(as each pore became a tiny atomic laser for 1/40th of a billionth of a second to the tune of 2.5 Billion Watts)

As we celebrate Easter in 2025, perhaps it might be a good time to take stock and ask ourselves, what are we celebrating? Are we celebrating an imaginary Easter Bunny who brings children baskets full of jelly beans and chocolate bunnies and dopamine spikes? If so, I humbly propose that we dig deep and see if there is something else we all can celebrate on Easter. We can start by asking how chocolate-binging and hiding dyed eggs became the focal point of the holiday that was originally intended to commemorate the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

It appears that the holiday may have been hijacked in the 8th or 9th century, when the Church piggybacked the worship of a fake goddess of fertility and new life onto the Resurrection celebration. Per the AI Overview, the name of this goddess was Eostre, hence the derived holiday name we know and love. It is not a certainty that Eostre was widely venerated as “there are few primary sources about her.” But…”She is particularly known in Anglo-Saxon and Old High German traditions…Hares and eggs are symbols associated with Eostre, representing fertility and new life.”

I found a blog with more details:

“Most of the symbolism around this holiday actually comes from the pre-christian Pagan celebrations of the Spring Equinox…bright (easter egg) colors are a reflection of the spring flowers blooming and egg itself may be linked to chickens’ return to laying after the long winter months…The Easter rabbit symbolizes fertility…a perfect animal to symbolically represent the fertility of springtime.”¹

The blog author then went on to describe how she planned to worship or celebrate Oestre this Easter including appropriate attire, waking up at dawn, and collecting dew in a jar (her sacrificial offering to Oestre). hmmmm

Another blog further elaborated: “Legend has it that Eostre mated with the solar god of the spring equinox and nine months later, at Yule/winter solstice, gave birth to a man/god child. The subject of fertility and new life and its relationship to Eostre can be found throughout many cultures. Colored eggs have been associated with the spring celebration since at least 580 BCE in Persia. In Ukraine, Pysanka eggs historically honored the sun god father of Eostre’s child until Christianity came to Ukraine. Her name and festival rituals have been appropriated by Christianity for the church’s rebirth-after-death story…”

This blogger then amazed me by going on to say: “Christianity should be embarrassed that it has needed to embellish its Easter tradition by appropriating pagan symbols and rituals for its own use. The bunny isn’t for Easter, it’s for Eostre. The eggs aren’t part of Easter, they’re symbols of Eostre. Really the only symbol of Eostre the Christian church hasn’t appropriated for Easter is the dragon/serpent. I guess a dragon couldn’t quite so easily be worked into their narrative…Regardless, cultural appropriation is wrong, whatever your motivation…There is no fecund rabbit toting a basket of dyed eggs in any variation of the Easter story. There were no jelly beans at the Last Supper. There are no bunnies in the Bible.”² Again, interesting perspective. 🙂

So how did the Church get itself into such an embarrasing situation? One possible reason = syncretism. And syncretism is defined as: “Syncretism (/ˈsɪŋkrətɪzəm, ˈsɪn-/) is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.”³

You will note that the implication here is that syncretism represents an inclusive approach. Therefore, in the case of the Christian religion, it may also have represented acceptance of non-Christian beliefs in seeking this unity.

Perhaps this occurred because the Church went through an era in which it was compromising and watering down the gospel, for the sake of getting people converted–in the face of resistance. (It also implies that the Christians weren’t letting the Holy Spirit do the converting.) Here’s an example of how one church father caved/compromised during the approximate timeframe that the pagan customs infiltrated the Resurrection holiday (my italics):

“In AD 723, the Anglo-Saxon missionary Saint Boniface was attempting to convert the northern tribes of Europe to Christianity. He came across a group of Germanic pagans who worshiped a sacred tree known as Thor’s Oak, named for their god of thunder. Boniface eventually chopped down the tree and used its wood to build a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter. When an evergreen tree grew in its place, Boniface declared it to be a new symbol…Thus, the formerly-pagan Germanic tribes would be able to maintain many of their cultural traditions, but would use those traditions to celebrate Christian holidays rather than pagan ones…The modern celebration of Easter owes a great deal to syncretism as well…Most of the traditions we associate with Easter come from early pagan symbols for Springtime and rebirth, including bunnies (who are very fertile) and eggs.”⁴

So this gives us a pretty good idea of when and where the “let’s fold in Eostre” detour happened–and why we celebrate accordingly. Now let’s look for something else we can celebrate on the holiday.

Lately there has been a re-kindled interest in the Shroud of Turin.

