EASTER!
Its Hidden History
and Origin
Where
did Easter come from? How did it become
connected
with
the resurrection of Christ? What does
the resurrection
have
to do with bunny rabbits, colored eggs, and other symbols
of
the spring fertility goddess? Here we
reveal the shocking,
incredible
ORIGIN of EASTER!
William F. Dankenbring
God's Word says
unequivocally: “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the
Devil, and Satan, which DECEIVETH THE WHOLE WORLD: he was cast out into the
earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Rev. 12:9).
Does God mean
what He says? God says the “WHOLE WORLD” is deceived.
The apostle
John, in his first epistle, wrote: “And we know that we are of God, and the
WHOLE WORLD lieth in wickedness” (I John
Only a few, a
very few, at this time, have been called to have their minds opened to
understand and grasp the truth of God. Jesus called them a “little flock.” He said: “Fear not, little flock; for
it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke
Could that mean
that the vast visible Church which calls itself Christian has actually been
deceived by the devil! Could this be
possible? Could Satan the devil has
supplanted the truth of God, and foisted off his own doctrines upon a gullible and
naive world, which thinks it is really “Christian”? Could Easter itself be a major example of
Satan’s intrusive work and ingenious deception of the whole world?
Easter – Christian or Pagan?
What do colored
eggs and bunny rabbits have to do with Christ and His teachings? Have you ever
wondered? Where did the Easter parade and hot-cross buns come from? What about
Easter sunrise services?
Millions
of people assume that these time-hallowed customs are Christian and must
therefore date back to the early Christian Church. Yet few know the real origin
of Easter, or why the Christian-professing world, today, observes this
particular holiday.
The true story
of the origin of Easter is intriguing. In this article, we will explore the
earliest beginnings of the celebration of the spring festival called Easter,
discover the origins of many of today's Easter customs, and see the amazing
manner in which this ancient custom wove its way into the fabric of modern
Christianity. No story is more astonishing.
The English word
Easter and the German Ostern come from a common origin (Eostur,
Eastur, Ostara, Ostar), which to the Norsemen meant the season of the
rising or growing sun -- the season of new birth. The word was used by ancient
Europeans to designate the “Feast of New Life” in the spring.
The word long
antedates Christianity. Originally, it referred to the celebration of the
spring sun, which had its birth in the East and brought new life upon the
earth. The ancient Teutonic goddess of spring was addressed as Eostre. Easter, then, antedates Christianity by
centuries.
But what
about the myriad customs that surround this day – the chocolate bunnies, the
Easter eggs, the parades?
Again, you may
be surprised to learn that red, blue, yellow or green eggs, as symbols of the
renewal of life, were part of a custom that goes back centuries before the
birth of Christ. Eggs, a symbol of fertility in many lands, are easily
traceable to ancient pagan lore. So is the famous Easter bunny. (Only the
chocolate rabbit is modern.) This rapidly breeding and multiplying animal was
an ancient symbol of fecundity. And so modern children, eagerly hunting for
Eastern eggs supposedly deposited by a rabbit, are unknowingly following an
ancient fertility rite.
What about the
Easter parade? Does that, too, date back to the days of antiquity when pagans
paraded in the springtime, donning new hats and clothes to honor their goddess
of spring?
The answer is
yes. Scholars can trace the Easter parade to similar rites in ancient
Hot-cross
buns, interestingly enough, were eaten by pagan Saxons in honor of Easter,
their goddess of light. The Mexicans and Peruvians had a similar custom. In
fact, the custom of eating hot-cross buns was practically universal in the
ancient pagan world!
Easter fires,
although not a widespread phenomenon today, are still lit in some northern
European countries, notably
And what about Easter
sunrise services? They too go back to the pagan custom of prostrating before
the rising springtime sun. The goddess of light, Eastre or Ostera, was
identified with the rising sun.
Throughout the
Middle Ages, this pagan custom was continued, “A universal celebration was held
in the Middle Ages at the hour of sunrise. According to an old legend, the sun
dances on Easter morning or makes three cheerful jumps at the moment of rising,
in honor of Christ’s Resurrection. . . . All over
Plainly, then, today’s Easter has its roots deep in ancient paganism – centuries before the birth of Christ – and its rites have scarcely changed.
