ALT-2 The Pagan Roots to Easter Traditions
The real roots of Easter are not pagan, but from the beginning of human civilization, long before paganism. It is well to understand that mankind regressed into paganism (remember the fabled "Fall of Man"?); it did not start there, nor did it "grow out" of it entirely with the rise of monotheism. Through the long millennia of trial and error, and ever hopeful inspiration, after the Earth (and mankind) was divided (in the days of Peleg, as the Bible says...and "Peleg" literally means "divided", the text explains, "for in his day was the earth divided"), many things that were good and true were retained by the common people, but their origins were reworked into the successive religions that sought to steer mankind toward the sacred truth.
At the heart of the mystery was a sure, precise knowledge of the Earth and Heaven (the latter was just the celestial sphere surrounding the Earth, looked up at with religious awe by every person, and every successive generation). That knowledge is known well to science today (it is just the system of precise measurement on each sphere - latitude and longitude on the Earth, declination and right ascension on the celestial sphere - and how these systems combine simply to mark the four seasons of the year), but its truly ancient knowledge is not recognized by science, just as the ancient knowledge of Easter and Christmas, for example, are known by today's religions, but their ancient knowledge, before even the earliest known religions, is not recognized. All that was ancient even six thousand years ago has become branded with the intervening, "pagan" age. But it need not be so branded, for it was in fact the objective truth (i.e., science), not the superstition of benighted religions, in the beginning.
Thus, Easter arose from ancient celebrations of the vernal equinox - the beginning of spring, the time of renewal of life on Earth - just as Christmas arose from ancient celebrations of the winter solstice - the beginning of winter. These were defined by the two great paths on the Earth and sky, the equator (and its projection on the celestial sphere, the celestial equator) and the ecliptic. The equator belonged to the Earth, while the ecliptic - the path of the Sun among the stars - belonged to Heaven. In science, we describe the vernal equinox as the point where the celestial equator and the ecliptic cross and the Sun rises above the equator. (At the winter solstice, the Sun is at its maximum distance below the equator.)
The ancients thus knew the vernal equinox as the "rising" point of the Sun, after it had come back from the "dead" of winter at the winter solstice. The not-so-ancient pagans of different lands all had a savior, indeed a "son of god" (Osiris, Dionysus, Bacchus, Adonis, Tammuz, Attis, Linus, etc.) who died each year only to "rise up" again at the "rising" point of the year, to bring in the new life of spring.
The Easter egg represents no less than the Earth globe itself, about to break out of its shell with colorful new life. The Easter basket is lined with the new green grass of spring. All this is and was sacred truth, to science as well as religion, that transcends all the dogmas that separate and divide us on the Earth. It is beyond "pagan", and it is forever beyond the reproach of any mere sectarian belief, or any supposedly scientific criticism.
