Any other Christians annoyed at what society has turned Easter into?

[Opol]

I’m resigned that the same has been done to Christmas. But for me that is “only” the birth of Christ.

As a Roman Catholic, Easter is of far more importance to me. For me, God’s love for humanity meant he sacrificed his only son. Jesus’ resurrection is literally the embodiment of the victory of light over darkness, good over evil etc.

I don’t wish to gate keep but seeing it reduced to Easter baskets and chocolate rabbits is unpleasant to witness. I’m more annoyed at society making everything hollow and superficial via consumerism and over consumption.

I'm a Christian too and the way around this is to encourage your church to host some special Easter services and then you can honour the weekend as you want to.

This weekend our church had a beautiful, reflective Good Friday service and now I'm not long back from a 'He is risen' celebration complete with lively worship, followed by heaps of cake and chocolate. We had loads of visitors and it was a lovely, joy-filled service.

So yes, Easter has become very commercialised and I can't stop that but I can organise events and services in my area and if people want to join us to celebrate the resurrection, they can. If they don't, they won't. Celebrate/honour it as you would like to and then mentally tune out from the bits you don't like.

@ImInTheBathRightNow apologies because I wasn't intending to mock pagans or paganisms, it was a reference to the huge amount of comments on here about paganism from people who also don't know anything about it, other than it predating Christianity and are just using it to make a point.

@ImInTheBathRightNow - true. The comment 'There's more to being pagan than planting seeds' interested me, too. There are many ways of being Pagan. Wiccans, for one, can be completely secular, work without reference to dieties and embrace green witchery or kitchen witchery. For them, 'planting seeds' might form a large if not exclusive part of their practice and there's nothing at all wrong with that. Moon and seasonal rituals may or may not involve the invocation of deities: some might view themselves as Pantheists with no concession whatsoever to the neo-pagan spiritualities; others might follow the rules (sometimes prescriptive albeit less so than Christianity) of the different forms of Wicca, for eg). It doesn't matter. A major point of paganism is that every individual's path is unique to them. Paganism doesn't dictate that a failure to follow certain obligations is 'sinning', or in-fight and tell others they are 'paganing' wrongly. That's in opposition to the more didactic religions which simply require regular prayer and provide us with a set of rules to follow (not saying this is necessarily bad, just different).

Spirituality is a very personal affair and was, to me, even when I practised a Christian faith. Preaching is a turn-off. When my aunt 'found God' she quickly became such a crashing bore that it didn't take long for neighbours and even family to find any excuse they possibly could to avoid her. Pity, as she's intelligent and was quite an interesting woman before. But who wants to be held captive audience to someone's interpretation of their religion?

yabu. God / Jesus no more real than the Easter bunny

I'm sure when I was a kid at 3pm every Good Friday the skies used to darken and we would have a thunderstorm and it really annoys me that this no longer happens.

Except the word Easter literally comes from the pagan word Eostre. You are welcome to celebrate your appropriated religious event, you are welcome to your faith and belief in old folklore stories from the Middle East. Easter (and Christmas) have pagan roots, it’s a simple fact that irritates you more than me. And you’re quite right that no one forces me to celebrate Easter in any form, so I don’t. My children had an egg each on Friday which they didn’t really bother with, but they have zero care for anything to do with your (or anyone else’s) religious beliefs either.

What did Easter use to look like before Easter Eggs and all that?

What would people like Easter to look like?

It's Ramadan at the moment. And Passover starts in a few weeks. These religious festivals will carry on in our multi-cultural society.

That's simply not true. The issue is that Christianity is always stepping on everyone else's toes. My mum is a lifelong Christian, I'm not. I love her. She respects my views, and I respect hers. The problem on here is that often there is not a huge amount of respect, with a lot of the disrespect coming from the religious. So obviously, non religious will argue their corner.

@pictoosh Easter isn't a celebration of fertility. Other religions may celebrate fertility at this time of year but Easter is a Christian celebration.

NRTFT

But it hasn’t. We’ve just spent the day with my husband’s family for a lovely lunch. And then our niece, nephew and their baby popped over for a cuppa. We’ll probably be going to my parents’ house for a cuppa and catch uo to spend time together with my family tomorrow. Yes, we paid for lunch but that’s not relevant as we do that occasionally and yes we’ve bought some chocolate eggs because, well, why not?

