Latest / Ridiculous History / Look at Us, Late to the Ridiculous History of Easter
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
- 0:27Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
- 0:31Speaker 1: for tuning in for those of us in the crowd
- 0:35Speaker 1: who celebrate Easter, Happy Easter in classic Ridiculous History fashion,
- 0:41Speaker 1: we are getting to you a little bit after the
- 0:45Speaker 1: actual thing. Cuckuckatube, cuckuckutchew. Indeed, I'm the eman m h
- 0:52Speaker 1: uh is the cuckoockachew replacing the rah.
- 0:55Speaker 2: I'm gonna try a different one on for size every
- 0:57Speaker 2: now and again, But no, uh, cuckoock tube. Often I
- 1:00Speaker 2: thought for the years I thought it was cuckoo kachow.
- 1:03Speaker 2: It is in fact googoo goojub and it refers to
- 1:06Speaker 2: the wait, is that true? It is true. It's googoo goojube. Yeah,
- 1:11Speaker 2: and refers to a total boop for thirty three years now.
- 1:14Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I know same.
- 1:16Speaker 2: I think I saw it printed or something where I
- 1:18Speaker 2: watched Magical Mystery Tour and the subtitles were on. I
- 1:21Speaker 2: was like, what's that then? But you know, and of
- 1:24Speaker 2: course you're referring to the egg man. He is the
- 1:27Speaker 2: egg man. What's that about? It turns out that the
- 1:31Speaker 2: origins of Easter are about as nonsensical as a Beatles lyric.
- 1:35Speaker 1: Well that's that's a shout out to our super producer
- 1:39Speaker 1: Max the Eggman Williams. I am Ben Bullen with me
- 1:44Speaker 1: as always is the one and only the man the
- 1:47Speaker 1: myth legend, mister Noel Brown. And we are talking about Easter.
- 1:52Speaker 1: It's been on people's minds for a while. I recently
- 1:56Speaker 1: sent you guys a text as a as a Christian.
- 2:00Speaker 1: To be clear, I am always perplexed by Easter, by
- 2:05Speaker 1: the religious syncretism involved. And I sent you guys a
- 2:09Speaker 1: text when I was I can't say specifically where, but
- 2:14Speaker 1: I was. I was out of Atlanta and I saw
- 2:18Speaker 1: someone dressed up in the Easter bunny garb. And what
- 2:21Speaker 1: I love about Easter in the United States is it's
- 2:25Speaker 1: like a new seasonal cryptid just dropped, you know, totally.
- 2:30Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and it's a living too. You know.
- 2:32Speaker 2: There are people that I've actually got a dear friend who,
- 2:35Speaker 2: for a period of time was a mall Easter bunny,
- 2:38Speaker 2: which is, you know, a way to make some seasonal
- 2:40Speaker 2: scratch question, guys, is Toturo of my neighbor Toturo fame
- 2:46Speaker 2: a bunny?
- 2:47Speaker 1: I would you know, I don't like to put creativity
- 2:51Speaker 1: in a box.
- 2:51Speaker 2: Fair And just for the record, this is an audio
- 2:53Speaker 2: pod because I am holding up a little figurine of Toucho.
- 2:56Speaker 2: I actually have these nesting dolls of the lovely Miyazaki character,
- 3:01Speaker 2: who to me has always appeared to be a giant
- 3:03Speaker 2: hair rabbit bunny of sorts. But to your point, Ben, yeah,
- 3:07Speaker 2: he's much more of a cryptid in his own right.
- 3:10Speaker 2: But what's what you know? We should talk about that.
- 3:14Speaker 2: Let's talk about a bunch of things that the hair
- 3:17Speaker 2: pagan is and maybe we start with the pagans. Huh
- 3:20Speaker 2: they kind of were first to market with this stuff, right.
- 3:23Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, spoilers, Noel, Yeah, I love it. Let's
- 3:28Speaker 1: as r Palmax says, hop along to the history of Easter.
- 3:32Speaker 1: So if you grow up in the United States in particular,
- 3:37Speaker 1: wherein every holiday is monetized or commercialized in some way,
- 3:42Speaker 1: then you know that Easter is one of ridiculous histories,
- 3:47Speaker 1: most baffling holidays. It moves around in the calendar, right,
- 3:54Speaker 1: like how we're always startled when Thanksgiving happens and we go,
- 3:58Speaker 1: oh snap, it's that Thursday.
- 4:01Speaker 2: Which is I'm sorry, just again for the folks playing
- 4:04Speaker 2: along at home, which Thursday of the month is Thanksgiving again.
- 4:07Speaker 1: Fourth it's the fourth we it's the fourth one. And
- 4:10Speaker 1: it took us this show to learn that in our
- 4:14Speaker 1: personal lives, which I clearly have not internalized. Just for
- 4:17Speaker 1: the record, it's okay, man. I think we have an
- 4:20Speaker 1: emergency group text that we send out once a year
- 4:23Speaker 1: on Wednesday.
- 4:24Speaker 2: Advance is the one we also send around the link
- 4:27Speaker 2: for the YouTube video on how to tie a tie
- 4:29Speaker 2: when the time and it becomes necessary.
- 4:32Speaker 1: So so Easter is similar to Halloween, similar to Christmas.
- 4:39Speaker 1: It is a culmination of ancient religious practices, schools of
- 4:47Speaker 1: spiritual thought that did not did not always vibe together.
- 4:54Speaker 1: You don't know, you get to the heart of the
- 4:57Speaker 1: matter here, or you get to the yoke of the
- 5:00Speaker 1: egg here with the pagan idea. So let's go to
- 5:05Speaker 1: Penny Travers over at the ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
- 5:12Speaker 2: Penny Travers is such a dignified sounding name to me,
- 5:15Speaker 2: I don't know I like it.
- 5:16Speaker 4: I gotta be honest. When I was writing this brief,
- 5:19Speaker 4: looking ato a couple of sorts I could find, but
- 5:20Speaker 4: when I saw one of them was source by Penny Travers.
- 5:23Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, that's what we're using, rather Penny Travers,
- 5:24Speaker 4: but it has an air of authority to it.
- 5:26Speaker 2: And Penny points out that in Australia, much like in America,
- 5:30Speaker 2: on Easter Sunday, there's this idea of almost in Santa
- 5:34Speaker 2: Claus fashion, a creature of sorts delivering candy and chocolate
- 5:39Speaker 2: eggs and perhaps brightly colored heart boiled eggs two homes
- 5:44Speaker 2: across the nation, and poses the question of how in
- 5:48Speaker 2: the hell did this seemingly bizarre tradition come to be,
- 5:53Speaker 2: and then points out, well, actually, as it turns out,
- 5:56Speaker 2: Easter began as a pagan festival celebrating in the northern
- 6:01Speaker 2: Hemisphere far before a little old thing called Christianity needed
- 6:05Speaker 2: to kind of co opt this whole season.
