[Closed] The Further Commercialisation of Easter...

huge leg of lamb, that's all I'm interested in.

Just say no

Easter? Is that those four days where it gets in the way of everything else?
PITA

It's what Good Friday is all about...

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There was a time before it even meant any of that shit about Easter bonnnets and going to church.

Eggs are no longer just made of chocolate, but are painted and covered in beads, sparkles or pom-poms.

Some are even real eggs ffs!

I prefer Easter to Christmas. Less bullshit and better weather. Not religious, to me it's just the spring festival

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Not religious, to me it's just the spring festival

I prefer the winter equinox

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The whole joy of easter for me is the double Bank Holiday

I went past someone's house yesterday with one of those little signs plonked in a pot that says "Easter Bunny please stop here".
FFS.
Its bad enough that people were doing these "stupid christmas boxes" for christmas eve. Is christmas not enough?

As kids (we're talking 40 years ago here) we always used to have a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings on Easter Sunday (not quite so lavish as Christmas Dinner but I still really liked it.

And lots of chocolate eggs.

Personally I think Easter is a waste of two bank holidays. Much of Europe only take one. I am Catholic fwiw have been to Church once in the last 10 yeats at Easter.

As for Commercialisation I think the Christian meaning was lost long ago.

Apart from buying it all in a shop it's probably a step back towards a more traditional easter, this. Decorated eggs instead of chocolategeddon, and decorations were always a part of it in some places. And the easter bunny's essentially Furry Santa

Modern british easter really has basically nothing to do with christianity, you can see that in the church's whining about it. But that's fair enough since the main imagery is all obviously stolen anyway- it's so blatantly a fertility festival that people made a halfassed attempt to retcon christianity onto. The egg represents the stone, why? Why an egg for a stone? Why do we decorate it? Why do we [i]eat[/i] it?

And now all that's left for most people- the egg- is the bit that never really sat well in the christian mythology in the first place, so there's no intuitive link. The same thing's happened with christmas to a lesser extent, in making an everyman festival the connection with faith broke. But with easter there's not even much of a cultural link these days.

Happy long weekend! That's the story of jesus. we do easter because we like it, so we should do easter how we want to.

As for Commercialisation I think the Christian meaning was lost long ago.

The Pagan even longer ago.

As for Commercialisation I think the Christian meaning was lost long ago.

One of our local Christian charities is giving Chocolate Easter eggs to needy families.
A box of a dozen chicken eggs would have been of more use if their bloody needy.

Probably only in the sense of being a national festival. I think you might find that Christians still 'celebrate' it

*may not strictly be true

not having to worry about spending any more than £20-30 on a few cheap easter eggs for everyone.

Why do you worry about anything more at Christmas?

Don't let yourself get sucked in!

Yeah, it is nearly as commercialised as Christmas.
Do you think I could get away with a new bike for easter on that basis?

Firstly Easter is the best of all the 'holidays' it's a long weekend in Spring, what's not to like - it comes with chocolate, okay I'm on a diet at the moment so I'll pass but what's not to like.

As for the commercialisation, well they can try - Sainsburys offered me "Easter Crackers" today, like crackers you pull with a crap joke and a paperhat inside, yeah nice try...

So yeah, it's another one when the shops do people, parents expecially a bit - but compared to the nightmare of Christmas I'll laugh off a cardboard box with a sliver of chocolate in it for £6 in return for a long weekend at the same time as all my friends.

twinw4ll - Member

One of our local Christian charities is giving Chocolate Easter eggs to needy families. A box of a dozen chicken eggs would have been of more use if their bloody needy.

It's an attention grabber- easter eggs are a terrible way to donate food but it'll get people's interest in a way that normal donations don't. We did an easter egg collection at work for the local food banks, same thing- obviously £/value, easter eggs are a disaster but it's got a couple of hundred people thinking about donating to food banks.

And you know what? Screw it, there's kids out there that would have been left out and now they get to feel like they're getting the same thing their mates do, for once. That's worthwhile. If you want to get annoyed about it, get annoyed about the fact people in one of the richest countries in the world, are depending on donations to eat. Nobody's going to go short because someone donated a chocolate egg instead of £3 worth of inexpensive staples- people are going to go short because[i] shit is ****ed up.[/i]

This is why it's a shared celebration.

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I misread the title as "The Fuhrer Commercialisation of Easter"

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And you know what? Screw it, there's kids out there that would have been left out and now they get to feel like they're getting the same thing their mates do, for once. That's worthwhile. If you want to get annoyed about it, get annoyed about the fact people in one of the richest countries in the world, are depending on donations to eat. Nobody's going to go short because someone donated a chocolate egg instead of £3 worth of inexpensive staples- people are going to go short because shit is ****ed up.

Bravo

The rabbit thing is from a different place entirely, as is the egg thing, so it amuses me to see blinkered Christians trying to merge the concepts. Acknowledge things for what they are.

