Is your church against celebrating Halloween and trick or treat?
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Anonymous
Nope. Easter started during Passover. The Last Supper was a Passover meal and the supper and Jesus’ death occurred when Jerusalem was clogged with people celebrating Passover. This is Christianity 101. |
Anonymous
Trick or treating, pumpkins and the like are actually secular holidays and have nothing to do with scripture or liturgy. |
Anonymous
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As we have a few pagans on this thread, and it’s settled that Halloween isn’t actually a Christian holiday, I wonder if someone could explain the role of the goat in pagan/Wicca belief?
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Anonymous
And Passover, in turn, may have been an ancient, pagan Canaanite ritual before Israel had its own identity. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2015-04-02/ty-article/.premium/passover-canaanite-ritual-to-stop-rain/0000017f-db20-d856-a37f-ffe052970000?_amp=true |
Anonymous
Oh, really? What is the origin of the word "Easter"? And the rabbits and eggs as symbols? It's more complicated than your curt "nope" implies. Like many religious holidays (such as Christmas), it's origins are tied to seasonal changes, solstices and equinoxes. |
Anonymous
Those people were not Catholic. |
Anonymous
| Nope - Big Trunk or treat planned for this weekend! |
Anonymous
Yes really, the Last Supper was a Passover meal. This is scriptural (it’s in the New Testament) and it’s really fundamental. Why would you claim that it’s not part of Passover? The eggs may have come from Passover. Regardless, eggs and bunnies are not part of liturgy or scripture. What role do eggs and bunnies play in Wicca? Are you saying that Wicca has a monopoly on using eggs and bunnies, and Jews shouldn’t be using eggs at Passover either? |
Anonymous
Easter was known as Pascha (Passover) in Latin and Greek, and Paques in French, centuries before people started speaking what we know as English in the British isles. Honestly the fact that we’re speaking English now is pretty irrelevant to the holiday’s establishment. There’s pretty good consensus (except among pagans and atheists  ) that the English word Easter came to us first from the Latin designation of Easter week as in albis (plural of alba or dawn) which was translated into old high German as Eostarum (also “dawn”).
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Anonymous
In addition to the Wiccan goat, could somebody explain the ceremonial use of eggs and rabbits? |
Anonymous
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Easter bunnies were never part of Catholicism. They have German origins and some say it was Martin Luther himself who introduced them. In fact, when the German immigrants brought the custom to the US, some American +Catholic churches condemned them until someone basically argued "what harm does it do?" Still the Easter bunny in Europe is still associated with Lutheran areas.
Eggs became associated with Easter because they were one of the foods prohibited during the 40 days of Lenten fasting. So on Easter people celebrated by eating eggs--which were more plentiful in the diet of poor people than meat. |
Anonymous
Modern paganism began in the 18th century, so not much blood sacrafices. |
Anonymous
So could the pagan arguing that Pagan traditions shouldn’t be hijacked explain their current practices’ relationship to paganism in the ancient world, when Jews and Christians were celebrating with eggs and pagans were sacrificing chickens to read auguries? |
Anonymous
Christians were celebrating All Souls Day by at least the third or fourth century CE. |
Anonymous
Do you take vacation during the week of Dec 25th? Even if you call it “Winter break,” the origins of holding it over Dec 25 are clearly Christian, so isn’t that just as “hypocritical” and appropriation? Or do you take any vacation some other time, like in January or February? |