- 6:08Speaker 1: Yeah, because these celebrations are based on the passage of time,
- 6:15Speaker 1: the movement of the Earth in a larger context of
- 6:20Speaker 1: the heavens. Right, so equinoxes, solstices. As you're hearing this,
- 6:26Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians, there is a solar eclipse on the
- 6:31Speaker 1: way to you don't miss it, and make sure you
- 6:34Speaker 1: get your glasses. Make sure you get your eclipse glasses.
- 6:37Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll say, parents Williams. They are actually heading to Indianapolis.
- 6:41Speaker 3: See to get that totality.
- 6:44Speaker 2: I've only just really found out that that was such
- 6:46Speaker 2: an important part of it. I guess I've never I've
- 6:49Speaker 2: only ever seen any eclipse from the less cool vantage point.
- 6:53Speaker 2: But I think there are some places in Kentucky I
- 6:57Speaker 2: think that qualify as well as as Little Rock, Arkansas.
- 7:02Speaker 3: I have a.
- 7:02Speaker 2: Friend who is going, like literally doing an eclipse trip.
- 7:06Speaker 2: But you know, I think the eclipse is a perfect
- 7:08Speaker 2: analogy of that battle between light and darkness, you know,
- 7:12Speaker 2: which if you look at it from the perspective of
- 7:14Speaker 2: survival throughout the ages, you know, darkness kind of represents
- 7:18Speaker 2: cold and the smothering you know of a livelihood perhaps
- 7:24Speaker 2: or of you know, crops and things like that, and
- 7:27Speaker 2: the light, of course represents growth and life, and all
- 7:31Speaker 2: of life exists as somewhat of a continuum between the two.
- 7:34Speaker 2: So I think it's an interesting thing to celebrate because
- 7:37Speaker 2: it is very much like a lot of the ancient
- 7:39Speaker 2: civilations we discussed in the show. It's almost a worship
- 7:44Speaker 2: or a giving thanks for that balance and the hopes
- 7:47Speaker 2: that we won't be plunged into eternal darkness and gold.
- 7:51Speaker 1: Yeah, since prehistoric times, before the before the humans began
- 7:56Speaker 1: to write their stuff down, everyone realized that there were
- 8:02Speaker 1: certain predictable cycles to the passage of time. And let's
- 8:07Speaker 1: go to University of Sydney professor Carol Cusack, quoted by
- 8:12Speaker 1: Penny Travers. Because I know you guys like hearing me
- 8:14Speaker 1: say the name, Carol Cusack said, quote, the spring equinox
- 8:20Speaker 1: is a day where the amount of dark and the
- 8:22Speaker 1: amount of daylight is exactly identical. So you can tell
- 8:27Speaker 1: that you are emerging from winter because the daylight and
- 8:31Speaker 1: the dark I've come back into balance. People mapped their
- 8:35Speaker 1: whole life according to the patterns of nature, So there's
- 8:40Speaker 1: this concept of celebration of spring. However, as we earlier
- 8:46Speaker 1: established and shows like stuff, they don't want you to
- 8:49Speaker 1: know the life. The narrative of Jesus Christ echoes these
- 8:57Speaker 1: earlier learnings, right, there is a time of darkness, a
- 9:01Speaker 1: time of death, at a time of rebirth. The concept
- 9:05Speaker 1: of Easter as a Christian holiday is in the long term, honestly, guys,
- 9:13Speaker 1: it's kind of recent. It dates back to the fourth
- 9:17Speaker 1: century CE, the three hundreds, right.
- 9:20Speaker 3: According to a website called Cheffin.
- 9:25Speaker 2: Around mid three hundred eighty, Christianity was increasing in popularity
- 9:28Speaker 2: in Rome, then the center of the world. In three twelve,
- 9:31Speaker 2: the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, which, as we know,
- 9:35Speaker 2: was a big deal and put an end the ongoing
- 9:38Speaker 2: persecution of Christians. But you know, he as we often
- 9:43Speaker 2: see with cultures that are trying to kind of convert others,
- 9:48Speaker 2: you know, sort of subsume the history and practices of
- 9:52Speaker 2: other cultures. You kind of got to ease them into
- 9:56Speaker 2: it a little bit at the very least, kind of
- 9:58Speaker 2: what's that word been where you kind of have a
- 10:01Speaker 2: feature that reminds you of something old, like in design skewmoorph. Yeah, skewmoorph.
- 10:08Speaker 2: This is kind of a skewmoorph where they're like, Okay, Pagans,
- 10:11Speaker 2: we'll keep to your schedule here that you recognize, but
- 10:14Speaker 2: it's gonna be a little different, but it'll still have that,
- 10:17Speaker 2: you know, that familiarity to you. And then before you
- 10:20Speaker 2: know it, you won't even be Pagans anymore, and you
- 10:22Speaker 2: won't even realize how it happened.
- 10:23Speaker 1: You were always worshiping our God, you just didn't have
- 10:27Speaker 1: the right vocabulary to do so right, So that's that'll switch, yeah,
- 10:34Speaker 1: very much, beat and switch and so okay, here's here's
- 10:38Speaker 1: how it goes down, and we'll get into the origins
- 10:41Speaker 1: of the name, the etymology. We love etymology here, so
- 10:44Speaker 1: shout out ishtar and oste and so on. So in
- 10:48Speaker 1: three twenty five CE or a d is the Vatican
- 10:53Speaker 1: prefers the boffins at this new thing called Christianity. They
- 11:01Speaker 1: assemble something called the Council of Nicea. And these are
- 11:06Speaker 1: the folks who decide that the celebration of what they
- 11:10Speaker 1: call Easter should fall on all right, everybody listen closely
- 11:16Speaker 1: the Sunday after the first full moon of the spring equinox. Yikes,
- 11:24Speaker 1: that'll be easy to track. It'll be super easy to track.
- 11:28Speaker 1: What could go wrong? We got it. It's a rotating holiday.
- 11:38Speaker 1: It's based on a lunar calendar, which secular folks don't
- 11:43Speaker 1: practice in the modern day.
- 11:45Speaker 2: No, and maybe there are some folks out there that
- 11:46Speaker 2: are more attuned to these kinds of celestial movements and
- 11:50Speaker 2: be like, yeah, it is easy to track, but to me,
- 11:53Speaker 2: it just seems like you could lose track of it
- 11:56Speaker 2: real quick and it could be sort of up for interpretation.
- 12:00Speaker 3: That's all I'm getting at there.
