ALT Text: Scene is WAITROSE. Behind it is a staff member, whose name we will soon learn is BECKY. She is dealing with a customer, for now out of shot, while talking to her manager on the phone.

BECKY [on phone]: Yeah, hiya...

2 BECKY: Yes I have a customer here who wants to complain about the Easter eggs.

3 BECKY [putting hand over receiver while addressing the customer stood at the desk in front of her]: Sorry what was your name again?

4 [Pull back to show the customer is a very tall, green-skinned, PAGAN GODDESS, festooned with flowers. Stood next to her is her son, a normal human teenager in a hoodie, who looks mortified by his mum.]

PAGAN GODDESS: Eostre the Pagan Goddess of Fertility

5 BECKY Sorry - Your name is Easter…?

PAGAN GODDESS: Eostre.

6

[Vicky pauses, trying to take this in].

VICKY: Your name is Easter and you want to complain about the Easter eggs.

7 PAGAN GODDESS: Sorry love, what’s your name?

BECKY: Becky

PAGAN GODDESS: Well, Vicky -

8 PAGAN GODDESS: If it was you who’d shagged the solar god of the Equinox to give birth to an actual living god - my son Darren here -

TEENAGE BOY: Muuum…

9 PAGAN GODDESS: ….only to have all your efforts totally forgotten by history, you’d have a complaint too!

10 PAGAN GODDESS: Aisle four is full of products, with no hint of the true meaning of the festival!

11 BECKY: You mean… Jesus…?

PAGAN GODDESS: I mean shagging, Vicky.

12 PAGAN GODDESS: Is it too much to see just a little bit of pre-Christian sex in Aisle 4?

all 76 comments

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[–] 69 points 7 months ago (4 children)

What better way to symbolize shagging in a kid-friendly way than an egg hunt? Look at all those little sperms go, trying to find the egg as quickly as possible after all being released at the same time?

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    It's a nice idea, but eggs were associated with the Christian Easter (Pascha in Latin, which is roughly the name for Easter in most countries that celebrate it), probably as a custom from Persia going through to what's now Eastern Orthodoxy and from there to Catholics/Protestants as a way to celebrate the end of Lent (eggs being prohibited during that time). It's still possible it was also Pagan and forgotten, decorating eggs is at least 60k years old, but its association with Easter was only (re-?) initiated through Christianity.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    The thousands of years old tradition from non-Abrahamic Persia, (in fact a proto-IE region with shared religious rites with Slavic, Celtic and Germanic Europe), predating not only the splits of Christianity into Eastern Orthodox and Other, but of Christianity actually existing, doesn't show it was a Pagan tradition?

    What else do you call non-Abrahamic religious rites?

    (And apparently new evidence has since backed up Bede's account of Pagan Oestra in the British Isles, too.)

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  • [–] 67 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    I love the passive-aggressive move of Ēostre intentionally getting Becky's name wrong in return

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  • [–] 75 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    transcription for the visually impaired?

    Baaaased

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  • [–] 40 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Slightly differs from the actual comic, though.

    "Give birth to Spring itself" and "hang on, Spring" vs "give birth to an actual living god - my son Darren here"

    And ends with TEENAGE BOY: MUUUUM

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  • [–] 27 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Methinks it was generated. Shame.

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  • [–] [S] 38 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

    I got the comic and the Alt Text from this mastodon post which specifically says the author does the alt text himself. I couldn’t find evidence of that though I didn’t look tooooo hard…

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  • [–] 29 points 7 months ago
    [–] 14 points 7 months ago

    That's not even a checkout line, so the man behind Spring is just there to watch the drama.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    "normal human teenager" hmmmmmmmm

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  • [–] 17 points 7 months ago*

    Think of all of the millions that Christians butchered over this... then, they destroyed every single trace of any other religion, erasing centuries of cultural history.

    Today, Catholics alone own over 170 million acres of land, much of it stolen from those same people, and they enjoy tax-free status all over the world. Horrifying.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (21 children)

    Without checking, I think it's only called Easter in the UK, everywhere else in Europe uses a derivation of passover

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  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Pretty sure the German "Ostern" has the same root. As I understand it, Passover is a completely different (Jewish?) holiday?

