“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?”   ~2 Corinthians 6:14-15

Let’s start this off by taking a good, hard look at how and why paganism slowly but surely crept its way into Christianity. The how can be explained by the why. The why was to appease the heathen pagan beliefs to get them to join the church of Rome. Do we know if we are celebrating Christian holidays or pagan holidays? Are we really worshiping the Christian God of the Bible or the heathen idols?

It seems most of our Christian holidays are actually pagan festival days, or at least they started out that way. Across the years they have slowly morphed into a merging of both cultures, Halloween being at the very top of the list. It’s more than a coincidence that God repeatedly warns us about this ongoing problem of trying to blend pagan customs together with Christian beliefs. Even if we’re participating just to join in and have fun, the root of these holidays are pure evil, and therefore should be avoided by those professing to be followers of Christ . . . plain and simple!

“Abstain from every form of evil.”   ~1 Thessalonians 5:22

Christianity’s spread through what is now Europe was slow and complicated. Few people were eager to give up their pagan way of life in order to become Christians. Instead, the church of Rome blended its message together with existing local pagan traditions and beliefs, customs and rituals. This is simply a fact right out of history. Nearly all modern-day Christian holidays are a combining of early Roman Christian holy days and Pagan festival days.

The Pagan part of each holiday originated with a different ancient heathen god or goddess festival. The Christian part of these combined holidays was derived from the historic events of the day. The early church of Rome, led by the Emperor, Constantine, was totally willing to do whatever it took to get people to join the church.

The birth of Easter was the blending of the resurrection of Jesus along with pagan worship of the ancient Babylonian Ishtar goddess. Ishtar was the goddess of fertility and sex who married Tammuz the god of fertility in Greek mythology. By combining Christian theology together with Greek mythology the church of Rome was able to appease both Christians and Pagans. The Christians by adding a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, and the pagans by adding their fertility goddess into the mix, and even giving the holiday a version of her name Ishtar/Eastre, pronounced Easter.

Isn’t Easter about the risen Savior—or is Easter pagan?

So many people believe that Easter was created as a holiday to celebrate our risen Savior? But the simple fact of the matter is it was yet another attempt by Pagan Rome to satisfy their Pagan membership?

The Pagan goddess Ishtar was the goddess of fertility. Ishtar, also known as Ostre, or Eastre—which is where the word for the female hormone estrogen comes from. She was the “sex goddess” of all sex goddesses! That is why the Easter or “Eastra” symbols are eggs and bunnies! The rabbit is the most prolific animal known to man, hence the saying “they breed like rabbits!”

This Pagan holiday was merged right into Christianity, combining the rebirthing of pagan gods and the renewing of the earth in the springtime together with the resurrection of Jesus. What a horrible way to treat the most important event in the history of mankind, to combine it together with such a disgusting event as fertility symbols and sex rituals. Nevertheless, that is exactly what happened, and all in an effort to entice pagans to become Christians.

Easter is a pagan festival

The Easter bunny and Easter eggs are archaic pagan symbols of extreme fertility and prolific reproduction. Sorry to say it but this is what’s at the very core of these seemingly harmless traditions. These things are not Christian but rather the trappings of heathen idol worship, and are to be avoided according to the word of God. They are certainly not something we should be teaching our children to enjoy.

“Thus says the Lord: Do not learn the way of the heathen…”   ~~Jeremiah 10:2

God tells us in no uncertain terms that we are not to learn the ways of the heathen, or even speak the names of these gentile gods. The customs of these people are in vain because they are foolish—they are worthless wooden idols. He goes on to say that all the gods that these people worship are man-made, and they will all perish along with the heathens.

I, much like most of you, celebrated Easter every year and really enjoyed it. I had two small children that loved dying Easter eggs, along with hunting for the big Easter basket full of candy that the Easter Bunny hid for them. I get the attachment to all of this fun for the kids, as well as the handing down of these traditions from generation to generation. Nevertheless, whether I enjoyed it or not, if God says don’t do it, I'm not doing it anymore.

These fun customs are such a great case in point as to the cleverness of the enemy. How he can literally candy-coat just about anything to make it appealing to us. Lord help us to turn from our carnal ways and look to you for everything. Give us the desire to follow your word and only your word.

Is Valentines Day a pagan holiday or a day dedicated to love?