- 12:01Speaker 1: And so there was like a marketing thing. They were like, hey,
- 12:05Speaker 1: let's tie it to our messiah, right, death, birth, renewal.
- 12:11Speaker 3: That's right.
- 12:12Speaker 2: So they do that very thing, Easter Sunday is born,
- 12:16Speaker 2: and they really link it with those symbols that you mentioned, Ben,
- 12:20Speaker 2: and the idea of Christ has risen, you know, he
- 12:23Speaker 2: has risen. Indeed, this is an example of what you
- 12:27Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, Ben, religious syncretism. And now we're gonna get
- 12:31Speaker 2: into that etymology we teased a little bit. According to Britannica,
- 12:35Speaker 2: the English word for Easter parallels the German word Austern
- 12:41Speaker 2: is of very uncertain origin, and I believe is it Austern. No,
- 12:49Speaker 2: isn't that like East? Yeah, yeah, think of think of
- 12:53Speaker 2: like Oriental. I guess that's right, Yeah, one hundred percent,
- 12:57Speaker 2: so Austern. But the origin of that, you know, the
- 13:00Speaker 2: actual etymology is a little uncertain. But of course when
- 13:03Speaker 2: we have on certain origins, that usually means we've got
- 13:06Speaker 2: a lot of ideas. And one of these ideas came
- 13:09Speaker 2: from somebody with an Austin name. First I thought it
- 13:12Speaker 2: was just the venerable bed in the eighth century but
- 13:15Speaker 2: his name actually apparently was Venerable with a capital D,
- 13:18Speaker 2: and he believed that it was derived from basically also
- 13:23Speaker 2: probably pronounced Ulster or e Austre, which is e O
- 13:27Speaker 2: s t r E and e O s t r
- 13:30Speaker 2: a E, respectively, which was the Anglo Saxon goddess of
- 13:33Speaker 2: spring and fertility.
- 13:35Speaker 1: Which itself descends from another previous god. I mean, there's
- 13:43Speaker 1: there's a really interesting point here, and our friends of
- 13:46Speaker 1: Britannica are aware of this as well. The views of
- 13:51Speaker 1: this eighth CE century historian that we're quoting, or philosopher
- 13:56Speaker 1: that we're quoting, has an assumption inherent. It's the idea
- 14:02Speaker 1: that Christians appropriated pagan names and holidays without necessarily understanding
- 14:10Speaker 1: the providence of those festivals or their cultural importance. They
- 14:16Speaker 1: saw the similarities they wished to see. We would call
- 14:20Speaker 1: this cherry picking in the modern day. And you know,
- 14:25Speaker 1: it's weird. There's a paradox at play because Christians in
- 14:30Speaker 1: the early days and indeed in the current evenings were
- 14:36Speaker 1: very opposed to the idea of paganism. Right, there's the
- 14:39Speaker 1: one true God. They are not multiple gods. We're not polytheistic,
- 14:45Speaker 1: says Pope Yeah.
- 14:46Speaker 2: There's the whole thing about like the people that went
- 14:49Speaker 2: down to worship the Golden Calf and all of that.
- 14:52Speaker 2: And I mean they're made examples of if I'm not mistaken,
- 14:56Speaker 2: in the Bible, aren't they like, you know, the worshippers mollok, Yeah,
- 15:01Speaker 2: they're like taken out by you know, and like Sodom
- 15:03Speaker 2: and gomoor on all this stuff. Like anyone that is
- 15:06Speaker 2: perceived as being pagan is perceived as being in some
- 15:09Speaker 2: way against God. Or if you want to listen to
- 15:11Speaker 2: an episode about the history of the Antichrist, check out
- 15:14Speaker 2: stuff they don't want you to know where we talk about.
- 15:15Speaker 2: Is it the Antichrist or just being anti Christ is
- 15:19Speaker 2: just a bad vibe.
- 15:21Speaker 1: Yeah, so so the idea. Now, scholars will largely agree
- 15:28Speaker 1: that the word Easter derives from a Latin phrase aldus,
- 15:37Speaker 1: which was the plural of alba, which is just dawn,
- 15:41Speaker 1: right like albatross named for a bird. That that's a
- 15:46Speaker 1: Latin thing, and it translates through Old High German, which
- 15:53Speaker 1: you know, descends into German and modern English. We also have,
- 15:57Speaker 1: by the way, for anybody listening along, who's sell braids
- 16:00Speaker 1: passover in place of Easter. Guess what, It's still the
- 16:05Speaker 1: same human celebration of resurgence, of survival. Basically, so Latin
- 16:12Speaker 1: and Greek Pasha comes from the French word for easter, popways,
- 16:17Speaker 1: and I'm not going to go too far into the Hebrew.
- 16:20Speaker 1: The point you need to know is that the word
- 16:23Speaker 1: Easter definitely doesn't come from the Bible nor the Torah. Yeah,
- 16:30Speaker 1: and it's a tricky holiday, you got it.
- 16:33Speaker 3: What is it?
- 16:33Speaker 1: The first full moon, the first Sunday after the full first.
- 16:38Speaker 2: Full moon of the after the equinox, or of the equinox.
- 16:42Speaker 2: I believe right, Bet. I think you have also been watching,
- 16:47Speaker 2: at the very least seen some of the show Showgun
- 16:50Speaker 2: on FX, which is really good. It's like a really epic,
- 16:53Speaker 2: you know, sweeping kind of Game of Thrones, ask historical fiction.
- 16:56Speaker 2: It's no dragons, it's real. But one thing that I
- 16:59Speaker 2: found really fascinating, and I maybe hadn't seen it portrayed
- 17:03Speaker 2: quite this clearly in other media, was just how like
- 17:08Speaker 2: many of the Japanese willingly converted to Christianity, you know,
- 17:13Speaker 2: and Catholicism, and that certainly is the case in other
- 17:17Speaker 2: parts of the world. And I think there's something to
- 17:21Speaker 2: this religious syncretism that almost is like kind of built
- 17:24Speaker 2: into the ministering or the like you know what's the
- 17:27Speaker 2: word when you go on a mission trip to kind
- 17:29Speaker 2: of make it hey, check it out, it's just like
- 17:31Speaker 2: your thing sort of you know, right, It makes it
- 17:35Speaker 2: an easier sell or.
- 17:36Speaker 1: Some evangelize to proselytize. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And this is
- 17:42Speaker 1: this is a hard cell. It's a toll milkshake for
- 17:46Speaker 1: some of the Christian Christian missionaries in times past. When
- 17:52Speaker 1: someone says, okay, I get it. You had a crazy
- 17:57Speaker 1: good sales pitch. So when do I celebrate this Easter?
- 18:01Speaker 1: And that's when the missionaries say, oh yeah.
- 18:04Speaker 3: Funny thing.
