EASTER IS UNCHRISTIAN

from JoeUser Forums
Most people would be surprised to know that Easter is an outgrowth of the Passover--especially since these days are celebrated so differently. The story behind the commonality and contrasts of today's celebration of Easter and the Passover is amazing.

The New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul and the early Church kept the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread, not Easter. There is no trace of the celebration of Easter as a Christian festival in the New Testament or the writings of the apostolic fathers. The early church, for the first two centuries, observed the same Holy Day festivals as Jesus did. The Passover, which symbolized Christ as the sacrificial lamb, continued to be celebrated.

The history of this should be taught in all churches. The motivating force behind the changeover from Passover to Easter was a fierce determination to distance Christianity from Judaism. Apparently, the Roman Christians hated Jews so much that they altered vital parts of the New Testament. The Bible establishes the date of Passover as falling in the first month of the Hebrew calendar. Early Christians continued this observation as a memorial of Christ's death.

In the fourth century, roman Emperor Constantine dictated that all Christians adopt the celebration of Easter on a Sunday. The leading motive for this regulation was opposition to Judaism. Easter is the name of the Teutonic goddess of spring. The evening Passover service gave way to an Easter sunrise service.

Over the centuries Easter has become an almost universally observed Christian tradition. Time has also mellowed the Jew-hating attitudes that spawned the massive changes from Passover to Easter. The replacement of biblical Holy Days with customs from other religions is seldom questioned today.

In God's plan of redemption, Jesus warned that it is possible to worship God in vain by following humanly devised traditions rather than the true forms of worship described in the Bible. I do not want to rain on anyone's Easter parade. But shouldn't you want to learn about the Holy Days of the Bible, the ones that Jesus Christ, the apostles and the early Church observed? Shouldn't you want to learn why they considered these days so important and how they teach us about Jesus Christ and His role in God's plan?
religion
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Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
"Most people would be surprised to know that Easter is an outgrowth of the Passover--especially since these days are celebrated so differently. "

Actually, most of what we now celebrate as Easter comes from Pagan traditions:

The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similar "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [were] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." 1 Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre."

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis ([the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." 3

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternate explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. 4 Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.

Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
The article is very accurate. I researched it in my Encyclopededia Brittanica. Also the internet.
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