How many Christian holidays are presumed to correlate with holidays or celebrations of other religions?
One of the great assets of the early Christian Church was a ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ attitude. What they did was take many a pagan or non-Christian festival and graft onto it the fitting Christian celebration. So Easter is the festival of Eastre or Ostara (or a bunch of other spellings, they weren’t big on dictionaries then) an Anglo-Saxon goddess of the east/spring. The Easter eggs are Persian in origin. Christmas was the festival of Saturn/Jupiter (at which time his temple was decorated with greenery, a custom that has continued) or the festival of Sol Invictus, the Undying Sun, part of the Persian Mithraism religion/cult that was popular with Roman soldiers. Christmas trees represent Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Time. That’s not all, by a long way – Valentines Day marks a Roman fertility rite, Epiphany or Twelfth Night is the last night of Saturnalia when a special cake is eaten – Twelfth Night cakes are still made in France. Harvest festival has the remnants of the pagan f
