Is Easter Still Relevant?
 

Personally for Christianity I believe it is, but it's become so over-marketed etc that it has lost it's meaning. If you don't celebrate Jesus rising from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion then why is it relevant to others?

It's always bothered me really, and I'd like to hear what others think on the matter. Feel free to give me a good reason why non-Christians/Catholics etc should celebrate it too?

Like most holidays, it can be summed up in two words: family tradition.

it's like Christmas with a different name and less gifts.

that and people like having statutory holidays on a regular basis, ever notice that there's usually one holiday per month. holiday... holy day? dun dun DUN....

i suppose this depends on your religious persuasion. though by and large, even christians seem to be interested in a giant candy-gifting bunny than zombie christ...

hmmm.... if the church advertised it more like zombie christ they might get a better response with the younger generations.

I'm just in it for the strippers and blow. Isn't that what this holiday is about?

I'm just in it for the Peeps.

It's just an excuse to see your family and eat chocolate, what's so bad about that?

I always view Easter as a celebration of Spring and the sweetness of family and childhood fun, Vanilla.

When I was growing up, Easter had the same happy feeling of fun and friendship as did May Day, which in Iowa as a child we celebrated (and some people still do!) by making little paper baskets filled with a few candies or treats to leave on friends' doorsteps...just to make life a little happier for them. Both holidays involved going outside and appreciating nature and young little animals (chicks, baby rabbits) and plants (new violets and other early flowers).

On Easter morning, my mom always surprised us (so it wasn't really a surprise) with Easter baskets at breakfast, with little plastic eggs with a candy inside, and that was fun. Later, we had plastic Easter egg hunts outside...those were an exciting family and sometimes community event!

The night before, we blew and dyed eggs...which now as a vegan I wouldn't do, aware as I am that people slaughter the millions of male siblings of egg-laying hens, so any egg in your hand is really a symbol of DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!

Again, Easter for me is simply a celebration of Spring, whereas for Christians I know it is THE most important holiday, because they hope so much that their belief in this religion means they will have an afterlife.

I was just thinking that it should also probably be mentioned that another reason some non-Christians would celebrate it is that it's actually not exclusively a Christian holiday. Much like Christmas, it is pre-Christian pagan holiday that was co-opted by Christians. Undoubtedly there are still pagans around today who celebrate something akin to its older form.

So you are saying that pagans had both holidays for the birth of a Messiah and the resurrection of a Messiah?

I sometimes wonder if this guy is the best wind up merchant around or he really doesn't have a clue.

better question: is christianity still relevant?

Seconded.

You and everyone else.

Pretty much this.

I wondered about this myself...the numbers are still strong so you will obviously get people arguing for Christianity. Me, though, I go with George Carlin, "I was a Christian until I reached the age of...reason."

Is to me.

According to the monk Bede who wrote a treatise De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time) in 725, the english term Easter itself comes from the old english name Ēostre or Ēastre - the name of a germanic goddess who was celebrated at march equinox.

Modern easter and march equinox don't overlap perfectly (it was march 20th this year), but I would assume that christianity has just taken over a different religious holiday and if that was not the celebration of Ēastre, a feasible hypothesis it seems to me, then it could have been a different one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ēostre

I don't celebrate easter, but I appreciate time off work. The only negatives for me (for purely selfish reasons) are the holy days when the shops close.

Yep, and don't forget the pagan origins of the fertility symbols associated with Easter like rabbits and eggs.

O wow. I know this idea gets bounced around for Christmas every year - but I didn't realize Christians felt the same spiteful possessiveness about Easter as well. Anyway, I don't have a good reason and I don't even really notice or acknowledge it so I'm one less of the "others" who you need to worry about feeling that Easter is relevant.

Of course. Same answer as for Christmas and everybody knows this already. Jeez..

Haha - that is one positive aspect of Easter. I always get a laugh when I think of it as zombie worship.