- 18:05Speaker 1: We've got a weird schedule for this one, right yeah yeah.
- 18:10Speaker 3: And where the two calendars kind of collide, right.
- 18:13Speaker 1: Right, right, yes, when worlds collide, when religions collide. So
- 18:19Speaker 1: there are multiple good explanations of why this thing happens.
- 18:26Speaker 1: This long story, short and happy occasional birthday to our
- 18:31Speaker 1: pal Max Williams. Sometimes his birthday does occur on Easter
- 18:36Speaker 1: because birthdays in Max's tradition are based on the Gregorian calendar.
- 18:43Speaker 1: But Easter is a Christian holiday, Easter is a Pagan
- 18:48Speaker 1: holiday wearied a Christian jacket, which is why it floats
- 18:54Speaker 1: around in the calendar.
- 18:56Speaker 2: And that is because the actual date of the spring equinox,
- 19:00Speaker 2: can you know, has a little bit of wiggle.
- 19:02Speaker 3: Room a couple of days or so on either end.
- 19:05Speaker 2: The Catholic Church, however, created a fixed date of March
- 19:09Speaker 2: twenty first to define it, known as the Ecclesiastical Equinox,
- 19:15Speaker 2: and the full moon that occurs just on or after
- 19:18Speaker 2: March twenty first is known as the Pushall or Pascal
- 19:22Speaker 2: full moon, and that I think it must be push
- 19:25Speaker 2: All because it derives from a Greek and Latin word pasha,
- 19:29Speaker 2: which is referring to passover. So that means that you
- 19:34Speaker 2: start to see why this can get a little bit.
- 19:37Speaker 3: Confusing, and you have a bit of a.
- 19:39Speaker 2: Arrange rather than an actual solid date of when Easter
- 19:43Speaker 2: can fall. And a lot of this had to do
- 19:46Speaker 2: with the clashing between the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar.
- 19:53Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's go to well, well, let's talk in
- 19:58Speaker 1: twenty twenty four terms, twenty twenty four most of modern history,
- 20:02Speaker 1: and going forward, you're going to find the date of
- 20:06Speaker 1: Easter anywhere between March twenty second and April twenty fifth.
- 20:11Speaker 1: And this is all because our pal Max if we
- 20:14Speaker 1: get a sound, cute heavy g himself, Pope Gregory thirteen
- 20:23Speaker 1: he instituted the Gregorian calendar, and a burst of humility,
- 20:28Speaker 1: he named it the Gregorian Calendar. It goes into effect
- 20:31Speaker 1: in fifteen eighty two, and Easter is most likely to
- 20:39Speaker 1: fall on April sixteenth between then between fifteen eighty three
- 20:45Speaker 1: and the year three thousand, three thousand. But again you
- 20:51Speaker 1: see it floating around. But why why this hub up
- 20:54Speaker 1: man gets it gets even more complicated.
- 20:57Speaker 3: You can leap your brain right now, bro.
- 20:59Speaker 1: Seriously, I'm glad you brought that up, Noel, because there
- 21:03Speaker 1: are a lot of people practicing Christians who do not
- 21:08Speaker 1: use the Gregorian calendar. If you're Eastern Orthodox, and shout
- 21:13Speaker 1: out to you fellow ridiculous historians practicing this, you use
- 21:17Speaker 1: the Julian calendar, the preceding calendar for your holiday observations,
- 21:23Speaker 1: which means your Easter can be between April fourth or
- 21:28Speaker 1: May eighth. If you convert it to the Gregorian calendar,
- 21:32Speaker 1: it's like Celsius and fahrenheit. If I was an alien
- 21:35Speaker 1: landing on this planet, I would be like, why just
- 21:40Speaker 1: pick pick a day, just pick like the same day.
- 21:43Speaker 1: It's complicated, but it wasn't always. So it's been a
- 21:48Speaker 1: complex matter for thousands of years because they're trying to
- 21:53Speaker 1: reconcile I would say, the intricacies between the solar and
- 21:59Speaker 1: lunar cycles, which are ultimately the calendars of humanity.
- 22:04Speaker 2: And I gotta say, I mean, I still I've been
- 22:08Speaker 2: in conversation just with friends. I'm like, so we shud
- 22:10Speaker 2: an episode on leap here and I still don't really
- 22:13Speaker 2: understand how it works, And they're like, what it's the gist.
- 22:16Speaker 3: I'm like, I this is I'm gonna try to compact.
- 22:19Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's just the idea of a mistake that
- 22:22Speaker 2: was made long ago that, if left unchecked, would cause
- 22:25Speaker 2: all of the recorded stuff from history to not be
- 22:29Speaker 2: in a discernible schedule.
- 22:32Speaker 3: Let's just say, like, we couldn't we couldn't call.
- 22:35Speaker 2: Out dates and have them line up with dates that
- 22:38Speaker 2: other people think things happened.
- 22:39Speaker 3: On, right, right, Okay, cool, I guess maybe I do
- 22:43Speaker 3: get it.
- 22:43Speaker 4: And to jump in here, I mean it is also
- 22:45Speaker 4: important to remember the reason they've changed with Julian calendar
- 22:49Speaker 4: for the Greg Gordan calendar was to make sure Easter
- 22:51Speaker 4: did end up, that's right.
- 22:54Speaker 2: So so that's why this is so important because you know,
- 22:55Speaker 2: this is where how power, religion and functional things that
- 22:59Speaker 2: affect either the non religious of us all completely intersect.
- 23:02Speaker 1: It's like network programming. You don't want competing programs, right.
- 23:07Speaker 4: And see here's the funniest thing though, was the the
- 23:11Speaker 4: error between the Julian calendar and greg Goran calendar was
- 23:14Speaker 4: so much smaller.
- 23:15Speaker 3: Than other eras had ever been.
- 23:16Speaker 4: But it was just this one motivating factor because it
- 23:19Speaker 4: it was like ten or eleven days off. But you
- 23:21Speaker 4: remember like when they went from like the Roman calendar
- 23:24Speaker 4: to the Julian it was like months off and they
- 23:26Speaker 4: were just randomly putting more days in that time and stuff.
- 23:28Speaker 1: I remember, I was there. It was terrible. It was
- 23:32Speaker 1: also hilarious. It was back in the day. I mean, okay,
- 23:36Speaker 1: let's get to the big question. Guys, our fellow ridiculous historians,
- 23:42Speaker 1: some of whom may have had to wear rabbit costumes
- 23:46Speaker 1: today or this past weekend, they're wondering, what's the deal
- 23:52Speaker 1: with the rabbit? Also, what's to deal with the eggs?
