SPLITTING HARES
Raining on the Easter parade

Sounds familiar, right? Thing is, I'm not talking about Jesus and Mary.

Easter, which Christians the world over celebrated this past Sunday, is actually an ancient pagan festival of the coming of spring. The early Church appropriated the holiday for its Messiah, but not even the papal censors could rid Easter of its pagan roots. Many of the pre-Christian traditions have persevered.

The virgin mother/son/resurrection myth is found in Sumerian, Babylonian, Phrygian, Phoenician, and Egyptian lore, to name a few. Jesus of Nazareth, well versed as he was in Scripture, likely knew the stories himself.

The Mother and Son were known by many names. In Phrygia, in modern-day Turkey, they were the fertility goddess Cybele and her son and consort, Attis. Her devotees would ritually bleed themselves on Friday, bowing to an image of Attis nailed to the tree. Sunday would mark his rebirth, and the coming of spring.

The Phoenicians knew the Goddess as Astarte and her son as Tammuz. To help her mourn Tammuz's death, they would dye and hide eggs, eggs being a symbol of fertility. We do the same thing on the White House lawn.

Other names for the Goddess include Asherah, Esther, Aurora, and Eostre. The latter was a Germanic deity venerated throuhgout what is now Western Europe. Her symbol was the hare -- Eostre's hare or, if you will, the Easter Bunny.

There is a decidedly pagan way to determine the date of Easter: the first Sunday after the first full moon the occurs on or after March 21. The vernal equinox occurs when the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator; in other words, when day and night are the same length of time. The approximate date for this: March 21.

Coincidence? I think not.

Here's the kicker: Easter Sunday is the holiest of holy days of obligation in the Roman Catholic Church, a day of veneration for Jesus Christ. Yet the holiday is named for a pagan goddess. Which pagan goddess? Take your pick: Eostre, Astarte, Asherah, Esther. All are fertility goddesses associated with spring.

The Judeo-Christian god saw the Goddess as his greatest rival. If you've read the Hebrew books of the Bible, you know that the worst sin against Jehovah was worship of the Goddess. Jesus himself, a devout Jew, was Her sworn enemy. That his most sacred holy day is named after his greatest rival, then, is irony to choke on.

So that's the skinny on Easter. The next big pagan festival on the calendar is May Day. On the first of May, townspeople would descend on a grassy clearing, eat, drink, take off their clothes and, in a frenzy of orgiastic delight, ignore for one day their marital vows.

The meaning of "kissing the May pole" I will leave to your imagination.