Side Note: Anyone who is “relics-averse” might have an immediate negative response here. So I hope you won’t be offended if I bring up the topic, with the preface that I am definitely not into shroud worship, by any means. Basically, the Shroud has been a curiosity of mine that continues to re-surface when I periodically check technological advances in determining its authenticity. Thirty years ago, the scientific community was unable to I.D. it as the real deal. I will next excerpt from a 1995 Documentary from the “Ancient Hidden Secrets of the Bible” TV Series, on the Shroud. At that time, the only conclusive thing that the experts could agree on was that they did not know how the image got on the shroud.

At that time, Professor John Brown who was an electron microscopist said, “whatever energy may have created the shroud image is certainly beyond our ability to duplicate at this time.” Kevin Moran, an optical engineer, said, “the shroud image is made from tiny fibers that are 1/10th the size of a human hair and the picture elements are actually randomly distributed… to do this you would need an incredibly accurate atomic laser. This technology does not exist.” The documentary raised the question of whether this was indeed a photographic record of Jesus’ resurrection. Was it a photograph on linen?

Essentially the question that no one could answer at that time was – what made the image? Don Lynn, an image processing scientist said that what ever the mechanism was for forming the image on the shroud, it had to occur in a short period of time, act in an up and down direction, and produce an intensity determined by the distance between the cloth and the body. One of the theories that seemed to satisfy these characteristics was that it was a coronal discharge…similar to lightning! A Physics Professor, Dr. Robert L. Jones, went on to say that, “it’s like every pore of the body suddenly fired a miniature laser beam for a split second of time and that explanation defies our current understanding.”

Thirty years later? Same deal. A transcript from Bible Discovery TV encapsulated a lot of the podcast traffic:

“The image on the Shroud captures the very moment Jesus Christ rose from the dead…Additional evidence to support this claim is the complete lack of blood smears present on the cloth. Smears would be caused by a person shifting or removing the cloth from the bloodied body, which is extremely difficult to do given how the corpse was wrapped, which suggests another supernatural occurrence: the body either de-materialized from inside the wrapped cloth or transitioned through the Shroud at the moment the burst of light penetrated the fabric…if you zoom into a thread at the microscopic level, there are roughly two-hundred fibrils that make up that thread. The image on the Shroud is only 1 fibral deep. Any other chemical application, say, a dry powder, would leave much more intrusive chemical residue. The image on the Shroud is nearly impossible to reproduce without radiation…”

In 1995, they were saying, we don’t have the technology. In 2025, they are saying, “we don’t have the technology:”

“The most prevailing theory is that the negative imprint we see was created by a sudden burst of photons, that is an oscillating strobe of high-intensity light with a simple wavelength and radiated the fabric. In other words, the image on the cloth was created by a burst of light that came from the corpse and projected outward. The event happened in 1/40th of a billionth of a second and required a minimum of 2.5 billion watts to produce the image. To create a similar light, one would need all the electrical power generated on Earth today. And that is a conservative estimate, mind you. Some scientists put the electromagnetic energy required at 34 trillion watts. There is no light generating mechanism in human history that can do this.”⁵

Whether or not we believe in the Shroud of Turin, something utterly incomprehensible and inexplicable happened between the time when Jesus was sealed up in the tomb, and the time He re-appeared on earth as a handleable human facsimile who shared meals, walked through walls, transported/teleported Himself at will, and lovingly prepared everybody to receive his Holy Spirit–actions and events seen by hundreds of human witnesses.

Subsequently, rather than making sure that we used the latest Color Whip Egg Decorating Kit or Non-toxic Dye-less Spinner, and that we fastidiously stuff baskets full of party favors (and a year’s worth of refined sugar) — baskets that are representative of what an imaginary mythical character might leave during a late night home invasion —

maybe we should just sit our children down and discuss the real supernatural implications and impact…of the Resurrection:

Micro: individual fibers on burial cloth may well have been indelibly marked (the first fibril out of ~200 per fiber) in a hyper-selective coronal discharge leaving a photographic image of the event…for generations

Macro: God-man saves everyone who is willing to believe the photographed event…for generations and forever.

Personally speaking–knowing that this utterly awe-inspiring God would want to have anything to do with me at all, is cause for continual, unending, eternal celebration.

++++++++++++

¹https://www.arcane-alchemy.com/blog/2020/3/5/all-about-eostre-the-pagan-goddess-of-dawn
²https://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2022/04/16/traditions-easter-and-cultural-appropriation-eostre/7317930001/
³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism
⁴https://eagleandchildblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/defending-easter-a-lesson-on-syncretism/
⁵https://biblediscoverytv.com/history/2024/shrouded-in-mystery-no-more/