Talk:Easter

I'm afraid I have some bad new regarding the first reference for this article:

Larry Boemler "Asherah and Easter," Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 18, Number 3, 1992-May/June reprinted at: http://www.worldmissions.org/Clipper/Holidays/EasterAndAsherah.htm

First of all, the reprint is evidently no longer available; the link is dead. But that's the least of it.

"Asherah and Easter" is NOT an article from that or any other issue of BAR, nor is Larry Boemler of Miami, Florida a BAR contributor, writer, or even a scholar with any credentials of note. Mr. Boemler was only a reader of Biblical Archaeology Review, and evidently a Messianic Jew and a bit of crank: the "article" is merely a letter to the editor printed in BAR's "Queries and Comments" section, and is basically a rant that Christianity should eschew Christmas trees, use the non-English term Pascha instead of Easter, celebrate that holiday following the Jewish reckoning of Passover, and otherwise divest itself of other supposedly pagan accretions.

Citing this as a scholarly reference is both misleading and, frankly, embarrassing to the principles of Free Thought and freethoughtpedia.

That is one small part of the article. However you have not proven the published information is inaccurate - merely that its source appears to be an editorial. If you can correct and improve upon the article, by all means do so. Just make your revised version an improvement in terms of citations and evidence. One thing we do know is that Easter is an assimilation of earlier Pagan and Roman celebrations and this article exists to document the details of that.--Pile 10:24, 10 April 2009 (CDT)