Have you seen the “Easter is a pagan holiday” meme? It usually goes around this time of year. It’s an attempt to link Easter with pagan deities and the like. You’ll see American atheists, new-agers, and fundies batting it around. But does it have any basis in fact? Not at all, but the provenance of these ideas will surprise you.
Watch Is Easter Pagan?
You know, it could be because I’m sort of pagan (I guess) but all I know is the chocolate eggs are awe inspiring. I’m not that much into Valentine’s Day either but any holiday that includes chocolate is okay in my book.
State Christianity sanitized the major Roman and trans-European seasonal festivals. Hence Xmas too.
The Atheists trot out this paganizing history as some sort of talisman at Easter, like a cross in front of Dracula… somehow hoping it will protect them from Yeshua Jesus’ blood-sucking curse of Christianity. 
The blood-sucking curse of Christianity being communion I take it?
You aren’t a pagan, because you don’t have pagan gods. Maybe you’re a chocolatarian?
If you’d watch the video you’d see that an anti-Catholic fundamentalist Christian invented the idea that Easter is a pagan holiday. And no, the date of Christmas did not come from a pagan holiday. I’ve posted about this before.
Yes! Where do I sign up?
Of course! Scripture explicitly explains that Communion and the Death and Ressurection is “…a stumbling block” to all who do not wish to know the truth… So yes.
I never watch videos on a discursion site. What does it claim? What does the word Easter mean? And what was celebrated, in pagan Rome on December 25th? After the Brumalia-Saturnalia solstice celebrations of December 17th-23rd?
To deny the direct correlation is absurd.
I have explained this many times before. The date of Christmas was calculated from the assigned date of the Annunciation. There is no textual evidence that a Roman holiday was co-opted. George “Wikipedia” Brooks used to fight me on this.
Source? So it’s pure coincidence that Advent-Christmas and Brumalia-Saturnalia-Sol Invictus arose in the same culture and share 90% of the same time, including the solstice?
This is weird, I actually wrote a answer on quora on this subject a few years ago, and it came back to my attention yesterday because someone posted a comment.
Their is no doubt that Easter carries some pagan origines. Even the names is in reference to the Nordic goddess Ēostre which would have been celebrated at about the same time. Now in french, the words used is Paques with does comes form the passover. The elements we see such as the bunnies and the eggs have for a long time been symboles of fertility and renewal and they often came from pagan religions.
What often happened is as Christianity spread and converted people it replaced local pagan festivals with Christian ones rather than replaced them. This is pretty obvious with Christmas since we didn’t know and still don’t know when Jesus was born but it replaced a pagan equivalent of the winter solstice festival, the Christmas tree is also Nordic pagan symbole. This is simply the path of least resistance.
The difference is we know when Jesus died since Passover was mentioned to be happening at the same time and communion was first taken during the Passover meal.
Now one argument I could hear form this is we should reject the pagan elements of the festival. It’s a feeling I can understand but not one I would necessarily agree with.
But we can’t deny that their were Pagan festival that happened at the same time that the Christian festival replaced, we’ve even kept somme of the symbolism. If anything, I’m surprised I can’t think of any equivalent for the summer solstice, and I’m not sure their really an equivalent for the harvest festival, all saints is relatively recent.
But even if they came and replaced pagan festivals they still remain extremely importante and worthy to be celebrated.
The pagan origin of Easter is no less controversial than the pagan origin of the days of the week. We still have Woden’s day, Thor’s day, and Freya’s day, as examples. The pagan origin of Easter should have as much impact on Christianity as having mid week bible studies on Woden’s day.
Unfortunately I cannot eat chocolate without getting sick…
… yeah I get sick quite a bit. LOL An irresistible cliff of misery.
so god or devil? The jury is out on that one for me.
Ah man! That upsets SO MANY apple carts. I was raised in the culture which took this for granted. Didn’t bother me about Christianity because I believe in cherishing our pagan roots – and there you go pulling out all the roots… darn!
Though… it looks like you are getting some push back on this. It makes you wonder about the rather ephemeral nature of human perception of reality. How much of it is pure fantasy, I wonder?
Learned it in a theology class in Manhattan about the theology of Christmas.
If you’ll watch the video (produced by an atheist) you’ll see that Easter does not have a pagan origin.
As I watch more and more of these history for atheism video articles, a very uncomplimentary pattern is emerging. And this is that the majority of these myths are the total fabrication of anti-Catholic Protestant liars. These lies are in turn accepted as fact by atheists. Seems to be another example of the way that Christians have sabotaged themselves.
So this habit of telling lies is more deeply rooted in Christian history than I thought, and thus this anti-science manifestation is not so very inconsistent with much of the rest of Christianity. How is it any wonder that people have become so fed up with Christianity.
Exactly. When they argue against religion that is all they want to hear from the other side. Fundy atheists make ex-smokers look like saints.
Riight. No text book? And does the atheist not know the etymology of Easter either?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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