Says Ralph
Woodrow in
“The word
itself, as the dictionaries and encyclopedias explain, comes from the name of a
Pagan
Goddess – the goddess of
Spring. Easter is but a more modern form of Ishtar, Eostre, Ostera, or
Astarte. Ishtar, another name
for Semiramis of Babylon, was pronounced as we pronounce ‘Easter’
today! And so the name of the
Spring Festival, ‘Easter,’ is definitely paganistic, the name being
taken from the name of the
Goddess” (p. l52).
The
"” egg” was a sacred symbol of the ancient Babylonians. They believed an
old fable about a huge egg which supposedly fell from heaven into the
Admits the Encyclopedia
Britannica:
“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” (article, “Easter”).
Thus eating
Easter eggs is actually a modern form of participation in ancient spring
fertility rites, and the worship of the goddess of fertility, “Easter”!
The Romans
called the name of this goddess of sexual fertility “Venus,” and it is from
this name that we derive the modern English words “venereal” and “venereal
disease.”
What about the
Easter “Rabbit”?
This symbol,
too, comes from ancient paganism. Says the Britannica:
“Like the Easter
egg, the Easter hare came to Christianity from antiquity. The hare is
associated with the moon in
the legends of ancient
the fact that the Egyptian
word for hare, UM, means also ‘open’ and ‘period,’ that hare
came to be associated with the
idea of periodicity, both lunar and human, and with the
beginning of new life in both
the young man and young woman, and so a symbol of
fertility and of the renewal
of life. As such, the hare became linked with Easter . . .
eggs” (ibid.).
Says
Alexander Hislop regarding the festival of Easter:
“Then look at Easter. What
means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name.
It bears its Chaldean origin
on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one
of the titles of Beltis, the
queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of
as found by Layard on the
Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar”(The Two Babylons, p. 103).
Admits the World
Book Encyclopedia, “Its name may have come from Eostre, a
Teutonic goddess of spring, or from the Teutonic festival of spring called Eostur”
(article, “Easter,” vol. 6, p. 25).
Speaking of the
Easter egg, this same authority says: “The custom of exchanging eggs began in
ancient times. The ancient Egyptians and Persians often dyed eggs in spring
colors and gave them to their friends as gifts. The Persians believed that the
earth had hatched from a giant egg.”
Adds Hislop:
“Such is the history of
Easter. The popular observances that still attend the period of its
celebration amply
confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The
hot cross buns of Good
Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in
the Chaldean rites just
as they do now. The "buns," known too by that identical name,
were used in the worship
of the queen of heaven, the goddess Easter, as early as the days
of Cecrops, the founder
of Athens – that is, 1500 years before the Christian era. ‘One
species of sacred
bread,’ says Byrant, ‘which used to be offered to the gods, was of
great antiquity, and
called Boun.’ Diogenes Laertius, speaking of this offering
being made by
Empedocles, describes the chief ingredients of which it was composed,
saying, ‘He offered one
of the sacred cakes called Boun, which was made of fine flour
and honey.’ The prophet
Jeremiah takes notice of this kind of offering when he says,
‘The children gather
wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough,
to make cakes to the
queen of heaven.’ The hot cross buns are not now offered, but
eaten, on the
festival of Astarte; but this leaves no doubt as to whence they have
been derived” (Hislop,
p. 108).
And what about
the Easter egg?
Again, Alexander
Hislop tells us plainly:
“The origin of the Pasch eggs is just as clear. The ancient Druids bore an egg, as the
sacred emblem of their order. In the Dionysiaca, or mysteries of Bacchus, as celebrated
in Athens, one part of the nocturnal ceremony consisted in the consecration of an egg.
The Hindoo fables celebrate their mundane egg as of a golden colour. The people of Japan
make their sacred egg to have been brazen. In China, at this hour, dyed or painted eggs
are used on sacred festivals, even as in this country. In ancient times eggs were used in
the religious rites of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and were hung up for mystic
purposes in their temples. From Egypt these sacred eggs can be distinctly traced to the
banks of the Euphrates.”