- 24:01Speaker 1: Why is there this anthropomorphic rabbit that hides eggs that
- 24:07Speaker 1: are oftentimes not human or not. You know, actual eggs
- 24:11Speaker 1: or plastic eggs now with little treats inside them.
- 24:14Speaker 3: Why is that a thing?
- 24:16Speaker 1: Is that what Jesus Christ would have wanted?
- 24:19Speaker 3: I think? So? Who to say what he would have wanted?
- 24:23Speaker 3: Just likely that, as anything else.
- 24:25Speaker 1: He didn't shout it out too much. But we have
- 24:28Speaker 1: the answer with the eggs.
- 24:29Speaker 3: We certainly do.
- 24:30Speaker 2: And you know, even without doing the research, you can
- 24:34Speaker 2: kind of figure out a little bit of why this
- 24:37Speaker 2: might have been. What is it? What did the Pagan
- 24:40Speaker 2: version of Easter represent? What does the Christian version of
- 24:43Speaker 2: either Easter represent? It's all about rebirth, you know, it's
- 24:46Speaker 2: all about new life, right, and what better to represent
- 24:50Speaker 2: that than with a.
- 24:51Speaker 3: Little low egg.
- 24:52Speaker 1: Yeah, and let us keep in mind, for anyone who's
- 24:56Speaker 1: read the fantastic book Watershipped down the Hair the rabbit,
- 25:02Speaker 1: the prints with a thousand enemies, the primary evolutionary, the
- 25:08Speaker 1: primary evolutional like adaptation of the rabbit is not to fight.
- 25:14Speaker 1: It is to reproduce. It's the word to breed like
- 25:17Speaker 1: rabbits the other f word just so, and so it
- 25:20Speaker 1: is no surprise that for a long time the egg
- 25:24Speaker 1: and the rabbit have represented to humans, the idea of reproduction,
- 25:32Speaker 1: of thriving, of rebirth and birth in general. So we
- 25:36Speaker 1: know this because during the Neolithic Age in Europe and
- 25:41Speaker 1: indeed Central Asia and the Near East, you would find
- 25:46Speaker 1: burial sites with ancient humans who have been buried with
- 25:50Speaker 1: rabbits with hairs, as they would call them Europe, as
- 25:54Speaker 1: a way of symbolizing a passage, a rebirth, a resurgence.
- 26:00Speaker 1: And then if you go the Neolithic Age was a
- 26:03Speaker 1: long time ago, it's like the way we look at
- 26:06Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties now, so stop it.
- 26:10Speaker 3: It's weird.
- 26:11Speaker 1: It's true though, So over a thousand years after the
- 26:14Speaker 1: Neolithic Age, during the Iron Age, we would see that
- 26:21Speaker 1: there was this high regard for rabbits. You wouldn't eat
- 26:28Speaker 1: a rabbit due to its religious significance. At least people
- 26:34Speaker 1: like Julius Caesar talked trash about people in what we
- 26:38Speaker 1: call Britain today. It was like, what these guys don't
- 26:41Speaker 1: even eat rabbits because he got some weird religion about him.
- 26:45Speaker 3: You ever eating rabbit as you have? Yes, I have.
- 26:47Speaker 2: It's good lean. It definitely has a good what do
- 26:52Speaker 2: they call it, a gamy kind of quality to it.
- 26:54Speaker 2: But yeah, they're big boys. These hairs, too, were sacreds.
- 26:57Speaker 2: To Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, said, there present fertility,
- 27:01Speaker 2: fleet footedness, and I guess just general kind of I
- 27:04Speaker 2: don't know life, because they are such vital creatures. Aphrodite's
- 27:10Speaker 2: son Arrows, was often depicted carrying one around like like
- 27:14Speaker 2: a familiar I don't think, slung over his shoulder like
- 27:16Speaker 2: a carcass, as a symbol of unquenchable desire. And in
- 27:22Speaker 2: the Greek world throughout the Renaissance, you often see hairs
- 27:27Speaker 2: depicted in art as symbols of that kind of you know,
- 27:32Speaker 2: vitality and sexuality, as well as in literature. The Virgin
- 27:36Speaker 2: Mary actually in this era often is seen with a
- 27:40Speaker 2: rabbit in tow.
- 27:42Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's more about.
- 27:44Speaker 2: I believe, overcoming desire and and sort of having it
- 27:48Speaker 2: in check.
- 27:49Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's a white that's her white hair, and
- 27:54Speaker 1: and it's it's cool. There's this symbolic shorthand throughout Western
- 28:00Speaker 1: visual art, right depicting these things. We should get Oh,
- 28:04Speaker 1: we should do an episode on why there are weird
- 28:08Speaker 1: snails in Western art? Why there are you know, like
- 28:13Speaker 1: harnospash alone, you know that's a cool thing we should
- 28:17Speaker 1: look into the You nailed it with the idea of
- 28:22Speaker 1: rabbit as shorthand for virility or the dedial thereof. What
- 28:30Speaker 1: we see though, is that the connection between this rabbit,
- 28:34Speaker 1: this bunny idea, and the concept of Easter comes much
- 28:40Speaker 1: more recently. It isn't until like the fifteen sixteen hundreds
- 28:48Speaker 1: in Germany that we see the idea of children hunting
- 28:53Speaker 1: for Easter eggs hidden by the easter rabbit. So that
- 28:59Speaker 1: like it sounds as though it is very very distant
- 29:04Speaker 1: in history, but we have to recognize that in the
- 29:07Speaker 1: larger context that is quite recent. You can see written
- 29:11Speaker 1: accounts from England around the same time that also mentioned
- 29:15Speaker 1: this Easter rabbit, and they talk about, uh, not just
- 29:19Speaker 1: hunting Easter eggs. They talk about hunting actual hairs, actual rabbits,
- 29:26Speaker 1: and then eating them, consuming them at Easter.
- 29:31Speaker 3: Uh.
- 29:31Speaker 1: This is where we go to something called the hair
- 29:34Speaker 1: pie scramble.
- 29:36Speaker 3: The hair pie scramble. We're gonna get the eggs.
- 29:39Speaker 2: It's nice, I know, dude, We're gonna get into some big,
- 29:43Speaker 2: some serious scrambles later. But the moment I heard that,
- 29:47Speaker 2: I was like, oh, is this some kind of like
- 29:49Speaker 2: rabbit frickasy for tata situations.
- 29:52Speaker 3: I'm on it. Oh please.
- 29:55Speaker 2: By the way, can I just say that, you know
- 29:57Speaker 2: the there's a musical called Hair spelled h a I R.
- 30:01Speaker 2: And it's about like hippies, you know, in the sixties.
- 30:03Speaker 2: There's also a musical about a giant rabbit that is
- 30:08Speaker 2: an imaginary friend. I believe it might have started off
- 30:12Speaker 2: as a as a player.
