There have been many pagan gods or gods of mythology or false gods which have led many astray, but God has been from the beginning and his truths have never changed. A lot of christians have followed the errors of some Protestant churches and continue to follow the pagan festivals and so called "holy days" from paganism.
As for the holidays being Christian, they don't come from the Bible and we have followed the pagan path of the Catholics, with their "holidays" and idols and other extra-Biblical traditions. Catholics aren't really Christians with their rituals and statues and false teachings, any more than Mormons are. They are following the eastern pagan religions especially with the "HOLY DAYS" they have set up which are nothing but the festivals for pagan gods. Another problem is the worship of the pagan gods, the sign on the Pope's coffin after he died was a giant "M" for the pagan worship of Mary........ "QUEEN OF HEAVEN"...
Check it out for yourself:
Mary-Queen of Heaven, Goddess & Saint is celebrated around the world as the Divine Feminine by millions of people, many of them Catholics.
. . So great was devotion to the Goddess that She was resurrected in the hearts of the people by a new Goddess, Mary, Mother of Jesus. Those who are devoted to Mary, honor Her the Blessed Virgin Mary, the ever patient mother, and protectress of humanity.
The Madona and child have been revered since the earliest times. Isis and Her son Horus, Mary and Her son Jesus, Demeter and Her daughter Kore, all have attracted a devout following. Long before Isis, and long before Mary or Demeter, pagans fashioned Madonna and child icons and placed them in sacred shrines. Many believe that with the rise of Christianity and papal power, the Goddess would slowly disappear from western culture and fade into the Mists of Avalon . .
But they didnt, the names and sometimes the images of the Madonna and child have changed, but the location of these shrines, and the wide devotion to them has remained constant.She is honored by many as Isis, Gaia, Kali, Diana, Sheela Na Gig, and the Ancient Primal Earth-Mother Goddess.
For many European Christians, the blending of their ancient Goddesses with the Blessed Virgin Mary has been a well accepted fact of their faith for centuries, there is no conflict. The Madonna, be She called Isis, or Mary, or Kali, or Diana, embodies all the aspects of Female Divinity for many millions of people.
Easter and its ties to Mary/Isis/Ishtar/Beltis
The name Easter, like the names of the days of the week, is a survival from the old Teutonic mythology. According to Bede [an eighth century monk] it is derived from Oestre, or Ostdra, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month answering to our April, and called Eoster-monath, was dedicated. -- "Easter", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed.
What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments is Ishtar." -- The Two Babylons, Hislop, p. 103
Many ancient cultures share this legend of Semiramus and Nimrod: called by such names as Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylon; Isis and Osiris in Egypt; Astarte and Bel in Syria; Aphrodite, Cybele, or Venus, and Attis or Adonis in Greece and Rome; and Oestre (the dawn goddess) in Britain.
They considered her "the Mother of Gods", and often depicted her either as a fertility symbol, or as a madonna figure.
Many pre-christian Europeans thought that their sun gods and fertility goddesses died at the winter solstice and regained life again at the spring equinox.
The concept of death and rebirth plays a large role in these legends. e.g. Cybele mourned two days for Attis, then celebrated his return on the third day, while Venus mourned two days for Adonis until he ascended to heaven on the third day.
In the Babylonian myth, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar, and his wife Ishtar dedicated 40 days to weeping and fasting.
Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. -- Ezekiel 8:14
Sunrise Services
Even in ancient times, astrologers knew when the Vernal equinox occurred, and their followers would celebrate the arrival of spring at the first sunrise of the season.
And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east. -- Ezekiel 8:16
Hot Cross Buns
The cross symbol comes from the letter T, for Tammuz, husband of Ishtar, the queen of heaven.
