Eostre is the spring maiden. She is the goddess of the Dawn, assumed by many scholars to be the Anglo-Saxon counterpart to the Roman Aurora and Indian Ushas. and many associate her with the Norse Idhunn, the Goddess of of vitality and health who is said to keep the apples that furnish the gods with eternal life. She is the goddess of natural beauty and life just beginning, she is seen as ever jubilant and frolicking. Eggs and hares are sacred to her, representing fertility and bounty. Her name is given to the fourth month in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, Eostur-monath, which traditionally is when her feast is celebrated. When Christianity came to primacy, her spring tide celebration was usurped and absorbed into the Christian pascal rite, as the monk Bede wrote in De Temporum Ratione:
“Eostur-monath has a name which is now translated Paschal month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. (Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit.) Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”
Thus, the followers of the new faith who sought to destroy her cult actually guaranteed its perpetuity! It is appropriate at Eostre’s festival to leave gifts of painted eggs in the wild places, a custom which is remembered in modern day “Easter Egg hunts”.
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