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    My family celebrated both Passover and Easter for a few years. We were not Jewish, although we do have some distant Ashkenazi ancestry.

    There was a trend for a while for people to "prove" their devoutness as Christians or Catholics by celebrating Jewish traditions because they gave rise to Christianity. It was weird

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    Well, their religion is centered around a Jew. If you want to do as Jesus would have done then you celebrate the Jewish traditions.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    I mean, it was very performative and it felt more like a novelty with how shallow it was. That's what was weird, there wasn't respect towards the traditions or an attempt to gain an understanding of the history of the faith or closeness with god.

    I suppose looking back all of the traditions we practiced felt performative lol

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    In Slovenian it is called Big Night

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    In my language it means "meat taking" or "taking of the meat".

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Not derived from passover, but pesach.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Passover is a Jewish holiday.

    UK is not a Jewish country so the two holidays are unrelated, but obviously a lot of different cultures are going to celebrate the days getting longer again so it's not surprising that there are multiple different holidays that are all celebrated at the same time. Also of course the Christian church overwrote a lot of pagan holidays so Easter being celebrated when the days get longer tracks even though that's not actually what the celebration is about.

    I'm not really sure what the egg laying rabbit is about though.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    Well they are related, Jesus was Jewish and the last supper was celebrated during the passover holiday. Presumably the first Christians were Jewish and the passover name kinda stuck and found its way into the other cultures.

    I first found out about it when celebrating Easter with my Italian room mates who called it Pascha. I wanted to know why and lo and behold Wikipedia came to the rescue. Which, according to Wikipedia, Easter is only called Easter in the UK. Happy to be corrected by language other than English speakers though!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Easter?wprov=sfla1

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    Was eoster really worshipped? I thought they were just made up.

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  • [–] 64 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Fun Fact: They're all made up.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    🤣.

    This will sound insensitive but I look at the Bible like I look at Harry Potter or Lord of the rings.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The Bible is more like of you took HP, LotR, and 20 other series and mashed them together.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    There's some evidence Eostre (or Ostara, Austra, definitely Aušrinė in Lithuania) was worshipped, but the evidence is scant and mostly based on linguistic reconstruction by Grimm in the 19th century. There is evidence of votive offerings to the "Austriahenae" (a collection of matron goddesses) discovered in 1958, but little else.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    There have been more discoveries since Grimm boys, and despite earlier scepticism scholars are now mostly accepting that there was an Eostre diety worshipped in Europe around the Spring Equinox.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago

    New findings and archeo-lingustics have supported Grimms and Bede, so the existence (culturally) and worship of Oestra (or however your 1000BC Celto-Germanic language spelt it) is now generally accepted by scholars (and anyone who isn't pushing an anti-intellectual, and often antisemitic, "war on Christianity" agenda).

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago
    [–] -1 points 6 months ago

    One sentence written by a monk with no proof nor backing is the most we have of "eostre" btw

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  • [+] -75 points 7 months ago* (19 children)

    Too.

    Much.

    Fucking.

    White.

    Space.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (16 children)

    Out of curiosity, why do you have an issue with author's name?

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    The little shit is trolling. Block and move on.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I disagree. Down vote, shame, and then move on.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    That just validates his behaviour. The best thing against idiots like this is to let them scream into the void and be alone with their "opinions".

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  • [+] -23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (10 children)

    In this specific case?

    Do I even need to answer?

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago* (9 children)

    Yes, that's why I asked. Not necessarily in specific case but in general as you keep removing these.

    I don't get it.

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  • [+] -21 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    In short, to have a better ad free visual experience.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    But a signature is not an add? Furthermore it makes you to do more work with cropping etc.

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  • [+] -22 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    But the result is more beautiful comic that even I prefer to save on my drive, instead of the original.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [+] -19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    It shows the details of the art clearly, instead of having a giant space of white around it. It makes you actually appreciate the work of the webcomic artist more as you focus on the details.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    Shhh, no one tell him about Photo Mats in frames...

    Also, how can we appreciate the work of the webcomic artist if you literally cut off their name so none of us know?!

    And, like, am I the only one that knows how to use pinch zoom?!

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