- 30:14Speaker 3: A movie and that was made into a musical.
- 30:16Speaker 2: For the longest time, I confused those two and thought
- 30:19Speaker 2: Hair was the one about the giant rabbit, and it's not.
- 30:24Speaker 2: I think it's Harvey. Sorry, Harvey is the giant rabbit.
- 30:28Speaker 2: Hair h A I R Is about hippies. But today
- 30:32Speaker 2: we're talking about the hair pie scramble, which was held
- 30:35Speaker 2: at halitin a village in let's call it let Leicester Share.
- 30:41Speaker 2: I think that's right in England, of course, and that
- 30:43Speaker 2: involved eating a pie was made with hair meats, but
- 30:46Speaker 2: no eggs, no, no scramble while people kind.
- 30:51Speaker 3: Of I don't know, fought it out for a piece
- 30:55Speaker 3: of the pie.
- 30:56Speaker 1: Yeah, they were quote unquote scrambling for a slice. And
- 31:01Speaker 1: just as people of yesteryear fought against what they saw
- 31:07Speaker 1: as the pagan traditions of Halloween or other harvest festivals.
- 31:12Speaker 1: There were local religious authorities who were fighting against the
- 31:17Speaker 1: current celebration of Easter, which again, as I said at
- 31:21Speaker 1: the top, has been very commodified and monetized. In seventeen
- 31:26Speaker 1: ninety there was this English guy, he was a parson
- 31:30Speaker 1: over at Halton, and he said.
- 31:34Speaker 3: Oh, what's old isting?
- 31:35Speaker 1: You guys gotta stop eating these you gotta stop scrambling
- 31:40Speaker 1: for this rabbit pie. This is not what Christianity is about.
- 31:44Speaker 1: And everybody said, boo boo, unto you put him in
- 31:49Speaker 1: the pie, put him in your ploy. And the custom
- 31:53Speaker 1: continues to this day.
- 31:54Speaker 2: Dude, I'm sure you all have heard of the idea of,
- 31:56Speaker 2: like you know, in the I guess the more dark ages,
- 31:59Speaker 2: the idea of making live birds into a pie, or
- 32:02Speaker 2: putting birds into Of course, there's that four and twenty
- 32:04Speaker 2: black birds. I saw a thing about it on Instagram
- 32:07Speaker 2: the other day and it occurred to me, wouldn't those
- 32:10Speaker 2: birds just like crap all in the pie and just
- 32:13Speaker 2: like render it completely inedible just for the purposes.
- 32:17Speaker 3: Of a look at the beds.
- 32:20Speaker 1: Yeah, we usually starved them before we put them in
- 32:23Speaker 1: the pie.
- 32:24Speaker 3: You did, you and your what cadre of Illuminati.
- 32:28Speaker 1: The four and twenty.
- 32:31Speaker 2: No, no, but no, this is these kinds of This
- 32:34Speaker 2: is a very old English type stuff here.
- 32:37Speaker 3: It's almost like a cakewalk, but ther it is. Yeah,
- 32:42Speaker 3: like that, I mean a little bit right. Yeah.
- 32:45Speaker 1: And this idea of eating the hair, it's sort of
- 32:50Speaker 1: it's it's a way to navigate and approach mortality, is
- 32:54Speaker 1: it not like the eating of the hair the fantastically
- 32:58Speaker 1: reproductive animal? You could just associate that with folk traditions
- 33:03Speaker 1: of scaring away witches at Easter. With a shout out
- 33:07Speaker 1: to Todd Thompson t O. K. Thompson for Smithsonian Magazine.
- 33:13Speaker 1: You can see there was this long standing belief that
- 33:18Speaker 1: a witches, warlocks, whatever you want to call them, would
- 33:22Speaker 1: shape shift and take the form of a hair and
- 33:26Speaker 1: do what we would call Dennis the Menace level mischief. Right,
- 33:31Speaker 1: They would steal milk from your cows. They they would
- 33:36Speaker 1: also you know, I guess it's weird to think of
- 33:39Speaker 1: this in the same way you would think of were wolves,
- 33:42Speaker 1: right or unsealy totally the fair folk like they would
- 33:46Speaker 1: they would apparently hop into your house undercover night. We're
- 33:49Speaker 1: an audio show, so I'm doing like a little rabbit. Hot,
- 33:52Speaker 1: he's got a little little hoofs you know, a little good. Yeah,
- 33:55Speaker 1: he's he's floppity for evil. And they thought these witches
- 34:01Speaker 1: would suck out the life energy of sleeping people and
- 34:06Speaker 1: deliver unto them some sort of infection, a sickness, possibly
- 34:10Speaker 1: a contagion.
- 34:12Speaker 3: So if you're.
- 34:12Speaker 1: Eating the rabbit, then you might be eating a witch.
- 34:16Speaker 1: You're taking their power.
- 34:17Speaker 2: Kind of reminds me that chuop Ofcabra a little bit,
- 34:19Speaker 2: the old goat sucker.
- 34:21Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, a little bit.
- 34:23Speaker 2: And the funny thing is, like a lot of these
- 34:25Speaker 2: kind of fables or folkloric kind of explanations of phenomena. Uh,
- 34:30Speaker 2: there's a lot of commonalities between cultures in terms of
- 34:33Speaker 2: like the types of things that are trying to be explained.
- 34:36Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah.
- 34:38Speaker 1: And if we if we look at this context, then
- 34:42Speaker 1: what we find is the idea of the spring equinox
- 34:46Speaker 1: is symbolically in opposition to the idea of uh, life
- 34:52Speaker 1: draining or death or mortality, the witches, the hard winter, Uh,
- 34:57Speaker 1: the what is it? What do they call it in
- 35:00Speaker 1: Song Device and Fire Game of Thrones? I think maybe
- 35:03Speaker 1: just the long night? Yeah, there it is, Yeah, yeah.
- 35:07Speaker 2: But again, we talked about this at the top, that
- 35:09Speaker 2: this struggle between light and dark and heat and fire
- 35:13Speaker 2: and ice and all that stuff tale as old as time, classic,
- 35:18Speaker 2: you know, fodder for these sort of like massive epic tales.
- 35:22Speaker 2: And it's because it all dates back to the idea
- 35:24Speaker 2: of you know, kind of fearing, like living in a
- 35:27Speaker 2: time where you weren't sure if the lights were ever
- 35:29Speaker 2: going to come back on, and just praying that they would,
- 35:32Speaker 2: and that usually involved worshiping some sort of deity, and
- 35:36Speaker 2: these crafty Christians just sort of co opted all of
- 35:39Speaker 2: this stuff and replaced you know, some sort of light
- 35:43Speaker 2: and darkness or winter and summer deity with good old
- 35:47Speaker 2: Jesus Christ to kind of represent it it all.
