This is, as John put it, suburbia at it’s finest.

Want to know what easter bunny does during the rest of the year?

I was trying to learn a bit more about the history of Easter today. Turns out, Easter was not originally a Christian holiday at all. The history of celebrating spring equinox goes back to as early as many centuries before the birth of Christ. Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the spring equinox.

Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period March 22 to March 25. Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus’ life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans.

Modern Easter celebration probably comes to us through the Anglo-Saxon fertility rites of the goddess Eostre. The first Sunday after the first full moon succeeding the vernal equinox was also sacred to her, and this pagan holiday was given her name — Eastre. The full moon represented the “pregnant” phase of Eastre — she was passing into the fertile season and giving birth to the Sun’s offspring.

Olympus 35 RC, Kodak Max 400
Hillsdale, CA
March 2009