Christmas and Easter...pagan holidays??!!?

Question

I just watched a documentary that claims Christmas and Easter are pagan holidays that were adopted by early christians. Easter was a pagan fertility festival that involved orgies and virgin sacrifice. Pagan rituals were based on seasonal / celestial events and the pagans used the first day of spring (spring equinox) for this. The main fertility symbols were the egg and the rabbit (as in, "they reproduce like rabbits"). I was skeptical at first, but then I started thinking about eggs and rabbits and how those two things DO bring to mind fertility (I grew up on a farm and rabbits really do just have sex all day!), and I could think of nothing that they would have to do with Jesus!

From the internet:
The ancient goddess, Eostre, a Saxon deity who symbolized new life and fertility, was the key symbol of this celebration which was also known as Ostara.

Does anyone know if any of this is true and what bunnies and eggs have to do with Jesus and God? Are we worshipping pagan gods!?

Answer 1

CHRISTMAS

The Bible does not tell us when Jesus was born. However, we know that the angels announced the birth of Christ to the Bethlehem shepherds in the open fields who were tending their flocks by night.. This fact certainly implies that the birth of Jesus could NOT have been on the 25th of December. "The cold of the night in Palestine between December and February is very piercing, and it was not customary for the shepherds of Judea to watch their flocks in the open fields later than about the end of October.
Because of these facts, and others, it is virtually impossible for the birth of Christ to have occurred on December 25.


"No such festival as Christmas was ever heard of until the THIRD century, and not until the FOURTH century was far advanced did it gain much observance.

"Long before the fourth century, and long before the Christian era itself, a festival was celebrated among the HEATHEN, at that precise time of the year, in honor of the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven; and it may fairly be presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of the nominal adherents of Christianity, the same festival was adopted by the Roman Church, giving it only the name of Christ. This tendency on the part of Christians to meet Paganism half-way was very early developed."


There can be no doubt that the Pagan festival of the winter solstice—in other words, Christmas—was held in honor of the birth of the Babylonian Messiah.


December 25 was also the Day of Saturnalia, a celebration dedicated to the Chief god, Saturn, during which time there was much drinking, many banquets, and presents were exchanged.

God is very clear in his directives against the celebration of this Pagan holiday that Christians now universally celebrate as Christmas. God calls this an abomination! Christians celebrate December 25th blindly believe they are honoring the birth of Jesus, when they are in reality honoring the Pagan god Tammuz.

In Jeremiah 10:1-4, we read:


"Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel:

"Thus saith the Lord, Learn NOT the way of the heathen, and be NOT dismayed at the signs of heaven (the queen of heaven, Isis, worshiped by the heathen), for the heathen are dismayed at them.

"For the customs of the people are futile: for one cuts a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.

"They decorate it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not."


There could be NO more specific description of a present-day Christmas, than this.


God says, "DON'T do it. This is Paganism!"

EASTER:

Easter is not a Christian name. It is Chaldean (Babylonian) in origin - the name Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven. The name Astarte, as found on the Assyrian monuments by the noted archeologist Layard, was the name Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was introduced very early into Britain, along with the Druids, "the priests of the groves," the high places where the pagans worshipped the idols of Baal. In the Almanac of the 1800's, May 1st is called Beltane, from the pagan god, Bel. The titles Bel and Molech both belong to the same god.

Semiramis (also known as Ishtar) of Babylon, the wife of Nimrod and mother of Tammuz, was the same goddess worshiped throughout the world under various names, such as the Egyptian fertility god, Artemis, the Roman goddess of licentiousness, Venus, the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, and the Ephesian, many-breasted fertility god, Diana, as well as many others.

The (Easter) bunny, the oldest pagan symbol of fertility - Semiramis - has absolutely NOTHING to do with the birth of Christ.

Nor does the Sunrise service. Jesus was resurrected while it was still DARK!


