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How would you explain Easter without referreing it to as the ressurection of Christ?

I've a 3 1/2 year old. Being a single mother and due to my financial situation I live with my super religious parents. I've already given in to allowing my mom to take her for "Sunday School" most because I thought she could meet other children there. With the upcoming Easter holidays I'm begining to wonder how I can explain to my daughter what Easter is without bringing religion in to it. I'm sure she will get a religious explanation in church but I'd like to counter that with a non-religious one. Mostly, I just want her to think for herself and ask questions. I live in a small city in India and other than my brother I have yet to meet another atheist. I've met a lot of people who say "I don't believe in god" simply because they are angry at god because things didn't go as planned not because they really question his existence.

Any suggestions would be more than welcome!

JenniferRoberts 4 Mar 11
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70 comments

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29

Easter started as a spring fertility ritual. Rabbits and eggs have nothing to do with christianity.

Just tell her it was a celebration of spring. The original resurrection was life returning to the world. Plants began to sprout, trees began to bud, animals that were gone all winter came out of hibernation, and birds returned.

JimG Level 8 Mar 11, 2018

@Redcupcoffee ...with a 3 year old?

19

It is an older Pagan holiday called Eostre.

Seriously. The Christian plagiarists did not even try when they stole this one.

It is about Spring and everything growing again.

I heard that Constantine started the replacement of pagan holidays with christian themes. Part of pacifying his failing empire. Pretty much all pagan systems have a vernal equinox holiday. All were wrapped in a thin candy coating and enforced at sword point. Also nearly all have a winter solstice holiday, guess what that became.

12

Just tell her not to worry about all the religious stuff (but also to be respectful towards her grandparents' belief, of course) and to instead concentrate on the real meaning of Easter - that is, the celebration of chocolate!

Jnei Level 8 Mar 11, 2018
8

Easter means candy. It's training for the kids, hey you get cool stuff for going to Church. For the adults, it's ponder your suspension of disbelief season. . It's interesting Easter falls on April Fool's Day, this year.

jeffy Level 7 Mar 11, 2018

Interesting, but perfectly appropriate.

The Christ is risen! April Fools!

Yeah, I'm driving my mom crazy telling her Easter is on April Fool's Day...just love it!

8

I don't see any more issues in explaining the falsity of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or God to my child as they are all fictional beings that we tell our kids about to make them feel better.

My kid isn’t into Easter. She doesn’t believe in the Easter Bunny and thinks it’s silly to look for eggs(though she does like coloring them). Plus, she doesn’t like chocolate so we just decorate a small tree with eggs and bunnies and call it a day.

@DelilahJones33 that's awesome. Kind of like a hello Spring Festival.

7

You could say that he came out of his tomb and saw his shadow, indicating 6 more weeks of basketball

7

Peter cottontail

5

As a lifetime ex catholic, you explain it as a family tradition. "Most of the religious world celebrates this event, and even though we're not religious, we made this holiday a fun family tradition." is what I told my son.

Or you could tell them the truth.

5

Go back to the pagan roots: celebrate spring, new beginning, fertility and preparing to plant.

5

It always meant a paid holiday for me.

marga Level 7 Mar 11, 2018
5

It's like Christmas or Diwali or.... it's just a cultural holiday

Easter is probably easy. I mean what have bunnies or chocolate eggs got to with Jesus?

4

Spring Equinox, feast of new beginnings

4

The truth: It's a pagan holiday celebrating spring's rebirth that got hijacked by the church, to make Xtianity more palateable to pagans they were trying to convert. In a way that yur child can understand. Ex: Easter is a celebration of nature, because the winter is over, and it's time for flowers to bloom.

I needed that more fully explained to me as a kid growing up in NYC...

“Spring” was still quite cold and snowy come March 21, in the days before global warming began it’s runaway greenhousing(!), so it was a long time before I realized how that period of time was considered spring!

February was still the “blizzard month” and as a child, I could see no correlation between Groundhog Day and the start of spring...

Now every winter month seems like the start of spring!

@Ungod
Groundhog Day has more to do with the January Thaw than any real meteorilogical information is concerned.

Just one little untruth in your comment. It wasn't hijacked to make christianity more palateable to the pagans - it was to totally stop paganism, and if you didn't like it, they killed you. They didn't try to convert pagans, there was no choice. There was no PR in the days of old.

