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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   21937 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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Yes, the Dark Ages were real. They were not "and this lasted up to the 14th/16th century until 18th century Enlightenment/19th century Rationalism/20th century mass Atheism came along to liberate us!"

It does matter who invents the name and the concept, or do you indeed agree with this stunning example of fact-based representation?

The original, invented by christians, do not steal, holiday of easter?

Yes, original invented by Christians Easter. It is based around the Jewish festival of Passover, or are you going to argue the Jews stole this from the Anglo-Saxons, too? In nearly every European language, the term for Easter is derived from ecclesiastical Latin or church Greek "Pascha", derived ultimately from Pesach, for Passover. See the Irish word Cáisc or, indeed, the English term Paschal (and the name derived from that, Pascal, as Noel and Noelle from Christmas).

We even had rows in the early Church about the date of Easter being too near to Passover!

Now, where the pop culture "Easter is a pagan feast them dirty Christians stole!" depends on two legs:

(1) Many cultures have spring festivals. Easter is a spring festival, therefore The Dirty Christians stole it from pre-existing European spring festivals.

To which I reply, the only people with a legitimate right to complain about us appropriating pre-existing religious feast of the time are the Jews with Passover, and if we're gonna blame The Dirty Christians then we also have to blame Da Joos for ripping-off Passover from some Canaanite or Mesopotamian spring festival. It's turtles all the way down!

(2) There totes was a goddess Eostre and she was the same as Istara/Inanna. Here we get the divergence and, ironically, the recombination of anti-Catholic Protestant polemic (the good old Two Babylons type) and the neopagan movement. The anti-Catholics were (and still are?) very big on "There used to be Pure Gospel Christianity, but at an early date corruption crept in, thanks to the emperor Constantine, and the Roman Catholic Church was born, and this was chock-full of pagans only pretending to be Christian, and they carried over or cynically adopted popular festivals so the masses could keep on worshipping the old gods under the pretence of celebrating new Christian saints and what-not". Then the neopagans hopped on this with "ours is a Genuine Ancient Tradition not invented out of whole cloth in the late 19th up to mid-20th century, we have rights to the big popular cultural events like Christmas and Easter because they belong to us" (often, as I say ironically, quoting the anti-Catholic stuff for evidence).

To which I reply, the big foundation stone for this is one (1) reference, by a Christian saint St Bede (formerly known as the Venerable Bede before his long-delayed canonisation) in a book on working out the dates of major Church feast days like Easter, The Reckoning of Time. (See above where I mentioned about controversies over dating Easter). He mentions that the Anglo-Saxon name for the period where Easter is celebrated is (what now corresponds to our month of April in modern dating) named after a goddess Eostre:

THE ENGLISH MONTHS

In olden time the English people - for it did not seem fitting to me that I should speak of other nations’ observance of the year and yet be silent about my own nations’ - calculated their months according to the course of the Moon. Hence, after the manner of the Greeks and the Romans, [the months] take their name from the Moon, for the Moon is called mona and the month monath.

The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Solmonath; March Hrethmonath; April, Eosturmonath; May, Thrimilchi; June, Litha; July, also Litha; August, Weodmonath; September, Halegmonath; October, Winterfilleth; November, Blodmonath; December, Giuli, the same name by which January is called. They began the year on the 8th kalends of January [25 December], when we celebrate the birth of the Lord. That very night, which we hold so sacred, they used to call by the heathen word Modranecht, that is, ‘‘mother’s night’’, because (we suspect) of the ceremonies they enacted all that night.

...Nor is it irrelevant if we take the trouble to translate the names of the other months. The months of Giuli derive their name from the day when the Sun turns back [and begins] to increase, because one of [these months] precedes [this day] and the other follows. Solmonath can be called ‘‘month of cakes’’, which they offered to their gods in that month. Hrethmonath is named for their goddess Hretha, to whom they sacrificed at this time. 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. Thrimilchi was so called because in that month the cattle were milked three times a day; such, at one time, was the fertility of Britain or Germany, from whence the English nation came to Britain. Litha means ‘‘gentle’’ or ‘‘navigable’’, because in both these months the calm breezes are gentle, and they were wont to sail upon the smooth sea. Weodmonath means ‘‘month of tares’’, for they are very plentiful then. Halegmonath means ‘‘month of sacred rites’’. Winterfilleth can be called by the invented composite name ‘‘winter-full’’. Blodmonath is ‘‘month of immolations’’, for then the cattle which were to be slaughtered were consecrated to their gods. Good Jesu, thanks be to thee, who hast turned us away from these vanities and given us [grace] to offer to thee the sacrifice of praise.

(If these calendar names are stirring vague sensations of "haven't I heard something like these before?", yes, Tolkien used these as basis for month names in The Shire, e.g. 'Winterfilth in the muddy Shire').

Now, this was catnip in the late 18th to early 19th century folklorists and antiquarians, particularly when we started getting European nationalist movements (think of the revivals of 'this is our native language and literature, these are our historic traditions, we are indeed a separate culture of our own and not mere helots of the dominant empire'). It had an entire name of its own, Romantic Nationalism. We get composers like Smetana and Sibelius writing works based on local folklore and myths, the Celtic Revival in Ireland, the search for and creation of national epics.

And discovering Big Important Pre-Christian Influences was a huge part of this. Eostre is probably linked to dawn goddesses and there were deities like that in Europe, heck we might as well invoke Ushas and Eos here as well. But those had fallen into obscurity, until the new scholarship seized upon Bede's mention to reconstruct an almost entirely imaginary goddess. We don't have any details of her worship, nature, etc. because Bede is the only surviving reference we have. But that didn't stop the Romantic Nationalists from giving her a slew of attributes and bigging her up in importance.

And so here we get to today, where it is taken as Gospel that hares, eggs, chocolate, and the rest of it are all derived from Eostre, the goddess cruelly displaced by the wicked Christians from her own feast.

But no, children, Easter is Christian. The name in the English-speaking world may be derived from Anglo-Saxon but the feast itself has been there from the foundation of Christianity.

Yes, the Dark Ages were real. They were not "and this lasted up to the 14th/16th century until 18th century Enlightenment/19th century Rationalism/20th century mass Atheism came along to liberate us!"

Eh, on some metrics it did last until the 14/15 hundreds. Some of the graphs do look shockingly similar to the "hole" meme, tbh. The "enlightenment came to liberate us" part however is much more complicated.

It does matter who invents the name and the concept, or do you indeed agree with this stunning example of fact-based representation?

That meme has a lot of problems but who invented it is not one of them.

The original, invented by christians, do not steal, holiday of easter?

Yes, original invented by Christians Easter. It is based around the Jewish festival of Passover

Well, there you go. Original much like sonichu.

Eh, on some metrics it did last until the 14/15 hundreds.

Oh, baby. Baby, baby, baby

Well, okay. If you get your history off the pop culture shelf, who am I to stop you? 🤣 What, are the Carolingians nothing to you?

Well, there you go. Original much like sonichu.

And who did the Jews copy Pesach from, tell me? Enquiring minds want to know!

I will refer you to my previous messages.

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