EASTER & CHRISTMAS - Pagan holidays, or religious celebrations?

Question

Growing up, we were not permitted to celebrate Easter in the traditional fashion - i.e., Easter eggs, candy & bunny rabbits. We always called it Resurrection Sunday and were taught that "Easter" was a pagan version of a very holy day.

I am curious if there are others out there who were raised like I was - or now believe that way.

I am also curious what your opinion is on the matter. Is it a Pagan holiday or a religious celebration?

Answer 1

We celebrated Easter in the fashion that most people do , eggs, bunnies, presents and so forth. But after I grew older, the real meaning of Easter and Christmas became more apparent to me. As a kid, you enjoy the candy and presents. But as an adult, it is the message that the season brings that truly means so much. We still celebrate Easter and Christmas, but we teach our kids what the true meaning of the holiday is.

Answer 2

It is all the contrary. "Holy Week" (Easter) is a Christian version of a Pagan celebration. Christianity copied many of the Pagan traditions in order to get its followers to celebrate that which the Church considered to be "politically correct".

When the Primitive Catholic Church was planted as the mandatory religion of the Roman Empire (355 CE), many European Christians continued to celebrate Pagan holidays. The Church didn't like at all the fact that Pagan festivals were celebrated by Christians (even today they still reject that).

For that reason, the church established its "Holy Days" very close to the dates in which Pagans celebrated their own holidays. If you compare many of todays Christian religions, you will see that they celebrate some of their holidays in different times.

I was raised as a Christian. First as a Protestant (Disciples of Christ), then as a Baptist, and later in my early youth as a Catholic (incredibly this is where I learned about what the Church did to make people stop celebrating Pagan holidays). However, as a young adult, I was a Latter Day Saint (Mormon).

Of course, the more I studied the truth about the origins of the Scriptures, and what the Church did (and still do) to prevent the people to have all information about Christianity, the more I convinced myself that we were being lied to.

For example, Ostara is a Pagan holiday celebrated between March 21-23 on the Spring Equinox. The Church came up with the bright idea to celebrate Christ's passion and resurrection taking a whole week for that which is now called Easter. In predominantly Catholic countries it is called "Semana Santa" or Holy Week in Spanish.

The fact that Pagan holidays found their way into mainstream Christianity is not a surprise. However, the surprise is that they were not completely absorbed by the new religion, but helped Paganism to remain alive, in secrecy, for more than 1,700 years.

Answer 3

Easter and Christmas are Christian. Ostra and Yule are Pagan. Yes, they are nearly the same thing, but the focus is different and the meaning is different.

Easter celebrates the reseraction of Jesus. Ostra is the coming of Spring.

Christmas is the birth of Jesus. Yule is the Winter Solstice.

They are often not even celebrated on the same days. Ostra has already passed. Easter is next week.

Easter is a Christian religious holiday and Ostra is the Pagan religious holiday.

Answer 4

What is the origin of Easter and the customs associated with it?

The Encyclopædia Britannica comments: “There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians.”—(1910), Vol. VIII, p. 828.

The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us: “A great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring. . . . The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility.”—(1913), Vol. V, p. 227.

In the book The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop, we read: “What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, . . . as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. . . . Such is the history of Easter. The popular observances that still attend the period of its celebration amply confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now.”—(New York, 1943), pp. 103, 107, 108; compare Jeremiah 7:18.

Is Christmas a celebration based on the Bible?

Date of the celebration

M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia says: “The observance of Christmas is not of divine appointment, nor is it of N[ew] T[estament] origin. The day of Christ’s birth cannot be ascertained from the N[ew] T[estament], or, indeed, from any other source.”—(New York, 1871), Vol. II, p. 276.

Luke 2:8-11 shows that shepherds were in the fields at night at the time of Jesus’ birth. The book Daily Life in the Time of Jesus states: “The flocks . . . passed the winter under cover; and from this alone it may be seen that the traditional date for Christmas, in the winter, is unlikely to be right, since the Gospel says that the shepherds were in the fields.”—(New York, 1962), Henri Daniel-Rops, p. 228.

The Encyclopedia Americana informs us: “The reason for establishing December 25 as Christmas is somewhat obscure, but it is usually held that the day was chosen to correspond to pagan festivals that took place around the time of the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen, to celebrate the ‘rebirth of the sun.’ . . . The Roman Saturnalia (a festival dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture, and to the renewed power of the sun), also took place at this time, and some Christmas customs are thought to be rooted in this ancient pagan celebration.”—(1977), Vol. 6, p. 666.

The New Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges: “The date of Christ’s birth is not known. The Gospels indicate neither the day nor the month . . . According to the hypothesis suggested by H. Usener . . . and accepted by most scholars today, the birth of Christ was assigned the date of the winter solstice (December 25 in the Julian calendar, January 6 in the Egyptian), because on this day, as the sun began its return to northern skies, the pagan devotees of Mithra celebrated the dies natalis Solis Invicti (birthday of the invincible sun). On Dec. 25, 274, Aurelian had proclaimed the sun-god principal patron of the empire and dedicated a temple to him in the Campus Martius. Christmas originated at a time when the cult of the sun was particularly strong at Rome.”—(1967), Vol. III, p. 656.

Answer 5

Over the centuries some pagan practices have crept in such as seeing Easter as a rite of spring and Christmas as a winter solstice festival.

But still, Christians can and should celebrate on these days in the ways that the Church intended. Orthodox Christians still call Easter "Pascha" and Roman Catholics refer to it as Easter Sunday or Ressurection Sunday.

There's no point in arguing over who "created" the holiday or which came first (pagan rites or Christian rites). The fact is, for nearly 2000 years the Church has set aside these days to celebrate two important events in the life of Christ - His birth and ressurection. So Christians should continue to observe these Holy Days.

God bless.

Answer 6

I wasn't and neither was anyone else I knew.

Now, to be truthful, RESSURECTION Sunday only comes every so often.

Jesus was arrested, crusified, killed and ressurected on a FIXED DATE that moves across the week on a yearly basis.

This Sunday thing is based on the Jewish Movable Feast, which is based on the Lunar Calendar.

Isaac Newton fixed the date of the crisifiction as April 3 and I fixed it at March 21

No one can be totally sure.

That means resurrection day comes 3 days after these dates or April 6th and March 24

The day of the week will vary with each year.

I mean Christmas doesn't float! We don't have Jesus being BORN on a different date in December to make it a Sunday.

Why is his DEATH a floating date!

That's a paradox.

Answer 7

You got it backwards, the Christian Easter is a Christianized version of a Pagan holiday. The Pagan holiday was around first.

Answer 8

My aunt was a Jehovah's witness so I was not unfamiliar with those concepts growing up. And I find myself with very mixed feelings about it now. But in my family we tend to tip in favor of the traditional way of celebrating. I believe when we keep the focus on Jesus, He blesses. I would love it, though, if we would all call it Resurrection Sunday.

Answer 9

Well, whenever I go to Mass on Easter Sunday or on Christmas, the focus is either on the resurrection or birth of Jesus Christ and what it means to our life. There is never any talk of pagan gods or goddesses, so I must say that the celevbrations are entirely Christian.

Answer 10

There's some Pagan elements - some superficial trappings, mostly. But the reason, the significance - that's Christian. Just because it's timed the same as some Pagan ceremonies doesn't mean that they're inextricably linked.