C.H. Week
With Easter quickly approaching, we seem to be fiercely into the annual Charlton Heston week. The Ten Commandments was last night, and even as I type PBS seems determined to play along and is showing 55 Days at Peking. I can't wait for my Ben Hur fix, and will of course giggle all throughout the blatant homosexual imagery (which The Celluloid Closet claims Hes was completely oblivious to). Although, for my money, Olivier was a better Heathcliff.
This past Saturday one local station even replayed the Saturday Night Live episode from '93 where he hosted. The man's got a fine sense of humor about himself, I must say. As an aside, glancing at the hosts/guests list by season, it seems like a decent tool to chart musical trends. '93/'94 was firmly in the grip of grunge, for example.
I do have to point out that the name "Easter" comes from a pagan celebration, and if it were tied to passover like, you know, it is in the scriptures, then it would be in late April this year... just sayin' (I'm looking forward to making my celebrated vegeterian matzoh ball soup for the local seder we attend at the Unitarian Church)
Bunnies aside, there is, however, a lot of symbolism surrounding red eggs which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Germanic goddess. Red eggs seem to occur all over the world in nearly every culture all throughout history. They're still common in Eastern Orthodox tradition, and many images of Mary Magdeline holding a red egg exist (which, I suppose, fans of The DaVinci Code would find highly significant...) One could probably draw a nice line connecting the Greek Orthodox tradition back to the ancient Greek Orphic celebrations involving red eggs. The ancient Romans also seemed fond of them, as did the ancient Egyptians.
The next time you're in the grocery store, note that pickled eggs are often colored red.
In doing a bit of searching, I also found reference to an interesting Chinese tradition where one holds a red egg party to celebrate a baby's first month of life. The symbolism of a red egg featured prominently in one of my favorite alternate history books, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which almost made my SF Literature List, below.
This past Saturday one local station even replayed the Saturday Night Live episode from '93 where he hosted. The man's got a fine sense of humor about himself, I must say. As an aside, glancing at the hosts/guests list by season, it seems like a decent tool to chart musical trends. '93/'94 was firmly in the grip of grunge, for example.
I do have to point out that the name "Easter" comes from a pagan celebration, and if it were tied to passover like, you know, it is in the scriptures, then it would be in late April this year... just sayin' (I'm looking forward to making my celebrated vegeterian matzoh ball soup for the local seder we attend at the Unitarian Church)
Bunnies aside, there is, however, a lot of symbolism surrounding red eggs which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Germanic goddess. Red eggs seem to occur all over the world in nearly every culture all throughout history. They're still common in Eastern Orthodox tradition, and many images of Mary Magdeline holding a red egg exist (which, I suppose, fans of The DaVinci Code would find highly significant...) One could probably draw a nice line connecting the Greek Orthodox tradition back to the ancient Greek Orphic celebrations involving red eggs. The ancient Romans also seemed fond of them, as did the ancient Egyptians.
The next time you're in the grocery store, note that pickled eggs are often colored red.
In doing a bit of searching, I also found reference to an interesting Chinese tradition where one holds a red egg party to celebrate a baby's first month of life. The symbolism of a red egg featured prominently in one of my favorite alternate history books, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which almost made my SF Literature List, below.
posted by fatoudust at 10:40 PM
1 Comments:
Don't you love how The Ten Commandments is everyone's favorite Easter movie? Because Easter is when Moses freed the Jews from Egypt and Passover was the day of Jesus' resurrection. *end sarcasm*
And you should send me your your celebrated soup recipe...it sounds yummy!
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