Ēostre

The next full moon after the Spring Equinox is the festival of Ēostre. That's today. Ēostre is a Germanic fertility Goddess of Spring and according to the Venerable Bede her name is the origin of the Christian Easter, although it is hard to find any reference to her elsewhere. That said, Ēostre is Anglo Saxon in origin and there are records of Easter activities revolving around hares and eggs in old Germanic culture.  Maybe there's a connection.  I'll tell you where there's no connection and that's between Easter and the festival of the chocolate Jesus we see today. What's all that about? It's crossed my mind that that's why so many right wing / Christian types* get so worked up when they see other faith / cultural groups following their traditions, you know the types, the 'coming over here (fill with a pejorative of choice)' types. It's not that these faith / cultural groups are following their traditions so mush, as it's that we're not.  We've put everything up for sale, sold the lot; every tradition distilled down to its consumer worth, then sold cheapened. The world of man, ay, mental. 

The world of nature on the other hand, accepts no such nonsense. In the natural world the Hare's off and all nature strains ready to join the chase. The forest is still quite bare, though every twig is tipped with a bulging bud, throughout shoots thrust through last years litter in search of the Sun, whilst all about  spring blooms begin their colonization, soon to cover great swathes in colour. We'll feast on vistas of yellows, blues and whites; and you know how good that feels. Following a forest stream today we chanced upon an isolated clump of Daffodils hugging the bank, beautiful, a promise of what's to come. A toast to Ēostre.

* By no means are the majority of Christians right wing, that's not what I'm saying. No, I'm talking about the very vocal group who you'd get if you created a right wing / Christian venn diagram.