What's to celebrate?

Sometimes I'm just naive enough to think that everybody knows why we have holidays. I'm always amazed then when I find out how many people don't. OK, maybe it's not necessary to know the exact formula for figuring out when Easter and Passover come, but seen cosmologically, there does appear to be a very long-standing tradition of why it's now.

The Easter story is pretty straightforward: a young Jewish rabbi is accused of rousing too much rabble, so the powers-that-be decide his number's up and they crucify him -- the standard abominable punishment of the day; contrary to expectations, however, he doesn't stay buried, was raised from the dead, met his disciples leading them to draw the conclusion that this man was in fact the long-promised Messiah ... thus (in very abbreviated form) Christianity was born. Easter, then, is Christianity's defining moment: no Easter, no Christianity.

Passover is perhaps a little more complicated, but not very: the Hebrews are slaves in Egypt, Moses, who was incidentally raised by the Old Pharaoh, is tasked by G-d to get the New Pharaoh to free the slaves. After a dramatic series of events, the last of which killed the first born of the Egyptians, but not the Hebrews (for the Angel of Death passed them over), the Pharaoh relents, lets them go and they leave; then, after wandering in the desert for 40 years, they settle in what is now Israel and become the Jewish nation ... thus (in very abbreviated form) Judaism was born. Passover, then, is Judaism's defining moment: no Passover (Exodus), no Judaism.

Aside from any religious or ideological issues, am I the only one that finds it odd that these two holidays should coincide. OK, it's not all that rare that two different groups may have holidays around the same time, but these two holidays are not just any old holidays. Instead, in both instances they are the holidays that more or less define these two groups.

Sure, I hear the skeptics already shouting "coincidence", but to me the fundamental significance of these holidays speaks against that. As we saw between the years, it was anything but a matter of chance that Christmas ended up where it is, but what we also saw was that there had been a long tradition of a particular type of holiday at that time. Is it really to unreasonable to think that the same forces might be at work here? I don't think so.