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Easter is religion based!? I don’t think the majority of people here think of it that way.

May the Easter Bunny be with you!

Really? I think most of the people here are from the USA according to the stats, and here it is definitely seen as a Christian holiday, A bit over half of Americans celebrate it and of those that do the majority of those who do celebrate it as a religious holiday. According to the last polling data I could find – looks like data was collected in 2022.

Well, to keep it simple with “here” I was intending to refer to where I live, which is about as biased as your take on it. But now I know that people can interpret it as the readership as well.

But if we go neutral and let “here” mean on Earth, last I checked US is not the majority of the world. In fact, population wise it is about 4 % of it.

Of course I’m gonna agree with you if you use here to represent anywhere outside of the US XD – But i had to make an assumption on what you meant by here and since I don’t know where you are- I do know you are posting- “here” XD I get ya though and I agree of course with that clarification 😛

It’s religious twice-over. It was originally a “Pagan” Spring/Fertility Festival, and was converted into a “Jesus resurrecting from the grave” festival when Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe. The former of which being the reason why Eggs and Rabbits are a part of the festival.

Additional note, I put quotation marks around the word Pagan simply because I don’t actually know what religion it came from, and assume that the word Pagan was originally or developed into a derogatory term that Christianity used for any polytheistic religion, regardless of their differences. Which would suggest that followers of Norse Mythology and Celtic Mythology would both be called Pagan’s, despite their religions & beliefs having no similarities or parallels.

So this covers a lot of ground, and I’ll just jot down the synopsis of a wide search. There is a wide span between folklore and religion – which is why I prefer to refer to the latter as “organized superstition” – and the Germanic spring traditions that were co-opted may have been more in the direction of lore.

It is hard to tell now, and the religionist tarring of anything they disliked – so not only competing religions – as “Pagan” didn’t help. [“late Middle English: from Latin paganus ‘villager, rustic’, from pagus ‘country district’. Latin paganus also meant ‘civilian’, becoming, in Christian Latin, ‘heathen’ (i.e. one not enrolled in the army of Christ).”]

Easter is a mashup of religious traditions.
To the jews it is when the angel of death passed over the jewish households marked with the blood of lambs.
To the christians it is the celebration of Jesus death and resurecction.
To the pagans it is a celebration of fertility rites.
To the rest of us it is a couple of day off from work.

Pagans can be whatever you dislike, for a muslim a “heathen” can be another monotheist. But common pagan beliefs are polytheism, shamanism or animism.

This is where it gets iffy – the connotation to Germanic fertility goddess Ēostre is authored by catholic priests. Most likely it is an “explanatory” retcon of what could have been simply spring festivities. People having fun could have been more threatening than competing religions, for all I know.

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