I myself don't observe a day like Christmas or Easter it's only the tradition of men that human beings observe these days. There is no commandment in the scriptures that we should observe Christmas or Easter.
However I disagree with someone saying pagan origins don't matter when it comes to Christmas or Easter because there origins do come from pagan gods. So these days are associated with the false gods the pagans believed in. So whenever a person is speaking about false gods, these are idols which means you're speaking about Demons. The scriptures make it clear that as Christians we should have nothing to do with demons. They have nothing in common with the true God so a servant of the true God should have nothing to do with what comes from demons.
As far as getting together as a family to play games or eat a meal, why should it take some kind of special day to happen for the family to come together to play games or eat a meal. Why can't they do it simply because of the love they have for their family. I think gifts should be given simply because you love the person you give a gift to, not because of some special day.
You're under no compulsion to celebrate any days on the Christian calendar, but two points I'd like to raise:
1) Just because God doesn't command something doesn't mean it's wrong. I'd encourage you to take the time to read through what Paul says in, for example, Romans 14 concerning Christian freedom on matters of days and food.
2) The "pagan origins" argument for Christmas and Easter are, to put it mildly, nonsense. I know that if one goes onto the internet there's no shortage of websites, or discussion forums, or blog posts all talking about how Christmas is based on Saturnalia, or that Easter celebrates a fertility goddess who had rabbits and eggs as her symbols.
But you should know that all those claims have no basis in fact. It's like the claim that Columbus proved the earth was round because everyone in Europe that the world was flat. Or the claim that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and then said, "I cannot tell a lie".
In other words, people made something up, then other people repeated it, and then repeated it again, and more people came along and repeated it. And now you have people who talk about these things as though they are "common knowledge". But, from the get-go, it's all false. So no matter how many times it's been repeated, no matter how frequently you see it--it's still false.
Let's take one claim: "Easter is based on a fertility goddess whose symbols were rabbits and eggs". There should be evidence for this claim if it's true, right? We should be able to find some sort of documentation that shows that there was a goddess of fertility with rabbits and eggs and that somehow Easter should be connected, right? If there's no evidence for that, if there's no documentary evidence, no archeological evidence, if there's nothing. If it's just what some people on the internet are saying, then why believe it, right?
So let's take a deeper dive into that for a moment.
In the 7th century an Anglo-Saxon Christian monk by the name of Bede wrote a work attempting to talk about the right way to calculate the Christian Paschal Feast (what in English we usually call "Easter"). Bede undertook this work to talk about different calendars used by different people. In one section of the work he talks about the Anglo-Saxon calendar, the calendar used by his ancestors. Bede describes the twelve months of the Anglo-Saxon calendar, their names, and offers an etymology for the name of the month.
Bede's introduction tot he Anglo-Saxon calendar, taken from the Faith Wallis translation of The Reckoning of Time,
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In olden time the English people--for it did not seem fitting to me that I should speak of other nations' observance of the year and yet be silent about my own nation's--calculated their months according to the course of the moon. Hence, after the manner of the Greeks and Romans, [the months] take their name from the moon, for the moon is called mona and the month monath.
The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Solmonath; March Hrethmonath; April, Eosturmonath; ..."
So notice that Bede says that the Anglo-Saxon month that approximately corresponds with the Roman calendar month of April is called Eosturmonath. So let's skip ahead to what Bede has to say about Eosturmonath,
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Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated 'Paschal-month', and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance."
That's everything Bede tells us. There's simply nothing else besides this short paragraph.
So let's look at that closely, the Anglo-Saxons had a month called Eosturmonath, corresponding to the Roman month of April. The month was named after a goddess named Eostre, which before their conversion to Christianity the Anglo-Saxons worshiped and celebrated feasts dedicated to her in that month. But since the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons the month is now understood to be "Paschal-month", and the word "Eostre" was used not to refer to a goddess, or to any celebrations of that goddess, but instead had come to exclusively refer to the Christian celebration of Jesus' resurrection.
So there we have it, definitive proof of Easter's pagan origins, right? Wrong.
All we've established here is where the word "Easter" comes from in reference to the long and established Christian observance of a celebration of Christ's resurrection. The word "Paschal" is derived from the Greek Πάσχα (Pascha), itself a transliteration of the Hebrew word פֶּסַח (Pesach), "Passover".
That Christians honor the Pesach/Pascha/Passover in a new Christian way is ancient. St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:8,
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Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."
This isn't a call to observe the Passover in the old way, but in a new way--a Christian way, as the verse directly preceding this says, "
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed."
When should Christians celebrate this feast? Well, two traditions emerged in the 2nd century, both traditions claimed to be apostolic in origin. And, initially, these two traditions co-existed without much controversy.
Eusebius of Caesarea in his Church History tells us of an episode where the Anicetus, the bishop of Rome visited Polycarp the bishop of Smyrna (probably around 160 AD). In their meeting together they basically practiced everything the same way, the one thing that differed however was that the Christians in Rome always celebrated the Paschal Feast on the first day of the week, basically the first Sunday after the Jewish Passover. Whreas in Smyrna the Christians there celebrated the Paschal Feast on the 14th of the Jewish month of Nisan.
In the next couple centuries the practice of Christians celebrating Pascha on the 14th of Nisan slowly fell out of disfavor. By the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 AD it was basically non-existent. But there still wasn't a a universal standard of when Christians should celebrate the Paschal Feast. So while the Council of Nicea met to chiefly address the Arian controversy over the nature of Christ, one of the side-issues it addressed was to create a standardized way to calculate the Paschal Feast so regardless of where Christians worshiped, they still be celebrating at the same time of the year. The computus, or way to calculate the Paschal Feast which Nicea presented is still what virtually all churches today still use.
So when Bede talks about the Anglo-Saxons calling the Paschal Feast "Easter", what he is saying is that the name of the month, essentially, became a local way for the Christian Anglo-Saxons to speak of the Paschal Feast. It would, as though, we called the Paschal Feast "April", calling it by the time of the year--the calendar month name. The Germans (or some Germans) likely were influenced by the Anglo-Saxons; as the German name for the Paschal Feast most familiar is Ostern, but historically and in some dialects, it is e.g. Paisken, similar to how in Dutch it is Pasen or Frisian Peaske, because the most common names for the Feast are directly taken from Greek
Pascha.
What about eggs and bunnies? Well, nothing.
What about other ancient documents or material evidence from archeology? Nothing there either.
Bede is literally the only source. Let me repeat that: Bede is the
ONLY SOURCE we have. Everything else about a goddess named Eostre you have read about or heard anyone mention about is either made up or, at best, an educated guess.
And when I say Bede is the only source, I mean we don't have any corroborating evidence that anybody, at any time, ever worshiped a goddess named "Eostre". There is no Eostre mentioned in any myths or stories of Germanic mythology. Literally nothing exists outside of Bede's small paragraph quoted above.
This fact has led a lot of scholars to challenge Bede's account, that perhaps Bede is actually wrong about the etymology. And have offered alternative conjectures, such as that Eosturmonath probably means "Dawn-month", that "Eostur" isn't a goddess at all, but a reference to the sun rising earlier in the morning in the
East. While other scholars disagree, and think Bede's account is basically accurate, we still are at a complete loss for any information or evidence to corroborate or give us additional information.
Claiming fertility rituals, or bunnies and eggs as symbols for a pagan goddess aren't based in evidence.
They are made up.
And like I said at the beginning, this is just one example of the "pagan origins" claims being false. The same is true also when we look at things like Christmas, and even Halloween. Yes, even Halloween. Halloween doesn't have any pagan origins either--
that is also made up.
-CryptoLutheran