Does Anyone Think Easter Is A Pagan Holiday As Well As Christmas?

Question

I mean, the arguement for CHRISTmas being a pagan holiday is a little thin already. (spare me your pagan christmas arguements I know them all well).

But I just read an answer that claimed Easter is a pagan holiday. This is a new one for me. Where is the rational for this? Surely you understand you can't use the "date changed" arguement. Good Friday is a well recorded date.

Right then, So its the same arguement as used for pagan Christmas minus the date change which is the only thing making it reasonable.

For those that missed the boat. Easter isn't about the Easter hunt (though it may be a good time) it's about the Ressurection. I think you'll find more people worshiping Christ that day than worshipping a bunny.

Answer 1

I am sorry to tell you, but it is true. Even the name easter came from a Pagan Goddess names Oester. Surely you don't think that easter bunnies and colored eggs have anything to do with Christ's resurrection?

Really - the churches have gone to great trouble over the years to combine these holidays and then put a Christian stamp on them. It was as much a political decision as much as for the need humans have to have celebrations before winter seals us in our homes and when we can come out again at spring time. When Christianity started to take over, they carefully planned these things this way for the good of the church and to give the illusion of human unity. I really don't understand why Christians get so upset about it.

Peace!

Answer 2

I don't know about pagan but I will say that the "date" of Good Friday is not a well recorded date (the bible does not specify it and no contemporary record or historian mentions it) and, in any case, the date is not used in the modern church. Instead, a formula for determining the date is used and the formula has little basis in history.

If the church wanted to say that the Good Friday occurs on March 25 (or whatever the purported date is) every year, that would be defensible. If the church wanted to say that Good Friday occurs the day after Passover every year, that would be defensible. In either case, the name would have to be changed since it would not always be a Friday. Even if the church wanted to use the Friday after one of the two dates above, that would be marginally defensible.

However, the formula which the Nicene Council made up is just that, made up. It seems to have been influenced by the sentiments expressed by Constantine in a letter to the Council (and no doubt shared by many of the Council's members) in which he wrote on the subject "Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd . . ."

The pagan aspect would seem to be based on the fact that the formula uses, as a starting point, the Spring Equinox and Constantine was initially a sun worshiper (as were many of his subjects); that the term Easter is pagan, not Christian; and that the customs of Easter are, primarily, pagan without even a Nativity scene to give them a Christian gloss.

Answer 3

What does Good Friday have anything to do with it? It says he was in the earth for 3 days and 3 nights, right? Friday afternoon to Sunday Morning is not 3 days and 3 nights. Good Friday isn't even mentioned in the Bible... that came later thru the Roman Catholic Church.

Look up Eostar/Ishtar. Coloring Eggs isn't in the Bible... neither is fluffy Bunny Rabbits.

You can CHRISTmas all you want... but I don't think you realize that it means Christs MASS.... which is directly from, once more... the Roman Catholic Church. His Birth was not once documented in the Bible that other people were celebrating it.

All of this is well documented... though I don't think the "Good Friday" is a "well recorded date" FOR what you are saying it is for. If you go by the Jewish calendar (which is what the writers would have done, seeing as all of them except Luke were Jewish) the time frame comes out right. The "Good Friday" thing does not match up to the "prophecy" that he would be in the earth for 3 days and 3 nights.

Now, if Good Friday were such a "well recorded date" .... you would have the Exact date of when he died... and from there could have the Date of his Birth. But Christianity has neither. It has scholarly guesses..... which blows your statement that it is a little thin already, right out of the water for Christmas. You can change the name of a Holiday (Halloween was not called Halloween... that's what we call it Today - it was called Samhain *pronounced Soween*) but that doesn't change anything About the holiday.

Answer 4

If you think the argument for Christmas being overlaid on top of an already-existing Pagan holiday is "thin" (but tell me - what exactly does a decorated evergreen tree have to do with the birth of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem, again??), I doubt you'll be willing to see that Easter was overlaid onto an older Pagan holiday called Ostara.

Unless you can explain what rabbits delivering eggs have to do with the Crucifixion, without acknowledging the Pagan symbolism of the hare and the egg with regards to the spring?

By the way - both Christmas and Easter as Pagan holidays that were folded in to Christianity in order to convert the Pagans is well-documented... even by several Christians.

http://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/Origin-Of-Easter.htm

"The origin of Easter, a holiday associated with the observance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is actually based on an ancient pagan celebration."

http://www.goodnewsaboutgod.com/studies/holidays2.htm

It is beyond doubt that Christmas was originally a pagan festival. The time of the year and the ceremonies with which it is still celebrated, prove its origin.

[...]

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

Sunrise services are for the worship of the Pagan Sun god - ONLY! In addition, Jesus was NOT resurrected on Sunday, the first day of the week. Please see the study entitled "Was Jesus Really Resurrected on Sunday?"

http://sabbath.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sa/subj/easter/easter-articles.htm

"The name Easter is the slightly changed English spelling of the name of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the 'Queen of Heaven' who is also known as Ostern, Eostre ('Goddess of the Dawn'), and Astarte—the ancient pagan goddess of fertility and spring who was celebrated annually on the vernal (spring) equinox. The Roman Catholic church incorporated the Easter traditions into its version of Christianity by subtly altering the meaning of the rituals to try to venerate Jesus Christ."


http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p235.html (Christian Churches of God website)

"Christians have been conditioned to accept that Christmas and Easter are essentially part of the Christian tradition. The facts are that neither are at all Christian and both have their roots in the mystery cults, The Saturnalia, the worship of the Mother goddess system and the worship of the Sun god. They are directly contradictory to the laws of God and His system."


