The Jewish Passover was kept at the time of the first full moon which followed the vernal equinox. The primitive Christians of Asia Minor, claiming for precedent the practice of St. John the Divine, commemorated our Saviour’s Passion on the same day as the Passover and His Resurrection on the third day after. Thus it frequently happened that the very event which had led to the observance of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath had its yearly commemoration on some day which was not the Christian Sabbath. On the other hand, the Christians at Rome, following as they believed the practice of St. Paul, kept not only the weekly but also the yearly feast of the Resurrection on the first day of the week and the anniversary of the Passion on the third day before, in other words they kept their Paschal feast as we do now on the first day of the week which occurred next after the first full moon following the Spring equinox. The origin and signification of the feast were the same for both Eastern and Western Christians. It was the Christian Passover (Pascha) and was known by that name. The ancient Cornish word for it was Pask. In North Staffordshire forty years ago it was the custom, and it is probably still the custom, for bands of men and maidens to solicit Pace (Pasch) eggs. The use of the term Easter, of Saxon origin, is merely a proof of the stubborn independence of the English character which refused to receive not only the names of the days of the week but also of the Christian seasons from the Latin. The coincidence in point of time of the Paschal feast with a pagan feast, if such coincidence can be discovered, was purely accidental; and the same can be said of Ascension, Pentecost and all other movable feasts which are ancillary to or supplementary of it. In this connection it is noteworthy that throughout the bitter controversy, dating from an amicable discussion held in the year 162 when Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, paid a visit to Anicetus, bishop of Rome until the sixth century, it never occurred to either party to suggest a pagan origin for the feast or to connect the time of its celebration with nature or nature worship.[[6]] As the commemoration of a notable historical event—the Resurrection of Jesus Christ—it was observed by East and West, just as the Jewish Passover was observed as the anniversary of the “self-same day that the Lord did bring the children of Israel out of Egypt by their armies,” and of that hurried meal of which a lamb of the first year and unleavened bread were the more important constituent elements. In the Bible and in the Primitive Church the two feasts are so closely linked together that, in order to demonstrate identity of origin for the Christian Passover and the feast of Tammuz the earth-god, it will be necessary to show that the Jewish Passover derived its raison d’être from the same source as the worship of Tammuz. That any such source has been found or that any connection has been found, or will be found, is not to be taken for granted. The connection between the Jewish and the Christian Pascha is not open to dispute. Had the Christian Church repudiated the Pascha and kept a festival of the Resurrection entirely distinct from it, something might have been urged in favour of a pagan origin. It is the indissolubility of their union which forbids any such interpretation.
The writer has no desire to be regarded as an obscurantist and, for this reason if for no other, he offers to the students of folklore in general and to all deductive philosophers obsessed with the unique evidential value of coincidence and resemblance in particular, the following facts, for the authenticity of which he is prepared to vouch whenever he is required so to do. He believes that when their import is fully grasped they will carry, to the minds of the said philosophers to whom the discovery, never previously announced, is humbly but confidently dedicated, the conviction that not in Asia, the accredited home of mystery, not in Africa the cradle of theologies old and new, not in America the foster mother of science Christian and otherwise, but in Australia will be found the true origin of the Easter festival and its ceremonial. He regrets that his command of scientific language is unequal to the task which a discovery of such absorbing interest and far-reaching possibility demands. He therefore craves the indulgence of the learned for expressing himself in terms which he hopes will be intelligible to learned and unlearned alike.
In the low-lying land which borders Halifax Bay in the colony of Queensland there is to be found an edible root called the bulgaroo which, at the time of the European Spring equinox, after the heavy rains which begin in the month of February, betrays its presence by sending forth shoots of a bright and tender green colour. For some occult reason this root is preferred by the aboriginal inhabitants to the choicest delicacies which the white man, notwithstanding his cultivated taste in the matter of food and drink, can supply. Accordingly every year the black man, if employed, seeks his master’s permission for a month’s sojourn in the land of the bulgaroo. It is well known to all who have lived in Queensland that the black man is a keen observer of the heavenly bodies and is much distressed by the sight of an eclipse of the sun or moon, from which it may be inferred that he rejoices when the sun and moon are not obscured. Whether, strictly speaking, he can be described as a sun worshipper has not been determined, but it is believed that the disclosure of these particulars will help incidentally to solve this as well as the larger problem under discussion. The coincidence of the Spring equinox with the resurrection of the said bulgaroo from its dark retreat under the earth, and of both events with the assembling of the aboriginal tribes and of their partaking together of what may not unfitly be described as the root of ages (for in all probability we have here a vegetable food known to the black man’s ancestors long before they emerged from a pre-human archetype); above all, the addition to the bulgaroo banquet of human flesh whenever it may be safely had, and the marked preference for those portions of the human body which, like the heart, are essential to life, and therefore, as they suppose, are the better fitted to stimulate and increase the eater’s physical courage and efficiency; to which must also be added the attendant dance and song of corroboree and the more secret and mysterious bora meeting whereat, after due proof has been given, both oral and experimental of the candidate’s fortitude, he is admitted to the full privileges of manhood by a solemn rite of initiation: all these ceremonial acts, whose significance it is impossible to misinterpret and to exaggerate, strengthened and not weakened (as might be supposed by a superficial observer) by the fact that at the antipodes Spring synchronises with European Autumn, establish a strong presumption that the continent of Australia affords the veritable solution of the great problem of the origin of Christian ceremonial observance. Nor is this surprising when we remember that according to an eminent German archæologist, Dr. Buttel-Reepen,[[7]] the Australian aborigines are the direct descendants of the propithecanthropi, i.e. pre-ape-men or common progenitors of apes and men, “since their foot had not yet undergone the definite change from a grasping organ to a supporting apparatus.” Nay more, when we reflect that from the great concourse of pre-men one huge horde poured away in the direction of Africa, some of its members pursuing their wanderings through generations, until they eventually reached Europe across a bridge of land that then united the two continents; being accompanied in their migration by the pre-glacial fauna, the Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros merckii and other great beasts whose fossilised remains bear witness of this emigration, we are driven to conclude that throughout incalculable periods of time, from the Tertiary era at least, when, according to Dr. Woodward, man was already emerging from his pre-ape condition, down through the ages, palæolithic, neolithic, bronze, and iron, across continents which have been overwhelmed or refashioned, this simple meal of bulgaroo has persistently held its ground and won its triumphs in the social and afterwards in the religious life, pagan and Christian, of man as he has progressed steadily but surely from generation to generation.
