History of Easter and it's Pagan roots..

                                 

                                                    A odd time of the year for this post lol but here ya go......

 Ostara,  is the Goddess of spring time and  Fertility her symbolizes are egg's and Hares, representing birth fertility and new life.

 Ostara otherwise known as Ēostre, is the Germanic  goddess of spring and dawn and fertility. On the old Germanic calendar, the equivalent month to April was called “Ōstarmānod” – or Easter-month.

Ēostre is attested solely by Bede  in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), the pagan feasts in Ēostre's honor was heald, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal Month  a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

 Historic linguists  have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn   Ausṓs , likely the original  goddess the Germanic  Ēostre and Ostara are based on. Additionally, scholars have linked the goddess's name to a variety of Germanic personal names, a series of location names in England, and, discovered in 1958, over 150 inscriptions from the 2nd century CE referring to the matrona Austriahenae.

Theories connecting Ēostre with records of Germanic Easter customs  including hares and Egg's, have been proposed. Particularly prior to the discovery of the matronae Austriahenae and further developments in Indo European studies, there have been several debates  among some scholars about whether or not the goddess was an invention of Bede. Ēostre and Ostara are sometimes referenced in modern popular culture and are venerated in some forms of Germanic neopaganism

Did you know roughly 61 million eggs will be dyed  in the US each year, ? 

Did you ever wonder why the egg is symbol of Easter?or wonder why they are brightly colored? And where did this magic rabbit come from anyway?

Eggs are an ancient symbol of new life and springtime.

Eggs have become a sort of metaphor for Jesus rebirth, but originated as a Pagan symbol of spring and fertility.  Later incorporated into the christian church lake many other pagan traditions.

The early Zoroastrians used eggs as a symbol of the Vernal Equinox." FYI, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first Full Moon after the equinox. Of course, most of the people painting eggs this year don't identify themselves as Zoroastrians, the church has incorporated many old tridiagonal rituals and costumes to convert new followers (as apposed to  torture or burning them at the stake, that doesn't leave many new patrons..) 

 Easter eggs came to the United States with the German settlers in the early 18th century. They brought us a lot of the Christmas and Easter traditions we have today. They also brought us the easter bunny. 

The tradition of decorating Easter eggs isn't a modern development, people have been decorating them in central Europe since at least the 13th Century. That's where the tradition of ornately decorated eggs, à la Fabergé, came from.

So, in case you were wondering whether the Easter egg was invented for purely commercial purposes, the answer is no. It was hijacked for purely commercial purposes (I'm kidding, sort of). The week leading up to Easter does just happen to be the biggest week of the year in terms of egg sales. Though i'm guessing the Easter Bunny is behind that.