Christmas. A Christian holiday?

It was definitely made Dec. 25 to compete with the pagan solstice festivals. If you're going to get your new religion off the ground, you gotta entertain the masses. Who wants to be a Christian when all those pagans down the street get to party every winter and we don't? Easter, with its egg symbolism and vivid colors, was the same tactic. It's all just a recycling of pagan sun rituals. Vegetation rites.

There's a field of study called "comparative religion" that documents how much world religions rip off from each other. Great stuff -- an eye-opener for people who think their religion is the "one true" faith.

 

Easter (in the pagan sense) should actually be celebrated by having lot's of sex.

That's where the whole rabbit and egg thing comes from.

It was originally a holiday celebrating fertility not the resurrection of a human sacrifice.

 

Now this would be an Easter Sunday to wake up for. To hell with easter-egg hunts. I knew I picked the wrong religion.

 

Christians should not celebrate Easter either.

 

Any excuse I get to play "'hide the egg" with my sex partner I take.

 

Since widespread globalisation, most countries celebrate Christmas on the same day. This has not always been the case.

 

That's a bit of an over-simplification, but yes, it is quite interesting.

 

Why not? They cannibalized it fair and square from the lesser known religions.

No sense in letting a perfectly (supposed) good human sacrifice go to waste!

That's why we get to eat ham on Easter! (The human sacrifice cleansed the sinful pork)

 

Quite simply because it is a pagan holiday and not a Christian one.

Seeing as you are not a Christian, you can celebrate both Christmas and Easter all you want after all they were design for you.

 

How do you know what I do and don't celebrate?

There you go speculating again

 

I don't think he actually said anything about what you DO and DON'T celebrate, just what you CAN and CAN'T. Unless you're claiming to be a Christian now.

 

it was the christians that took in those day to convert pagans it was a way to spread the good word , christianity has taken over many cultural ways .
so tho they came from pagan , pagan means any releligion that is a minoraty , so at its start it was a pagan thing , now it is a major religon leaving pagans behind . i feel that thee holidays are a time to stop and rember about jesus and what he stands for , espsacailly now days with all the rush of things , ppl tend ot forget about what the churhc stands for not just the fact of this whole thing of the holidays,
in short i like my christmas to be filled with all the fixings and easter too .
hail mary full of grace - catholic , and that relates to christmas and easter

 

Good point.

 

Where is the evidence that Easter originated as a Pagan festival?

 

Well there's the name, for one thing.

 

Is that evidence?

My name is french, yet I have no french blood in me.

 

Meh, Wiki it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter

I'll be honest, you won't find PROOF of anything, but then, there's a lot more evidence that it originated as Pagan than there is that it's a Christian festival.

Paganism has: the time of year, the name, the symbolism attached to it.

Christianity has... because Christians say so.

 

If you were a careful reader, you would notice that I said you CAN celebrate the two holidays, not that you DO celebrate the two holidays. No speculating involved.

Second, these two posts:

Seem to indicate a propensity, on your part, to celebrate at least Easter.

PS Thanx Hoatzin

 

Not to be facetious but the evidence is everywhere.

Honestly, what do eggs and rabbits have to do with Jesus?

Even the name Easter: “Eighth-century Catholic scholar Venerable Bede claimed that the word was derived from the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, “Eostre.” In his book The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop claimed a connection between Easter and the Babylonian goddess Astarte.”

 

Eggs I am not going to argue. Easter I will. Yes the roots of the english word Easter may be "pagan" in origin, but many other languages do not use it all all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter A quick wikipedia search will tell you that Anglo-Saxon is the language group that has Easter for a name. All the others derive from the Hebrew Passover (via Greek mostly) or have other derivations such as "resurrection", "great day", "or one that is "the taking of meat". So all those Christians who celebrate Resurrection Sunday are just being pompous. Yes, it may be a way to get away from the eggs et cetera, but it is just ignorant to world Christian traditions.

So in rebuttal, the lack of knowledge is everywhere (not evidence of a pagan easter), and this style of thinking is very anglo-centric.