Are Christian holidays pagan?
Are Christian holidays pagan?
What does the Torah say about them?
25 years before my deeper study of the scriptures prompted me to leave the church, I had already developed strong convictions against Christian holidays. There is virtually no-one, not even among conservative Christian scholars and apologists, who denies the pagan origins of Christian holidays. The question is: what, if anything, is wrong with co-opting pagan practices? Christianity sees this practice as demonstrating its victory over paganism.
We won’t go into detail about how foreign religious celebrations were blended into Christianity by the Roman Catholic Church. That information is easily found online with a simple google search. One of my favorite summaries regarding the biggest Christian holiday, Christmas, can be found here, for anyone interested:
In Israel, the earliest of Jesus’ followers knew nothing of these holidays. They continued to meet on the Sabbath in the synagogue. They continued observing YHWH’s feasts, which are summarized in Leviticus 23. They did not participate in any of these foreign religious observances. They wouldn’t have even considered it, for YHWH specifically forbade it!
The introduction of pagan holidays into Christianity began in the fourth century. They are completely absent from the New Testament writings. (Please don’t mistake the mistranslation of the Greek word for Passover–Pascha–as Easter in Acts 12:4 in the King James Version as anything other than what it is: a purposeful mistranslation of Passover, attempting to replace this particular post-crucifixion Passover with a holiday which wasn’t celebrated by Christianity until hundreds of years after the book of Acts was written.)
The original revelation of YHWH to mankind, the Torah, contains a statement directly from YHWH about how he feels about Christian holidays:
When YHWH your God eliminates the nations from the place where you are headed and you dispossess them, you will settle down in their land.
After they have been destroyed from your presence, be careful not to be ensnared like they are; do not pursue their gods and say, “How do these nations serve their gods? I will do the same.”
You must not worship YHWH your God the way they do! For everything that is abhorrent to him, everything he hates, they have done when worshiping their gods. They even burn up their sons and daughters before their gods!
You must be careful to do everything I am commanding you. Do not add to it or subtract from it!
Deut 12:29-32 NET
Not only has Christianity specifically taken the religious practices of pagan cultures and made them their own, they have abandoned the holidays that YHWH himself established!
It doesn’t matter that today you aren’t celebrating these pagan rituals to worship false gods. Neither your intent, nor what is in your heart justifies this blatant violation of YHWH’s command to his people.
It is my position that there is NO EXCUSE for this!