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[mainiac]

Seriously, Easter and Christmas are rebrandings of earlier pagan holidays revolving around the rebirth of the sun and the resurrection of the natural world.

Have you ever been to an Easter rite?  That's not what Easter is about.  Yeah some of that snuck in because of the time of the year.  But that's not the core of Easter.  The core of Easter is the miracle of the resurrection, literally the most central component of Christian faith.  If you think it's a celebration of spring you are completely missing the point.

[kaijyuu]

I believe his point was these holidays have been repurposed for christianity, not that they are (today) pagan holidays.

[GlyphGryph]

Have you ever been to an Easter rite?  That's not what Easter is about.  Yeah some of that snuck in because of the time of the year.  But that's not the core of Easter.  The core of Easter is the miracle of the resurrection, literally the most central component of Christian faith.  If you think it's a celebration of spring you are completely missing the point.

Seriously. Retconned. That's not what Easter was about. Easter was already a holiday before Jesus ever came along, so the idea is kind of silly. There is a reason it's called "Easter" and not "Jesus".

Because Easter is the goddess of spring and fertility.

[Aqizzar]

Blah blah elections blah blah blah.

I don't deny that Obama and Romney giving dueling commencement addresses, Romney at a university that dedicates a whole course to teaching it's students how to combat Mormonism and it's "occult origins", is interesting election stuff.  But it's getting a mite huffy in here.

[mainiac]

Seriously. Retconned.

Seriously, not.  Like half the new testament is people talking about the miracle of the resurrection and the salvation.  It is the most central aspect of the entire religion.

Yes there were spring festivals before.  But Easter is not a spring festival.  It is a festival about the resurrection and the promise of salvation.  And this is pretty much the most basic of the tenets of Christianity, right after "do unto others".

[Sowelu]

Seriously. Retconned.

Seriously, not.  Like half the new testament is people talking about the miracle of the resurrection and the salvation.  It is the most central aspect of the entire religion.

Yes there were spring festivals before.  But Easter is not a spring festival.  It is a festival about the resurrection and the promise of salvation.  And this is pretty much the most basic of the tenets of Christianity, right after "do unto others".

Christianity is not exactly the first religion to have a major figure die for three days then miraculously come back to life.  But yeah, Easter /was previously/ a spring festival, prior to Christianity coming in and saying "Look, we have a holiday in Spring too, you don't have to lose your holiday, just change it to ours".

[kaijyuu]

What are you smoking, Maniac? Pass it around.

Yes, Easter is nowadays a celebration about the resurrection and blah blah blah. What they're saying is Easter was not always like that, but was once upon a time a 100% pagan holiday. Christianity adopted and morphed it over time into what it is today. All those things you're talking about were tenants of Christianity long before Easter became part of the religion at all.




Also I can't tell if that picture is stop motion or just a bad gif. If it's stop motion, that's a credit to whoever made it.

[MaximumZero]

So, how 'bout that election news? Anybody hear anything crazy from the teaparty lately?

[Aqizzar]

So, how 'bout that election news? Anybody hear anything crazy from the teaparty lately?

Nobody's heard anything crazy from the Tea Party since around November 9th of 2010.  After they won a bunch of elections, the Koch money dried up and they scattered to the dusty wind from whence they came.  At this point, nobody even bothers trying to remind first-term Republicans around the country that they were elected promising "all fiscal no social".

[MaximumZero]

Coke money? That explains it all.

[mainiac]

Yes, Easter is nowadays a celebration about the resurrection and blah blah blah. What they're saying is Easter was not always like that, but was once upon a time a 100% pagan holiday.

And I've said like five times now, yes there were earlier holidays on the same day.  But if you take even the remotest look at the actual religious practices they bear no resemblance.  May day also takes place in spring.  I suppose that's a rip off of pagan practices?

[Heron TSG]

He probably meant Little Scotty Klopfenstein.

I was sure he meant Scott Calvin.
Damn you, 90's!

And I've said like five times now, yes there were earlier holidays on the same day.  But if you take even the remotest look at the actual religious practices they bear no resemblance.  May day also takes place in spring.  I suppose that's a rip off of pagan practices?

Yes, yes it is. Just like Ēostre.

So, I decided to take a peek at the Google 'election news' listings. I immediately turned back after reading the line, "Obama Campaign Depicts Romney as 'Job-Destroying Vampire.'"

This is going to be one hell of a time to own a TV.

[MaximumZero]

Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, I know,) on May Day, first thing:

May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations.

As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were merged with or replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and All Saint's Day. In the twentieth and continuing into the twenty-first century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.

So yeah. Christianity steals things like icons and dates, this has been firmly established to anyone who knows anything about history.

Now, let's get back to politics, ja? It's nonsensical as it is without this ridiculous argument.

[scriver]

Easter is not a retcon. It surpassed the old Easter festival, not adopted it. The majority of Christian countries have their "Easter" holidays named after Pesach, the Jewish holiday that Jesus was celebrating when he was seized (the whole last supper thing, you know). Since he then died and came back, the celebration is of that. You know, since that is the single most important event in Christianity.

It's not a retcon or a merge or a holiday moved around to deliberately overwrite another one (like Christmas or Halloween). It's a genuinely Christian holiday all the way. That there were other festivals around the same time of year which got surpassed by it (and in the almost singular case of English, passed on it's name) is just coincidence.

[mainiac]

Just because ancient societies had a holiday on 1st of may doesn't mean they celebrated the labor movement on the 1st of may.
Just because it's the same date doesn't mean it's celebrating the same thing.  There has been a holiday for something or other literally every day of the year going on for millennia now.