Describing Easter To A Non-Christian

[Wildy]

I know it's been a while since Easter but I just remembered it now.

On Easter Sunday my family had a get together and we brought along our exchange student from China. He is, as far as I know, a Buddhist, and didn't know what exactly the purpose of the holiday is.

The best description I could come up with was something along the lines of:

"We remember a man who sort of wasn't God, sort of not dying for our sins that we have because a man listened to a woman who listened to a talking snake."

I get the feeling I described it wrong. So, two questions:

1. How would you describe Easter to someone who hasn't got a clue as to what it is.
2. How could I improve what I said to make it understandable?

[Marquis de Carabas]

1. How would you describe Easter to someone who hasn't got a clue as to what it is.
A bunch of people who hate *********** having a big celebration of ***********.

[Mr Clingford]

It depends on whether you want to take the piss or not, surely? From your OP it sounds like you want to take the piss so I think you're doing fine.

[Wildy]

I wasn't trying to.

[paximperium]

Easter? The alleged day that Jesus, a god called YHWH incarnate, supposedly arose from the dead after sacrificing himself for some curse that was laid upon mankind by YHWH himself.

[Mr Clingford]

Easter? The alleged day that Jesus, a god called YHWH incarnate, supposedly arose from the dead after sacrificing himself for some curse that was laid upon mankind by YHWH himself.
That's not bad. But, it's the day to celebrate it rather than the exact day, and there are a variety of models of atonement depending on how vindictive you want the God to be.

[paximperium]

That's not bad. But, it's the day to celebrate it rather than the exact day, and there are a variety of models of atonement depending on how vindictive you want the God to be.
I could do the whole Zombie Jesus thing but that's been kinda played out.

[Mr Clingford]

I could do the whole Zombie Jesus thing but that's been kinda played out.
Easter is the day on which Jesus eats the brains of believers, which explains their stupidity?

[paximperium]

Easter is the day on which Jesus eats the brains of believers, which explains their stupidity?
I've yet to figure out how to put a shotgun into a good Zombie Jesus story.

[MarekM]

I've yet to figure out how to put a shotgun into a good Zombie Jesus story.

http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/shotgun-jesus.gif

[Mr Clingford]

Excellent piccie.

[joobz]

Like any religious holiday, you need to believe in the miracle to find it special.

Easter: The day Jesus was ressurected, fulfilling the prophecies and granting every christian a chance to get into heaven.

Passover: The Day when death spared the jews but not the egyptians.

Diwali: The day that good beat evil.

[quarky]

What about the bunny eggs?

[EventHorizon]

Easter is the day Jesus rose from the pumpkin patch to hand out chocolate bunnies and eggs to all the children of the land.

[Dave Rogers]

1. How would you describe Easter to someone who hasn't got a clue as to what it is.

"It's when we have a big celebration to commemorate the fact that we made it through another winter. Some middle-eastern religion likes to think it's got something to do with them, but actually it's just a good excuse to pig out on chocolate rabbits."

2. How could I improve what I said to make it understandable?

Nothing. It's as clear as any explanation could be of the excuses used for the assimilation of a festival by a religion that has nothing to do with it.

Dave

[Safe-Keeper]

When someone asks a serious question, they deserve a serious answer. So here's my shot (long answer):

"Well, Easter and God's sacrifice doesn't make much sense in my eyes today, but back in the old days in the Middle East, it was common for the punishments of particularly serious crimes to be passed on to the children of the lawbreaker. For example, if you killed someone, it could be decided that not only were you made an outlaw, your children and their children would be, too. Now, the Jews and Christians have a myth which some of them believe in and some regard as a metaphor. In this myth, the first humans, a man and a woman, are living in a paradise called Eden. While in the garden, they are forbidden from eating from the tree of knowledge, as God prefers them to be blissfully ignorant of evil, but they eat from it anyhow, evil enters the world, and God finds out and throws them out of the garden of Eden into our world, in which they start having children, giving rise to the current population of the Earth.

