Christmas? Easter?

CrossCentered

Senior Member
So in my quest for knowledge, I have come across Christians and nonchristians who claim Christmas and Easter were pagan holidays well before Christ was born and crucified. They stated that celebrating these holidays, as the pagans do is an abomination to God. Also as evidence they asked me to show them anywhere in the Bible where God instructs us to celebrate Jesus birthday, and or his death and resurrection. The Bible does caution us about following traditions of man.

I still celebrate these holidays, and my answer was that the devil, knowing of Christ story, and how it would happen. Deceived men and gave them the false stories of virgin births, and dying and coming back as a way of distracting us from celebrating God. PS if you do not know about the pagan stories I am referring to, look them up. Something about the sun god impregnating a virgin human, the son was born on what we call Christmas now, (something like that, but it shares some common elements of our Christian beliefs, and allegedly it was around WELL before Christ)

I am wondering if someone has supporting or denying Biblical proof of what we should do?
 

Israel

BANNED
I find the Lord's death and resurrection a continual cause of celebration and worthy of attention. But I am not a good man, and certainly not a good christian.
 

welderguy

Senior Member
One man eateth meat offered unto idols, another man eateth meat with thanksgiving to God.
We are instructed,as Christians, not to eat the meat offered to idols if we are told that is it's purpose.

My point,...whatsoever you do, do it unto God, with thanksgiving. period.
Whatsoever is done without faith is sin.
 

Israel

BANNED
I appreciate your honesty there
Just very selfish.
I didn't want any days without joy. And I was way too selfish to settle for just a few happening "once in a while". (I don't think there was ever a man who "loved" Christmas...more)

Who knew there's provision for the very selfish?

I just had to come clean about liking Friday afternoon way more than Monday morning and admitting that was in some way my testimony that Jesus wasn't Lord of each...making me a liar. But again...who knew there's such provision for liars, too?

I just had to let go of "my" special days to see things I'd never seen before.
 
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j_seph

Senior Member
and my answer was that the devil, knowing of Christ story, and how it would happen. Deceived men and gave them the false stories of virgin births, and dying and coming back as a way of distracting us from celebrating God.

I cannot get past this statement. Please help me, am I reading correctly that you told someone that the Devil deceived men and that the virgin birth of my Savior and his resurrection was false? That it never happened?
 

BANDERSNATCH

Senior Member
I celebrate God's feasts. :) (note, they are not Jew's feast, they are God's feast days....and were celebrated all the way to the end of Acts, 30+ years after Jesus ascension)
 

BANDERSNATCH

Senior Member
In the OT - ill have to look up the references - God asked Israel to "not worship Me in the way the pagans worship Me" Christians typically do not mind that Easter originated with a pagan god, and that many of the Easter customs are pagan. Nowhere in the bible, OT or NT, are we asked to honor Jesus' birth....only His death, which is where the blessings originated!

Let me add that Passover is how God told us to celebrate the death of our Passover Lamb, Jesus. We also celebrate Jesus' resurrection with yet another of GOD'S Feasts, 'First Fruits'. Modern Christianity, being very anti-Semitic and doing away with most everything "Jewish" about our faith has left us clueless with it comes to how the Lord fulfilled these feasts. That's how we scratch our head wondering how Jesus was in the grave 3 days and 3 nights when Good Friday is on a Friday. Every Christian should know how, and why, Jesus was in the grave 3 days AND 3 whole nights.
 
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CrossCentered

Senior Member
I cannot get past this statement. Please help me, am I reading correctly that you told someone that the Devil deceived men and that the virgin birth of my Savior and his resurrection was false? That it never happened?
No sir, I was referring to the pagan sun god myth, how he impregnated a virgin. Read the rest of the paragraph. The pagan mythology has similar elements with our Christian beliefs, and was around before Christ.
 

CrossCentered

Senior Member
One man eateth meat offered unto idols, another man eateth meat with thanksgiving to God.
We are instructed,as Christians, not to eat the meat offered to idols if we are told that is it's purpose.

My point,...whatsoever you do, do it unto God, with thanksgiving. period.
Whatsoever is done without faith is sin.
Do you have the original verse sir? I always like to gather context from previous and after verses.
 

Madman

Senior Member
Christians have always observed those days and many others, in fact one of the topics of the 1st Council of Nicaea was to come up with a way to set the date for Easter.

The Church uses many things that point us to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

P.S. Even if Christmas and Easter were set on dates to offset pagan holidays, who cares? God use many things that once were "dirty" for His purpose, I am but one example.
 

