"Pascha" means Passover, aka. the time when Jesus died (14th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar). Easter has nothing to do with Jesus' death. It's celebrated at a different time, with traditions that are completely pagan. Some years Passover and Easter are around the same dates (like this year), however, other years they can be an entire month apart.

Yeah, God gave us the sun, the moon and the stars as signs and seasons (seasons comes from the Hebrew word Mow'ed, which means "Appointed Times"). So, you are right, we are to use them to determine when these "Appointed Times" are. However, we should use the Bible to determine these times, not man-made rules nor the use of equinoxes or solstices like the pagans use. Jesus, the disciples and the early church never celebrated Easter. They did, however, celebrate Passover. It wasn't until many years later that they changed Passover to Easter, and of course, the Sabbath to Sunday as well. See quotes below.



“The earliest Christians celebrated the Lord's Passover at the same time as the Jews, during the night of the first full moon of the first month of spring (Nisan 14-15). By the middle of the 2nd century, most churches had transferred this celebration to the Sunday after the Jewish feast. But certain churches of Asia Minor clung to the older custom, for which they were denounced as ‘judaizing'. The first ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that all churches should observe the feast together on a Sunday”
- The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Macropaedia, Vol. 4, pp. 604-605, "Church Year".

“There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians.”
- Encyclopedia Britannica, volume VIII, p.859.

“The actual introduction of Easter-Sunday appears to have occurred earlier in Palestine after Emperor Hadrian ruthlessly crushed the Barkokeba revolt (A.D. 132-135)... The fact that the Passover controversy arose when Emperor Hadrian adopted new repressive measures against Jewish religious practices suggests that such measures influenced the new Gentile hierarchy to change the date of Passover from Nisan 14 to the following Sunday (Easter-Sunday) in order to show separation and differentiation from the Jews and the Jewish Christians”
- Samuele Bacchiocchi, God's Festival in Scripture and History, 1995, pp. 101-103

“A whole body of ‘Against the Jews’ literature was produced by leading Fathers who defamed the Jews as a people and emptied their religious beliefs and practices of any historical value. Two major causalities of the anti-Jewish campaign were Sabbath and Passover. The Sabbath was changed to Sunday and Passover was transferred to Easter-Sunday. Scholars usually recognize the anti-Judaic motivation for the repudiation of the Jewish reckoning of Passover and adoption of Easter-Sunday instead. Joachim Jeremias attributes such a development to ‘the inclination to break away from Judaism.’ In a similar vein, J.B. Lightfoot explains that Rome and Alexandria adopted Easter-Sunday to avoid ‘even the semblance of Judaism’”
- Samuele Bacchiocchi, God's Festival in Scripture and History, 1995, pp. 101-103

Thanks, Pickie Chickie for the videos. Maybe our politicians are around just for looks while someone else really controls our govt., kind of like a lamb on the outside, but a dragon on the inside.

Seems like every presidential candidate has big plans to change things, but once elected, things don't really change that much. Maybe the shadow government straightens them all out.

Just because the majority of Christians say it is a Christian Holiday, doesn't make it so. There's absolutely nothing Christian about December 25. It was a pagan holiday hundreds of years before Jesus was even born, and it still is today. It doesn't matter how much the church tries to sugar coat it. The Bible clearly says don't learn the ways the heathen worship their gods and try to worship the true God that way.

“When the LORD your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.’ You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way;" - Deuteronomy 12:29-31 (NKJV)

The feasts and holy days of the OT never commemorated anyone's birthday or deathday, but always pointed to the Kingdom of God in the next life where similar holy days and feasts will be observed.

That's like saying that this planet isn't following Christ....It's pagan...And yet, ask many a baptist, mormon, SDA, methodist, anglican, Catholic....they will tell you that we all are Christian...

Christians are in every nation, and in some nations, they have over ran the population of thier culture...Take Korea, for example. In the 70's, that country was 30% Christian...now, they are nearing 50%....France, Germany, Italy....these are more Catholic...which is a Christian religion....South America has Catholics and SDAs to consider....The south pacific islands are more SDAs than other Non-Christian religions/pagan.