- 35:49Speaker 3: It was sort of a catch all for this stuff.
- 35:52Speaker 2: Like you said before, these folks knew it, folks who'd
- 35:56Speaker 2: been practicing other kinds of religions.
- 35:59Speaker 1: They were Christians, they just didn't have the words. So
- 36:04Speaker 1: let us take over your country and extract all the resources. Look,
- 36:09Speaker 1: history is long, it is continuing. If you are listening
- 36:13Speaker 1: to this show today, then you are one of the
- 36:16Speaker 1: authors of what people will call history in the future.
- 36:21Speaker 1: And with that we must acknowledge that the celebration of
- 36:24Speaker 1: Easter is indeed a global phenomenon. Noel Max, what if
- 36:31Speaker 1: we end today's episode with some shout outs around the
- 36:36Speaker 1: world to celebrations of Easter, because just like Christmas, just
- 36:42Speaker 1: like Halloween, not every country nor regions celebrates Easter in
- 36:48Speaker 1: the same way.
- 36:49Speaker 2: Right, And you know, we let off today with some
- 36:51Speaker 2: excellent perspective from an Australian writer whose name we love,
- 36:54Speaker 2: Penny Travers. It turns out in Penny's country there is
- 36:59Speaker 2: a tradition that is designed to raise awareness for the
- 37:02Speaker 2: dwindling population of one of these one of myriad bizarre
- 37:08Speaker 2: at least, you know, to us looking creatures, wonderful, you know,
- 37:12Speaker 2: stuff that seems like it belongs that of a fantasy novel,
- 37:15Speaker 2: something called the bill b which is a tiny marsupial
- 37:19Speaker 2: whose numbers have been in danger, and so chocolate tears
- 37:24Speaker 2: in Australia have taken to instead of an Easter Bunny,
- 37:27Speaker 2: they're rocking the Easter Bilby and crafting chocolate into you know,
- 37:32Speaker 2: little effigies, I guess edible effigies of these little rabbit
- 37:37Speaker 2: sized creatures.
- 37:38Speaker 1: Love it, love it. And if you are still if
- 37:44Speaker 1: you're still caught on the eggs. Folks, if you're like guys,
- 37:49Speaker 1: I've heard too much about rabbits today, I need some
- 37:52Speaker 1: eggs in Easter. Then you want to go to France
- 37:56Speaker 1: on the Monday after Easter, whichever our king time that is.
- 38:01Speaker 1: In your neck of the woods. There is a town
- 38:05Speaker 1: called ho Haux and they they will make are a
- 38:13Speaker 1: gigantic like Guinness World Record level omelet. Four five hundred
- 38:19Speaker 1: eggs into this pan. They make an omelet. They serve
- 38:23Speaker 1: over one thousand people every year. Each family contributes. They
- 38:28Speaker 1: crowdsource this. It's a beautiful thing. They break the eggs
- 38:31Speaker 1: in their home in the morning, they gather in the
- 38:33Speaker 1: main square. They make this omelet. And if you've never
- 38:36Speaker 1: been to France, if you've only had an omelet in
- 38:39Speaker 1: one country, got to tell you the top, the top
- 38:44Speaker 1: level omelet technology in the world is France and Japan.
- 38:50Speaker 2: They really love their eggs in France and Japan. They
- 38:54Speaker 2: also I swear the best of another thing that I've
- 38:56Speaker 2: ever had in my life came from France, and that
- 38:59Speaker 2: is but my friend, unbelievable butter.
- 39:02Speaker 3: They got there.
- 39:03Speaker 2: But you know, there's so many different types of eggs
- 39:05Speaker 2: and I always have found it interesting and a little
- 39:08Speaker 2: morbid maybe that these symbols of you know, life and
- 39:12Speaker 2: these literal vessels of life are just devoured. Uh, And
- 39:17Speaker 2: it's totally fine. In fact, the case in point here,
- 39:21Speaker 2: it's actually almost like a respectful ritual, you know, that
- 39:25Speaker 2: honors life by literally consuming it. I've always kind of
- 39:28Speaker 2: felt there was a component of like, let's take in
- 39:31Speaker 2: the life force of.
- 39:33Speaker 3: These things, you know, into our bodies. Mm hmm.
- 39:36Speaker 1: That's why, uh, that's why we love it. Ortologue.
- 39:41Speaker 2: Oh god, I could never My fear of birds prohibits
- 39:45Speaker 2: it alone. But oh really quickly, so I had to
- 39:48Speaker 2: add the bilby that we talked about from Australia.
- 39:52Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like ma Adeeb.
- 39:55Speaker 2: If you've seen the New the New Dune movie, where
- 39:58Speaker 2: Madib is the name that Timothy Channamar's character takes on,
- 40:03Speaker 2: it's this little little desert mouse that kind of looks
- 40:06Speaker 2: like a little mini kangaroo with big ears.
- 40:08Speaker 3: And that is what the bilbie looks like.
- 40:10Speaker 1: And if you're ever on an Easter egg hunt in Greece,
- 40:14Speaker 1: you may notice something that I would not as a
- 40:17Speaker 1: color blind person. All the eggs on your East egg
- 40:21Speaker 1: hunt in Greece are going to be colored red or
- 40:24Speaker 1: like gray for me, because red is the color of life.
- 40:29Speaker 1: It as such is a representation of the blood of
- 40:32Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, and that's that's where they're further syncretizing the religion.
- 40:41Speaker 1: We also we also have a crime wave in Norway.
- 40:45Speaker 1: Every Yeah, well, you know, they love we. We all
- 40:48Speaker 1: love not we, but folks.
- 40:50Speaker 3: Love their true crime.
- 40:51Speaker 2: They love their murder mysteries, both real and fictional, and
- 40:56Speaker 2: Norway is no different. Television channels run a lot of
- 41:00Speaker 2: crime specials and you know, morbid stuff like that. And
- 41:04Speaker 2: also it is a peak time for the publication of
- 41:08Speaker 2: new detective novels. Just around Eastern you going to see
- 41:11Speaker 2: like a whole cavalcade of these type of procedural crime
- 41:16Speaker 2: novels coming out. I don't really understand the connection there.
- 41:19Speaker 2: Maybe once again, it has something to do with that
- 41:22Speaker 2: birth and death cycle and they have decided to go
- 41:25Speaker 2: with the death part of it.
- 41:27Speaker 3: That's so metal.
- 41:28Speaker 2: Norway knows how to get metal. It was something about
- 41:33Speaker 2: milk cartons I believe as well.
- 41:35Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah.
- 41:36Speaker 1: The milk cartons will carry short like flash fiction detective
- 41:42Speaker 1: stories in place of a missing person that.