When the kids were little we used to do our own Easter egg hunt in the house and garden and printed clues off from the internet - that cost a couple of sheets of paper (so nothing). Some people choose to buy craft things of course to do that sort of thing and again, why not? People buy craft stuff at other times and it keeps kids occupied relatively cheaply. We also used to have family get togethers when the kids were little too.

I’m not sure how spending time with family and friends, or spending a little bit of money on themed entertainment for kids means it’s been commercialised and has no meaning.

All it would have taken for Christians would have been staying away from pagan festivals and celebrations and try to make them Christian.
Jesus could have been in September and died in August and nobody would have batted an eyelid. But hey, celebration of winter solstice, celebration of spring, you get the green, the yellow, bunnies, gifts etc. Tough s.. you know what.

Religion and science are not the same. They are more like opposites.

The damage done to both mine & my partner's family by the Catholic Church has left me quite hostile to that institution. But, I can see how it would annoy you that, despite the Church's obscene wealth and influence, it's an increasingly difficult myth to sell.

I'm sure there's a passage in the Bible that'll give you comfort, but maybe avoid this one.

"you must kill with a sword everyone who lives in that city. Destroy the city completely and kill everyone in it, as well as the animals, with a sword. Gather up everything those people owned, and put it in the middle of the city square. Then completely burn the city and everything they owned as a burnt offering to the Lord your God. That city should never be rebuilt; let it be ruined forever."

Yes, I think that's why I'm only mildly amused by it all rather than annoyed - I did stuff all through Lent, was in Church twice a week throughout, in church five days this week (actually six, but one of those was a funeral) (and 'church' today was a graveyard, before dawn, very appropriate), have found it all enlightening, inclusive, harrowing, enriching and ultimately joyful (as always). If some people prefer chocolate bunnies, let them at it.

And it's full-on Easter until next Sunday, and Easter season until Pentecost, so the fun doesn't end tonight.

But that's your interpretation. How do you know what people did after Christ was resurrected? Maybe they did something similar, like massive feasts?

I'm not sure how accurate this is. My kids' very standard non-religious state primary school did a full on Easter production with a trial, barabas, pontius pilate, crucifixion and rolling back the stone.

You won’t get much agreement on here despite your post asking the question of other Christians.

Yes it’s commercialised.

It’s a uk bank holiday because of the Christian connection not because it’s a celebration of Spring. We do not have a bank holiday for that.
Christmas is exactly the same

However
I think most people know what Christmas and Easter are about whether they believe or not. They do know they are about the birth of Jesus and his death…..at least.

Fireworks night however is a complete cf.
Despite the fact most on here will claim they know it’s all about burning Catholics. Not many in this country actually do and even schools are happy to have celebrations despite having catholics in their schools. That’s disgusting!!!
I don’t think King James’s law imposing all Catholics attend bonfire celebrations has even been repealed in this country.

As an aside it’s worth watching ‘Gunpowder’ with Kit Harrington playing his ancestors role in the Gunpowder plot.

Just don't let it worry you. There isn't any point. Just do your own thing and celebrate Easter how you wish.

But...Eostre is the name of a goddess. Easter is named after her.

I’m not a believer, and I enjoy seeing my grandchildren doing an Easter egg hunt etc. However I also recognise that it is a Christian festival and think that more emphasis should be made on that point; in the shops and on tv etc. What makes me really mad is things like a certain supermarket that put ticks on their hot cross bun this year instead of crosses and shops that have signs saying ‘happy holidays’ rather than happy Christmas, so that they don’t offend certain other religions, even though this is a Christian country!

This sums up the main issue I have with religious people - the belief that their religion entitled them to judge and dictate to others. Observe Easter how you see fit and leave others in peace to do likewise. Judge not lest you be judged, as I believe it says in your sacred book.

😁

Does that make you mad?

Does it happen enough to annoy you?

I find it unbelievably sanctimonious and hypocritical when Christians, who appropriated the pagan festivals in the first place and who make up a vanishingly small percentage of the population, come on and lecture us about the “proper” way to celebrate certain feast days.

No one is stopping you from worshipping in whichever way you see fit but you don’t get to tell the non Christian majority what to do with their feast days, thanks very much.

Yes but I don't think they were celebrated with plastic tat, commercialism, fairy lights etc