Absurd as the foregoing presentment of a few, plain verifiable facts will appear to the reader, it is neither more absurd nor more wildly fantastic than much that passes for penetration with those who allow themselves to become the slaves of resemblance and coincidence. So far as the bulgaroo feast is concerned, it would be possible to write in the same grandiloquent manner and with an equal amount of wisdom of a beanfeast at Blackpool.
To resume. The deductive philosopher having identified the Christian Passover, which in England is commonly known as Easter and which always occurs in March or April, with the Celtic feast of Beltane which always occurs in May, it would be strange if he did not discover a pagan archetype for Christmas.
In this case both coincidence and resemblance point to the birthday of Mithras the Persian sun-god whose worship was introduced at Rome in the time of the Emperors. Is it unfair to remark that here conviction is rendered doubly certain by reason of the fact that the date of the earliest Christian observance of the Christmas festival is somewhat obscure? We know that it originated at a very early period and that the Alexandrians and the Churches of Palestine kept it, until the year 428, at Epiphany[[8]] and not on the 25th of December. Clement of Alexandria, who died about A.D. 220, refers to calculations of the year and day of the Lord’s nativity not to encourage but to caution. It is noteworthy, however, that he gives no hint of the danger which might arise from the possibility of its being confounded with pagan celebrations of like nature. It is well known that a festival of the sun was held at the time of the winter solstice (dies natalis invicti solis), but it is equally well known that the early fathers never ceased to warn the people against confounding Christian festivals with pagan.[[9]]
Having satisfied himself that the keeping of Christmas originated in sun worship at the winter solstice, our philosopher would hardly do himself justice did he not discover a similar explanation of the commemoration of the birthday of St. John the Baptist at Midsummer. The ordinary uninstructed Christian would probably argue, and to better purpose, that if you keep the Saviour’s birthday on the 25th of December you ought to keep the Baptist’s birthday on the 24th of June, because the latter was six months older than the former.[[10]]
It is possible that pagan rites may have become associated with the Christian festival, but in Cornwall the Midsummer fires do not appear to have been so associated. Whatever their origin may be, there is no evidence that they have at any time entered into the Christian system.
The position for which, in the interests of truth, it seems vital to contend may be illustrated by citing a familiar episode from the life of St. Patrick—the episode of the Paschal fire. There is indisputable evidence that, from the days of the Emperor Constantine (A.D. 274-337) at least, Easter was distinguished by the Christian Church from other festivals by the lighting of fires or tapers to signify the rising of Christ from the dead to give light to the world. When St. Patrick arrived at the hill of Slane, in sight of Tara, on the eve of the Christian Passover, he set about preparing for that great solemnity. He lighted the sacred fire. But it so happened that the then pagan Irish were, at that moment, equally intent upon keeping a festival of their own, and that their festival also involved the observance of a similar ceremony. They, too, had a fire to light, and the act of lighting by anyone except King Leoghaire himself, or by one of his ministers at a signal given by him, was punishable with death. St. Patrick in ignorance of the prohibition lighted his fire first, and the fire was seen by the King and his subjects at Tara. He would doubtless have acted as he did had he known of the edict; but it was, as events soon showed, this particular transgression, insignificant enough in itself, which at once brought about the collision between him and Leoghaire.
St. Patrick manifestly was not consciously observing a practice of pagan origin. Whatever thoughts, memories or associations his fire kindled within him they were definitely Christian. We are not told what meaning the King’s fire had for him. The casual onlooker would probably have seen little to choose between the one fire and the other: he might conceivably have regarded them as expressive of one and the same intention. Had a modern philosopher been present he would almost inevitably have discerned a common origin and therefore a more or less near relationship. Yet both would have been wrong; the first, because the motives and intentions of Patrick and Leoghaire were not the same; the second, because until a common origin has been shown any inference derived from similarity of ceremonial is apt to be misleading however reasonable it may seem.