- 41:45Speaker 3: Have been abducted for demonic rituals now days.
- 41:47Speaker 1: And we don't we don't get the milk carton Uh,
- 41:50Speaker 1: we don't get the milk carton stories anymore in the US. Yeah,
- 41:54Speaker 1: and this was this, this whole phenomenon is uh. It
- 42:00Speaker 1: originates in crime novel from nineteen twenty three set on
- 42:06Speaker 1: the Bergen Railway. What we're saying is there's a ton
- 42:10Speaker 1: of fascinating history about Easter, and we have so much
- 42:14Speaker 1: more to explore. In the meantime, you can check out
- 42:19Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. We have a
- 42:21Speaker 1: YouTube video called the Surprising Origins of Easter. We have
- 42:25Speaker 1: not delved into the full mythology leading to the Christian
- 42:31Speaker 1: interpretation of this holiday, but we hope you had a
- 42:35Speaker 1: good one. Whether or not you celebrate, people are a
- 42:39Speaker 1: little bit nicer around holidays.
- 42:40Speaker 3: I find, you know what I mean, like people a
- 42:42Speaker 3: little bit cooler.
- 42:44Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's been in the back of my head,
- 42:46Speaker 2: this whole conversation. I haven't brought it up, but I'm
- 42:48Speaker 2: gonna just make it my last thing.
- 42:50Speaker 3: Set that fire.
- 42:51Speaker 2: It's just kind of interesting to me that somehow both
- 42:56Speaker 2: the secular versions or I guess Tremont of both Christmas
- 43:03Speaker 2: meaning Santa Claus kind of egregious commercialism, gift giving and
- 43:08Speaker 2: all that, and Easter just bizarro Easter bunnies and chocolate
- 43:12Speaker 2: eggs and dyeing, you know, hard boiled eggs and all
- 43:16Speaker 2: this stuff that comes along that are kind of also
- 43:18Speaker 2: embraced by hardcore Christians. Like there's part of me that
- 43:22Speaker 2: would think that the real you know, christianist of the
- 43:25Speaker 2: Christian would kind of eschew a lot of that stuff
- 43:28Speaker 2: and sort of turn their nose up at it. But
- 43:30Speaker 2: it seems to me, at least from where I stand,
- 43:32Speaker 2: that they're all about those aspects as well, maybe because
- 43:36Speaker 2: they think it's a way of getting people into the fold.
- 43:39Speaker 2: You know, you start by being attracted by the Easter
- 43:42Speaker 2: egg hunts. The next thing, you know, you're a mass
- 43:44Speaker 2: I don't.
- 43:44Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, And you know that goes into the idea
- 43:49Speaker 1: of social autonomy and the individual's interactions with a group,
- 43:55Speaker 1: which makes me sound like a crazy academic, which perhaps
- 43:59Speaker 1: I am.
- 44:00Speaker 3: You're not crazy.
- 44:02Speaker 2: You've got a background for sure a bit, but I
- 44:04Speaker 2: just wonder, you know, all along the way and this chat,
- 44:08Speaker 2: it's kind of been like this is almost feels to
- 44:11Speaker 2: me like it still could be looked at as recruitment tools,
- 44:14Speaker 2: you know, much like the whole religious secretism was about
- 44:17Speaker 2: getting people to you know, come over to their side
- 44:20Speaker 2: religiously speaking without fully.
- 44:23Speaker 3: Realizing what it meant.
- 44:24Speaker 2: And I'm just wondering if, like, maybe Christians are cool
- 44:26Speaker 2: with all this stuff, A because it's fun and be
- 44:29Speaker 2: because it sort of sometimes gets people in the door.
- 44:32Speaker 3: I don't know.
- 44:33Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see youth group folks.
- 44:36Speaker 2: Hey, I remember going to youth group for the free tacos.
- 44:39Speaker 3: That's why I went to youth group.
- 44:40Speaker 1: Sounds cool. Yeah, We've got we have so much more
- 44:44Speaker 1: to explore. We also have We also have some commentary
- 44:49Speaker 1: that me interests you about the secular origins of the
- 44:53Speaker 1: depiction of Santa Claus, which is coming up on a
- 44:55Speaker 1: future episode about cartoons and propaganda. Spoil is but do
- 45:01Speaker 1: never do. Please tune in, uh and maybe we'll do
- 45:05Speaker 1: it etymology of the phrase spoilers. I think it would
- 45:08Speaker 1: take us about six minutes. But with that, we want
- 45:13Speaker 1: to give a big thanks to everybody's tuning in. We
- 45:17Speaker 1: hope that you had an excellent weekend, whether or not
- 45:20Speaker 1: you celebrate some derivation of Easter. We want to let's
- 45:25Speaker 1: see Noel. I guess we got to think. First off,
- 45:28Speaker 1: we got to thank our super producer research associate mister
- 45:31Speaker 1: Max Williams.
- 45:32Speaker 2: And of course Max's brother Alex, who composed this theme.
- 45:37Speaker 2: I like to thank my personal Lord and Savior JC.
- 45:40Speaker 2: I'm glad he has risen, he has risen. Indeed, I'm sorry,
- 45:43Speaker 2: I'm joking. I grew up in the church. I'm allowed
- 45:45Speaker 2: to make those jokes, and we never you know, poopoo
- 45:48Speaker 2: anybody's religious beliefs. Your religious beliefs are your own. This
- 45:51Speaker 2: is just such an interesting trajectory. Somehow we ended up
- 45:54Speaker 2: with people in bunny costumes. We're standing on the side
- 45:57Speaker 2: of the road waving at cars, which I just saw
- 45:59Speaker 2: the video, he said, it is more than a little unsettling.
- 46:03Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank everybody dresses up in a
- 46:06Speaker 1: big rabbit costume. It means the world to me when
- 46:10Speaker 1: I see you all on the streets. New seasonal Cryptid
- 46:12Speaker 1: just dropped. That's how I feel about it. Big, big
- 46:15Speaker 1: thanks to Bahamas or aj Bahamas. Jacobs the puzzler.
- 46:20Speaker 2: Soon to be appearing right here on your regularly scheduled program.
- 46:24Speaker 1: A Catching Old Brown making an appearance on his show
- 46:29Speaker 1: as well, The Puzzler. Big big thanks, of course to
- 46:33Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland aka The Twister. I got a cat in
- 46:37Speaker 1: the way, keep it in next, Big big thanks to
- 46:40Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland ak The Twister, famously the guy who will
- 46:45Speaker 1: show up as an adult at children's Easter egg hunts
- 46:50Speaker 1: and compete with them.
- 46:52Speaker 3: We'll see you next time, folks.
- 47:00Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
- 47:04Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.