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i think most places have been celabrating similar themed holidays around the same time of year for hundreds of years. ive given up on trying to decide which culture it came from. anyways with its modern meaning i would hardly call it a pagan holiday anymore. its just something fun for kids and aduts to do. when i celebrate it though i still use a few of my old pagan tratitions for things like house cleansing but nothing off the wall thats going to piss off god as far as i know

Really good points. Only one point I partially disagree on.



Depends on the holidays you are talking about. Many of the saints days probably so. Days like Christmas and Easter, not so much. Christmas was added mainly to convert the Arians (a sect of Christianity that believed Jesus was a man and had no divinity). Easter is the holiday celebrating the whole point of Christianity. Yes pagan customs got tacked on to the celebration of the holiday since many customs were practiced at or around the same time as some of the major holidays. What's debatable is if the Church actually "Christianized" these customs or they just claimed that they did this to save face in that they couldn't stamp out those customs. Converts tend to "Christianize" customs on their own. The Chinese Rites controversy and the syncretic practices in Latin America seems to suggest the latter.

Oh lol I'm sorry. I meant no offense. I misunderstood that comment that's all.

I am familiar with the idea that Early Christians celebrated Pagan holidays to avoid persecution but I'm not so sure if they set up their holidays to blend in. Care to share some info on this in particular Easter?

Here's what I understand of Easter. The dating of Easter is supposed to be a variation of the Passover date calculation. Basically as Christians recognized they were distinct from Judaism, they decided to compose their own calenders rather than consulting other Rabbi's. Next Easter is the English name for Pashal Sunday. Pashal is the Greek equivalent for the month of Pesaḥ, the month the Hebrews celebrated Passover. The date of Pashal Sunday is calculated by determining when the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. The name Easter derives from the name Ēostre, which was a Germanic festival that was celebrated during the Spring Equinox.

I can share my notes about Christmas but off the top of my head, the only pagan holidays that could have been celebrated during Christianity's development was Lenaia, Saternilia, and Sol Invictus. Lenaia disappeared after the 2nd Century BCE, long before Christianity but it could have survived as lore or in practice in small communities. Saternilia was celebrated a few days after the Winter Solstice. Sol Invictus is debatable though since the only sources that confirm a dating of December 25 is Julian the Apostate, who had a grudge against the Christians.

Agian, I wasn't referring to every holiday Christians celebrate...

and as I understand historical significance of the name Easter, it was named after the Germanic Aoster or the way Rmcdra spelled it (I don't know how to do the line over the 'E' LOL) or the Celtic Ostara...The only thing that is specifically linked from Easter (besides the name) to the European Goddesses is the Rabbit. The date is coincidence, as the goddesses holiday was the equinox, which is itself a pretty set and unchangeable occurrence... The Christian holiday was not placed where it was because of the equinox, it just happened that way, and as rmcdra stated earlier, those who are converted tend to adapt their existing tradition to fit with their new religion... the holidays were so close in common occurrence that it was bound to happen...

As far as the festival of Ishtar being associated with Easter, I do believe I read that in a Chick tract once. xp ... and the idea that it is associated with Easter may be entirely inaccurate...

It is commonly said nowadays that Ishtar's feast was considered the Feast of First Fruits, but there has been evidence found that her feast was celebrated later in Spring and closer to Summer, but really the only concrete evidence of this being true is found in her loose based northern counterpart, Aoster ... even more evidence found in the middle east points to Ishtar's main holiday possibly being an autumn event due to the relation she has to Isis, and the earlier incarnations of her in the Sumerian mythos, and the cruelties and/or tragedies that surround those incarnations of the goddesses ... and if I wasn't lazy, I might have even hunted down the article I first heard the newly and more researched timeline from it from (I think it was a NG article)...

In actuality, colored eggs are an entirely Christian tradition that stems from the myth of Mary (I do believe it was the Magdeline) visiting Ceasar's court and feasting with him... as the story goes, Ceasar was impressed by Mary's character, but told her that he would never believe the story she told just as he would never believe that the white egg on her plate could turn red... in which she countered by picking the egg up off of the table, covering it with her hand, and saying a prayer... When she opened her hand to reveal the egg, it was red... or something along those lines...

There are many other reasons why Easter and Ishtar aren't necessarily as corespondent as commonly believed... One is the fact that Venus/Aphrodite was her Greeco/Roman counterparts, and as such, feast were held in conjuction with the particular placements of planets... the other proposed timing for the festival of Ishtar based on planetary theory and her direct 'descendant Goddesses' would actually place the feast in February by many scholarly counts. Yet this is all educated guesses, and no one can say for sure with certainty when it comes down to exactly when and how Ishtar was celebrated, she is too old of a Goddess for the particulars we know to be concrete...

...and you could argue that the chain that leads from Inana all the way through to Ostara is in essence the same goddess so in the end it is all relative, you would have every right to it, and would be partially right. The way that people are wanting to claim tradition to verify their own practices has left most information that is immediately available to anyone a bit scewed. You will find many sources on the internet that will say every bit that Ishtar and Easter are synonymous, but there is such a gap between the advent and fade of the worship of Ishtar to the rise of Aoster that they really aren't... and the information that claims they are is outdated and based on best guesses of way back...more modern studies are more research based, and since they are still relatively new understandings, they are not quite as circulated or accepted yet.

Possibly I know that creating holidays to convert has a lot of holes in it since the religion was already popular appealing primarily to women, slaves, and outcasts.

Yeah Sol Invictus, but the only hard evidence of it being dated on December 25 is from Emperor Julian in 398ish CE. Nothing prior to this date tells us explicitly when Sol Invictus was actually celebrated. We know that the idea of Jesus being conceived on December 25 has been floating around since 221 due to the Chronographai. Our main debatable point of data in all of this is the Chronography of 354. Listed on December 25 is a holiday called Natalis Invicti (Birth of the unconquered). What this is referring to is unknown since it's vague which holiday this is referencing. If the Catholics are right in Chronography of 354 being an official reference to the celebration of Christ's Mass, then it's likely that Sol Invictus was moved to December 25 to convert the Christians. Especially since it's well documented that Emperor Julian blamed Christians for the problems with the Roman State. But again we just don't know. It's pretty much lost to time when the celebration originated.

As for Easter being the Spring Equinox, because of the way the date is calculated, Easter never falls on the Spring Equinox, it's always after. Next why go through all the complicated calculations for the date of Easter if the goal was to convert the pagans celebrating spring equinox? Wouldn't it just be easier to place it on the Spring Equinox and not go through the messy calculation crap or consult with Rabbis for the date of Passover?

Edit: Also Easter was historically called Pashal. Easter is the English-Germanic name for the holiday. Christianity did not become a big part of Germanic history until 900 something. Well after the fall of Rome.