So if you still have a hard time believing it, you may want to take it up with the Christians.

Answer 5

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Christmas is still called 'Yule' in most European/Christian countries, because it is and was a Christian holiday based upon good old pagan roots.

Easter itself is a pagan word, possibly referring to the Goddess Isthtar, the Goddess of rebirth and fertility, hence the rabbits and eggs.

A better etymological source for the word Easter might be the Anglo-Saxon pagan name for the month of April, which was something like Eostremonat, which also was a lunar reference to a goddess of fertility.

In most languages Easter is called by the name for Passover, a Jewish festival, like Paques in French or Pasqua in Spanish. So that makes Easter a Jewish/pagan and Christian holiday.

Are some Catholics and Evangelicals really so insecure and tormented that they are threatened by the historical truth about the pagan origins of their faith? YES!!!

Guess what: if God is God, then you don't have to try so hard to constantly defend God. God can do quite well of God's own, I would imagine . . .

And I'm not at all sad to tell you that almost ALL Christian holidays have pagan roots -- it won't change history to have you say otherwise. Early Christians knew this, and it didn't threaten their faith -- why does it threaten yours?

Answer 6

Josh, all you need do is take a look at religious history and you will see that a great number of Christian holidays were "borrowed" from indigenous pagan populations. This was done to aid early Christians in converting these ingenious pagan populations. And why would early Christians do this kind of thing?

Simply put, the people refused to give up their celebrations. They had become deeply entrenched in their communities. So to help ease the people into believing in the Christian faith, these celebration were incorporated into Christian practice.

This was not only apparent in pagan holidays. This tool was also used when a pagan population refused to give up a specific god or goddess. In this case, early Christians canonized the god or goddess. An example of this is Saint Bridget. "Bridget" was the Great Mother Goddess of Ireland. When the people refused to give Her up, She was canonized, made a saint, in order to respect the people's wishes and to aid in their Christian conversion.

And Easter? Again. It was originally the pagan holiday of Ostera. A spring fertility festival. As proof, have you ever wondered why rabbits and eggs are associated with Easter? What to they have to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus? Absolutely nothing! Instead, the traditions of Ostera were incorporated into Easter to again, aid in the conversion of indigenous pagan populations.

Answer 7

Many of the traditions that have now become a part of both Christmas and Easter came from old pagan traditions. However, the events that these holidays now celebrate are definitely not pagan.

In an attempt to provide an alternative to pagan celebrations, early Christians did put forth their own celebrations. Christ's resurrection did occur in the spring, so that one was easy. No one knew when Jesus was born, so early Christians just chose December to replace the pagan celebrations of the time. Of course, it is now generally accepted that Jesus was born in the spring as well as this is the time of year that shepherds have their flocks out in the country side and need to be watching them at night.

Are they pagan holidays? NO!

have they been influenced by pagan traditions? Absolutely.

Answer 8

The vernal equinox is celebrated as the return/Resurrection of the (sun)after the dark cold winter.

Easter celebrates the return/Resurrection of the (son).

The equinox was celebrated first, which would lead one to believe that Easter is just another in a long list of holidays that were stolen by the original church.

Answer 9

Oestre (pronounced "estre" as in estrogen, the female hormone) was fertility "goddess" long before christian myth was invented. She was worshipped in the spring as new life bloomed in nature, just as Samhain was celebrated in the fall as the farming season ended.

Since you weren't aware of that one, you should know that all major christian myths were placed in attempts to quell and quash preexisting myths. As time went on, the catholic cult "created" enough saints to cover every day of the year (sort of like a lousy gambler who covers a roulette table in chips in hope that he will win).

Another such example is "Valentine's Day". There was a Roman named Valentinus who was a gnostic (a group the catholics tried to commit genocide on in practice for their later Nazism). Ain't funny how the catholics used a non-catholic name for their "holiday"? But prior to that, there was the Roman Lupercalian festival on February 14 where young couples were introduced and marriages were often arranged.

Valentine's Day really was once a day of romance before the catholic cult came along; it's probably the only holiday practiced today the same way it was thousands of years ago.


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Answer 10

Well, historically Christians liked to attempt to replace pagan holidays with Christian ones. For example, do you know why people use pine trees adorned with ornaments at Christmas? Druids used to worship trees...so to try to counter this Christians used to hang Christian symbols on their sacred trees to try to get them to worship their God as well. How else do you reconcile an indoor tree with ornaments to celebrate the birth of the Christ? For Easter...well...the rabbit and the egg are both pagan symbols for fertility and birth. As such, it didn't take Christians long to try to use this symbolism in their "rebirth" (resurrection) myth of the Christ.