do with Peter Cottontail and what does any of it have to do with Jesus? Nothing. These are disparate pagan strands woven together to create the most unlikeliest of holidays--ironically the most important to Christians.
Ok, the basket and eggs--here it is:
It is simply the story of Moses being floated down the Nile in a basket to be rescued by Pharaoh's daughter. This in itself is not a true story obviously. It is an allegory for how life started on earth. As the earth was forming, there was great chaos and violent forces unleashed which were necessary to form the earth into a cradle of life. The life potential, represented as an egg, had to lie dormant and protected for a time until those violent forces subsided and life could hatch from the egg and propagate.
The story is told yet again as Noah and his ark. All earth's life is shut inside the ark as violent forces rage blindly over the earth, shaping it into a cradle and then when they subside, the ark opens and all that life potential pours out to fill up the earth.
We remember this allegorical time in our New Year celebrations but we must remember that the ancient people celebrated New Year in the spring--March or Nisan--rather than in January (something we got from the Romans). So Pharaoh's soldiers out slaughtering all the first-born sons was a metaphor for the violent forces unleashed on the earth to eventually shape it for life and so the life potential is placed in the basket to protect it until such time as it can be removed and take its place in the world.
The same story is told again when Jesus was born and Herod sends out his soldiers to slaughter all the children under two years of age. No such slaughter ever took place but, again, the soldiers are the violent forces unleashed on the earth and the infant Jesus had to taken to Egypt until the heat died down--same story.
In Revelation 12, the story is retold yet again when a woman (Virgo) clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars (the circle of the zodiac) gives birth to a man-child. A great dragon crouches between her feet to devour the child but it is handed up to god to be protected while the woman flees into the wilderness. We remember this annually as the coming of winter when the sun must go away for a time and reappear in the spring.
The infant is the same one we see wrapped in a sash and wearing a Mason's hat as the New Year symbolizing rebirth and the continuity of life. That is your true Holy Infant:
The Jesus that dies on the cross at 15 Nisan then rises three days later as the New Year baby/sun. The cross itself is the intersection of the celestial equator and the ecliptic plane. When the sun crosses it, its "blood" or red rays fall to the earth and rejuvenate the soil. Of course, priests over the centuries have garbled this story beyond recognition but that's what it is. Venus announces not simply the sunrise but the arrival of the New Year sun--the same sun that had to be hidden away from the dragon (the dark winter months). THAT was the original importance of this holiday.
Easter obviously has nothing to do with the death of a historical Jesus because, as we all know or should know, it falls on the Sunday after the first full moon that occurs after the passing of the vernal equinox (first day of spring). That's why Easter slides around so radically from year to year. The 2014 Easter is about as late in the year as it occurs. It is determined by an astronomical event and nothing more.
It is not coincidence that the Easter basket resembles a bird's nest which is a symbol of the birth/rebirth of life. The green stuff obviously represents grass because green grass is a potent symbol of life. You know spring has arrived when the green grass starts to sprout up. The eggs, though, were originally serpent's eggs colored red. This is because the snake is cold-blooded and cannot heat her eggs with her body and so relies on the warm spring sun and hence they are colored red to symbolize the sun. The red serpent's egg represents the Infant Sun/Son of the spring, the New Year. The Easter basket is nothing more or less than a symbol and gift of life itself and Easter is a celebration of life not an observance of someone's death.
The Christian priests simply appropriated the pagan egg-in-a-basket as such:
In some of the Christian stories, Jesus is born in a cave or grotto. In the gospels, he is laid to rest in a rock-hewn tomb--another cave or grotto. In other word, he dies in the same place where he was born and then will be born there again and die there again ad infinitum. That is, the old year sun dies at a certain spot in the heavens and the New Year sun rises in its place until it returns to that same spot in one year--now an old man--and dies there again. This, in turn, symbolizes our own existence--birth, death, rebirth, etc.
I have no problem with people celebrating Easter--just know what it is you are celebrating and why. Take the Christian bulls-hit out of it and you are simply celebrating life. So Happy Easter!