Terms of Use
TagTag.com
tagtag.com/jiewen
Easter falls officially on the first Sunday after the full moon of March.It is not coicidental that this corresponds with the beginning of spring, for the Christian celebration of Christ's resurrection replicates far more ancient pagan celebrations that have to do with the return of the sun . The deliberate linking of sun and Son is a motif throughout Christian literature. The name Easter itself ,according to the eighth-century historian the Venerable Bede, derive from Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon dawn goddess. Easter ,like Eostre, represent rebirth:the revival, after darkness, of the soil--or, in Christian terms ,of the soul.
It is because of this association of the holiday with rebirth that the egg has long been its chief symble. Alan Wats calls the Easter egg a modern variant of the ancient World Egg, the symbolic construct that denotes wholeness and that also stands for the "
origial germ from which all life proceeds."
Francis Weiser(1954) also mentions the egg as a symbol of spring and fertility,
and notes that the ancient Persians gave each other eggs at the equinox, just as Christian do today. In addition, he points out, the egg functioned for Christians as a mundane symbol of Christ's tomb- a cold and hard casket from which new life ultimately breaks forth in triumph.
The egg has been a centerpiece of Easter customs for centuries. American egg-rolling contests, egg hunts, and egg-dyeing all have their European counterparts. The decoration of eggs is particularly common , with styles ranging from the pastel monotones that are most common in the United States to the painstakingly elaborate filigree work of the Ukraine, which makes its traditional pysanki worthy of display in a museum.In Greece and the Christian middle East, eggs are dyed red, probably the original iconographic hue symbolizing the sacrificial the sacrificial blood of Christ.
Home Site Map my.TagTag
Terms of Use
TagTag.com