Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, even the death and resurrection of a God are all far older traditions than you might think.
This Easter, let us celebrate a God, born from a virgin, who was sacrificed on a Friday only to resurrect three days later and bring with him the promise of eternal life. No, it wasn’t Jesus (he resurrected after only two days), this was Attis, an older God and consort of Cybele. Attis was a God of vegetation and it was the burgeoning Spring that he represented.
Worshipers of Attis used to mingle in ancient Rome with those following Jesus and doubtless they used to have some humdingers over which was the true God and which the usurper. Even then, they were not unique and virtually every civilisation has an equivalent deity: Tammuz, Adonis, Baal, Osiris, and Dionysus are a few.Easter itself was first recorded by Venerable Bede who says that the Anglo-Saxons called the entire month Eosturmonath (now April) after their Earth Goddess, Eostre. He also recorded that the Pagan festival had, by the beginning of the Eighth Century, been entirely replaced by the Christian custom. Entirely? Bede may be Venerable but he is clearly not infallible; elements of the Pagan festival survive even today.
Let’s start with the Easter bunny.