Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Christmas, Christianity and Culture - My question

Now that Christmas is over and countless number so of Christians, agnostics and atheists alike are racking up the 19-22% interest on their credit cards for things that will be broken or on the shelf with in the next 6 months (will you REALLY play Guitar Hero 2 after Guitar Hero 3 comes out in the spring or summer?), I have a question that has been bugging me the last few days.

Now, let me say this, I love being with my family this time of year. Especially this year since we were afforded the opportunity to appreciate each other more this year rather than focus on material gifts. That's why I did the 12 Days of Christmas posts. I'm not one of these anti-Christmas people (I think that would make me a Jehovah's Witness, right?) But allow me to ask a question: What holiday did Christians INVENT?

Most of the more important Christian holidays were not created Christian. Allow me to explain:
Easter - pagan celebration of fertility (hence the eggs and rabbits)

Christmas - pagan celebration of Saturnalia and Juvenalia. Didn't become a recognized Christian holiday until 400 AD when the church wanted to convert the pagans. It hijacked their celebration and tried to make it about God. Because the traditions of the pagan celebration continued into Christmas celebrations - drunkeness, reverlry, fights, sexuality (missletoe wasn't originally for kisses!) and other wild things - Christmas was originally banned in America. In fact, the 1st December 25th in America was just a regular day.

Now I know that Easter is SUPPOSED to be about the death, burial and resurrection of Christ - but its not how we celebrate it. We celebrate it with a rabbit that lays colorful eggs, which are pagan symbols of the goddess of fertility.

So we tried to reach the pagans by hijacking their holidays and changing their meanings - BUT WHAT DID WE INVENT? Is the climax of Christianity's impact on culture simply limited to the theft of pagan culture and rituals?

Christ did an amazing thing at Calvary. Did we lose our own sense of how we should honor him? Did we have to resort to seeing the way others honor their gods to get an idea of how we should honor the Everlasting Father who calls us His own?

What do you think?

2 comments:

Jeffjazzy said...

What difference does it make if Christian's invented the holiday? None. That is if you insist on following the same course pursued by The Jews as is considered in the "OT" portion of the Bible. They too made the serious error of trying to fuse and adopt the pagan celebrations and gods into their lofty, spiritually clean form of worship only to be punished severly by their God. They tainted what they had so badly they became no different in their worship from the pagans they were surrounded by. Those who can't see what's wrong with adopting pagan customs into a faith that represents the Son of God are blinded by the light and are making the same tragic mistakes made by the Jews'over and over. This is exactly why the record of their actions and consequences are preserved for us in Scripture from Exodus through Malachi on into the "NT". This makes it unexcusable for any so called Christian to be adopting into their worship any custom's, rites, symbols or holidays that has at it's roots' pagan foundation's or more precisely Satanic originated influences. Some people have awoken to this reality and cut ties with these influences. What will you do? Here we go again! Trying to force God to lower his clean standards just so WE can feel good periodically throughout the year by imitating demon inspired hoildays masking as Christian. You can't dress up such things and expect God to not hold you accountable forever.

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