Tracey Braun

(Anyone get the reference to the Dar Willams song? It’s a favourite in our house!)

It’s the Easter weekend and I’ve just finished re-watching Chocolat, one of my favourite movies-with-pagan-undertones *based on the book by Joanne Harris with some changes). The movie circles around the themes of patrichary/morality and matrifocal/sensuality through an ongoing conflict between the mayor and the owner of a chocolate shop during Lent (the 40 days prior to Easter). 

Any witch can explain how Easter has its roots in paganism: Eostre is actually a Germanic Goddess, and bunnies/eggs are symbols of fertility (which is what spring is all about) and so on. This appears in the movie in a scene where the mayor attacks the display created for the chocolate shop’s fertility festival,. The first thing he destroys is a chocolate statue of Ixacacao, the Mayan Goddess of Chocolate; he then destroys other, more common, symbols of the holiday.

While some pagans get upset that our festivals/gods/ideas are reshaped by Christianity, I recognize that the original purpose (taking over/destroying the symbols of the Goddess) no longer holds power over us. Instead, I celebrate the common themes that bring our religions together: first the sacrifice, then the celebration. Jesus was the original hippie, after all, and his stand against the dominant ideas of the day have stood the test of time. I may not make it to sunrise service, but I’ll be celebrating the power of life over death just the same. Blessed Be!