Now let’s take a look at Valentine's Day. Certainly, this day dedicated to love—a holiday named after a Saint—Saint Valentine's Day, must be a good and legitimate thing, right? Sorry to say, but once again this holiday, Valentine's Day, has nothing to do with love or with a Christian Saint, and everything to do with pagan sex rituals.

It was originally known as the Pagan festival of Lupercalia, and may very well be the longest-lasting of the Roman adopted Pagan festivals. The earliest possible origin story of Lupercalia occurred for centuries in the middle of the month of February. Soon after, the church of Rome declared February 14th to be a day of feasts to celebrate the martyred Saint Valentine. Hence, Saint Valentine’s Day!

Like many other pagan holidays, it too was cleverly merged into the Catholic church to appease the newly added heathen parishioners, and has remained to this very day.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”   ~Proverbs 16:25

Even when it seems right to celebrate something, it oftentimes is wrong. We must know what we are celebrating before we participate in the celebration. God is very clear on this, and He repeats His warning many times throughout the Bible. Not worshiping heathen idols is actually the second Commandment!

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;”   ~Exodus 20:4

Is it wrong to celebrate Birthdays?

Happy Birthday to me! An opportunity to acknowledge the anniversary of my birth—a time for my friends and family to come together to celebrate the wonderfulness of me! This one certainly can’t possibly be pagan! I mean after all who doesn’t love a whole day devoted entirely to themselves?

​Well…once again this is totally heathen…Egyptian to be exact. It is suspected that the celebration of Pharaoh’s birth as a god, around 3,000 B.C. was the first recorded birthday celebration. They believed that every person born had a mystic spirit that connected them to the god that was born on the same day.

Then the pagans of ancient Greece adopted these Egyptian customs. These ancient heathen cultures made many sacrifices to appease all of these gods, one of which was moon-shaped cakes with burning candles on top. Blowing out these candles was believed would send your message or wish to these gods so they could grant them.

“But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.”   ~1 Corinthians 10:20 KJV

Are you beginning to see where this all came from, and how it morphed into modern-day birthday celebrations? If birthday celebrating was created to celebrate the birth of a man as a god, do we really want to have anything to do with this type of blasphemy? Sorry to say, but self-worship of any kind is not only frowned upon but prohibited by God. It is actually the very first Commandment!

“You shall have no other gods before Me.”   ~Exodus 20:3

What are we to do? How can we have our cake and eat it too? The simple answer is…we can’t. We must willingly honor God in everything we do, especially in the things that we call holy. I’m not going to tell you it will be easy, but breaking away from the secular world with all of its heathen trappings is a necessary step in surrendering to the will of God.

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”   ~Colossians 2:8

None of these heathen customs are found anywhere in the Bible as being used by Christians. Nevertheless, society has become so completely immersed in paganism that we can no longer see the Biblical forest truths from the evil Pagan trees.

Maybe we need to remember the only holy day that God tells us to keep—His holy day—the seventh day Sabbath, rather than all of the pagan holidays?

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy . . . For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”   ~Exodus 20:8-11

“Because they despised My judgments and did not walk in My statutes, but profaned My Sabbaths; for their heart went after their idols. But I said to their children in the wilderness, do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols. I am the Lord your God: Walk in My statutes, keep My judgments, and do them; hallow My Sabbaths, and they will be a sign between Me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God.”   ~Ezekiel 20:16, 18-20

In the following verse, Jeremiah tells of our current condition, which is precisely the same condition as the fallen church of Jerusalem back in Jeremiah’s day. God has warned us repeatedly not to allow the customs of the heathens to enter His sanctuary or corrupt His congregation. But that’s exactly what happened and is still happening today because we are still following their traditions instead of His word!

The word “she” in the following verse is also referring to the fallen church, aka the Church of Rome (being led by the adversary/Satan). They had invited the pagans into God’s church by adding their heathen customs to coerce them into joining their congregation. And this is still the condition of the apostate church to this very day.

“The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.”   ~Lamentations 1:10 KJV

It all boils down to this one thing, we must choose. Where will our loyalty lie, with the word of man, or the word of God? We must read the Bible, take in the facts, digest the truths, and refute the lies once and for all if we are ever going to repent, turn from our misguided ways, and truly serve Almighty God.

“And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”   ~Joshua 24:15

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