[size=20pt]Why Were Christian Festivals Placed On The Dates Of Pagan Festivals?[/size]
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100318071330AAesZzi
Resolved Question

[size=15pt]seeker_of_wisdom_and_truth:[/size]
Why were Christian festivals placed on the dates of pagan festivals?The original Christmas was the 6th January, the Alexandrian dare of the birth of Osiris, but why move the date to Dec.25th the date of Sol Invictus , the rebirth of the sun, and of Mithras the Roman soldiers god, it is also on the winter solstice festival, Easter is a pagan festival of rebirth hence the name taken from a pagan goddess Eoestre. In fact nearly all Cristian festivals are on pagan dates.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]SpringWolf:[/size]
(Best Answer - Chosen by Asker)
Ostara became Easter, Samhain became All Saints Day, Yule became Christmas. There is also speculation that "May Day" was derived from Beltaine. Many of these holidays were modified by the early Church to ease the conversion of local Pagans from their practices to those of the Christian Church. If the Church used the same dates, and slowly altered the underlying message or purpose of the festival, they could rid the area of pagan practices all together. And it nearly worked. Those Pagans that didn't convert went underground so to speak with their practices and kept their beliefs alive. While no pagan tradition today can directly link their practices of today with an ancient tradition, the elements and oral traditions have been kept alive. Even if some of those are from anthropological study and research. But holidays aren't the only Pagan influences you'll find in a Christian Church. There are many pagan rituals that are incorporated into Christian worship.
~ Catholicism utilizes the use of incense to bless the altar before Mass. A Pagan form of clearing energy and setting shields of protection around an altar before ritual.
~ Most Christian churches light candles upon their altar to beckon the presence of Yahweh and Jesus. A Pagan form of honoring and calling the Gods/Goddesses to ritual.
~ Prayer is a petition to Yahweh for aid or to honor. Closely related to casting a Spell and invoking a God/Goddess for aid or to honor.
~ Using symbology upon an altar such as a cross or image of Jesus is also a Pagan practice used to focus energy or align one's energy with a particular Deity or spirit (ie: an animal spirit).
~ One of the biggest uses of symbology in the Christian church is drinking wine for the blood of Jesus and eating bread for the bones of Jesus. This is an extremely pagan thing to do. By taking in the essence of the "god" into your body you are not just aligning your energies with that Deity, but you are also channeling that "god" through your body.

Whether or not some Christians want to admit it or not, we are all much more alike than we are different. Wouldn't it be great if we could focus on our similarities instead of our differences and learn tolerance for each other?
Source(s):
The History Of Samhain / Halloween http://paganspath.com/magik/samhain-hist…
The History of Yule and the Winter Solstice @ http://paganspath.com/magik/yule-history.html

~ Celtic Shaman, Teacher & Pagan
3 years ago

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Asker's Rating: *****
Asker's Comment: well researched and documented

[size=15pt]Dirty Rotten Badger:[/size]
To bring in the pagans to Christianity, because they were saying,'Big deal with this Jesus guy. We've heard all of this stuff before.' Ironically, they were quite ready to abandon their gods and move forward. Then a "new" brand of belief was presented.

"And if we assert that the Word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God. But if any one objects that He was crucified, in this also He is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours, who suffered as we have now enumerated. And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus. And in that we say that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Aesculapius."

Justin Martyr's comparison of Christianity to Greco-Roman mythology.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]Sandra:[/size]
Christians copy Paganism without realising it,all the jesus story is from ancient myths such as Horus.Christmas and Easter are the most obvious.The name Easter originated from the name of an ancient Pagan goddess called Eastre.Christians honour the Goddess without even realising it with chocolate rabbits and eggs that are directly drawn from her symbolism.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]supertop:[/size]
The Roman emperor would not let them have another holiday, so they picked a holiday that already existed. It originally was not to celebrate the pagan holiday.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]M (atheist):[/size]
Because just like the writing committee of the Bible when "creating" the mythology (really just plagiarizing greek tragedies and other mythologies), the party planning committee didn't feel like being original either.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]America_is_Enslaved_to_Debt_Backed_Currency:[/size]
That would be Catholic festivals, not Christian. It was done to distract people from pagan festivals by Queen Sophia.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]HTacianas:[/size]
Easter is only called "easter" in the english-speaking world. Most Christians refer to it as Pascha, after the Jewish Passover. Begin your inquiry there.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]brb:[/size]
in order to recruit barbarians and pagans, the christians adopted a lot of their practices to make the transition easier. see: celtic cross.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]Image_not_loaded:[/size]
Convenience. If people have too many holidays, no work gets done.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]Christians_4_Jews:[/size]
Christians don't have festivals. They have holy days.
3 years ago

[size=15pt]Chuckles_(dirty liberal atheist):[/size]
it was used as an easy way to convert people... take the pagan gods give them saints that do the same thin
3 years ago

[size=15pt]?:[/size]
We know this, what's the point of the question?
3 years ago

?:

We know this, what's the point of the question?
3 years ago

Not every Nigerians Christian & muslim religionists knows this. Infact only few atheists & some a'theist knows.

[size=15pt]greenshootuk:[/size]
Load of cobblers, complete garbage, I'm afraid.

The "original" Christmas date is unknown. The 6th January was, and still is, the feast of the Epiphany when the wise men came to visit Christ. The Church in Rome instituted Christmas to counter those who claimed that Christ was not really God made Man but only became Divine when he was older.

There is NO evidence that December 25th was any sort of pagan festival before Christians chose it for Christmas. You can find images of ancient Roman calendars from around the time of Christ. These show no festival on Dec 25th. There is NO record of any birth day for Mithras. Even the supposed "Natalis Invicti" feast day is dubious and, if it existed at all, came after Christmas started, Romans did not celebrate the Solstice - their festival around that time (Dec 17th), Saturnalia, was a harvest festival.

The Feast of the Resurrection, Easter in English, was celebrated by the church from its earliest days. There are records of Easter services from the 2nd century. There was a debate in the church about which day to celebrate which settled on the Sunday after Passover - Sunday being already know as "The Lord's Day". Because of its link to Passover, the feast was named the Christian Passover - Pascha in Latin (in modern times Pascua in Spanish, Paques in French and so on).

Over 400 years later, Christianity reached the Anglo-Saxons, they were taught about the Paschal Season which happened to coincide with their month of Eosturmonath. The ordinary people therefore translated Pascha as Eostur, later Easter, though the church, which used Latin, continued to call it Pascha until the reformation.

The early English writer Bede speculated that Eosturmonath had, many years earlier, been named after a goddess Eostre whose worship had died out. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing else is known about this supposed Goddess. She appears in NO anglo-saxon myths or legends, she has NO known feast day, she has NO known temple or site, NO known dedication.. Modern scholars have concluded that she was probably made up by Bede to explain the month name and was never actually a goddess at all.
Source(s):

"Stations of the Sun", Professor Ronald Hutton, Oxford University Press 1996
3 years ago

Both are properties of hell fire. Simple

teniyi: Both are properties of hell fire. Simple

And where is this Semitic concept called 'Hell Fire' if I may ask, your home town?

This was done because the church was aware that it was impossible to achieve the complete destruction of deeply-rooted Paganism.

therefore the church sought 2 methods:

1) the confusing and deceiving of the people, by using such methods to replace Paganism with christian doctrine.

2) the mass assimilation and detribilization of Europe and destruction of its culture.

ghostofsparta:

And where is this Semitic concept called 'Hell Fire' if I may ask, your home town?

Wao, truth is bitter.

Nothing Christian about those festivals, bro- both original and 'christian' replacement are pagan. No difference whatsoever.