A blessed Easter to everyone!
Now there's nothing wrong with bunnies and chocolate eggs (especially chocolate eggs!) but they really are not what Easter is about!
There is nowhere on this planet where I have experienced the wonder of Easter's message of hope, of how Love has overcome hate and Life has overcome death, more than in the garden tomb in Jerusalem.
There are two places in Jerusalem where Jesus was thought to have been buried, one is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which the mother of the Emperor Constantine is supposed to have found. It is all pomp and ceremony, gilt, splendour, bells and smell. The other is the Garden Tomb, a peaceful, beautiful place, with deafening bird song, where you get the feeling of what it must have been like during that momentous weekend far more than in the “bells and smells” up the hill.
Scroll down to the bottom one, “Garden Tomb Instructional”, which is a little glimpse of this wonderful place and the dear people who look after it. The rest of the website is worth reading too.
Have a very special weekend!
Love and peace,
Judy
For a more holistic view, please refer to Ostara which was the original name for Easter. Occuring on the 21st of March when the amount of sunlight and darkness is equal. It is a pagan festival, based in Germanic roots, referring to the Goddess Ostara whose associated items of worship were that of the Egg for all the new life being born around this time and the Hare that had some associations with the moon but more for fertility.
When Christianity converted paganism, Ostara was transformed into Easter and the hare became the Easter Bunny 🙂
A blessed Easter to everyone!
Now there's nothing wrong with bunnies and chocolate eggs (especially chocolate eggs!) but they really are not what Easter is about!
There is nowhere on this planet where I have experienced the wonder of Easter's message of hope, of how Love has overcome hate and Life has overcome death, more than in the garden tomb in Jerusalem.
There are two places in Jerusalem where Jesus was thought to have been buried, one is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which the mother of the Emperor Constantine is supposed to have found. It is all pomp and ceremony, gilt, splendour, bells and smell. The other is the Garden Tomb, a peaceful, beautiful place, with deafening bird song, where you get the feeling of what it must have been like during that momentous weekend far more than in the “bells and smells” up the hill.
Scroll down to the bottom one, “Garden Tomb Instructional”, which is a little glimpse of this wonderful place and the dear people who look after it. The rest of the website is worth reading too.
Have a very special weekend!
Love and peace,
Judy
Excellent Video Judy
For a more holistic view, please refer to Ostara which was the original name for Easter.
As I replied earlier:
These are the Christianity pages Finalshine .
Love and peace
Judy
A couple of years ago, I found this interesting little snippet from a book called The Pedant's Revolt: Why Most Things You Think Are Right Are Wrong, by Andrea Barham. It's a fairly miscellaneous collection of debunkings of commonly accepted beliefs and assumptions that are actually erroneous - including this:
[INDENT]Easter gets its name from a pagan goddess
The eighth-century chronicler Bede, in De Ratione Temporum, claimed that the word 'Easter' came from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility, Eostre or Eostrae. The Encyclopaedia Britannica disputes this notion, stating that: 'Given the determination with which Christians combated all forms of paganism, this appears a rather dubious presumption. Rather, it is widely believed that 'the word derives from the Christian designation of Easter week as in albis'.
If you can't see the connection that's because it hinges on a mistranslation.
German scholar J. Knoblech explains: 'Among Latin-speaking Christians, the week beginning with the Feast of the Resurrection was known as hebdomada alba [white week], since the newly-baptised Christians were accustomed to wear their white baptismal robes throughout that week. Sometimes the week was referred to simply as albae [white].'
According to Knoblech, when the word was translated into German, it was mistaken for the plural of alba meaning 'dawn', and so the 'white' connection was forgotten: 'They accordingly rendered it as Eostarum, which is Old High German for "dawn".' And thus came the word 'Easter' in English.[/INDENT]
Regardless of how the name came about, the Christian celebration of Jesus' resurrection is held at the correct time of year - around the time of the Jewish Passover, which according to the Bible is when the crucifixion and resurrection took place. This happens to be at the same time (in the northern hemisphere, at least) as the arrival of spring and the birth of new life that this represents. So it's natural that the already existing symbols of spring, rather than being ruled out or discarded, became part of the Christian festival as well.
However you celebrate it, a blessed season of new life to you all!