"And early came Mary Magdalene, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre." John 20:1


"In ancient times, eggs were used in the religious rites of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and were hung up for mystic purposes in their temples. . . The classic poets are full of the fable of the mystic egg of the Babylonians.

"The occult meaning of the mystic egg of Astarte had reference to the ark during the time of the flood, in which the whole human race was shut up, as the chick is enclosed in the egg before it is hatched. And of course, the egg also refers to birth, or creation.

"Though the deified queen, whom Astarte represented, had no actual existence till some centuries after the flood, yet through the doctrine of metampsychosis, which was firmly established in Babylon, it was easy for her worshippers to be made to believe that, in a previous incarnation, she had lived in the Antediluvian world and passed safely through the waters of the flood. The Roman Catholic Church then adopted this mystic egg of Astarte, and consecrated it as a symbol of Christ's resurrection."


The Bible clearly tells us what God considers the memorial of Christ's death and resurrection. It is NOT the pagan celebration of Easter, in honor of the pagan god, Ishtar. It is BAPTISM:


"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?

Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

"For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection:

"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed (rendered inoperative), that henceforth we should not be slaves of sin." Romans 6:3-6


The memorial for Christ's death and resurrection is BAPTISM - - - NOT Easter!

There is NO doubt that Easter is a totally Pagan holiday.

Answer 2

The Easter thing is _mostly_ bunk. Christians celebrated a holiday they called the Greek work for passover for centuries before Christianity came to the British Isles. The reason for this is simple. Christ was crucified on the first day of passover, and rose on its third day. Then Christians began to celebrate that on the Friday and Sunday that coincide with it.

Now it is true that when St. Augustine of Canterbury came to Britain, that he permitted the local populace to call the Paschal feast "Eostre" (a cleric named the venerable Bede records this) which was an unfortunate choice. But understand, that by the time this happened, Pascha had been celebrated for six hundred years already.

Even to this day, this really remains an English-only issue. In all other latin languages, the word for the feast is a variant of Hebrew's word for passover, "pesach" - pascha, pasqua, paques, etc. These other languages represent most of Christendom, and latin-language people would certainly scratch their heads at all this "eostre" stuff which doesn't apply to the holiday as it is called in their languages.

And then of course, there is how Christians celebrate Easter - with reenactments of the passion, straight out of the bible: not exactly the thing you'd expect from a borrowed holiday, wouldn't you say?

Certainly not the first thing I think of when I hear the strains of "Christ the Lord is risen today."

Answer 3

Yes, Christmas and Easter among other holidays are based on Pagan holidays. It was only because the, then, emporer decided to convert his subjects to Christianity. To make the transition much more smooth for his subjects, Emporer Constantine(I believe) designed the new Christian holidays to be built around the current Pagan holidays that the people were currently worshipping.

Answer 4

They are pagan holidays.European Christians were slow in conversion and held on to these holidays and reassigned new meanings.The bunnies and eggs are fertility symbols,adults were the ones originally hunting eggs and sexual sport.

Answer 5

The Holy Church, in her infinite wisdom, has historically made a prctice of placing Christian feast days near old pagan feast days to try and supplant the old pagan rituals in various cultures with the new, Christian feast, and to try and change the focus of the culture. This has nothing to do with the adoption of any pagan practices. This is professional anti-Catholic bias.

Answer 6

You are correct. Christians should avoid anything with pagan origins. Neither God nor Jesus approve of such things.

Answer 7

Yes it is true. It is also true that the bible was rewritten in the 15th century (if my memory serves me right) and many things were either removed from the orignal text, or changed. This was done to "protect" and help the masses with Christianity.

Answer 8

Early Christian leaders designated pagan dates for Christian observances to supplant the old religions.

Answer 9

Yes. These are Pagan holidays.
Oh the church did not substitute, it adopted pagan holidays.

Answer 10

jesus was actually born in april but they moved it to 12.25 cuz 12.21 is a pagan holiday and they wanted to become popular with the majority(pagans)