Happy Easter :)

[jay]

For those who celebrate it, and a nice spring day to everyone else. :)

We're going to have the kids hunt candy and things scattered around the house (patgreene and cyan_blue did the hiding last night, after I'd fallen asleep on the couch), then to our church at 10:30am, then a large, late lunch (dinner). Then maybe I'll finally bottle the 5 gallons of homebrew that have been pending for 2 weeks...

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Thanks -- I'd wondered how the spring/autumn flip affected one's perceptions of the holiday. I imagine that it would affect the relevance of some of the symbolism... like the subsumed Northern European pagan fertility symbols (i.e., eggs and rabbits).

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

The eggs go without comment. There aren't really any indigenous fertility symbols, and eggs work as well as anything. But I can't really point to any particular time of year as symbolising fertility more than others. We're much more affected by rain - we've been in drought the last five years, and this summer has seen the first proper rain for a long time. So currently, we are in a very fertile phase - lots of things are hurrying up and reproducing while they can. A lot of plants have been flowering and producing new shoots out of whack with my memory of when I've seen them other years. (Again, native trees tend not to be deciduous, but drop leaves and produce new shoots according to water conditions.)

Now the rabbit - it's an introduced pest species. There's a lot of very ambiguous feeling around it as an easter symbol (other than, of course, eating it :-) ). There's something of an attempt to replace it with the easter bilby. But you're watching a culture slowly developing and changing.