3

After the dark winter and long nights without very much to eat except what they had stored, the peopel in olden days welcomed the warmer weather and the hens, coming in to lay , giving us fresh eggs and so they made a celebration and a feast - and now we can go to a store and buy pretty fancy chocolate eggs to remember, that the seasons change and life always begins afresh The grass always greens up and we can play in the warming sun. The change from harsh winter to the green shoots of spring and the warmer days makes us feel more energetic - so we all change a little when the seasons change

3

Perhaps describe it as a celebration of the return of Spring and all the new born things, i.e., baby animals, budding plants and flowers, trees sprouting new leaves.

Pagan festival of the goddess Oestre.

3

The druids called it Oestre and it was a festival more about the returning cycle of a warming sun and a spring that promised a coming fruitfulness and good harvest with the buds devleoping - I am guessing that is where we get 'oestrogen' from - the druids were aware of the oneness of all nature.

3

"The Easter bunny gathers up all his magical eggs in a basket and steps out into the world, and if he sees his own shadow then there will be another six weeks of winter."

Or, more soberly, "Easter is a celebration of springtime. The exact celebration comes from a pre-Christian pagan religion, and every culture and every religion around the world has some kind of holiday to mark this time of year."

3

Celebration of welcoming spring and a cool way to get presents and candy until you're like 12 or 13. Haha

3

[nobeliefs.com]
You can tell her the truth. Religion coopted this holiday like it does most everything else.

3

A celebration of rebirth, when winter passes and plants start to grow again.

3

Many cultures have a Spring/rebirth festival. While the name and festivities vary, they are common. if you know your heritages you can possibly pick one of those and "update" it a bit.

3

I agree with others on here. Explain the true of origin of Easter. And that it's been represented in many ways over time and in different cultures. At this current time, our time, it is represented as a Christian event. In the past, it wasn't. In the future, it most likely won't be. Some cultures celebrate it, some don't.

I don't know what the true origin of Easter. A quick search on Google resulted in this: [allaboutjesuschrist.org]

2

I was baptised and brought up a Catholic and did all the chruch stuff growong up but if you teach your daughter how to think and help her develop her critical thinking as she gets older she'll probably come to the same conclusion you have. Being a Catholic didn't do me any harm, if anything it gave me an insight that I wouldn't have otherwise had.

Weird way to get an insight. Like when the beating stops you appreciate not being beaten? I've never been religious - the insight it what you're born with. Religion stops it.

@GoldenDoll I had no say in being brought up a Catholic so it's hardly weird but insight in this case means something I acquired, I understand what they're about more than if I'd never experienced it. So I have an insight into being Catholic but not Zoroastrian although basic tenants of faith obviously apply and as I stated, for what ever reason, I worked out for myself that it didn't make any sense, whether that's nature or nurture is another discussion.

I found your analogy to being beaten, imo, a little glib but perhaps more accurate than you realise. I was the victim of domestic abuse and so again I have an insight into what it feels like to be physically abused and the long term damage, in a variety of ways, that it causes. It is an insight that I could have cheerfully done without but I wasn't born with it.

@ipdg77 I know about catholicism from catholics, and I know about abuse from kids who were abused. Doesn't mean I don't sympathise and understand it, but I would never suggest a child should be beaten so they could have a better insight into abuse.

@GoldenDoll I'm not suggesting that either, I'm not saying you or anyone else should experience being Catholic or being abused to understand it, all I'm saying is I, personally, have a greater understanding of Catholicism and abuse from personal experience that was not of my choosing. In my case being Catholic didn't do me any harm, being abused did (and I don't mean physical) . But I would hope, again and this just my perspective, that my experiences may prove beneficial in some way to someone else through discussion etc

2

Do NOT allow her t be taken to Sunday school..... nothing good happens in those circles.... and it'll slow her development of critical thinking skills..... which most very religious people are void of.

I went to Sunday school for nearly 15 years, was raised a Christian and was surrounded by extremely religious people. It didn't do me any harm and I'm a hardcore atheist and so is my brother 🙂

@JenniferRoberts Considering the rapidly growing reputation of the Catholic Church as being the largest pedophile ring in the world, I'd say you were very lucky to get out of it unharmed. But, the popes keep saying that the Church's good name is more important than bringing the offenders to justice - so they keep moving them to new parishes in different countries whenever the victims' families start to get wise to their shenanigans.

2

I think it’s called spring. Explain the shifting of the seasons and how ancient people’s came up with different ways to explain it. And how we’re lucky to have science to know what’s really happening.

Iffy Level 5 Mar 12, 2018
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