Easter is a mixed-up affair: fluffy bunnies and confectionary compete for attention with the tale of a young man being tortured to death. We could say it suffers from symbolic dissonance, a tangle of images – empty caves versus chocolate eggs, daffodils versus crowns of thorns. But this dissonance is only skin deep – both sides of Easter are really sending the same message: that we need not fear death, for it is not as terminal as it seems.
The Christian version of Easter is disarmingly explicit about its function in helping us to manage the terror of oblivion. As the Orthodox Easter liturgy puts it: "Let none fear death, for the death of the Saviour has set us free." Jesus Christ managed this, of course, not only by dying on the cross but through rising again on the third day. His resurrection, as the Bible makes clear, paves the way for all believers to rise again when the last trumpet sounds. Then, as the New Testament puts it, all those who have been baptised, "will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his". This promise of eternal life based on Jesus's example is the centerpiece of the faith and why Easter is the most important festival in the Christian calendar.
But the springtime celebration of life's victory both precedes and – for millions of atheists and agnostics in our secular society – succeeds Christianity. In the northern hemisphere, spring is when vitality returns to the land after the desolation of winter. It is therefore when nature's cycle of life, death and rebirth is at its most visible. Many cultures have been aware that this cycle stands in stark contrast to the linearity of human life, with its march from birth to death. Left to their own devices, dead humans do not rise from the ground in the way that daffodils reappear each March. The primary purpose of many ancient rituals, with all their elaborate and expensive trappings, was therefore to defeat death by breaking this linearity and binding our human fates with the cycle of nature.
Such rituals were often centered on what anthropologists call "dying and rising gods". These are figures who, just like Jesus, either die or in some other way enter the underworld only then to emerge from death's clutches, and in doing so prepare the way for the rest of us to do the same. But unlike in Christianity, these figures frequently embodied seasonal change: in Greek myth, for example, the goddess Persephone, who had been abducted to the underworld by Hades, returned to the earth in spring, bringing the green shoots of new growth with her. In ancient Egypt, this role was played by Osiris, who was murdered by his brother only to be brought back to life by his wife as the first mummy. His rites were similarly tied to the return of life to the land – they even involved growing plants in mummy-shaped pots.
The rituals surrounding the Germanic goddess Eostre, from who we have the name Easter, were long ago lost. Indeed, even her identity is disputed, as there is only one ancient reference to her – by the Venerable Bede in England, writing already after Christianity was all but established. But a long tradition of mythography associates her with hares, eggs, the return of light and other tokens of rebirth. Whether or not our ancestors really worshipped Eostre, these symbols have been part of European folk traditions since records of such things began.
So although mummy-shaped pots are now out of fashion, the Easter symbolism of rabbits and green shoots all identify this festival with the renewal of life. Our rituals today – mostly involving either hunting for, racing with or eating eggs – might be a little tame compared to those of, say, the ancient mystery cult of Persephone, which lasted 10 days and involved blood sacrifice and psychoactive agents. But they serve the same purpose: to encourage us to identify with the endlessly recurring rhythms of the seasons and so believe we can escape the finality of death.
Therefore many ancient peoples would not have been at all surprised to see these two sides to our spring festival, the god who must die only to rise again and the egg-bearing bunnies. In these older myths, these two sides came together to convince us that death is not the end, neither for our crops in winter nor for ourselves in our dotage. Christianity emphasises only one side of this story; but our folk traditions have preserved the natural symbols too. So whether through a midnight mass or a slice of simnel cake, the real meaning of this weekend's festivities is to reassure us about our ultimate fate.
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