Is Easter a pagan holiday?

There is nothing in the New Testament respecting the keeping of Easter. Acts 12:4 simply refers to the Passover as a suitable time for Herod to deliver up Peter to destruction. Of course the Passover was observed by the Jews, and probably by the Jewish converts. The words sent out from the council were "that all the brethren in the east, who formerly celebrated Easter with the Jews, will henceforth keep it agreeably with the Romans and ourselves, and all who from ancient time have kept Easter as we." The crucifixion was observed on what is called Good Friday by fasting, etc.; the following Sunday commenced Easter as a festival.

Its observance began on the preceding evening by fasting, prayer in the churches, etc. Jerome assigns as a reason for the people being kept till after midnight, that "even as the paschal deliverance of Israel took place at midnight (Ex. 12:29) it was the expectation of the church, according to apostolic tradition, that Christ would return to accomplish the redemption of His church, and triumph over her enemies at the same hour. That hour being passed, the awe with which the Lord's coming was anticipated being relieved, the Easter feast was celebrated with universal joy." Lactantius also mentions the night being passed in watchfulness for "the coming of our King and God." How strange that the coming of the Lord should be looked forward to in awe instead of being the hope of the Christian!

The word "Easter" occurs once in the Authorised Version (Acts 12:4), where the word is pascha, which is elsewhere translated "Passover," and is so translated here in the Revised Version. This shews that in the translators' minds Easter and the Passover corresponded. But the Passover is associated with the crucifixion: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7); and the Passover fell on the 14th day of Nisan, and might occur on any day of the week; whereas Easter is generally accepted to refer to the resurrection, and commences on a Sunday. The former mode of reckoning was mostly adopted in the east, and the latter in the west. At the council of Nice it was settled for the latter.

331 "I am afraid of you," says the apostle. It was, he tells us, going back to heathenism. And Mr. Sadler, with his knowledge of ecclesiastical history, must know that, except Easter, which was the Jewish Passover, and Pentecost, and perhaps some more recently added saints' days, the church festivals were deliberately and formally adopted from heathenism. Christians, so-called, would have festivals, and they tacked on Christian names to heathen ones. The great Augustine informs us that "the church" did it, that if they would get drunk (which they did even in the churches), they should do so in honour of saints, not of demons. One of the Gregorys was famous for this, and left only seventeen heathen in his diocese by means of it. And another Gregory, sending another Augustine to England, directed him not to destroy the idol temples, but to turn them into churches; and as the heathens were accustomed to have an anniversary festival to their god, to replace it by one to a saint. It was thus Europe, Africa, and Asia Minor at least were Christianised. Sicily, which in spite of all efforts had remained heathen, as soon as it was decided that Mary was the mother of God at what I must call the disgraceful and infamous general council of Ephesus, gave up all her temples to be churches.

It was as easy to worship the mother of God as the mother of the gods. But everywhere drunkenness in honour of the saints, and even in the churches, took the place of drunkenness in honour of demigods, the great Augustine and other fathers being witnesses. Such were festal anniversaries, Christmas having been (and it is still celebrated in heathen countries) the worst of heathen festivals, to celebrate the return of the sun from the winter solstice, without a pretence that Christ was born that day, but as they could not stop the revelry, they put Christ's birth there. Such, in real fact, is the church's celebration of anniversaries and saints' days. This is certain, that the apostle declares that it was a return to heathenism, so that he was afraid his labour was in vain — avowedly turning the great and mighty parts of Christianity, by which God acted on souls, to bring them into blessed and divinely-wrought relationship with Himself, individually and collectively, into certain outward events, or outward facts, and exclusively to their announcement as occurring at particular times. "I am afraid of you."

Yet these poor Christians now desired to return to the weak and beggarly elements from which, when heathens, they had been delivered, through the knowledge of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus! Mark well that all their ceremonies are but the same thing as paganism, the elements of the world. Even if those who subject themselves to them be Christians, yet the principles according to which they walk are the elements of the world, and their practices are heathen practices. We learn this here as doctrine, but the history of the church shews it to us as a fact. Holy days and holy places were taken from the heathen, who had holy places and days on which they held festivals in honour of deified men, such as Theseus, Hercules, and others. The names of saints were afterwards attached to these places and days, and the saints celebrated instead of the demi-gods.

Really this perplexes me. If it will not do to go to the scriptures or to the church as set up of God, then where has the religion of holy mother church come from? Take a few particulars; for instance, the feasts of the church — this holy day and that holy day. I certainly do remember that our blessed Lord did not institute one holy day, except as His resurrection marked out the Lord’s day, the first day of the week. Neither did the apostles observe a single holy day or festival of the church. Some did cling to Judaism with its beggarly shadows; but nowhere does the Holy Ghost in the Epistles teach the observing of days, and months, and times, and years. Nay, he severely condemns the attempt of the Galatian deceivers to introduce them. (Gal. 4:9-10.) Then whence did you get them? Was it not partly from Judaism, but chiefly from paganism? The pagans sacrificed to demons. (1 Cor. 11.) Now the doctrine of Balaam was to mingle the old pagan worship with the worship of Christians. Swarms of pagans were nominally called Christians, and pagan festivals were altered to festivals of the church, and pagan temples were called churches: and pagan idols, consecrated to demons, were called by Christian names. Now nothing could have answered better to corrupt the church than this. Just take one. The twenty-fifth of December was about the worst pagan feast. Well, it was afterwards called Christmas; and the drunkenness and wickedness of that old festival continue to this day, only in the name of Christ. Take again this trick — for such it was. Millions of pagans worshipped the queen of heaven and her little child; but especially the queen, under different names. Her name was altered from Diana, &c., to Mary; and millions continue to bow down to her image to this day. How dreadful — all this from paganism! And all this is the very cream of high church — I mean highest church!