Hislop
continues:
“The classic poets are full of
the fable of the mystic egg of the Babylonians; and thus its
tale is told by Hyginus, the
Egyptian, the learned keeper of the Palatine library at Rome,
in the time of Augustus, who
was skilled in all the wisdom of his native country:
‘An egg of wondrous size is
said to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates.
The fishes rolled it to the
bank, where the doves having settled upon it, and hatched it,
out came Venus, who afterwards
was called the Syrian goddess’ – that is, Astarte. Hence
the egg became one of the
symbols of Astarte or Easter; and accordingly, in Cyprus,
one of the chosen seats of the
worship of Venus, or Astarte, the egg of wondrous size was
represented on a grand scale”
(The Two Babylons, pp. 108-109).
Prior to
Easter, most churches observe a period of forty days which they call “Lent.”
Where did this forty day period of abstinence come from? Is it Christian in
origin?
What is the
truth about Lent?
The festival of
the Passover, observed by the early New Testament Church of God, was preceded
by no Lent. Where, then, did Lent come from?
You will be
shocked to know the answer:
“ ‘It ought to be known,’ said
Cassianus, the monk of Marseilles, writing in the fifth
century, and contrasting the
primitive Church with the Church in his day, ‘that the
observance of the forty days
had no existence, so long as the perfection of that
primitive Church remained
inviolate.’ Whence, then, came this observance? The
forty days’ abstinence of Lent
was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the
Babylonian goddess. Such a Lent
of forty days, ‘in the spring of the year,’ is still
observed by the Yezidis or
Pagan Devil-worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited
it from their early masters,
the Babylonians. Such a Lent of forty days was held in
Spring by the Pagan Mexicans,
for thus we read in Humboldt, where he gives account
of Mexican observances: ‘Three
days after the vernal equinox. . . began a solemn fast
of forty days in honour
of the sun.’ Such a Lent of forty days was observed in Egypt,
as may be seen on consulting
Wilkinson's Egyptians. This Egyptian Lent of forty
days, we are informed by
Landseer, in his Sabean Researches, was held expressly in
commemoration of Adonis or
Osiris, the great mediatorial god” (The Two Babylons,
Hislop, pp. 104-105).
Writes Alexander
Hislop:
“Among the Pagans this Lent
seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the
great annual festival in
commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz,
which was celebrated by
alternate weeping and rejoicing, and which, in many
countries, was considerably
later than the Christian festival, being observed in Palestine
and Assyria in June, therefore
called the ‘month of Tammuz;’ in Egypt, about the middle of
May, and in Britain, some time
in April. To conciliate the Pagans to nominal Christianity,
Rome, pursuing its usual
policy, took measures to get the Christian and Pagan
festivals amalgamated, and, by
a complicated but skillful adjustment of the calendar, it was
found no difficult matter, in
general, to get Paganism and Christianity – now far sunk in
idolatry – in this as in so
many other things, to shake hands” (ibid.).
“Alexander Hislop describes how the pagan forty-day
"fast" of Lent, and Easter, were both incorporated into Church doctrine
by the Roman Catholic Church, with the abbot Dionysius the Little as the chief
instrument in the change-over. Hislop
explains:
“This change of
the calendar in regard to Easter was attended with momen-
tous
consequences. It brought into the Church
the GROSSEST CORRUP-
TION
and the RANKEST SUPERSTITION in connection with the abstinence
of
Lent. Let any one only read the
ATROCITIES that were commemorated
during
the ‘sacred fast’ or Pagan Lent, as described by Arnobius and Clemens
Alexandrinus,
and surely he must blush for the Christianity of those who,
WITH
THE FULL KNOWLEDGE OF ALL THESE ABOMINATIONS, ‘went
down to Egypt
for help’ to stir up the languid devotion of the DEGENERATE
CHURCH,
and who could find no more excellent way to ‘revive’ it, than by
borrowing
from so polluted a source; the ABSURDITIES and ABOMINA-
TIONS
connected with which the early Christian writers had held up to scorn.
That Christians
should ever THINK of introducing the Pagan abstinence of
Lent
was a sign of evil; it showed how LOW THEY HAD SUNK, and it was
also
a CAUSE OF EVIL; it inevitably led to DEEPER DEGRADATION.
