Piercing the clouds

A fine bright sun
warms the garden and the world.

Happy Easter!

It never fails...

And once again FB is full of people claiming that Easter is in fact based on the festival of Eostre, goddess of Spring, rabbits/hares and eggs.

It is cute, but there really isn't a basis to support it, apart from this passage in Bede's Reckoning of Time: 'The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Solmonath; March Hrethmonath; April, Eosturmonath [...]Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated 'Paschal month' and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance...'

In English traditions the hare did become connected to Easter, and I wonder if there is a semantic mix up, an association with the old vernal equinox - which would have been in March - and the old name, Hrethmonath.

The desperate need to make Easter something else through linguistic fancy is just irritating: First there was Easter as Ishtar, then that got poo-pooed so it became Eostre, and once this has been dispelled it will be some other name with vowels separated by an 's', Easy-peasy, goddess of spring vegetables or Asinine, god of donkeys whose fertility festival was actually on Palm Sunday, then stolen by the Christians...I swear I could write an entire book of these things, and someone somewhere would turn it into a meme and use to to 'so there' Christians.