In trying to reconcile the American holidays with the Christian influence, Keith and I like going back to the roots -the pagan ritual celebrations. The pagan rituals focussed on the earth and the celebration of seasonal changes are things we can get into. We're having a May Day party with a Maypole later, but we are celebrating Easter with our bunny loving family here. We dyed eggs in our Waldorf group with craft paper making "stained glass" eggs and we are using yellow onion skins on Saturday. I'll post those pictures later.
The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word Eastre, which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to the goddess Eostre, who was celebrated at the Spring equinox, and has cognates in Old High German ōstarūn, plural, "Easter" (modern German language Ostern). The Old English term Eastre ultimately derives from ēast - meaning the direction of east. This suggests it originally referred to a goddess associated with dawn. Corresponding traditions occur with the Roman goddess Aurora and the Greek goddess Eos.[1]
Eostre is sometimes[2] derived from the Proto-Germanic root *aew-s, "illuminate, especially of daybreak" and closely related to (a)wes-ter- "dawn servant", the dawn star Venus and *austrôn-, meaning "dawn, east" (compare ostar-rîchi "Eastern Realm, Austria"), cognate to the names of Greek Eos, Roman Aurora and Indian Ushas, all continuing Proto-Indo-European *Hausos.[3]
There is no certain parallel to Eostre in North Germanic languages though Grimm speculates that the east wind, "a spirit of light" named Austri found in the 13th century Icelandic Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, might be related.
Whether the derivation is from a Goddess of "Spring", or of "Dawn", is to some degree a moot point, when the term is examined in its use in far northern climes, since there the two concepts are somewhat cognate -- the return of Spring is indeed the return of dawn after a long hiatius; and the return of the sun each day after is merely a mini-version of the same event, the dismissal of darkness and resurrection of life and warmth. The extent to which this agreement occurs declines toward the equator, and is gone before reaching the tropics.
Celebration of Easter in modern cultures -- and particularly in the Southern hemisphere where Easter is paradoxically celebrated in Autumn, not Spring, due to the cycle of seasons being out-of-phase compared with the Northern hemisphere -- has become almost completely removed from any conscious knowledge of its meaning as ritual celebration of return of the sun, that event so important to agrarian society.
Eostre is sometimes[2] derived from the Proto-Germanic root *aew-s, "illuminate, especially of daybreak" and closely related to (a)wes-ter- "dawn servant", the dawn star Venus and *austrôn-, meaning "dawn, east" (compare ostar-rîchi "Eastern Realm, Austria"), cognate to the names of Greek Eos, Roman Aurora and Indian Ushas, all continuing Proto-Indo-European *Hausos.[3]
There is no certain parallel to Eostre in North Germanic languages though Grimm speculates that the east wind, "a spirit of light" named Austri found in the 13th century Icelandic Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, might be related.
Whether the derivation is from a Goddess of "Spring", or of "Dawn", is to some degree a moot point, when the term is examined in its use in far northern climes, since there the two concepts are somewhat cognate -- the return of Spring is indeed the return of dawn after a long hiatius; and the return of the sun each day after is merely a mini-version of the same event, the dismissal of darkness and resurrection of life and warmth. The extent to which this agreement occurs declines toward the equator, and is gone before reaching the tropics.
Celebration of Easter in modern cultures -- and particularly in the Southern hemisphere where Easter is paradoxically celebrated in Autumn, not Spring, due to the cycle of seasons being out-of-phase compared with the Northern hemisphere -- has become almost completely removed from any conscious knowledge of its meaning as ritual celebration of return of the sun, that event so important to agrarian society.