Originally,
even in Rome, Lent, with the preceding REVELRIES OF THE
CARNIVAL,
was entirely unknown . . . . But at last, when the worship of
ASTARTE
was rising into the ascendant, steps were taken to get the whole
CHALDEAN
LENT of six weeks, or forty days, made imperative on all
within
the Roman Empire of the West” (ibid., p.106-107).
Nowhere
in the Bible do we find the saints or people of God ever observing this pagan
custom or season of Lent. In fact, God
commands very plainly, “Learn NOT the way of the heathen” (Jer.10:1).
Socrates,
writing about 450 A.D. in Rome, said that by that time the people of Rome
fasted before Easter about three weeks. But about the year 519 at the Council
held in Aurelia in the time of Hormisdas, Bishop of Rome, a decree was made
that Lent should be solemnly kept before Easter, and the way was being prepared
for the full introduction of the Chaldean Lent of six weeks, or forty days.
Thus the
debauchery of the riotous pre-Lent feasting and merrymaking of Rio's Carnival,
and the Mardi Gras of New Orleans, and related feasts around the world, all
stem back to ancient paganism, along with Lent itself, and Easter as well.
It does no
good to deny the truth. The real question is, do we love the truth more
than our own preconceived ideas and prejudices and practices which we may have
been steeped in from our very youth?
Which is more
important to you: The truth? Or your own way?
What about
Easter sunrise services? Don't they come from honoring the resurrection of
Christ at sunrise, early Sunday morning?
That is what the
devil would like you to think – and that is what he has the whole world
believing! But that assumption is flagrantly FALSE!
When Mary
Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus early Sunday morning, the first day of the
week, while it was yet dark (see John 20:1), the tomb of Jesus was
already empty! He was not there! He had ALREADY risen!
Biblical history
shows that Jesus was actually crucified and died on the stake, late afternoon,
on a Thursday. See our article “How Long
Was Jesus in the Grave?” He Himself foretold
that He would be in the grave three days and three nights, even as Jonah
was in the belly of the great fish for three days and
three nights (see Matthew 12:40). According to Jewish reckoning, that could mean parts of 3 days and three nights, inclusive. This would re counted as part of Thursday, day, Thursday night, Friday day, Friday night, Saturday (day three), and part of Saturday night (night three).
But can you count three days and three nights, or a portion
of them, between Friday afternoon and Sunday sunrise? Of course not! That would
only give you Friday day (part of the day), Friday night, Saturday day, and
part of Saturday night – two days and two nights!
Thus the idea that Jesus was crucified on a “Good Friday”
is blatantly false! Jesus was not crucified on a Friday at all. The Friday
crucifixion-Easter resurrection is a fable of the Devil, palmed off on an
errant Christianity!
Be sure to read
our article “How Long Was Jesus Really in the Grave?” for the proof from the
Bible, the calendar, and astronomy, that Jesus was crucified Thursday and
resurrected early Sunday morning, before sunrise!
Where did “Good
Friday” actually come from?
At this
point you probably won't be surprised to learn that it also came from paganism.
That’s right. Friday was regarded by the Romans as the sacred day of Venus and
was called dies Veneris.
The word
“Friday” itself comes from the name of “Freya,” who was regarded as the goddess
of peace, joy, and fertility by the pagans. Fish was regarded as being
sacred to her, and was a symbol of fertility or fecundity. Fish have a very
high reproduction rate, a single cod spawning upwards of nine million eggs, a
million eggs for the flounder, and 700,000 for the sturgeon.
Hence the custom
of not eating fish on Friday stems also from ancient pagan times, in honor of
the goddess of fertility, Freya, or Venus. The fish was also regarded as sacred
to the goddess Ashtoreth, and in ancient Egypt the goddess Isis is sometimes
represented as having a fish on her head. Strange, isn't it, how all these
customs go back to ancient paganism!
But what about
Easter sunrise services? Aren’t they Christian?
We have
already seen that Christ did not arise from the dead at sunrise Easter morning
– not at all! On the other hand, there was an ancient pagan custom of holding a
sunrise service in the spring to worship the risen sun-god, Baal, Tammuz, or
Nimrod!
