There is no “right” or “wrong” answer.
Now you know.
May the peace of Christ fill your heart this Christmas.
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Andrew K. Gabriel, Ph.D., is the author of Simply Spirit-Filled: Experiencing God in the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit as well as three academic books, including The Lord is the Spirit. He is a theology professor at Horizon College and Seminary and serves on the Theological Study Commission for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. You can follow him on Facebook or on Twitter.
Where does Hanukkah fit in to the equation, if at all, in your opinion? Oddly, it is mentioned in the New Testament, though the celebration of Christmas is not. Of course, the nativity story is told in significant detail, in two Gospels.
Well, Jesus didn’t ask us to celebrate his birth, only his death. However, given that we’ve opted to celebrate his birth and if it happens to fall on a Sunday, I think gathering to worship is one of the best things we can do. It adds focus on Jesus whom Christmas is supposed to be about.
Christmas is a joke. The emperor of Rome told Christians that they should celebrate the birth of Christ (the Messiah) on a day they had already fixed for pagan celebrations. For instance: the western world still celebrates Santa Klaus and company on the same day. The he had us celebrate the resurrection on the feast day of the goddess Esther. (Easter) whereas it took place during Passover. Churches are on board. They do not know or acknowledge the Bible.
Mr. Muirhead. I am sorry you have been misinformed, but that is not your fault. In the first half of your comment, you commit what is known as the genetic fallacy, rejecting something because of its origin. The First and Second Temple in Jerusalem where God was pleased to manifest His Presence was built on the floorplan of a pagan Phoenician temple where pagans would sacrifice their children in fire with loud drums and pipes to drown out the screaming (remember that Hiram of Tyre was involved in building the Temple). Yet God was pleased to dwell there because it is the USE of something that makes it holy or unholy, NOT its origin. Secondly, the Goddess you were thinking about is not Esther (who is the heroine of the Book of Esther in our BIbles), but Ishtar
However, there is absolutely no conclusive connection between the pagan goddess Ishtar and the Christian celebration of Easter. Any theory that Easter is named after Ishtar is pure speculation. There is also no proof that Ishtar was ever associated with eggs or rabbits as symbols. In fact, Ishtar’s sacred animal seems to have been the lion.
There are several theories concerning the origin of the word Easter that are more credible than the Ishtar theory. One is that Easter got its name from Eostre, an eighth-century Germanic goddess who (it is assumed) was celebrated around the time of Passover every year. But even this theory has major problems, since there is no real evidence that anyone ever worshiped a goddess named Eostre—we have no shrines dedicated to Eostre, no altars of hers, and no ancient documents mentioning her. Others contend that the word Easter ultimately derives from the Latin phrase in albis, related to alba (“dawn” or “daybreak” in Spanish and Italian). In Old High German, in albis became eostarum, which eventually became Ostern in modern German and Easter in English. The French word for “Easter” is Pâcques, based on the Latin and Greek Pascha, meaning “Passover.”