Question by LJ’s Back!: Why do Atheists claim that every holiday is a pagan holiday?
According to atheists, Christmas was originally a pagan holiday. Halloween, pagan holiday. Easter? Yup, pagan. Thanksgiving? Totally pagan. 4th of July? Come on, we all know the pagans were first to celebrate that. Black History Month? Sooooo pagan!
Best answer:
Answer by pab
what part of christianity involves a xmas tree? Or santa clause?
Easter is not a pagan holiday, but it has been secularized to be very much non religious to many people (an easter bunny and colored eggs?).
Thanksgiving and Independence day are American holidays. Completely secular.
What do you think? Answer below!
Unh-UH! Not St. Swithin’s day. That one’s totally Christian. I mean, predicting a 40-day pattern of weather on the basis of a single day in July? That’s just crazy! (and not the least bit pagan at all)
Because they are. In the UK we still have a holiday on “may day”
Halloween is a pagan holiday.
As a Pagan and an historian, I insist that Christians who ask questions about why non-Christians celebrate Easter or Christmas remember that those holidays are thinly-disguised Pagan holidays. It’s a little thing I like to call historical truth. Look into it.
However, Thanksgiving has clear Christian connotations, although certainly harvest feasts were practiced near the same time of year in pre-Christian Europe. July 4th is neither Pagan nor Christian. It is a secular patriotic holiday.
Nice straw man you set up there!
Christmas, Easter and Halloween are all pagan holidays. Christmas was originally the celebration of the sun god’s birthday, Easter is actually Ishtar, the celebration of the fertility goddess, and Halloween is one of the most wicked and demonic days out there. I am saying all of this and I am a christian. Not a Mormon, a Jehovah’s whiteness, catholic, pentecostal, prosperity gospel, blab it and grab it or new age-er. I am a King James version bible believing Christian who is trying to fashion my life after Jesus’. These holidays were merged with Christian holidays to try to bring the two faiths together. If you need more info please feel free to contact me.
God loves you and so do I
Be Blessed
Christmas, Easter and Halloween all have non-Christian origins. The Bible doesn’t say when Christ’s birthday is. Nobody knows the month and day for sure. December 25 was chosen because it’s near the winter solstice. People believed that they could encourage the sun to come back to the northern hemisphere with rituals on the day of the winter solstice.
Eggs and rabbits were fertility symbols associated with Ishtar.
This may be why store flyers say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Right wing politicians try to use Christmas as an issue to tear down the Separation of Church and State so they can stir up their donors.
This question looked good at first.
Then it degenerated.
I am an atheist, but I do not make those claims.
Why do christians insist in the face of veritable evidence that the dates of their festivals correspond to dates of festivals of other theist and non theist groups?
Halloween – The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes regarded as the “Celtic New Year”.
Halloween – All hallows eve – It was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints’ Day from May 13 (which had itself been the date of a pagan holiday, the Feast of the Lemures) to November 1.
Easter – The name refers to the Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar which may have been named for the goddess ?ostre in Anglo-Saxon paganism, attested by Bede.
Thanksgiving – In Grenada there is a national holiday of Thanksgiving Day on 25 October. It is unrelated to holidays in Canada and the United States even though it bears the same name. It marks the anniversary of the US-led invasion of the island in 1983 in response to the deposition and execution of Grenadan Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.
Christmas – A winter festival was traditionally the most popular festival of the year in many cultures.
Needless to say – but I think that a simple five minute surf of the internet has brought up enough cut ‘n paste to prove my point.
Although I knew most of this already, cut ‘n paste is convenient.
Do the research – do the math – do the laundry. I don’t care, just get some factual data / information before you make generalist uneducated remarks / assumptions.
Also, if I worded your question differently and questioned christianity, I would be accused of prejudice.
Should I therefore accuse you of prejudiced bigotry?
its interesting the answers here
now to be fair and honest christmas falls on the day of yule, which is a Pagan holiday, as a way of converting the pagans to christianity . there was no “Stealing” involved, it is very much a christian holiday.
to another answerer, santa claus is very christian, in fact its taken from saint nicholas, you know the catholic saint who wore a red robe and put goodies in peoples shoes, that guy.