Hobbit
Senior Member
Ok, I'm sick of having to go after these things in seperate threads all the time, so here it is.
I see all the time some people showing how Christmas, Easter, and all manner of other Christian holidays have pagan origins. The typical point of the article is a very subtle nudge that these holidays don't matter and/or Christians shouldn't celebrate them because some of the aspects of the holiday have their roots in another religion. First off, this is horse hockey. I doubt having an egg hunt at church on Easter is really going to corrupt the message that Jesus rose from the dead. After all, the egg on Easter is supposed to symbolize the new life that Jesus brought to the Earth. So, how did these holidays come about? I'm glad you asked.
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church held sway over much of Europe and was trying to reach the areas it hadn't already. Well, there were a few examples in the Bible of using tenets of another religion to introduce a new populace to Jesus. The most notable was the apostle Paul proclaiming Jesus as the one represented by the statue of the unknown God in Athens. Well, they saw several pagan holidays coinciding with harvesting seasons and the solstices and equinoxes, and decided to capitalise them. The traditional pagan winter festival was a festival of lights, since days got longer after the solstice. Jesus was the light of the world, so they drew a parallel and put Christmas near the winter solstice so that when the newly converted thought of the winter solstice and the lengthening of days, they would think of Jesus as the light of the world.
Next came Easter. In the spring, pagans celebrated the coming of new life as winter passed and plants budded and animals emerged from hibernation. Well, Jesus brought new life with his resurrection, so the church thought this would be a good way to teach the pagans about the resurrection. Thus, Easter was born.
All Saints' Day was put in the spot of the fall harvest festival, when pagans thought the spirits of the dead went on a night of mischief. This didn't stick and the original holiday lives on in a bit more of a harmless way through Halloween, an eventual slurring of All Hallows' Eve.
So, that is the origin of the so-called 'pagan' Christian holidays. No matter how they started, 1500 years of Christian symbolism and celebration have made them Christian holidays, and only a few symbols that have long since shed their original meaning remain of those dead religions.
I see all the time some people showing how Christmas, Easter, and all manner of other Christian holidays have pagan origins. The typical point of the article is a very subtle nudge that these holidays don't matter and/or Christians shouldn't celebrate them because some of the aspects of the holiday have their roots in another religion. First off, this is horse hockey. I doubt having an egg hunt at church on Easter is really going to corrupt the message that Jesus rose from the dead. After all, the egg on Easter is supposed to symbolize the new life that Jesus brought to the Earth. So, how did these holidays come about? I'm glad you asked.
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church held sway over much of Europe and was trying to reach the areas it hadn't already. Well, there were a few examples in the Bible of using tenets of another religion to introduce a new populace to Jesus. The most notable was the apostle Paul proclaiming Jesus as the one represented by the statue of the unknown God in Athens. Well, they saw several pagan holidays coinciding with harvesting seasons and the solstices and equinoxes, and decided to capitalise them. The traditional pagan winter festival was a festival of lights, since days got longer after the solstice. Jesus was the light of the world, so they drew a parallel and put Christmas near the winter solstice so that when the newly converted thought of the winter solstice and the lengthening of days, they would think of Jesus as the light of the world.
Next came Easter. In the spring, pagans celebrated the coming of new life as winter passed and plants budded and animals emerged from hibernation. Well, Jesus brought new life with his resurrection, so the church thought this would be a good way to teach the pagans about the resurrection. Thus, Easter was born.
All Saints' Day was put in the spot of the fall harvest festival, when pagans thought the spirits of the dead went on a night of mischief. This didn't stick and the original holiday lives on in a bit more of a harmless way through Halloween, an eventual slurring of All Hallows' Eve.
So, that is the origin of the so-called 'pagan' Christian holidays. No matter how they started, 1500 years of Christian symbolism and celebration have made them Christian holidays, and only a few symbols that have long since shed their original meaning remain of those dead religions.