That is a better question that also always comes up around Christmas and Easter. I say no and, as religions go, Christianity is a particularly bad one. It's only ever been relevant to the tiny fraction of Christians who actually become or remain better, nicer people because of their religion. I suppose there are a few of those but I'm not sure that it makes up for the ways that the religion teaches people to ignore reality and compels them to believe that they are something better than the world around them rather than a part of it.

I just find it annoying that Jesus got more time off over Easter weekend than some of my mates.

Huh?

ahahahah

duh?

I don't believe that misguided people holding onto a 2000 year old myth is relevant in today's society

It's relevant to my love of peanut butter and chocolate.

It's not relevant when the chocolate is hollow. I feel cheated when that happens

But what if there's a toy inside?

That works as a nice metaphor for the holiday itself though.

I don't even understand the question. How isn't it relevent?

There is two sides of Easter, the religious truth in Christanity of Christ's Resurrection, and the non-religious part like the tradition of chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs. I don't what side Vanilla is thinking of, the religous, non-religous, or both. I think it would be revelant as a positive glimpse into the rest of Christian religion for non-Christians. But if a person is anti-Christian I really can't see how the religious side of the holiday would be relevant to them since they dislike it & dismiss it already.

I honestly don't worry about celebrating holidays and what it means in terms of religion. Does anyone ever wonder why so many holidays from so many different religions share similar dates? Almost every major religion has a holiday on or around December 25th. Many also have a holiday around Easter. December 25th is known not to be Jesus's actual birthday, so why celebrate it then? Because it is the end of the Winter Solstice. Easter is around the beginning of Spring.

This is all due to syncretism - the melding of beliefs to ease the transition from the old to new. When missions and kings were busy converting everyone to Christianity, they did it aggressively, but they also knew that they couldn't just slap a brand new set of traditions on the people. So, they kept all the old holidays from the previous religion, renamed them, and tweaked the reason for celebrating it all to ease the transition into Christianity. Instead of worshiping the sun god on December 25th (who brings more sunlight and longer days with him), people worship the son of God.

All our holidays have a history dating back even to prehistory. So, I celebrate these holidays because I am a human and like to celebrate human history and accomplishment, not because I am religious.

No. I didn't even get a ****ing egg! :(

Easter is still very relevant and highly celebrated in certain parts of the world. But not so much in the States. And I live in the Bible Belt. Sure, Easter Mass and Easter Sermons are big gatherings, but really no different from the average Sunday church gathering.

I will admit, though, that some of the local churches that are Hell-bent (pun intended) on advertising with giant light-up marquees come up with some funny slogans to throw up there at Easter time. One of them being: "The Easter Bunny didn't die for your sins... Jesus did."

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

it's easter time, an important christian holiday. someone had to make a condescending thread.

and why would you need a good reason that catholics celebrate easter? they celebrate it for the same reason all other christians do.

I don't think Vanilla is being condescending here, from reading what she posted she it's important holiday to her.

I used to like Easter egg hunting when I was a kid. We didn't have plastic eggs filled with candy, and toys and all that crap... We had boiled chicken eggs that were painted. Being that I have always loved eggs, this was like Christmas for my stomach. So I brutalized my way into as many boiled egg finds as possible. By the time the hunt was over, I would gaze down at my bounty and smile knowingly. That night, I had eaten boiled eggs for lunch, dinner, and the remaining in bed. No less than 30 of them altogether. In a day. I felt like a king.
I guess those were the times I figured you can't overdose on eggs, and from that point on, when I'd fry eggs, I would fry no less than 4 or 5 at a time.
I haven't checked my cholesterol or anything like that yet... but I'm pretty sure I'm probably about to die now.

Correct, I am Christian.

I find, as a person who has no time for nor interest in alll the churchy le femme bollocks, that Easter is the most boring of all the holidays bestowed upon us working class...............not one bloody thing happens here over that weekend

And, as we all know, Christians are incapable of being condescending. :laughing: