Fixing the date of the Estrogen festival

Banbh

This year Easter Sunday is set for March 31st which is very early and upsets a lot of planning - well for me anyway.
For example, the following school term is going to be very long, giving Primary schools three months without a holiday.
When the Christian church imposed its rituals on the traditional feasts, this one retained its pagan timing being set at the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, presumably timed to fit in with the menstrual cycle.
I'm all for celebrating fertility but isn't it time we picked a date and stuck to it?
Happy Oester!

Bannasidhe

Banbh wrote: »

This year Easter Sunday is set for March 31st which is very early and upsets a lot of planning - well for me anyway.
For example, the following school term is going to be very long, giving Primary schools three months without a holiday.
When the Christian church imposed its rituals on the traditional feasts, this one retained its pagan timing being set at the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, presumably timed to fit in with the menstrual cycle.
I'm all for celebrating fertility but isn't it time we picked a date and stuck to it?
Happy Oester!

Nah- there was so much bickering about the date of Easter there was nearly a schism.

Round One - East Vs West

A protracted dispute in the second and third centuries over the date for celebration of Easter. The Eastern Church terminated Lent and began Easter celebration on the fourteenth day of Nisan regardless of the day of the week on which this date fell. The Jews celebrated Passover then, and the Pasch kept by Christ was also on that day. It was claimed that this practice was received from the Apostles Philip and John. The Western Church always celebrated the Christian Pasch on the Sunday following the fourteenth day of the full moon of the vernal equinox because it was the anniversary of Christ's resurrection. Westerners said that this tradition came from Sts. Peter and Paul. Schism was probably averted by the excommunication threat of Pope Victor I for all who would not follow the Roman custom...

Although the Eastern Christians did not comply, the controversy took a new direction when the Church of Antioch accepted the first Sunday after the fourteenth day of Nisan instead of after the vernal equinox. Disagreements continued until the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) paved the way for a final settlement by decreeing that Easter must be universally celebrated in the Christian world on the Sunday following the fourteenth day of the paschal moon, whose fourteenth day followed the spring equinox.

Round Two - Rome Vs Ireland

The Roman Church adopted a cycle of ninety-five years for determining the Easter date, but the Celtic Church still followed a cycle of 532 years and the Sunday for celebration was different. By the ninth century the Celts conceded and the 95-year cycle was followed everywhere.

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=33249

The Christianizing of Britain begun by St. Augustine in A.D. 597 was carried on with varying success throughout the seventh century. One great hindrance to progress lay in the fact that in Northumbria the missionary impulse was largely Scottish (i.e. Irish) in origin, having come through St. Aidan from Iona. In certain matters of external discipline, notably the observance of Easter, the English and Celtic traditions did not agree. Thus when the Northumbrian King Oswy and his household were keeping Easter, his queen, who had been brought up in the south under the Roman system, was still fasting. The consequent inconvenience and discord must have been extreme. In 664 a fortunate opportunity occurred of debating the matter, and a conference took place at the monastery of St. Hilda at Whitby or Streanoeshalch. King Oswy with Bishops Colman and Chad represented the Celtic tradition; Alchfrid, son of Oswy, and Bishops Wilfrid and Agilbert that of Rome. A full account of the conference is given by Bede and a shorter one by Eddius. Both agree as to the facts that Colman appealed to the practice of St. John, Wilfrid to St. Peter and to the council of Nicaea, and that the matter was finally settled by Oswy's determination not to offend St. Peter. "I dare not longer", he said, "contradict the decrees of him who keeps the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven, lest he should refuse me admission". This decision involved more than a mere matter of discipline. The real question decided at Whitby was not so much whether the church in England should use a particular paschal cycle, (see EASTER CONTROVERSY) as "whether she should link her fortunes with those of the declining and loosely compacted Irish Church, or with the rising power and growing organization of Rome". The solution arrived at was one of great moment, and, though the Celtic Churches did not at once follow the example thus set, the paschal controversy in the West may be said to have ended with the Synod of Whitby.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15610a.htm

Round One - The Eastern Tradition was just too Jewish for Rome.

Round Two - How very dare those bloody Paddys (usually called bloody Scots back then) not toe the Roman line.

Peregrinus

Banbh wrote: »

This year Easter Sunday is set for March 31st which is very early and upsets a lot of planning - well for me anyway.
For example, the following school term is going to be very long, giving Primary schools three months without a holiday.
When the Christian church imposed its rituals on the traditional feasts, this one retained its pagan timing being . . .

As Bannasidhe points out, this one wasn't overlaid onto a pagan festival. Pesach is a Jewish festival.

Banbh wrote: »

. . . I'm all for celebrating fertility but isn't it time we picked a date and stuck to it?
Happy Oester!

We have picked a date - it's the Sunday next after the first full moon following the ecclesiastical Northern vernal equinox. What could be more straightforward?

We could, of course, go for a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar, like we do for St. Patrick's day, or Christmas, but that would mean that the feast could fall on any day of the week, and think of the reduction in the number of long weekends that would result from that!

Penn

Maybe not have a fixed date, but at least a fixed weekend (eg. Second Sunday in April is always Easter Sunday). Can't see why that would be a problem.

Daemonic

Because that makes way too much sense

ShooterSF

No I think it's a perfect representation of how crazy Christianity is, where their godmans birth is celebrated the same day every year while his zombieification day moves every year making his life longer or shorter.

Bannasidhe

Penn wrote: »

Maybe not have a fixed date, but at least a fixed weekend (eg. Second Sunday in April is always Easter Sunday). Can't see why that would be a problem.

You mean go back and work out when Pesach occurred around 33 AD (give or take) and say ok - that is the date of Easter...:eek:

Penn

Bannasidhe wrote: »

You mean go back and work out when Pesach occurred around 33 AD (give or take) and say ok - that is the date of Easter...:eek:

No, just have it the second Sunday of April. Always the second Sunday of April. Or first Sunday. Doesn't matter so long as the whole thing is consistent. If we make it the second Sunday in April, have it always be the second Sunday in April from now on.

F*ck pesach.

Sarky

Why not leave it as a stupidly complex hovering date? I'm only interested in dates that I can plan around in advance. I'd imagine Easter pisses off a load of similarly minded people, and gets very little regard as a result.

sbsquarepants

Banbh wrote: »

When the Christian church imposed its rituals on the traditional feasts, this one retained its pagan timing being set at the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, presumably timed to fit in with the menstrual cycle.
QUOTE]

What??? There's a universal menstrual cycle:eek::eek::eek:
Fúcking hell, nobody is safe!

Bannasidhe

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Banbh wrote: »

When the Christian church imposed its rituals on the traditional feasts, this one retained its pagan timing being set at the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, presumably timed to fit in with the menstrual cycle.
QUOTE]

What??? There's a universal menstrual cycle:eek::eek::eek:
Fúcking hell, nobody is safe!

Wait til the Menopause kicks in.


Now I must go open every single window as I am having a hot flush and feeling sweaty and psychotic. :cool:

sbsquarepants

Bannasidhe wrote: »

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Wait til the Menopause kicks in.


Now I must go open every single window as I am having a hot flush and feeling sweaty and psychotic. :cool:

AKA the rapture!

Banbh

Most (possibly all) women menstruate with the moon, so the fertility celebration/ceremony was set at the first full moon after the spring equinox.

The Christians tacked on the first Sunday after that and added the yarn about resurrection. But, thankfully, we still remember women and their life-giving powers with Easter eggs.

If oestrogen gets its own feast, should testosterone not have one too?

Sarky

Steak&Blowjob day, surely?

Bannasidhe

Banbh wrote: »

Most (possibly all) women menstruate with the moon, so the fertility celebration/ceremony was set at the first full moon after the spring equinox.

The Christians tacked on the first Sunday after that and added the yarn about resurrection. But, thankfully, we still remember women and their life-giving powers with Easter eggs.

If oestrogen gets its own feast, should testosterone not have one too?

Possibly they don't...;)

If they did no woman ever would be 'caught short' and have to ask friends if they have a 'loan' of a tampon and if they did get caught short their friends would have tampons (what will all women being synchronised to the cycles of the moon) and the caught short woman would not be driving around bleeding trying to find an open shop at 10 pm in some forsaken rural Irish town....:mad:

There are several testosterone festivals - organised at regular intervals by every religion of 'The Word'.

legspin

Penn wrote: »

No, just have it the second Sunday of April. Always the second Sunday of April. Or first Sunday. Doesn't matter so long as the whole thing is consistent. If we make it the second Sunday in April, have it always be the second Sunday in April from now on.

F*ck pesach.

It would mean two things. Fristly the Irish and English Grand Nationals would never again fall on the same weekend and secondly, I'd know what date the Monaco Grand Prix is.

Peregrinus

Penn wrote: »

No, just have it the second Sunday of April. Always the second Sunday of April. Or first Sunday. Doesn't matter so long as the whole thing is consistent. If we make it the second Sunday in April, have it always be the second Sunday in April from now on.

F*ck pesach.

Too Jewish for you?

Peregrinus

Banbh wrote: »

Most (possibly all) women menstruate with the moon, so the fertility celebration/ceremony was set at the first full moon after the spring equinox.

The Christians tacked on the first Sunday after that and added the yarn about resurrection. But, thankfully, we still remember women and their life-giving powers with Easter eggs.

Surely, then, the fixing of the festival by reference to the phases of the moon is entirely appropriate? Why would you wish to conceal the origins and significance of the festival by changing this?

Peregrinus

Trivium of the Day: Despite appearances, Easter and oestrogen/oestrus are etymologically unrelated.

Easter is the much older word. Among modern languages, it’s found only in English and German. All other languages, including other Germanic languages, name this festival with a word derived from the Hebrew Pesach.

Etymologically, it comes, via German, from an Indo-European root meaning “dawn”. (We get East, the direction of dawn, from the same root.) Most probably it named a Teutonic spring festival; the name points to the fact that the hour of dawn is advancing most rapidly at the time of the vernal equinox, suggesting that the festival focussed on light or daylight, the lengthening day. But of course all spring festivals - like all harvest festivals - are to some extent festivals of fertility also. Agricultural fertility more than human fertility, though. Still, as we all know, in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of shagging and, although the poet fails to mention it, this is true for women also. So quite possibly shagging was one of the things which was celebrated by the festival, but we don't actually know this. And we have no reason to think that female sexuality was particularly celebrated by this festival.

We've no reason to think that the Germanic festival was timed by reference to the full moon. Since the festival was named for the dawn, and marked the vernal equinox, the sun rather than the moon was the relevant celestial body. The timing of the modern festival by reference to the moon as well as the sun is an inheritance from Judaism, and so far as we know has nothing to do with the Germanic festival.

(And we've no reason to think that the Jewish Pesach was particularly connected with femal sexuality or menstruation, or that it supplanted one so connected. The Jews used a lunisolar calendar; all their festivals were - and still are - fixed by the phases of the moon.)

Oestrus is a much later word. It’s a classical Latin word meaning a gadfly, and by extension a wild desire or frenzy, and this word in turn comes, via Greek, from an Indo-European root meaning impulse, attack, rage. It wasn’t adopted into English until the late sixteenth century, and even then it meant a gadfly and, later, anything that excited activity or passion. It didn’t acquire associations with female sexuality until the mid-nineteenth century, when it was adopted as a scientifically acceptable term for the female orgasm. By 1890, it meant either the orgasm or the clitoris, according to context. It didn’t acquire the meaning of a period of sexual receptivity and fertility until the turn of the twentieth century. Oestrogen, the name of the hormone, dates only from 1927.

Banbh

I think this is a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.

I also did a Wikipaedia search and found this:

The modern English term Easter, cognate with modern German Ostern, developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre,[nb 4] which itself developed prior to 899. This is generally held to have originally referred to the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, Ēostre, a form of the widely attested Indo-European dawn goddess.[nb 5] The evidence for the Anglo-Saxon goddess, however, has not been universally accepted, and some have proposed that Eostre may have meant "the month of opening" or that the name Easter may have arisen from the designation of Easter Week in Latin as in albis.[25][26]

The Christian and Jewish overlays neither conceal nor explain the association of the festival with eggs and fertility (rabbits). Both religions have always been at pains to put down women - in fact, it might be argued that their raison d'etre is to subjugate women.

In my youth we boiled eggs with pictures drawn on them in pencil. Nowadays it's all chocolate - no gadflys though.

Peregrinus

No offence, but could you possibly be seeing a single tree and imagining it to be a forest?

The first point here is that the Easter <> Oestre connection is disputed. We have only a single source which claims that the Saxons had a goddess called Oestre, that she had a festival in the spring, and that the Saxon tribes applied the name of that festival to the Christian festival when they converted. And that source was writing several hundred years after the conversion of the Saxons. A lot of etymologists suggest that he was simply repeating a folk-etymology for the word “Easter” that was current in his own time, but that actually had no basis in fact.

But leave that aside; let’s assume that he was perfectly correct. Even if the christianised Saxons did name the Christian festival after the one they were used to, and the English inherited that, Christianity was five centuries old, and Easter was well-established, before the Saxons converted. Christians had inherited the Pesach festival, and the practice of dating it by the full moon, from the Jews. There is certainly no connection at all between the word English-speakers used to name this festival, and the dating of the festival by the full moon.

Besides, our single source for the claim that there was a pre-Christian Saxon Eostre festival tells us nothing about the date of it. We have no reason at all to think that it was dated by the moon and, given that Oestre was said to be a dawn-goddess, dating by the sun seems on the whole more likely.

So, if the Saxons did bring some elements of a pre-Christian festival to their celebration of Easter, those elements did not include the dating. Furthermore, whatever they did bring in, it’s unlikely that the rest of Christendom was much affected by this. Their Easter customs, practices and inheritances were already well-established; why would they suddenly adopt a bunch of obsolete foreign pagan beliefs and practices just because some hairy men on the fringes of the civilised world had finally embraced Christianity? The adoption of the name “Easter”: may tell us something about how the Saxons understood the festival, but it tells us nothing about the other 99% of the Christian world.

You mention the Easter bunny. Even now the Easter bunny – which does indeed have German roots - doesn’t have much traction outside the English-speaking world. The English-speaking world is now quite large and quite culturally dominant, but of course that’s a fairly recent development. In fact, when I was a child in Ireland, we didn’t have the Easter bunny. We knew of the Easter bunny. It was something they had in England and America; we knew this from comics, television, etc, but it wasn’t part of our Easter. And the reason for this is pretty simple; Ireland was substantially christianised in the fifth and sixth centuries, but there were no rabbits until the Normans introduced them in the thirteenth century, by which time our Easter traditions and associations were firmly established, and there was no room for rabbits. And I think this illustrates that, once the formative period is over, it’s very hard to shift the associations and heritage associated with a folk-festival like Easter.

Banbh

The problem with us etymologists is that we tend to ignore a great deal of other evidence and try to establish a link solely through words and the recorded languages.

We know that Easter is the festival of the eggs and that estrogen or esterogen is the female hormone. And we know that the festival has its date set by the full moon when most women ovulate. (A friend in the advertising industry tells me that the advertisements for sanitary towels are booked for this time. Check the TV tonight and see.)

I remember the introduction of the bunny (not the furry ones that the Romans brought to Britain, of course, but the Hallmark ones that came to Ireland from America in the 1950s). They are further evidence to support the festival as one of fertility or at least fecundity.

recedite

Don't forget India! The Hindu religion (or at least the vedic tradition) is the oldest surviving religion. They have a festival for pretty much each month, normally timed by the phase of the moon.
Considering that the Indian and the European languages can mostly be traced back to a proto indo-european version of Sanskrit, then it stands to reason that India is the origin of the moon based religious festival.

As people moved to more Northern latitudes, surviving the winter season became a paramount consideration. The winter solstice and spring equinox took on an extreme importance. And as every quack farmer knows, when planting your crops you should always plant at night, and at a certain moon phase to ensure the best harvest. So the spring (planting season) quackology is especially important in Northern latitudes compared to other months. Then you have the general "fertility of the earth" reawakening around this time, with the birds laying their eggs, lambs in the fields etc...

More to the point though, the Easter holidays should be fixed at the middle or end of April, because its going to be too f***ing cold in Ireland this year to go anywhere or do anything.

Peregrinus

Banbh wrote: »

The problem with us etymologists is that we tend to ignore a great deal of other evidence and try to establish a link solely through words and the recorded languages.

We know that Easter is the festival of the eggs and that estrogen or esterogen is the female hormone. And we know that the festival has its date set by the full moon when most women ovulate. (A friend in the advertising industry tells me that the advertisements for sanitary towels are booked for this time. Check the TV tonight and see.)

The problem here is that the festival had its date set by the full moon centuries before anyone was calling it “Easter”, and - even today - only a minority of people who celebrate the festival call it Easter, or anything like that. And people were calling it “Easter” many, many centuries before the existence of a female hormone was first hypothesised, and before it was given the name “Eostrogen” (in 1927) and before it was actually identified (in 1929, in sheep).

Furthermore, we know why the festival is dated according to the full moon. It’s because it was inherited from the Jews, and the Jews used a lunisolar calendar and all their festivals were set by reference to the full moon. What’s unusual about the dating of this festival is not the connection with the full moon; it’s the connection with the vernal equinox. It’s the only Jewish festival to be connected to solar movements in this way.

And all this happened long before any possible connection with Oestre. So this isn’t evidence of a connection between the festival and menstruation, unless you are going to argue that all the Jewish festivals (and all the festivals of other cultures using a lunar calendar, e.g. the Babylonians) were equally fertility festivals.

All spring festivals - like all harvest festivals - are basically festivals of fecundity to some extent, I think. In a subsistence agricultural society, the cycle of sowing and reaping is of central importance, and well worth celebrating. The Easter egg, I think, has a triple symbolism:

- as a symbol of fertility and growth in general. It’s not particularly associated with human fertility, though, if only because until the invention of the microscope nobody had any idea that eggs had any part to play in the mammalian reproductive cycle. I think it stands for fertility more in the sense of nature’s diverse capacity to produce food for us, and the multiple uses of the egg.

- as a symbol of the return of spring. Chickens stop laying in the winter and resume in the spring.

- as a (more specifically Christian) symbol of celebration; the end of Lenten privations. Of course, while Lent has a specific Christian significance, it’s generally true that in hunter/gatherer and subsistence agriculture societies late winter/early spring is a time of privation, since the food stored at the last harvest has been mostly consumed, and fresh food sources come in only slowly. So a feast at around the time of the vernal equinox celebrates the fact that we’ve survived the winter, and the next season’s food sources are coming on stream.

So these symbolisms are all related, and they are all connected directly or indirectly to fertility. But I honestly think it has more to do with agricultural fertility than human reproduction or sexuality.

It’s only indirectly relevant, but nevertheless it’s worth noting that the Romans (whose festivals are well-documented) had numerous fertility festivals throughout the year - there was at least one in every month - but they nearly all celebrated agricultural fertility. Only two festivals celebrated human female fertility; one held on the first of May and the other in December. Midwinter is a common time across cultures for festivals celebrating human fertility because births peak at this time. And, by an amazing coincidence(!) Christians celebrate the birth of Christ at this time. So I think if you’re looking for a Christian festival which has absorbed a pre-Christian celebration of human fertility, you may be looking at the wrong one.

Morag

Eostre: The Making of a Myth

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/502368.html

Sarky

I can't buy it tomorrow so I'm having a Dead Guy ale with my dinner now. It's delicious.

Off to a friend's tomorrow for steak and whiskey. Because I can.

Hotblack Desiato

Life of Brian DVD for us tomorrow, it's a tradition

Pherekydes

ninja900 wrote: »

Life of Brian DVD for us tomorrow, it's a tradition

A great movie, ideal for Christmas and Easter!