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Originally Posted by anastrophe
if not for the pagans, there would be no christmas or easter. nobody knows when Jesus. H. Christ was born or died, not to the day. christmas is merely the pagan rituals and celebration of the winter solstice adopted out of expediency, and easter is the merely the vernal equinox celebration.
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Straight ahead, Paul! And easter is more than a marking of a solar cycle event. The first Sunday after the vernal equinox was the worship day of Ishtar, also called Ashteroth, Isis, Aphrodite (or was it Venus?). Ishtar was the Babylonian version of the Pagan fertility goddess. Ishtar is where the word "Easter" comes from. That's why Easter celebrations include bunnies (famed for fecundity), eggs (symbol of fertility) and other fertility fetishes. Christmas and Easter are only the tip of the iceberg of pagan customs imported into Christianity by the church of the west.
The gripe I have with Paganism is that in my faith, Christianity, Paganism has been brought in by force, so that today, mainstream Christianity is so polluted that it has mostly lost it's purpose. What is more, the branch of Christianity which brought in all this Paganism wants to rule over the whole Church and force everyone to think and worship as they do (which I do not) and be under the kingly authority of their leader. I have a problem with that.