Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Sad_Blueberry_3868 t1_iz5wgbo wrote

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but from what I understand about Christianity is that they allowed people to continue their own traditions and celebrations but just with a new twist. So it wasn't like people had to abandon their previous belief system. That's why Christians today celebrate the pagan holidays of Christmas and Easter.

7

n_hawthorne t1_iz5yz5p wrote

There’s even a word for this: syncretism, the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.

8

Linus_Al t1_iz60jl2 wrote

But I think that alone doesn’t explain it’s early success. If anything Christianitys insistence on being an exclusive religion is comparatively harsh. A pagan had no problem with you joining several religions on the side, but Christians needed you to leave all other cults. For an ancient believer, this was quite a commitment.

8

Jean_Saisrien t1_iz6seig wrote

Psychologically, it is precisely the "harsh" comitment that makes it seems worthwhile. Having a relatively high bar to entry makes you feel like you are part of an elite that can truly give you something valuable and shape your life from top to bottom. Paradoxically, faith being too accomodating take the risk to lose adherents to those that are not as easy-going

2

TheobromaKakao t1_iz94bok wrote

Yes, but as you said, Odin doesn't care. If you died in battle he'd still come for you. So why not say that you only worship Jesus to hedge your bets?

If only one of the religions requires full commitment, then ironically that makes it easier for that religion to spread. The extremist intolerance and gatekeeping of heaven lets them attract the weaker people in society because there's no Valhalla waiting for them regardless, and they are easy to turn into followers too, because they're used to it already. Like sheep, they just need to be herded in any direction.

1

CK2Noob t1_iz6m330 wrote

Easter and Christmas are not pagan at all. That's a myth that comes from 19th century scholarly opinion and is pretty outdated. If you look at traditional Christmas or Easter celebration nothing about it is pagan. Easter had a long period of fasting with various services during the period and on Easter you would go to Church and celebrate it in Church, with a big meal afterwards (this is where the eucharist would have been consumed as well).

Easter itself comes from the jewish passover tradition, which celebrates Moses taking the Jews out of Egypt to the promised land and saved them from slavery (the paralell being that Christ took His people out of the world and opened up the promised land that is the Kingdom of Heaven to people, and broke the slavery to death and sin). The only thing somewhat pagan about easter is the english name for it, most languages use some variation of "Pascha" which comes from the jewish word for passover.

​

With Christmas it's basically the same thing. The only similarity between Christmas and Saturnalia is roughly the time of year and gift giving. It's just that Saturnalia was a multi-day festival that ended on the 23rd of december. Christmas would also have had a 40 day fasting period before it, so no festivals there. And on Christmas itself you would have gone to Church, then had a big meal afterwards.

​

If you want actual examples of syncretism then things such as the serbian "Slava" tradition is a much better example, not Christmas and and especially not Easter which is extremely abrahamic.

1

satan_messiah t1_iz6stc6 wrote

Easters date is determined by the first full moon after the equinox and you mean there is no pagan origins there? I mean I could be wrong but easter being the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox seems pretty pagany to me.

7

webbphillips t1_iz7anco wrote

Christianity is an ancient religion, and it's also plausible that dating things by equinoxes and moons was just a standard way of fixing a yearly event.

More difficult to explain are the eggs and bunnies, which any anthropologist will tell you are fertility symbols common to the spring festivals of many cultures before and alongside Christianity. The Iranian spring festival, Nowruz, existed long before Islam, is a popular holiday, and isn't going anywhere. Also, subjectively, but as a non-believer who enjoys experiencing different traditions, passover doesn't give me spring festival vibes, but Easter absolutely does.

3

CK2Noob t1_iz7xg32 wrote

Have you ever celebrated easter in a non-western context? Traditionally things such as the easter bunny or egg hunts are a very anglo-saxon thing. I reccomend celebrating easter in an eastern Christian setting as the liturgical format (and importance of easter) is much older than current western praxis. I’ve never really gotten spring festival vibes from Orthodox easter tbh.

Like the only thing I can think of are the eggs? But you just get a small red egg afterwards and That’s it. It’s a very small piece in an otherwise thouroughly Christian celebration (and well, eggs have been used as symbolism by ancient jews so it’s not even neccessarily a pagan import).

3

AliMcGraw t1_iz7r3dp wrote

It literally comes from the Jewish luni-solar calendar, in an attempt to keep it concordant with Passover.

But yeah, like basically every calendar in the history of the earth uses either a lunar, luni-olar, or solar cycle. So basically all holidays, events, and occurrences are going to occur based on one of those calendars. That doesn't mean people were stealing holidays from each other, although sometimes they were. It just means that the planet works the same way for everyone, and there are only so many ways to mark time astronomically when you only have naked eye observation.

