Why did the stupid xtians steal cristimas from the pagans?

Question

Why did they do that dude

Answer 1

they like pagans and don't really know their own bible or anything about pagans.

Answer 2

Well, it wasn't a stupid thing to do, really. And they weren't stupd to do it. It just didn't work quite as well as they planned.

As Christianity went from being a religion that lived side-by-side with other religions to a more zealous attempt to convert all to it's teachings (which was after Rome has been Christianized, or we could say after Christianity had been Romanized), the early Church began to copy the very successful technique that the Romans had used for centuries. When the Roman Empire absorbed peoples through conquest, they simply added a name of an already-existent roman deity to the name of the local gods/goddesses and claimed that they were one and the same.

In the case of the pre-Christian Romans, it was pretty much true; for every Goddess of a sacred well or spring, the Romans *had* a similar Goddess, so it worked pretty well.

In any case, the process of conversion in those early times wasn't like it is today. The peoples that the early Church missionaries ran into were pretty set in their ways, and realistically, the Church couldn't convince them to abandon their ages-old celebrations. Some of those celebrations were seasonal (and you cant just alter those) and some were tied to the cycle of the agricultural year, which were also pretty static.

What *could* be done was to put a veneer of Christianity on those celebrations; thus the promise of everlasting life that the Church said was heralded by the birth of Jesus was transposed onto the celebrations in the darkest part of the year, at which time the ever-green trees had been seen as a promise of returning life (with the return of the Spring) for centuries.

Similarly, Easter (Eostre) had been a celebration of that renewal promised at Yuletide/Saturnalia, with the coming of Spring, and so the Church transposed the promise of eternal life in the Jesus resurrection story onto that older celebration.

That's why so many of the traditions of these holidays have no relationship to Christian belief or mythology; they were incorporated from earlier celebrations by the church in to get the locals to celebrate (by basically saying that the celebrations were the same). Many of them don't really "fit" , though, and iwas only semi-successful to transpose the Chrisitan myths onto older ones - the peculiar carryovers like rabbits and eggs at Easter, and the evergreen trees and holly and mistletoe at Christimas are evidence of the perisistence of the symbols of older religions.

Answer 3

They were being diplomatic and wanted people to follow Christianity so they let the people keep their celebration dates and rituals but just put the Christian overtone onto everything. There's still alot of ritual that originates from the pagan that is used in Catholicism

Answer 4

I just went to a Thank giving diner at one of the local schools. I decided to volunteer my time and help out, I found out after I got there that it was sponsored by a church, that didn't bother me until the part when Santa showed up and told all the kids that he wasn't the reason for Christmas, and proceeded to the story about the birth of Christ. I ended up walking out on them, why do the feel the need to lie to children?

Answer 5

Why do the stupid pagans whine and cry so much?

Answer 6

dude dont be calling people stupid ...
but you are right about the pagan celibration though

Answer 7

It wasn`t the stupid ones that stole it .
It was the jealous ones who did .They wanted to make even more money off of their flock .
Thou shalt not steal ,nothing was said about borrowing ?

Answer 8

Because we didn't have any "Cool" holidays yet and we figured,"What the Hell...hey why's that guy got an egg and a bunny over there?"

Answer 9

We didn't steal christmas from Pagans at all. Christmas is Christs birth and that is our holiday not the pagans. I do know that a church leader in history inserted the Christmas feast in the middle of a holiday period that you pagans celebrate as a drunken brawl, and december became the christmas month. But before it was just a wild holiday for pagans. If anything we improved it.

Answer 10

so they could recruit pagans who would not want to lose their only holidays. there was no workweek then, the only days off were official holy days.