“But I have a few things against thee: thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam.” The Church is still regarded in its outward unity. There were two parties in it most hateful to Christ: those who held the doctrine of Balaam, and those who held the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes — the doctrine of the Balaamites, and the doctrine that those who professed faith in Christ might practise sin. Now surely it was in this third period of the history of Christendom — say from about the period of Constantine — that the clergy began to imitate the practices of Balaam. Not merely preaching for hire; but, just as he advised the mingling of the Jews with idolatry, so the clergy advised the mingling of the Church with the idolatrous temple worship of the world. I have read how great divines approved of this: I hear how solemnly the Lord condemns it. Idol temples were now called churches; shameful idol feasts were turned into shameful christian festivals: the gods of the heathen were turned into saints; and these old demons were still worshipped under new names! Tell me of one so-called christian festival that was not thus linked with the worship of demons. Can you find one of these saints' days in the New Testament? which of them did the apostles observe? Was not the attempt denounced by the Holy Ghost? See Galatians 4:10-11.

Thus was begun that grafting of pagan observances on to Christianity, and the transformation of pagan feast days into Christian feast days, which developed into the depths of corruption seen in Thyatira.

Now the Galatians were unwittingly in danger of giving up the truth. They were only, as they supposed, beginning to cherish a becoming attitude toward the religion of the fathers, and of all who had before Christ honoured God on earth. Venerable religion! — the only system of earthly worship which had ever possessed God's sanction. Why not adopt what was wanting in Christianity? Where was the harm of taking up what saints of old submitted to? No, rejoins the apostle; you are going back to heathenism. They had been idolaters before they became Christians; and to take up Jewish principles in addition to Christ is to turn back again to their cast-off idols. Next, we are told, wherein this consisted. "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. What! is this all? I have known a divine who had a character for intelligence use these words as a motto and sanction. And no wonder. Christendom is built upon this footing. They think that it is quite right, for the church especially, to appoint days for this and that saint; to have certain seasons to remind one of the Lord's incarnation, ministry, and crucifixion, of His resurrection, ascension, and so on. I choose the best facts; for I have no wish to rake up abuses. All this is counted a great, wise, and sensible help to devotion. Well, "sensible" help in the meaning of an appeal to nature it is; but it is a sensible help to idolatry, not to living faith. This is the very evil which the Spirit of God so earnestly and energetically denounces here by the apostle Paul. He does not charge them with anything of an openly gross or immoral nature; but what a proof that the truth of God, that the grace of Christ, is exclusive of everything but itself! Nor is there a greater evidence of God's tender and considerate care for us than such a fact as this. For He knows our tendency to mingle law with grace in some form or measure, and treats that which was of the fathers and long before Moses, as a foreign ingredient deleterious to Christians. As God has wrought for us on the cross, and delivered us from every atom of sin in Christ, so He will not allow us to mix one earthly or legal element with the revelation of His grace, which He has made ours in redemption, and proclaimed to us by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

All this led the way to hierarchical power, and finally to popery in the West; and, as to practice, the deliberate adoption of heathenism, days, and months, and years, formally judged in Galatians as a return to heathenism, and the deliberate substitution of saints' memories, as they were called, for those of demigods — places of memorial, where they feasted and got drunk in honour of saints instead of demi-gods, that at least, as Augustine expresses it, their drunkenness might be consecrated to saints, not to demons. And this was deliberately done everywhere, formally allowed in England, where temples were changed into churches; and these festivals were the origin of our village wakes, Christmas being the dissolute feast of the Lupercalia.

But Christendom, not satisfied with Jewish festivals; has added to its calendar many pagan festivals with Christian names and so-called saints-days, some of them of reprobate character, like St. George of merry England, merry in being patronised by a scoundrel after his death a saint! Can we close our eyes to the manifest increase of ritualism everywhere? Rome has spread the leaven in almost every section wherever the Lord's name is named. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," as Paul told the Judaised Galatians (v. 2). Christendom is advancing far and fast in this evil direction. The end we read in Rev. 14, 15, 17, 18, as well as in 2 Thess. 2. God calls, as He has called long, His people to come out of her, lest they partake of her sins, and so receive of her plagues (Rev. 18:4). We may and must be accused by the old serpent; but we ought not to be deceived, as the whole world will be. J.S.F.C.