The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, ... -- Jeremiah 7:18
It is quite probable that it has a far older and more interesting origin, as is suggested by an inquiry into the origin of hot cross buns. These cakes, which are now solely associated with the Christian Good Friday, are traceable to the remotest period of pagan history. Cakes were offered by ancient Egyptians to their moon goddess; and these had imprinted on them a pair of horns, symbolic of the ox at the sacrifice of which they were offered on the altar, or of the horned moon goddess, the equivalent of Ishtar of the Assyro-Babylonians. The Greeks offered such sacred cakes to Astarte and other divinities. This cake they called bous (ox), in allusion to the ox-symbol marked on it, and from the accusative boun it is suggested that the word 'bun' is derived. Like the Greeks, the Romans eat cross-bread at public sacrifices, such bread being usually purchased at the doors of the temple and taken in with them, a custom alluded to by St. Paul in I Cor. x.28. At Herculaneum two small loaves about 5 in. in diameter, and plainly marked with a cross, were found. In the Old Testament are references made in Jer. vii.18-xliv.19, to such sacred bread being offered to the moon goddess. The cross-bread was eaten by the pagan Saxons in honor of Eoster, their goddess of light. The Mexicans and Peruvians are shown to have had a similar custom. The custom, in fact, was practically universal, ... -- "Bun", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed.
Easter Eggs
Ancient Babylonians believed that Ishtar hatched from an egg that fell from heaven.
... the egg as a symbol of fertility and of renewed life goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who had also the custom of colouring and eating eggs during their spring festival. -- "Easter", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed.
Rabbits
Because of its short reproductive cycle and large litters, people have long regarded the rabbit (or hare) as a symbol of fertility.
Hares were the sacrificial victims of the goddess Eostre, and in Teutonic myth, were believed to lay easter eggs.
Ham
In the Babylonian myth, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar. Pre-christian Europeans considered eating ham a symbol of luck. Eating pork also expresses a blatant rejection of God's laws regarding clean and unclean meats.
The myth of Dumuzi and Inanna :
This is the myth where Inanna descends into the underworld (where the dead are).But it is known now as the myth of 'Dumuzi and Inanna' in its complete form. Dumuzi is the Sumerian form of the more familiar name Tammuz, and Inanna is the Sumerian equivalent of semitic Ishtar. So, Ishtar is Inanna, the queen of heaven, (in other words she is the queen of the sky).She is also the Babylonian "queen of heaven," Semeramis (also worshipped and known as Ishtar), the wife of Nimrod and mother of Tammuz, was the origination of the Easter spring/fertility goddess. Aphrodite of the Greeks, Juno of the Latins, Isis of the Egyptians, Astarte of the Moabites, Ashtoreth of the Zidonians & Israelites, Ashtar of the Assyrians, and Eostre of the early Anglo-Saxons, just to name a few, all were localized versions of the Babylonian Semeramis/Ishtar, who we have in modern form as Easter.
"Easter" and the related spring/fertility festivals built around it are nothing new.
All these false goddesses (although more correctly "goddess" singular, as these names are all variations of the same deity) originate from the Babylonian myth of Semeramis (Ishtar). As the myth goes, the wife of Nimrod, Ishtar, was born as such: a giant egg fell magically from heaven and landed in the Euphrates river. The fish rolled the egg to shore, where the birds hatched it, and out came our friendly fertility fallacy, Ishtar, whom the Babylonians (and indeed hundreds of other cultures throughout history) worshipped as the queen of heaven, the goddess of spring and fertility.
A common theme among all versions of the Ishtar/Easter myth is that of sexuality. Babylonians worshipped Ishtar as the goddess of fertility and sexual impulse, and throughout these millennia of Easter celebrations, there has often been sexuality involved. In Hastings Ency. On Religious Ethics, p. 117, we read of these ancient "easters":
A spring feast was celebrated. These occasions were marked with great sexual license.
Just as it was for the Lent ritual, the Catholic church of the 4th and 5th centuries adopted the various pagan festivals and slapped a Christian label on it ("Jesus resurrected on this day!") so as to convert the massive pagan cultures to the Catholic faith. Fortunately, the excessively negative light in which Catholics (indeed most Christians today) portray sex has pretty much eliminated any immoral sexuality associated with Easter. That said, we still keep remnants of the ancients, with rabbits, eggs, and a spring festival all symbolizing fertility.
Even to this day, despite the supposed Christian holiness and purity of Christ in us, we've been unable to shake the very paganism that angered God enough to scatter Israel and punish them for more than 2 millennia. If Christians are part of Israel (as Paul argues in the New Testament), are we not also the people of God? Are we not angering him with the same festivals he hated in Solomon's day? If Israel's paganism angered God then, does ours not anger Him now?