2

CK2Noob t1_iz7wwat wrote

You phrased it really well. Almost every culture has some celebrations around the Winter or summer Solstice too. Doesn’t mean that they somehow copied eachother

1

Mo_dawg1 t1_iz70q8a wrote

It should be noted that "pagan" religions copied Christianity also. Loki for example

2

CK2Noob t1_iz7wg5m wrote

Most of the hávamál tbf. The author was Christian and Christian themes were almost certainly added (for example in what happens after ragnarök). If anything the struggle for historians is sifting away Christian influence from the norse religion

2

webbphillips t1_iz77z29 wrote

Remind me again where's the part of the bible with the pagan spring festival fertility symbols of bunnies and eggs?

1

AliMcGraw t1_iz7rndp wrote

So, just FYI, that's a very anglo-saxon thing, and other Christian countries/traditions don't mark Easter with eggs and bunnies. (Or they didn't, until international advertising became a thing and English-language holiday traditions kind of conquered some of those holidays completely.)

(Although the Bible does totally use eggs as a symbol of fertility, and even refers to God as a hen brooding over her eggs.) (I cannot remember any rabbit references off the top of my head, but I bet they're there in the Levitical rules about what you're allowed to eat.)

2

Due_Signature_5497 t1_iz8pz5e wrote

But a man eating rabbit guards the final resting place of Joseph of aramathea and the final clue to the location of the Holy Grail in the Castle of Arrrrggghhh.

4

CK2Noob t1_iz7w7rr wrote

The concept of eggs do fertility is probably something a lot of unrelated cultures realized too, it’s the same with spring festivals. They’re common in tons of cultures. Easter being celebrated around spring also has Christian theological meaning (with the whole resurrection thing). So Yeah.. I don’t understand why the Myth gets repeated.

2

CK2Noob t1_iz7vxwu wrote

As pointed out the whole easter bunny thing is a very anglo-saxon thing. The egg is more universal though, but so what? Eggs are a really tiny part of traditional (Especially early) easter celebrations. At best you can say it is evidence for pagan influence on easter, it is not evidence for easter being a pagan holiday.

Again, traditionally easter has consisted of going to Church and celebrating there. Things such a the easter bunny and egg hunts are innovations that came long after paganism had become nonexistant in what was the roman empire. You also have to remember how massive easter was in the past. In western christianity christmas became the ”main” holiday. But traditionally easter has always been the big one with many special celebrations, unique hymns, Church celebrations etc. Especially after the religion was legalized.

2

CalvinSays t1_iz6pek8 wrote

Not at all. Christianity was very much syncretism, at least early on. By the time possible syncretism does happen, it was already the culturally favored religion so this wouldn't explain the spread. As for the supposed syncretism like Easter and Christmas this simply wasn't the case. It was ironically propaganda started by Protestants in the 19th century against the Roman Catholic Church. Secularists ran with it to condemn the whole Christian tradition.

The most important work in this regard is Alexander Hislop's the Two Babylons.

1

webbphillips t1_iz778a3 wrote

Could you elaborate on Christmas and Easter a bit? Maybe I misread your post because I thought it was well established that those are Christianized pagan winter and spring festivals. If not, then why does Santa look like Odin and they both fly around at the end of December? And why eggs and bunnies, as are common among spring festivals?

1

CalvinSays t1_iz78r0e wrote

An important thing to realize is that similarity does not establish dependence. You have to show that one tradition is in fact dependant on another. Otherwise, you fall prey to same kind of reasoning that leads people to believe aliens taught us how to build the pyramids because so many independent cultures built them.

One also needs to be critical of sources. Where do we get the information regarding Odin? Often, when supposed pagan Origins to Christimas traditions are stated, they are given without any source. Be sure to locate the sources these traditions supposedly come from. When were they recorded?

As for the Odin claim specifically, I will point you to Jackson Crawford. He is an excellent scholar with a PhD in Old Norse. He is certainly better qualified than I to dig into the specifics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_o5ih9WuCxQ

As for Easter, Michael Jones at InspiringPhilosophy put together a good video on the topic: https://youtu.be/IffNsK_fdoY

2

Omega_Den t1_iz75d9m wrote

we do not worship pagan holidays.

0

PBaz1337 t1_iz814z3 wrote

We absolutely do, we've just renamed and rebranded them.

3

Omega_Den t1_iz94rz9 wrote

then read more about this.
I just saw recently few days ago explanation in a understandable meme format about Christmas, but sadly I didn't save it ; /

Easter as you call it (in Poland we call it a ,,Big night'') is a movable holiday (because crucificion happened after jewish holiday which is also movable because of moon's phases). What pagan holiday did we usurp with it ? o.o

1

Agastasa1X t1_izokiej wrote

Celebrating pagan holidays implies that the purpose of that holiday is being used to honor a pagan god or done with a pagan intention behind it. The supposed pagan elements are still used in favor of a Christian purpose and the Christian. God.

1