Ok, Easter, and Halloween were not originally Christian traditions. No, they were Pagen. Or, in the case of Easter, the idea was. Halloween was fifth century new year and Easter started out with a Pagen myth. I'll start with Halloween.

Halloween was originally started by fifth century Celtic Ireland. The thirty-first was the last day of summer, not to mention their last day of their year. They're is a story that said that the disembodied soul would come back for the body of the living on this day. Since no one would want to be possessed, *looks at this website and wonders* they would extinguish their fires and put on ghoulish costumes to frighten or deter the spirits from possessing anyone from the house.

When the Romans adobted this custom they added their touch. They made this day of protection into a day of worship. The closest thing the Romans had was a day of worship to Pomona, whose symbol is the apple. Therefor, we have "bobbing for apples.

The custom of "trick or treat"ing came from people begging for "soul cakes." The more "soul cakes" a begger recieved, the more prayers the givers dead would recieve.*curses the church*

This is not a day of devil worship. So the people who think this need to do one of two things; one, talk to a pagen. Yes, they still do prosper. Two, look at this link.


The pagen legend for Easter goes like this;

A goddess of the earth was sitting on the ground when an injuried bird walked towards her. The birds wing had a hole where it had been pierced by something. The bird needed help immediately, but since she was not the ruler of the sky she couldn't help the bird. So, she changed it into a rabbit and healed it. The problem was that the rabbit still reproduced like a bird. So that is where the Easter egg comes from.

It's good to have pagen friends.

Most of todays holidays were just the church finding ways to take over the holidays that the locals already celebrated. It was easier than trying to make them stop. In times when there were very little reasons to celebrate and party, telling a group of people they had to stop throwing a celebration they'd thrown for a few hundred years didn't go over well... It was basically good public relations to let them keep their party but rename it instead...

Christmas was just a way to take over the winter solstice celebrations that were already happening mid-winter. Since, by all biblical accounts, the Christ child wasn't even born in winter.

Jiro that Easter one is way off. It's a fertility celebration. And rabbits and eggs are symbols of fertility, so...

Sam's got you there, Jiro...

Ok, some facts are off, but the Easter legend I got straight from a pagan friend. The rabbit, like most mamals, usually has live young, my friend said, "The goddess, being the goddess of earth, could not help the bird. So, instead, she changed it to a rabbit. The only thing was, it reproduced like a bird."

And being pagan makes them right, because...?

Jiro, I hate to break it to you, but quite alot of modern pagans, certainly the young ones, are mostly in it for the shock value. Very few of them are interested in learning about their religion in more than just a surface fashion because then they'd have to worship in a way that wasn't convenient to them any more. They see it as a religion that lets them live their life free of all the rules any of the other religions have...

And it has the neat side effect of pissing their parents off...

Anyways, this is what I found on the subject:

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." 3

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternate explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. 4 Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops

Also, try this article on for size....

http://altreligion.about.com/cs/alchemy/a/mpreviss.htm

Now, are these "just bought a witch book (or something weird like that) from Barnes and Noble" pagans, or real ones?

Pagans, witches, warlocks, wisard, druids are, in essance, one in the same. The point I'm trying to say is that the Christians need to look outside of their little world, as I have for the past two years, and actually learn where their holidays, holy days, actually came from. I'm not saying I know everything, because their is no way one could know everything because we lose the knowledge at the same rate as we remeber them. So, for one thing we learn we forget another.