I have often joked that feasting at Easter is very biblical because when Jesus returned from the dead, he ate with the disciples. Of course, feasting on joyful occasions is very much a biblical value. But Jesus eating after the resurrection means more than just a celebration.
When the Gospels were written, a philosophical movement called Gnosticism was popular in some circles. Gnostics believed that there were two gods, an evil god who had created the material world and a good god who had created the spiritual world. They believed that humans were a part of the divine spiritual spark that got trapped in the evil material world and that the goal of life was to be freed from matter and return to the spiritual realm. They considered marriage and procreation to be evil because having children perpetuated the entrapment of the spiritual spark in evil matter. The Gnostics had no organized structure of their own, but instead they infiltrated the religious organizations of others and reinterpreted the existing tenets and practices of those groups to suit their outlook.
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