CK2Noob t1_iz6m330 wrote
Reply to comment by Sad_Blueberry_3868 in How did new emerging religions succeed despite established pre-existing religions during ancient and/or pre-historic times? by matthewlee0165
Easter and Christmas are not pagan at all. That's a myth that comes from 19th century scholarly opinion and is pretty outdated. If you look at traditional Christmas or Easter celebration nothing about it is pagan. Easter had a long period of fasting with various services during the period and on Easter you would go to Church and celebrate it in Church, with a big meal afterwards (this is where the eucharist would have been consumed as well).
Easter itself comes from the jewish passover tradition, which celebrates Moses taking the Jews out of Egypt to the promised land and saved them from slavery (the paralell being that Christ took His people out of the world and opened up the promised land that is the Kingdom of Heaven to people, and broke the slavery to death and sin). The only thing somewhat pagan about easter is the english name for it, most languages use some variation of "Pascha" which comes from the jewish word for passover.
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With Christmas it's basically the same thing. The only similarity between Christmas and Saturnalia is roughly the time of year and gift giving. It's just that Saturnalia was a multi-day festival that ended on the 23rd of december. Christmas would also have had a 40 day fasting period before it, so no festivals there. And on Christmas itself you would have gone to Church, then had a big meal afterwards.
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If you want actual examples of syncretism then things such as the serbian "Slava" tradition is a much better example, not Christmas and and especially not Easter which is extremely abrahamic.
satan_messiah t1_iz6stc6 wrote
Easters date is determined by the first full moon after the equinox and you mean there is no pagan origins there? I mean I could be wrong but easter being the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox seems pretty pagany to me.
webbphillips t1_iz7anco wrote
Christianity is an ancient religion, and it's also plausible that dating things by equinoxes and moons was just a standard way of fixing a yearly event.
More difficult to explain are the eggs and bunnies, which any anthropologist will tell you are fertility symbols common to the spring festivals of many cultures before and alongside Christianity. The Iranian spring festival, Nowruz, existed long before Islam, is a popular holiday, and isn't going anywhere. Also, subjectively, but as a non-believer who enjoys experiencing different traditions, passover doesn't give me spring festival vibes, but Easter absolutely does.
CK2Noob t1_iz7xg32 wrote
Have you ever celebrated easter in a non-western context? Traditionally things such as the easter bunny or egg hunts are a very anglo-saxon thing. I reccomend celebrating easter in an eastern Christian setting as the liturgical format (and importance of easter) is much older than current western praxis. I’ve never really gotten spring festival vibes from Orthodox easter tbh.
Like the only thing I can think of are the eggs? But you just get a small red egg afterwards and That’s it. It’s a very small piece in an otherwise thouroughly Christian celebration (and well, eggs have been used as symbolism by ancient jews so it’s not even neccessarily a pagan import).
AliMcGraw t1_iz7r3dp wrote
It literally comes from the Jewish luni-solar calendar, in an attempt to keep it concordant with Passover.
But yeah, like basically every calendar in the history of the earth uses either a lunar, luni-olar, or solar cycle. So basically all holidays, events, and occurrences are going to occur based on one of those calendars. That doesn't mean people were stealing holidays from each other, although sometimes they were. It just means that the planet works the same way for everyone, and there are only so many ways to mark time astronomically when you only have naked eye observation.
CK2Noob t1_iz7wwat wrote
You phrased it really well. Almost every culture has some celebrations around the Winter or summer Solstice too. Doesn’t mean that they somehow copied eachother
Mo_dawg1 t1_iz70q8a wrote
It should be noted that "pagan" religions copied Christianity also. Loki for example
CK2Noob t1_iz7wg5m wrote
Most of the hávamál tbf. The author was Christian and Christian themes were almost certainly added (for example in what happens after ragnarök). If anything the struggle for historians is sifting away Christian influence from the norse religion
webbphillips t1_iz77z29 wrote
Remind me again where's the part of the bible with the pagan spring festival fertility symbols of bunnies and eggs?
AliMcGraw t1_iz7rndp wrote
So, just FYI, that's a very anglo-saxon thing, and other Christian countries/traditions don't mark Easter with eggs and bunnies. (Or they didn't, until international advertising became a thing and English-language holiday traditions kind of conquered some of those holidays completely.)
(Although the Bible does totally use eggs as a symbol of fertility, and even refers to God as a hen brooding over her eggs.) (I cannot remember any rabbit references off the top of my head, but I bet they're there in the Levitical rules about what you're allowed to eat.)
Due_Signature_5497 t1_iz8pz5e wrote
But a man eating rabbit guards the final resting place of Joseph of aramathea and the final clue to the location of the Holy Grail in the Castle of Arrrrggghhh.
CK2Noob t1_iz7w7rr wrote
The concept of eggs do fertility is probably something a lot of unrelated cultures realized too, it’s the same with spring festivals. They’re common in tons of cultures. Easter being celebrated around spring also has Christian theological meaning (with the whole resurrection thing). So Yeah.. I don’t understand why the Myth gets repeated.
CK2Noob t1_iz7vxwu wrote
As pointed out the whole easter bunny thing is a very anglo-saxon thing. The egg is more universal though, but so what? Eggs are a really tiny part of traditional (Especially early) easter celebrations. At best you can say it is evidence for pagan influence on easter, it is not evidence for easter being a pagan holiday.
Again, traditionally easter has consisted of going to Church and celebrating there. Things such a the easter bunny and egg hunts are innovations that came long after paganism had become nonexistant in what was the roman empire. You also have to remember how massive easter was in the past. In western christianity christmas became the ”main” holiday. But traditionally easter has always been the big one with many special celebrations, unique hymns, Church celebrations etc. Especially after the religion was legalized.
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