Holidays & Holy Days: Origins, Customs, and Insights on Celebrations Through the Year

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Summary: Christian Exposition of Paganism in Church Holidays
Review: from tnnonline.net

We as Messianic Believers frequently come into conflict with Christians because of the holidays that we celebrate. Christians do not understand why we do not celebrate Christmas, Easter, Palm Sunday, Lent, Epiphany, All Saints Day, or God forbid, Halloween. They do not understand why we celebrate the Biblical holidays of Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Pentecost/Shavuot, the Feast of Trumpets (erroneously called by many as Rosh Hashanah), Yom Kippur, and Tabernacles/Sukkot. All too often if you do not celebrate things like Christmas and Easter you are considered to not be a Believer and deny the birth of Messiah and His resurrection. If you celebrate what are presumed to be "Jewish" holidays, which are in actuality feasts that God gave His people for perpetuity, you are considered a legalist and one who is trying to earn his salvation.

Why don't we as Messianic Believers observe Christmas and Easter, or for that matter an entire range of other Catholic holidays that are passing themselves off as "Christian"? We don't observe them for the simple reason that they are not mandated in Scripture, and because these holidays historically are redressed pagan feast days that were "Christianized" and "sanctified" by Roman Catholicism. "Christmas" as it is called today originally celebrated the birth of the sun god and "Easter" was likewise a day to celebrate the fertility goddess. Christians several centuries after the death of the Apostles, who did not celebrate these holidays and followed Messiah's example honoring the Biblical feasts, changed the pagan elements in them to reflect Biblical stories hence "cleaning them up" and the Catholic Church adopted them as part of its ritual and orthodoxy.

I will admit that I might be the last person to call Christmas or Easter as "pagan," as I am sure that most Christians honoring them are not worshipping the sun god or engaging in fertility rites. I am sure that many Christian Believers dedicate these two days fully to the Lord and He honors them. But at the same time I am also a person who strives to be 100% Biblical, and I believe that it is unacceptable under any circumstances to take something that has obvious roots in paganism and redress it as "Biblical," when God Himself has given us the holidays that He wants us to honor in Leviticus 23, and we see the fulfillment of these holidays through the First and future Second Coming of Messiah Yeshua. If we strive to be Biblical, then we must reevaluate the holidays that we celebrate and do what He wants us to do, not something that has been "traditional" for the past 1,700 years and was added long after the death of the Apostles at the Council of Nicea.

But please just don't take my word that popular Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter have origins in paganism. A book that I discovered when browsing a Christian bookstore, Holidays & Holy Days, discusses everything I have described and more. Author Susan E. Richardson indicates that as a person who had worked and managed Christian bookstores she had always wanted to produce a book that dealt with the historical origins of holidays that we as Americans celebrate. Her book takes you through the Gregorian calendar year starting at January 1 through December 31 addressing each holiday from New Years Day to St. Patrick's Day to Easter to Memorial Day to the Fourth of July to Labor Day to Halloween and Christmas. Also addressed are "Jewish" holidays, while in actuality Biblical feasts that YHVH gave to His people, Israel. She also discusses the origin of Santa Claus and the Easter bunny, revealing their "fairy tale" origins and a brief history of the "Christian" change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day.

You will be shocked and amazed to discover that Christians over the centuries have taken things rooted in paganism and "cleaned them up" claiming them to be "holy." This book is not written from some aberrant source or a mean-spirit; it is rather written from a Christian who wanted to honestly discover the origins of holidays. Believe me, I was very surprised to find this book in a Christian bookstore as it readily admits that things that Christians celebrate were adapted from paganism. Richardson does a fair job in stating that it is not her intent to decide for the reader what holidays to celebrate and not to celebrate, but rather she only wants to provide a fair history of the holidays we celebrate and encourages readers to prayerfully consider how they want to obey God.

I believe that this book accomplishes this goal, but unfortunately she does not encourage people who do not want to celebrate "Christian" holidays rooted in paganism to honor the Biblical feasts, which have Messianic significance concerning Messiah's birth, death, resurrection, and return. However, I am sure that Holidays & Holy Days will challenge many truthseekers and I believe that her fair mindedness will help many who want to obey God and not offend them as do many books that readily tout "paganism" and are not fair or balanced in their approach to the holidays. I highly recommend Holidays & Holy Days if you are engaged in the research of what we celebrate and I can already attest to quoting this book in articles that deal with the holidays that we as Believers should and should not celebrate.