as my uncle used to say, made you glad you didn’t winter kill.

Easter is the most important holiday to Christians, because it is the moment of our redemption. A lot of people have issues with Easter because it is based on a saxon pagan holiday- but if you look at the roots of Christianity, there is plenty of good reason for the integration of the so called “pagan” holidays into the Christian holidays. The idea of a “Gospel” account is in fact a pagan invention, just borrowed by the authors of the gospels. Likewise, the Pagan rites of spring were so embedded in the culture of the time, and they were so important to the people of the time, the Church wisely integrated them and taught, correctly so, that the celebrations they integrated were simply celebrations of Christianity before the arrival of Christ. So Easter, which was originally Oestre, the Saxon Goddess of Fertility, became integrated and is celebrated today both as a rite of spring and the moment of our redemption, which gave a sense of solidity and continuity to Christianity that it would have lacked otherwise. The history and tradition of the Catholic Church have always been steeped in formerly pagan rituals for very good reasons that I’m perfectly OK with because I know them and understand them, because they came from the Creator to people ignorant of Christ at the time.

Below the fold is a discussion of the Cantalamessa dustup, if you don’t want to read a long preachy post you might want to leave and go see what Brigid is up to.
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