Vernal equinox pagan holiday full#

While dying the eggs, women and children would think carefully on their hopes and wishes for the coming year.

The Celts (under a broad definition of Indo-European, not as a racial grouping but as a grouping of people with similar religious practices, culture, and language) often dyed the eggs red to symbolize the menstruation cycle. They run for miles and can even become aggressive and appear quite mad, hence the English and French expressions-“As mad as a March hare.”Įggs also represent fertility and the promise of new life. It is said that the typically shy, quiet hare becomes fanatical and fervent. It is apparently quite a spectacle in the European countryside.

The hare is an evident fertility symbol that is undeniably tied to the Vernal Equinox, March being the rutting time of the hares. She was so touched by this gift that she recruited her minions (the rabbits) to return the eggs (only brightly colored now) to the children in baskets (the birds’ nests), and that is where the tradition of rabbits delivering eggs to children comes from. Whether Eostre herself is hare-headed or her attendants are hares, she is strongly associated with the hare-and later its cousin the rabbit for obvious reasons.Ī popular myth says that the children of the time presented eggs to the goddess as a gift in return for her bringing them the spring. The hare is also associated with the moon in many cultures, due in part to its nighttime eating habits and in part to the image of one on the moon. Some descriptions say Eostre herself is hare-headed, and the goddess of rabbits and birds. Ostara and the egg she carries are symbols of fertility, of new and continuing life. Later on, the holiday commemorated the Exodus from Egypt in the thirteenth century B.C. In ancient times, the holiday coincided with the spring harvest and was a pilgrimage festival (one of three times during the year when all men were required to participate in celebrations at the temple). Passover, which occurs in the middle of the Hebrew month of Nisan, is one of Judaism's most important festivals. It was the celebration of the symbolic resurrection of earth itself, Christ, and Hathor (of Egypt) to name a few. The equinox was recognized world wide as a time for renewal, rebirth, and revivification. Often the tastiest cured meats were presented to the spring celebrations and feasts as a sign that the people no longer needed to stockpile food. With the end of the cold, dark months, ancient pagans no longer needed to store and ration foodstuffs. As the sun becomes stronger there is a sense of joyful abundance.

The earth reawakens to a burgeoning new season of life-giving, life-affirming gifts.

Vernal equinox pagan holiday full#

Vernal Equinox usually falls somewhere between March 19 and March 22 (note that many resources only mention March 21, as opposed to the date of the actual Equinox), and depending on when the first full moon on or after the Equinox occurs, Easter falls sometime between late March and mid-April. (The origin of the word east, the direction of the rising sun, comes from various Germanic, Austro-Hungarian words for dawn that share the root for the word aurora, which means “to shine”) Modern pagans have generally accepted the spelling Ostara (Oh-star-ah), which honors this goddess as the word for the Vernal Equinox. Easter gets its name from the Teutonic goddess of spring and the dawn, whose name is spelled Oestre or Eastre.