Paganfest

[den]

Celebrating on a date set as the first Friday after the first full moon after the northern autumnal Equinox sounds like a pagan festival date to me. I upset a Christian friend today by calling Easter "a paganfest." "Don't you celebrate our Lord's sacrifice?" Well, I thought the whole point of the bread and wine thing was to remember that every week.

Anyway


I heard a rumour that a company was producing chocolate easter Wombats, but I couldn't find any in the shops. Bugger. I'll just have to settle for easter bilbies.

Comments

[elektron.livejournal.com]

From here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/anyasy/217909.html),
For all the Christians, here's something originally in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" and confirmed via Google: Easter is derived from Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon mother Goddess of the Dawn/Fertility. The goddess Ostara was the Norse equivalent whose symbols were the hare and the egg. Eostre is still celebrated by Wiccans. ; )

I don't recall anything about pagan festivals having to do with weeks, but Christian festival dates only need to be reasonably close to pagan festivals for the purposes of drowning it out.

The bread and wine thing is the first Sunday of every month, not every week.

[guruwench.livejournal.com]

The bread and wine thing is the first Sunday of every month, not every week.

ObNit: That depends on the flavour of Christian church, IME. When I used to go to Anglican church (ie the Church of England), communion/eucharist/the bread and wine thing actually was every week. Catholics IME do bread every week, but the wine seems to be special occasions only (never did figure out just when).

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

No, bread and wine are both featured at every Eucharist, which most practicing Catholics celebrate once a week.

[guruwench.livejournal.com]

Whups! My apologies for being unclear. You are, of course, correct, and the wine is featured along with bread each week at a Catholic mass. What I think I meant to say was that, IME, the wine was only offerred to the congregation on special occasions rather than every week. The church I went to briefly as a child had the bread offerred to all each week, but the wine was only ever served to the priest(s).

Thanks for the correction. :)

[ms-interpret.livejournal.com]

No, not at any of the Catholic churches I went to growing up. The wine is offered to the congregation every week.