This article, on Ostara, the pagan festival celebrated at the vernal equinox is just great. It’s one of the most inclusive articles I’ve seen on the pagan origins of what is more commonly celebrated as Easter. It’s also fairly short and readable.

While I’m on the subject, I also just found this thing about the significance of this holiday in the Orphic religion (from a page about cosmic tree myths):

“The Orphic religion of the Ancient Greeks was still flourishing in the early Christian times. Its followers believed in a cyclic universe, which had been created by the coupling of the Great Mother, who took the form of a snake, with the World Serpent, Ophion. The single egg produced from this union was hatched by the heat of the sun and out of this cosmic egg creation was born.

The Orphic mysteries were celebrated on March 21th, at the vernal equinox festival of the sun, when the hatching of the world egg was ritually enacted. It was a rite of world rebirth and coincides with the Christian Easter mysteries which celebrated creation’s renewal in the resurrected Christ. The ritual Orphic eggs, which were painted red in honour of the sun, were absorbed into Christian folk tradition as painted Easter eggs, a colourful vestige of the Orphic worship of the serpent and the cosmic egg, from which came the cosmic tree that supports and nourishes the whole world.”

And while we’re on the topic of red eggs, Mary Magdalane is frequently shown in Eastern Orthodox iconography holding a red egg. Here’s why:

Following Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, she used her position to gain an invitation to a banquet given by Emperor Tiberius Caesar. When she met him, she held a plain egg in her hand and exclaimed “Christ is risen!” Caesar laughed, and said that Christ rising from the dead was as likely as the egg in her hand turning red while she held it. Before he finished speaking, the egg in her hand turned a bright red, and she continued proclaiming the Gospel to the entire imperial house.

And here’s another thing about the Orphic Egg, along with a picture of it that I ganked.