ishtar

Easter weekend is typically filled with dresses, pastel colors, terrifying giant bunny costumes. laughter, and family. This easter morning I awoke to a family friend knocking on our door delivering the most adorable bunnies riding skateboards that I have ever seen. This in turn, got me wondering why bunnies and egg dying are associated with Easter, so I did a bit of research. 

Currently Easter is seen as a religious holiday to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, but this wasn't always so. 

A long long time ago, in a galaxy that is in fact our own, 'Easter' was something completely different, from what it is seen as today. Ishtar (pronounced Easter) was the goddess of fertility and sex worshiped during Mesopotamia and the Babylonian era. When Constantine the Great took over the Roman Empire in 306 a.d. he declared Christianity as the dominate religion and began to change any and all previous holidays to ones with religious affiliations, as to make his people worship 'the correct' God. 

Since then Ishtar has been changed to Easter becoming a holiday rather than a god; and while bunnies and eggs still show a connection to the true meaning of easter, there has been a slight shift toward a more censored message of the "celebration of spring", rather than the celebration of sex and fertility. 

All this being said, I hope that you enjoyed your easter this year, whether or not you celebrated the resurrection of christ, sex and fertility, or nothing at all. May your bellies have been filled with chocolate and sugar. (The giving out of candies and treats on Easter didn't start till around the 1870's as a way to life the peoples spirits after the war.)