Now, since God decided this was a very serious offence, He decided that not only would the children and grandchildren of the two first humansbe punished with eternal torment in Hell, but every subsequent generation. This lasts until God decides to incarnate himself on the Earth and sacrifice Himself, redeeming us so that we may enter Heaven upon our death. Now, the logic behind this is that back in the day, in the Middle East, if you were guilty of some crime and owned an animal, for example a goat, you could punish yourself by sending the goat, the scapegoat, as it were, into the desert to starve to death. By giving up this valuable possession, you had made up for your crime and could go free. What God figured is that He had nothing more important to Him than Himself, so He chose to send an incarnation of Himself, which He named Jesus, to the Earth. Christians believe that Jesus became a rabbi with a fellowship of 12 people, and eventually got Himself killed, temporarily, to clear humankind's criminal record, so to speak. Now, the reason Christians celebrate Easter is because God rose from the dead after three days in Hell and again rules over all mankind."

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

Hey, I had the same thing. A Chinese guy (the one I mentioned in another thread) who came to the United States two years ago as an exchange student and who is completely and totally unfamiliar with Western religions asked me to explain Easter to him. I was at a total loss.

The best I could manage was "Well, Jesus rose from the dead- that's Good Friday- and you don't eat any meat 40 days before this. And there's Palm Sunday which is, uhm, well, you bring palms to church and make crosses out of them. And you have to bring a basket of eggs and bread into church so that it can be blessed and you can eat it for breakfast."

It's odd, how you can be Catholic your entire life but be completely unable to give someone Catholicism 101. Whenever he had questions about Christianity or the different denominations of it or the practices of it, I wouldn't quite know how to answer. I'd give answers based on very limited knowledge.

"Well, the differences between the Protestants and the Catholics are, erhm, well, the Protestants don't believe in the Pope? And they have a lot more money? And, uh,..."

"The Eastern Orthodox aren't Catholic, they broke off from the Catholic Church and the theological differences are, well, I don't know. They allow their priests to marry, though."

"No, no, Mary isn't a God. She's...something. A saint?"

"Well, God exists in three parts. There's God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost which is...I don't know exactly what but that's why you touch your shoulder when you cross yourself."

It's like speaking with an alien who is visiting Earth for the first time, if that's not too insulting. He doesn't have a clue and I couldn't explain it in any way that made much sense, in either the Christian view of it or the just-the-facts-outsider's-description of it.

[Soapy Sam]

It's a Bank Holiday.

Law of Physics, innit?

[ugot2bekidding]

It's the day Jesus walks out of his tomb...and if he sees his shadow we'll have five more weeks of Passover.

[Evilgiraffe]

How would you describe Easter to someone who hasn't got a clue as to what it is?

I think Mr Izzard summed it up quite nicely....

_XJfRzNOJNE

[Tsukasa Buddha]

It is the day their avatar of YHWH respawned after getting pwned by some plebes, after which all of his party members could follow him to the Heaven server.

[Shalamar]

2000 years ago, some Romans nailed a guy to a cross, and so we celebrate with chocolate rabbits laying eggs.

(I'm going to hell for typing that)

[George152]

It's an ancient pagan (Northern Hemisphere) midwinter feast ripped off by the Xian sect to sell the gullible their godman malarky.

The hint is in the egg connection..

[TheAnachronism]

Like any religious holiday, you need to believe in the miracle to find it special.

Easter: The day Jesus was ressurected, fulfilling the prophecies and granting every christian a chance to get into heaven.

Passover: The Day when death spared the jews but not the egyptians.

Diwali: The day that good beat evil.

I hate to revive this old thread, but i just wanted to point out that Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection were not foretold by prophecies.

A lot of Xtians will argue that the story of Jesus must completely true, because nobody expected that Jesus would be crucified and resurrected, and so they would have no reason for adding that to the story of the Messiah.

[Beerina]

I know it's been a while since Easter but I just remembered it now.

On Easter Sunday my family had a get together and we brought along our exchange student from China. He is, as far as I know, a Buddhist, and didn't know what exactly the purpose of the holiday is.

The best description I could come up with was something along the lines of:

"We remember a man who sort of wasn't God, sort of not dying for our sins that we have because a man listened to a woman who listened to a talking snake."

I get the feeling I described it wrong. So, two questions:

1. How would you describe Easter to someone who hasn't got a clue as to what it is.
2. How could I improve what I said to make it understandable?


"God let humans kill Him so He could rise from the dead to show he had dominion over Death, which as it turns out should have been obvious because He created Death, but that's a side story.