A date on a calendar can also be pagan...but Christianity has taken it over and Christianized it according to culture...Sure, pagan symbols may still exist in the culture, but they have been subplanted by the Christ Child....To say that Dec 25 is pagan is to ignore what the Christianity has done to people and to times....Sure, the orgion is pagan, or part of the culture ...but Christianity has brought new meaning to the day.....and added a new meaning to the culture of the day....

Therefore, Dec 25 is a Christian holiday....regardless of the origion of the day...Culture has defined it as Christian...

A friend of mine, Billy Burdick, used to come here from time to time. She wrote an article on the pagan origions of Christmas, and why, she felt, December 25 still belonged to Christ. I tend to agree with her...here is her article in it's entirety.

Oh Come Let Us Adore Him ...

It was 1992 when I wrote and first posted this essay as a "Christmas card" to my net families. I wrote it originally as a response to a debate that raged on SDAnet the first Christmas that I was a part of that group over whether we as Christians, and especially as Seventh-day Adventist Christians, should observe Christmas in celebration of the birth of Christ.

It was indeed encouraging to me when after posting this essay that year, I received a very heart-warming letter in which the writer expressed thanks for the new peace that had come to their home in regard to celebrating Christmas....and how they had, for the first time, been able to reconcile the observance of Christmas with the facts of its pagan associations and its not being the actual day of Christ's birth.

Each Christmas season since then I have sent it again to my net family, as well as making it available year round on this section of our At Issue pages, hoping that those who enter in to the joy of the season may find some new thoughts about the holiday you hold dear...and that those who may have had prohibitions or reservations about celebrating Christmas may be encouraged to look at the day in a more joyful way...and join with us, and with the angels, in singing...

Joy to the world,
The Lord is come....

Reflections on Christmas...

...and solstice and pagans and Jews and Gentiles and times and seasons and angels' songs and Christmas trees--and a baby born in a stable.

On winter Solstice... Could one born in the tropics comprehend the long, dark, winter arctic night? Or even we of temperate zones, in our warm, well lighted rooms--what can we know of the feelings of earlier tribes who watched the sunlit hours grow fewer and fainter each day, until there was solstice and the sun stopped its retreat and began to return. Those who knew the Lord--that it was He who made the sun, and ordered the seasons--these surely celebrated and gave Him thanks, and praised the Lord when they saw the sun returning. When they saw the season turning, surely they worshiped Him.

But not all knew the Lord. Some saw only the things that were made--the sun and the earth that provided their food. And they (some ignorantly, some willfully) turned from worshiping the Lord to worshiping instead those things the Lord had made. We call them pagans. At the turning of the season they called solstice, they celebrated, and gave thanks, and praised and worshiped those things that were but the signs of the turning of the year.

And then came Jesus. And Christians chose the solstice celebration and appropriated it as a celebration of His coming. And some Christians think this was a very bad thing to do--for Solstice had "pagan origins", and Christ was not born at Solstice.

But think with me a little farther. Perhaps it should not be so quickly condemned.

First of all, did Pagans really *originate* the celebrations of Solstice? I tend to agree with C. S. Lewis when he observes that Satan does not "originate" anything. He has no creative power. He only rebels, he perverts, he turns men from worshiping the creator to worshiping the creation. But it is the function of the gospel to turn men's hearts back to worshiping the true God. So why should we think of Solstice as being only a pagan holiday which was "Christianized"? (This term meaning, I suppose, only a thin veneer of respectability which covers a pagan--and therefore evil--heart.) Might we not better think of it as a holiday, a holy day--a day of celebration, praise, and worship which Christianity reclaimed--that is, removed its pagan heart--and redirected its praise and worship back to the true Creator God?

It is true, Christ was not born at winter solstice as men count the turning seasons of the year. Yet Christ was born at winter solstice--in the turning of the history of the world.

When "the light of truth seemed to have departed from among men, when faith had grown dim, and hope had well-nigh ceased to illuminate the future." when "the dark shadow that Satan had cast over the world grew deeper and deeper," when even the "priests who ministered in the temple had lost sight of the significance of the service they performed," when "the deception of sin had reached its height," when all the world, it seemed, lived in an arctic winter darkness...