The Bible
condemns this practice. Notice in the book of Ezekiel:
“He said also unto me, Turn
thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that
they do. 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. Then said he unto me, Hast
thou seen this, O son of man
turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations
than these. 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” (Ezek. 8:13-16).
When is the sun
toward the east? In the morning! These men were holding a sunrise service,
worshipping toward the rising sun! At the very temple of God, they were mixing
in pagan religious rites, customs and ceremonies!
Writes Ralph
Woodrow:
“Rites connected with
the dawning sun -- in one form or another – were known in
many ancient nations.
Those who made the Sphinx in Egypt, built it to watch for the
rising sun in the east.
From Mount Fujiyama, in Japan, prayers are made to the
rising sun . . .” (Babylon
Mystery Religion, p. l56).
In the Mystery
religion of Babylon, the false savior Tammuz was worshipped with various spring
rites. According to the legend, when he was slain, he went into the underworld
and couldn't be brought forth unless the whole world wept for him. Through the
weeping of his mother Easter, or Semiramis, he was mystically revived, his
resurrection symbolized by the budding of new vegetation in the spring. Each
year the pagan spring festival celebrated this resurrection story.
“The resurrection of Tammuz
through Ishtar’s grief was dramatically represented annually
in order to insure the success
of the crops and the fertility of the people. . . . Each year
men and women had to grieve
with Ishtar over the death of Tammuz and celebrate the god’s
return, in order to win anew
her favor and her benefits” (Festivals, Holy Days and Saints’
Days, p. 89).
In Ezekiel
chapter 8 we saw women weeping for Tammuz, one abomination in God's sight, and
the very next abomination was men in the temple of God worshipping toward the
rising sun!
It is
perfectly obvious that Ezekiel was speaking of this same ancient pagan
celebration of the weeping for Tammuz, and the observance of this pagan spring
festival.
Says Woodrow:
“Now since the true saviour,
our Lord Jesus Christ, in reality did rise (not merely in
nature, plants, etc.); and
since his resurrection was in the spring of the year – though
slightly earlier than the
pagan festival of olden times – it was not too hard for the church
of the fourth century (now
greatly departed from the true faith anyway) to merge the
pagan spring festival into
Christianity -- attaching the various phases of it to Christ.
In this way, it would appear
to be a Christian festival, yet at the same time, it would
retain many of its ancient
customs” (op. cit., p. l57).
Thus did
paganism become engrafted upon Christianity – a practice which God calls an ABOMINATION
to Him!
From the
literature of the ancient Summerians in Mesopotamia comes the earliest legend
of the death and resurrection of a pagan deity – the first Easter story.
Tammuz,
whose name meant “true son of the deep waters,” was married to the goddess
Inanna or Ishtar (pronounced Estar), the “mother goddess” who represented
Mother Earth. According to the legend, when Tammuz died, Inanna was
grief-stricken and followed him to the underworld to the realm of Eresh-Kigal,
queen of the dead. In her absence, the earth lost its fertility, crops ceased
to grow, and animals ceased mating – all life was threatened. Then Ea, god of
water and wisdom, sent a messenger from heaven to the underworld to bring back
Inanna or Ishtar. The messenger sprinkled Inanna and Tammuz with the water of
life, giving them power to return to the light of the sun for six months of the
year. Each year, therefore, Tammuz would again return to the realm of the dead
for six months, Inanna would pursue him, and her grief would move Ea to rescue
them.
This ancient
legend, very widespread in the Middle East, traveled to Phoenicia and Syria,
where Tammuz was called Adon and Inanna was called Astarte. In Greece, they became
known as Adonis and Aphrodite. The original legend underwent many changes in
its passage to other countries, but the essential theme of autumnal death and
vernal resurrection remained. In Asia Minor, Adonis was called Attis and his
wife-mother was Cybele, Rhea or Dindymene. The Egyptian myth of Osiris, who
married (in this version his sister) Isis, the Great Mother goddess of the
Egyptian pantheon, springs from the same source.