What else is easter supposed to be about beyond easter eggs and chocolate?

The so called religious festival is a joke. If it really is supposed to be about the death of jesus then why is it not celebrated on the same day each year? Lets face it, the day of his crucifixion and resurrection is far more notable than his birthday, you would have thought someone would have made a note of when it happened

Well his birthday isn't celebrated on his birthday is it?

The so called religious festival is a joke. If it really is supposed to be about the death of jesus then why is it not celebrated on the same day each year?

You ought to make at least a small effort to understand something before you ridicule it.

It moves around because the story is set around Passover, and Passover moved around.

You ought to make at least a small effort to understand something before you ridicule it.

It moves around because the story is set around Passover, and Passover moved around.

I know that. Thats my whole point, the only event in the christian story that is unique and its celebrated on the date of a jewish festival because no one seems to know when it is alleged to have actually happened. Its like Christmas which is just stuck onto the winter solstice festival because no body knows when jesus was actually born.

It hard to have a religious festival when no one knows when the events that are being celebrated actually happened.

It really isn't. It's symbolic - the ritual is what's important.

Given how much time and the calendar has changed in thousands of years it's not surprising no-one knows the exact date does it? If you asked one of the disciples when it happened, they wouldn't have said 'April 12th'. They'd have said 'well it happened over Passover' so that's when it gets celebrated. Seems straightforward to me.

they wouldn't have said 'April 12th'. They'd have said 'well it happened over Passover'

which in turn is the commemoration of "an event" which must have happened the first time on a particular date, no?

Easter moves around because the early Christian church(s) enjoyed an argument (let's face it, still does)

I ended up searching for Fuhrer bunnies online and found this interesting article about the Nazis breeding Angora rabbits for their SS uniform jacket linings at the concentration camps.

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav=N:4294963828-4294963805&dsRecordDetails=R:CS3952

The so called religious festival is a joke. If it really is supposed to be about the death of jesus then why is it not celebrated on the same day each year?

It is if you follow the lunar calendar that is still used by the Jewish faith. It became a moveable feast when we switched to the Gregorian calendar. Easter is determined by the feast of Passover and starts on Palm Sunday when Jesus entered Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.

Easter is determined by the feast of Passover

Are you sure? I thought the whole "movable feast" thing was to ensure that the new ceremony was never near the start of Passover, because of the, y'know...Jewish "thing"

In fact Nicea determined it would be:

"Easter shall fall on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the spring equinox"

The Gregorian calenders just corrected the "Creep" that the Julian calender had built into it.

Good call mefty. Open our ideas to different concepts. We start our calendar year at the point when the Earth has completed an orbit of the sun - but there are other ways to count days.

nickc - Member

which in turn is the commemoration of "an event" which must have happened the first time on a particular date, no?

Yep, but 2000 years ago, you didn't get a reminder from facebook on Jesus's birthday. Timekeeping itself wasn't so accurate, it was more or less at the same time as the julian calendar came in which was the romans' first real attempt to make a consistent, accurate calendar, so dates were still constantly on the piss.

Of course, it's actually tagged onto passover, which is even older and uses a calendar that's basically as old as civilisation. The hebrew calendar is pretty incomprehensible- it has things like bonus months which you squeeze into the calendar if the first month of spring comes before the first flowering of your crops.

Are you sure?

It is an oversimplification. The date is determined by the

The first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox

The Orthodox Church celebrate Easter often on a different date, which is always the week after Passover. The Western Church determined that the Vernal Equinox would always be March 21 according to the Gregorian calendar and then set out a formula for calculating when the first full moon would be. Neither of these exactly correspond with the lunar cycle so the two Churches celebrate on different days, the Orthodox being the more "correct".

Tesco have said they're sorry for Easter, anyway.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39587226 ]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39587226[/url]

Yep, but 2000 years ago, you didn't get a reminder from facebook on Jesus's birthday. Timekeeping itself wasn't so accurate,

they had pretty sophisticated ways of measuring time a couple of thousand years ago. FWIW. but hey-ho, we seem to have strayed somewhat from the OPs rant... 😳

Is it nearly time to buy a handful of [s]Easter eggs[/s] choccy bars for the family at ~25% of the price for far more choccy?

Co-Op had a 2 Easter eggs for £8 deal! 😯

Lets face it, the day of his crucifixion and resurrection is far more notable than his birthday

His birthday is even more unknown and very unlikely to have been December 25th. Do you reckon there were many shepherds out tending their flocks in open pasture in the middle of winter?

but hey-ho, we seem to have strayed somewhat from the OPs rant... 😳

It's been fun watching it develop 😀

GrahamS - was talking to the local vicar (my mate's dad) last evening and showed him your picture, he's nicked it for use this weekend 😆

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Would make it more fun