Easter is in fact a fun holiday, especially for kids, come on, a bunny that brings chocolate? Lots of pastel colors, flowers, eggs. Spring is here, getting warmer out. How could anyone not love that? There are lots of spring festivals throughout the world, another one, Holi, just passed.
While we think of Easter as a Christian holiday of course it predates Christianity by quite a few years, many hundreds if not thousands in fact and can be traced to pagan and Sumerian practices. Seems something we should all know by now, quite a bit of Jewish and Christian mythology was borrowed from previous cultures. An excellent history on the Pagan Roots Of Easter was written by Heather McDougall over at The Guardian, fun read.
With Easter a day past and our recent writings on kids books think it’s worth reminding us all that cultural stories and myths are important for us all. As humans we all crave community, we are social animals, having these common stories of our past keeps us grounded in the present. Regardless of whether you are Christian or Hindu, or Jewish, even atheist or agnostic, knowing these stories and passing them on is important, why we recommended the Secular Genesis for kids recently and the very soon to be released follow up, Secular Exodus.
Haven’t quite found a secular style book specifically on Holi yet, but there are lots of excellent books on Hinduism.