The Egyptian
Osiris, put to death by Set, was, it is said, brought back to life and emerged
from a sarcophagus or from a broken egg. On rising from the dead, he became
lord of the Tuat or underworld and the judge of the living and the dead. He was
called “Eternity and Everlastingness,” the one who would come again to reign upon
the earth.
It is just absolutely amazing how ancient paganism has
wrapped its tentacles around “Christianity,” so that the modern church is much
more pagan than Christian. As historian
Will Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization, volume 3, “Caesar and
Christ,” not long after the church began, the pagans began their onslaught to
infiltrate it, subvert it, and destroy it.
Says Durant, “Christ was assimilated to the religious and philosophical traditions
of the Hellenistic mind. Now the pagan
world – even the ant-Semitic world – could accept him as its own. Christianity did not destroy paganism; it
adopted it. The Greek mind, dying, came
to a transmigrated life in the theology and liturgy of the Church . . . The
Greek mysteries passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass. Other pagan cultures contributed to the
syncretist result. From Egypt came the
idea of a divine trinity . . . From Egypt the adoration of the Mother and
Child, and the mystic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and
obscured the Christian creed. . . . From Phrygia came the worship of the Great
Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps, the
cult of Dionysus,, the dying and saving god” (page 595).
In fact, says
Durant, “The Mithraic ritual so closely resembled the eucharistic sacrifice of
the Mass that Christian fathers charged the Devil with inventing these
similarities to mislead frail minds. Christianity
was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world” (ibid.).
The
professing church, to build its membership, adopted paganism wholesale. Pagan spring religious customs were adopted
by the Church. At the approach of
Easter, women in Sicily sow wheat, lentils, and canary-seed in plates, which
they keep in the dark and water every two days.
The plants soon shoot up, the stalks are tied with red ribbons, and the
plates are placed on sepulchers, with effigies of the dead Christ – “just as
the gardens of Adonis were placed on the dead Adonis.” Says Frazer, “The whole custom – sepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grain-may
be nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the worship of
Adonis” (Frazer, The Golden Bough, p.400).
Writes Sir
James George Frazer in The Golden Bough,
“Now the death and
resurrection of Attis were officially celebrated at Rome on the twenty-
fourth and twenty-fifth of March, the latter
being regarded as the spring equinox, and therefore
as the most appropriate day for the revival
of a god of vegetation who had been dead or
sleeping throughout the winter. But according
to an ancient and widespread tradition Christ
suffered on the twenty-fifth of March, and
accordingly some Christians regularly celebrated
the Crucifixion on that day without any regard
to the state of the
moon. This custom was
certainly observed in Phrygia, Cappadocia.
and Gaul, and there seem to be grounds for think-
ing that at one time it was followed also in Rome.
Thus the tradition which placed the death
of Christ on the twenty-fifth of March was
ancient and deeply rooted. It is all the more
remarkable because astronomical
considerations prove that it can have had no historical
foundation. The inference appears to be inevitable that
the passion of Christ must
have been arbitrarily referred to that date in
order to harmonize with an older festival
of the spring equinox”(page 417-418).
Frazer
shows the pattern of the church “Christianizing” all the ancient popular pagan
holidays. He declares:
“When we remember that the
festival of St. George in April has replaced the ancient
pagan festival of the Parilia; that the
festival of St. John the Baptist in June has succeeded to
a heathen midsummer festival of water: that
the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin in
August has ousted the festival of Diana; that
the feast of All Souls in November is a continu-
ation of an old heathen £east of the dead;
and that the Nativity of Christ himself was assigned
to the winter solstice in December because
that day was deemed the Nativity of the Sun;
we can hardly be thought rash or unreasonable
in conjecturing that the other cardinal festival
of the Christian Church-the solemnization of
Easter-may have been in like manner, and
from like motives of edification, adapted to
a similar celebration of the Phrygian god Attis
at the vernal equinox.”
Asserts James George Frazer in The Golden Bough, “Taken altogether, the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They mark the compromise which the Church in the hour of its triumph was compelled to make with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals. The inflexible Protestantism of the primitive missionaries, with their fiery denunciations of heathendom, had been exchanged for the supple policy, the easy tolerance, the comprehensive charity of shrewd ecclesiastics, who clearly perceived that if Christianity was to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too rigid principles of its Founde