by Crumpet 46 Replies latest jw friends
(Clam here is the promised fluff thread - but you know it will probably degenerate into an intellectual discussion about pagan festivals - like my posts so often do! )
So how will you all be honoring the goddess Astarte or was it Istoreth? Will you be devouring chocolate eggs - with their heavy pagan influences? Or chasing bunnies?
Or will you be using the holiday to get your house and garden straight - and clogging up the roads to Ikea and B & Q all weekend?
Well you already know my answer, EATING PEEPS of course! I hope to be eating chocolates too IF someone buys me some!
Is it really the festival of sex? My brainwashing says "festival of fertility". If it's really the festival of sex, not fertility, I guess I will need to re-evaluate my plans. Fertility is just not as fun to celebrate. ;)
No easter eggs for me - I'm allergic to chocolate, haven't ate any since I was about 14 years old, which is a very long time ago now! Linda might have some chocs, though she hasn't got much of an appetite at the moment.
We don't have our own garden, just a yard at the back, so it looks like a quiet weekend with a couple of drives in the countryside around Derby, though we may go further afield. I kind of like the idea of it being a Pagan Festival of Sex though, wouldn't mind honouring that....
Trev
Is it really the festival of sex? My brainwashing says "festival of fertility". If it's really the festival of sex, not fertility, I guess I will need to re-evaluate my plans. Fertility is just not as fun to celebrate. ;)
Well there is a good point rebel 8? My parents always droned on about the nasty pagan sexual rituals and seemed to equate fertility with sex...However isn't May Day a sex festival too? The big pole representing the male phallus and the girls dancing round it (like most men's wet dream)? Maybe I am mixing my festivals - but hey lets celebrate sex anyway!
Here's a little bit about Ostara!!
Ostara
by Kveldulf Hagan Gundarsson and Gunnora Hallakarva, from Mountain Thunder , Issue 4, Spring1992.
As the days lengthen, the earth thaws and starts its greening after the long, dark, cold winter. These are the early days of spring. Our ancestors would be busy now, making final repairs to their plows, preparing their draft animals to pull them, checking the seed corn to be sure that it was ready to plant. The success of the next year depended entirely on the crop that was about to be put in the earth. Our ancestors knew this, and thus turned to our Gods and Goddesses to ensure the fertility of the earth, the viability of the seed, and the growth and abundance of the crops that would keep them alive through the next hard winter. The rituals that marked the spring planting time are still known by name to us today, called "Easter," or to Asatruar, Eostre, or Ostara in the Anglo-Saxon or Old High German tongues of our ancestors.
The feast of Ostara takes its name from the Goddess Eostre, of whom little is known, except that she must have been a Goddess of spring, fertility, rebirth, and the rising sun. Her name is etymologically connected with both the "east," and with a word for "shining; glorious." The Ostara worship was so strong in the Germanic lands that the somewhat similar Christian feast of rebirth and renewal was given the Goddess's name. Bede recounts that the Christian Paschal feast was named after the heathen Goddess Eostre, and so this celebration is still named Easter among the Christians. There is no specific date on which the Ostara feast must be held. The three mightiest times at this turning of the year are the equinox itself and the new and full moons following the equinox. It is probably better in general to celebrate Ostara during the waxing moon.
Ostara represented many complex, interrelated beliefs to our ancestors. The sun was reborn from its winter banishment to thaw the earth, making it ready for the plow. People felt reborn as well, escaping from close, snow-bound confinement into the new warmth. The Gods and Goddesses of fertility were active once again in the land, causing new growth everywhere. Women often were showing the first swelling signs of pregnancy, engendered in the winter months when bed meant both warmth and entertainment for they and their men. As the wilds burgeoned with new life, so too would the lands inhabited by man, bearing crops in the furrows, kine in the fields, and salmon in the streams. Ostara is the brightest and most joyful ceremony of the Teutonic year. It is the time in which we celebrate the renewed presence of the Gods and Goddesses of fertility among us, and their marriages which ensure the fertility of the land. Ostara marks the victory of Sunna over the wolves which pursued her down into winter's dark, and Thorr's victory over the Frost-Giants. We celebrate the end of winter, and joyously exchange the cold for summer's healing warmth.
I kind of like the idea of it being a Pagan Festival of Sex though, wouldn't mind honouring that....Trev
Oh dear I think I may have misled you and led you up the garden path Trev! Oh thats right no garden!
I hope you and Linda can take pleasure and joy in however your spend your weekend together and that dear Linda gets a little appetite back!
Actually, I'll be attending a Catholic church with my buddy's parents ( I'm an atheist, but exposure to other cultures certainly isn't harmful).
And then later on that evening, I'll be sharing a meal with my friends, who are, well, PAGAN.
And I'll have peeps in hand for the whole thing.
We're going camping.
My son will have Easter fun with his mother while Brigid and I feast beneath the stars. Arroooooooooo!!
Well - when you see a guy in a Easter Bunny costume, how could you not think of sex?
As this is my first Easter I will be getting a great big egg before easter this time and not after when they are reduced as I used to do.