"When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son". . . "Wonder, O heavens! And be astonished, O earth!" (quotes from Desire of Ages by Ellen White) Then it was that angels brought light and song and celebration to temple shepherds keeping watch...for Christ the Lord was born that day! It was "Christ-mas" day--the first glimmer of the "return of the Son", the beginning of God's "Christ-mass"--"Christ- sacrifice"--that was to culminate at Gethsemane and Calvary and burst forth on the resurrection morning in light more glorious than the noonday summer sun.

The gods of field and forest and star and sun and Roman Empire were shown to be no gods. And the day of praise which they had usurped was given back to God. The day of celebrations for the sun's return was made a day of celebration for the coming of the Sun of Righteousness, the babe in the manger.

Oh, yes, from our vantage point in history, we know that not all men gave their full allegiance to the King of Kings. We know that Christians allowed pagan thoughts to infiltrate the church, causing a period of great darkness even in the church. We know that Christians today are not single minded in their worship. We even know that paganism is arising again, that Christ is being outlawed from public schools and government property while neo-pagan and Gaia (earth) rituals are encouraged. Solstice is once more being celebrated by some. So let's be against pagan elements that have clung to (or grown upon) the holy day called Christmas. Let's be against the secular commercialization of Christmas. But please! Let's not let (or help) these same elements squeeze Christ out of our Christmas!

If the celebration of solstice had not existed, would Christians have started it? We just might have--we who lived in lands of ice and snow and long winter nights--we just might have. Darkness is depressing. We just might have cheered each other with tales of light and song and Bethlehem. I hope we would have. Maybe, in fact, we did. Our present day pagans (and their true leader) would like to take credit for much more than history actually records. Let us not glorify them. Paganism never quite lives up to its own self-portrait.

There's a song that keeps running through my head, "Christmas helps us to remember, to do what other folks hold dear." Not all the spending, or even the over-spending, that goes on at Christmas has to do with "greed" or gratification of "lusts". This is the time of year when we can lay aside our timidities and give to those we love. What if we sacrifice a bit of our selves. What if the merchant is enriched as well as our friend--it's Christmas. God gave Himself to us. It is that thought that helps us step outside ourselves and give a bit extra to each other.

At our house, we have a tree. It is a fir tree. (We can still get real trees where I live--though we can't go out and cut our own as we once did.) It will die. And as it dies it will release its perfume. More than it does in its living, it will bless us in its dying. I see symbolism here that looks beyond the manger to a life of blessing and a death of saving. We have lights on our tree--and an angel on the top--the one my oldest son picked out the Christmas he was five. We will remember--stars and angels and Bethlehem and Christmases past. Our tree trimmings all have history--some we made when our children were little, some were gifts from very dear friends, some are merely decorative. Our traditions bind us as a family--and not just our visible family. We celebrate the birthday of our Elder Brother.

For you who do not see beyond the commercialization or paganization of Christmas, I pray that your eyes may be opened. May you see, and feel, and know, along with those of us who celebrate, the peace and love and joy and hope that is kindled anew with each remembrance of His birth.

For you who sing the songs of Christmas...May your hearts open to his love and peace in a new and joyfully intense way on this Christmas.

God bless,

Bille Burdick
At Issue Editor

Sorry to not care about the Christmas discussion, but, on the original topic, I am wondering if anyone besides me believes that men do, in fact, engage in conspiracies? How is it that people could be so naive as to believe that men conspire?

Do men conspire, behind closed doors, to foist their will upon the public? Do they succeed? What is a coup d'etat? Why would we have such a term if this never happens?

Conspire to do what? That is the question...

...If you think that "they" are out to mind control people.... What fun is that? Every single "James Bond" movie deals with global domination or mind control....And those movies were mindless blow ups but even they could see that the idea of global mind control was simply sadistic stupidity....

Now, if you think that they want to sell more things and get more money in relation to pushing thier product? Yes...but if they do, that is a far far smaller conspiracy than global domination. The documentation of the Tobacco Industry shows that they were out to control thier product....

Personally, I have never met a normal person who actually believed in a real conspiracy.

Signed,
Malachi Martin

P.S. Merry Christmas

And to all a good night.

HO HO HO HE HE HE HA HA HA