BANDERSNATCH

Senior Member
Christians have always observed those days and many others, in fact one of the topics of the 1st Council of Nicaea was to come up with a way to set the date for Easter.

The Church uses many things that point us to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

P.S. Even if Christmas and Easter were set on dates to offset pagan holidays, who cares? God use many things that once were "dirty" for His purpose, I am but one example.

It's not so much the dates that are the problem with Christmas and Easter, it's the fact that Christians use them as "holy days" while mixing in pagan rituals and practices, something God definitely forbids. (ie. Easter eggs...Christmas trees....etc)

No doubt the predominantly Gentile church got rid of its Jewish feasts....that are God's feasts: Passover, Tabernacles, etc. Christianity, over time, got rid of God's feasts and replaced them with their own. A quick google search for the origins of Easter will give you results that most Christians ignore.
 

BANDERSNATCH

Senior Member
This is where God's Feasts were dropped and replaced with man's versions, hundreds of years after Acts: BTW, we see in Acts how Christians were still observing God's feasts 30-40 years after Jesus ascended....men decided to do away with God's feasts, not God.


historian Eusebius record’s a letter from Emperor Constantine which summarizes, among other things, the following:


When the question relative to the sacred festival of Easter arose, it […] was declared to be particularly unworthy for this, the holiest of all festivals, to follow the custom of the Jews, who had soiled their hands with the most fearful of crimes, and whose minds were blinded. In rejecting their custom, […]. We ought not, therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews, for the Savior has shown us another way; […], in unanimously adopting this mode, we desire, dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews, for it is truly shameful for us to hear them boast that without their direction we could not keep this feast. […].”

Good ole Constantine....anti-Semitic to the core
 

1gr8bldr

Senior Member
Since we don't know the dates anyway, I think celebrating a date sometime is better than not simply because we were originally told when we could celebrate it. Christians wanted a day to celebrate Christ's birth.... so they, authoritys, gave us a date, only it was given out of the interest of the Secular society, we got what we asked for. Edit, several holidays, roman festivals, Jewish as well were granted to coincide with other to keep up economy. If each celebration from each group were a week apart, rather than the same time, economy would be effected due to limited services spanning a month. So better to put them all the same week, let everybody take off that week than to deal with such limited work force
 
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Madman

Senior Member
It's not so much the dates that are the problem with Christmas and Easter, it's the fact that Christians use them as "holy days" while mixing in pagan rituals and practices, something God definitely forbids. (ie. Easter eggs...Christmas trees....etc)
No doubt the predominantly Gentile church got rid of its Jewish feasts....that are God's feasts: Passover, Tabernacles, etc. Christianity, over time, got rid of God's feasts and replaced them with their own. A quick google search for the origins of Easter will give you results that most Christians ignore.
Peter claimed not to eat unclean food, but God asked him why he proclaimed unclean what God had created for good.


This is where God's Feasts were dropped and replaced with man's versions, hundreds of years after Acts: BTW, we see in Acts how Christians were still observing God's feasts 30-40 years after Jesus ascended....men decided to do away with God's feasts, not God.

The Jews did not celebrate Resurrection Day (Easter) still don't, and the writer of Hebrews teaches that there is a better way that has been provided. Be very careful falling back into the Jewish ways.


By the way Constantine had no say at the councils.
 

BANDERSNATCH

Senior Member
Peter claimed not to eat unclean food, but God asked him why he proclaimed unclean what God had created for good.

The Jews did not celebrate Resurrection Day (Easter) still don't, and the writer of Hebrews teaches that there is a better way that has been provided. Be very careful falling back into the Jewish ways.

By the way Constantine had no say at the councils.

Correct, Peter had not eaten anything unclean, years after Jesus had left. Peter understood the vision to be about Men, not food. Pigs had always been unclean, men were not, even though the Pharisees were teaching that they were. peter explains the vision twice, both times he never mentions food since he understood the vision to be about men.

The Jews celebrated what they were asked to celebrate, Passover, the day the lamb was slain. Also, they did celebrate the resurrection, still do. It's called "first fruits", when Jesus presented Himself before God, as the High Priest also presented the wave offering of the new grain to God. The church doing away with its Jewishness is why we have Good Friday...and why Christians can't figure out how Jesus was in the grave 3 days AND 3 nights

Constantine is why churches are the way they are today....anti-jewish. Like Constantine's letter said, or even it was only the council, they no longer wanted the church to resemble its jewish origins.
 

Madman

Senior Member
Constantine did not set Church doctrine. If your church is anti-semitic it is due to sin.
 

Madman

Senior Member
Paul seems to disagree with keeping the law for salvation. Galatians 2
 
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