Anyhoo, if you believe He did this, without proof, said lack of proof being ontologically significant for some reason, he'll bring you back to life after you die and reward you with a kind of paradise that is supposedly more pleasurable than the best sexual experience, but isn't sexual, since that's dirty.

If you don't believe, without proof, you should be aware that He'll bring you back to life, and then torture you for ever and ever, and you can be 100% sure this is going to happen, to within the limits of believing it without proof.

If you don't believe, with proof, as I do, the situation is even worse, since it's widely believed things don't turn out too well for either party.


...praise be His good and kind name."

[shadron]

What, a Buddhist can't understand religious holidays?

[Marduk]

the chinese already celebrate easter, they call it zhēng yuè and its their new year festival, it used to also be our new year until the romans ruined it all by changing the calendar
:D
bit of a no brainer imo that you are expecting a guest to understand your religion when you havent made any attempt to understand his

[Cainkane1]

I'd shrug my shoulders and say "I dunno".

[Cactus Wren]

We commemorate Jesus' dying for our sins. He remains among the dead for three days, and then at dawn on the third day he emerges from the tomb.

Then if he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter.

[boloboffin]

We commemorate Jesus' dying for our sins. He remains among the dead for three days, and then at dawn on the third day he emerges from the tomb.

Then if he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter.

6 million more years of Purgatory, isn't it?

[jasonpatterson]

I had a similar experience with a Japanese friend. I just told her that it was the day that Christians believe that Jesus, their god incarnate, returned from the dead 3 days after being executed. She asked about the rabbits, eggs, and chocolate and I told her about the historical connections to the springtime fertility festivals. She then asked if anyone actually believed in all that stuff. I sadly informed her that it was true that they do, and that was pretty much the end of it.

What's interesting is that to her, belief in all of that nonsense was nonsense, but she is also a firm believer in reiki (yet another far east energy healing, if you aren't familiar.) I imagine that the opposite would be true for most christians.

[yog_sothoth]

Start with the Pagan angle. The Pagan religions were more interesting. Also, the bunnies and eggs are older than christianity.

BTW why didn't the christians make Jesus get resurrected at Christmas and born on Easter? Babies and fertility make sense for the spring equinox fertility holiday and the death/rebirth thing makes sense at the winter solstice when the longest night turns into increasing amounts of daylight. As long as you are "borrowing" Pagan holidays, be poetic about it.

[Jorghnassen]

I'd make the person watch Jesus of Nazareth. It's just, like 7 hours long, but you get the whole story (well, the Christian aspect of it), and if the person's smart, s/he'll see the connection with eating lamb for Easter (but not ham... if you're one of those people).


It's an ancient pagan (Northern Hemisphere) midwinter feast


You're thinking of Christmas. Midwinter is the solstice (which for some reason nowadays is seen as the "beginning" of winter). Easter is related to vernal equinox (spring) celebrations. And when you only play the pagan angle, you completely pass over the Jewish Passover connection...

[SezMe]

Mr. Diety (http://crackle.com/video/MediaDetails.aspx?id=1820852&ml=fi%3d%26fu%3d2119977&#id=2064984&ml=fu%3D2119977%26fx%3D) is there to help.

[Evolved Wookie]

Easy.

Easter is the bastardisation of a pagan fertility festival. Christianity chose to put the 'celebration' of their god's 'death' at the same time so that there was any chance of their new converts celebrating it.

Most of it, the eggs, the rabbit, etc, are direct a hang-over from a celebration of spring and sex. The badly appended Christian death-worship is nothing more than cynical marketing.

For most of us it's a nice bank-holiday and an excuse to eat chocolate.

[bellonax]

For most of us it's a nice bank-holiday and an excuse to eat chocolate.

Some people need an excuse to eat chocolate?

[Crundy]

It is the day their avatar of YHWH respawned after getting pwned by some plebes, after which all of his party members could follow him to the Heaven server.

Ha! The day jeebus respawned after being telefragged by some camping fag n00bs

[Wildy]

What, a Buddhist can't understand religious holidays?

I never said that.

[Evolved Wookie]

Some people need an excuse to eat chocolate?

...I never said it was required; just that it was one...