Some old lady randomly stopped me outside the store yesterday leading with a hearty “Happy Easter!” Unfortunately, she ignored my reply and went off about how amazing it would be if the Easter Bunny dropped off checks at everyone’s door from Elon Musk.
Still have no idea what to make of that.
Maybe she’s a religious studies expert who knows that Ostara is a whole cloth invention of a 19th century German man and that while the English name of Easter is probably derived from a little understood Pagan Goddess other languages use derivatives of Pascha but she didn’t want to make a whole deal of it
I think one of the neat things about neo-paganism is that you can kind of make it up as you go along and it’s perfectly valid. The gods are really just set dressing, shorthands to concepts that you can acknowledge and appreciate, with rituals and holidays more for mindfulness and community than harkening back to some proto-Germanic/Celtic worship for material gain from powerful spirits. I mean I’m sure there’s some of that too and many people take it seriously, but I hardly think strict belief in the gods is necessary. Most of it’s guesswork anyway, it’s not like written language was widespread or lasting in those areas, and even then what’s the real difference between going back a millennium or two and the present day when there’s another 60-80k years of unknown language/religious history before that? Might as well find a name you like that other people recognize and go with that.
I’m going to choose to believe this is what happened because it makes me happy.