We, as a family are outdoorsy types. We have a large garden, cattle, etc so the seasons are very important to us. As such, these ancient holidays and festivities fascinate me. As with every year about this time I become interested with past traditions. We are very loose Christians of Celtic decent, so it's pretty easy for us to keep an open mind about things. For us, it's pretty clear to me that Christianity has simply recycled just about all of these holidays and festivities. Not a big deal, it's what humans do. We of course celebrate them all but, like Christmas, recognize that it's existence is simply a convenient overlapping timing for Jesus birth, which may or may not have even been during this time. That said, my question is WHY. To keep things simpler, let's focus on Halloween. Why would Christianity commandeer a holiday like this instead of simply abandoning it or banning it and starting over?

Was it historically better for Christians to recycle the holiday in order to sell Christianity quicker or would it have been better to ban and start over?

I understand this is probably going to devolve into argument but the question remains about recycling vs. starting over. This does loosely go with a post I had a while back about ancient beliefs. I'm personally certain Christianity itself is a recycled version of something of ancient times with much less desirable qualities, much like the holidays we celebrate.

I'm absolutely interested in the Christians that are well versed. I am not versed in..anything…so here I am.

Catholics have always "embraced" local customs and tried to assign them new Christian meaning. Go look at the Christian"festivals" in a highly Catholic country like Ecuador today. They are unrecognizable to most US Catholics. That's because they are just rebranding the culture's old festivals. Of course almost all culture's old festivals are pagan related, so that's how you get a pagan winter solstice festival and a pagan Spring fertility festival in Christianity. Most Catholics just deny, deny, deny this, because they see how obviously wrong it is. I've heard of one Catholic who admitted this was true, but didn't have any problem with pagan rituals being rebranded as Christian. But that's the exceptionally rare person.

For many who realize this and are bothered by it, they frequently wind up rejecting these, which when stripped away leaves you with the actual biblical festivals like passover instead of Easter (for example). That, among other contradictions, is what led me down the path to Messianic Judaism, which IMO, is closest to what the Apostles themselves practiced. They were all Jews, they believed Yeshua was the Messiah, and they are seen keeping the Sabbaths and biblical festivals throughout the New Testament. Go and do likewise.

Win At Life said:

---

Catholics have always "embraced" local customs and tried to assign them new Christian meaning. Go look at the Christian"festivals" in a highly Catholic country like Ecuador today. They are unrecognizable to most US Catholics. That's because they are just rebranding the culture's old festivals. Of course almost all culture's old festivals are pagan related, so that's how you get a pagan winter solstice festival and a pagan Spring fertility festival in Christianity. Most Catholics just deny, deny, deny this, because they see how obviously wrong it is. I've heard of one Catholic who admitted this was true, but didn't have any problem with pagan rituals being rebranded as Christian. But that's the exceptionally rare person.

For many who realize this and are bothered by it, they frequently wind up rejecting these, which when stripped away leaves you with the actual biblical festivals like passover instead of Easter (for example). That, among other contradictions, is what led me down the path to Messianic Judaism, which IMO, is closest to what the Apostles themselves practiced. They were all Jews, they believed Yeshua was the Messiah, and they are seen keeping the Sabbaths and biblical festivals throughout the New Testament. Go and do likewise.

---

So where do you stand on the Talmud and Oral Torah? From what I understand there isn't unanimity among Messianic congregations on the issue of them.

Quote:

---

So where do you stand on the Talmud and Oral Torah? From what I understand there isn't unanimity among Messianic congregations on the issue of them.

---

There isn't unanimity on any of that in traditional Jewish streams either. You know the joke; if you get two Jews in a room, they'll have 3 opinions on every issue.

For us, we don't follow the Mishna or Talmud much at all. Most, if not all, of those were written by men who knew of Yeshua and rejected Him. Would we allow someone who rejected Yeshua as the Messiah to teach in our congregation? Certainly not about matters of doctrine. So, why would we look to the Talmud for doctrine? We look at those more as a work of history like the writings of Josephus or the Maccabees, or Tobit.

We have our own Halacha, which is a bit unique from most other Messianic Jewish congregations in a few ways. We are more strict to the bible for most of our doctrine, but in practice we adopt a number of Jewish traditions that are not against the commandments such as Havdalah (as one example). However, we've removed the Havdalah prayer about being commanded to light the candles on Shabbat, because the Torah does not specify such a thing as a commandment. It's neither commanded, nor forbidden, so we light candles, but do not say it's a commandment. Our siddur has been modified with many New Testament insertions like that; and we've inserted Yeshua being the light of the world for Havdalah instead.

From a "Jewish" perspective, we follow the Torah more closely, and most similar to the small Jewish group known as Karaite Judaism. Karaites have rejected all Mishna and Talmud (at least as being authoritative), and are more strict to the Torah. The problem is the Torah is quite vague sometimes, such as what you should and should not do on Sabbath. When the Torah is specific, we are specific, but when the Torah is vague, we believe Elohim did that for a reason, and try not to add too many rules onto that, which is surprisingly hard. There seems to be something within mankind, to want to tell others around them what to do.

One Halacha Yeshua was very specific about was not to call any man rabbi, but most Messianic Jewish congregations have a guy they call rabbi. Why? Yeshua is our only Rabbi.

I've had a recurring thought to send a copy of this book to a number of prominent Messianic Jewish Congregations to get more agreement on the fundamentals.

https://www.amazon.com/These-Things-Should-Have-Done/dp/1735393002

Quote:

---

I'm personally certain Christianity itself is a recycled version of something of ancient times with much less desirable qualities, much like the holidays we celebrate.

---

You are personally certain that Christianity itself is a recycled version of something? What is this version of something that you are certain about?

I cannot speak to what version of Christianity you may be referring to, but I'm I'm convinced that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the ancient Jewish prophesies.

We have ancient biblical text written in the genre of historical narrative
The biblical record matches the archaeology of ancient times.

There's lots of good books if you are interested in evidence.
Cold Case Christianity - J Warner Wallace
The New Evidence that demands a verdict - McDowell
The Case for Christ - Lee Strobel

DirtDiver said:

---

Quote:

---

I'm personally certain Christianity itself is a recycled version of something of ancient times with much less desirable qualities, much like the holidays we celebrate.

---

You are personally certain that Christianity itself is a recycled version of something? What is this version of something that you are certain about?

I cannot speak to what version of Christianity you may be referring to, but I'm I'm convinced that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the ancient Jewish prophesies.

We have ancient biblical text written in the genre of historical narrative
The biblical record matches the archaeology of ancient times.

There's lots of good books if you are interested in evidence.
Cold Case Christianity - J Warner Wallace
The New Evidence that demands a verdict - McDowell
The Case for Christ - Lee Strobel

---

This is an insane comment. Shows you have no clue what religion was like before Christianity. Even from a secular/academic standpoint they can tell you a million reasons Christianity was unique and what caused it to take off. I under appreciated the uniqueness of Christianity and Paul especially until I learned better of it

***Comment not intended towards DirtDiver but towards initial part of quote ***

That said I would avoid reading any American Evangelical books without a very good vetting. Lots of crazy this side of the world.

I say read the stuff that was written 1700-1800 years ago.

A lot of our "holiday" traditions are a mixture of Christian and Pagan traditions. back in the day the Pope, or other church leaders sought to incorporate pagan rituals as something of a soft landing for those they were trying to convert. Take a little of theirs, add a lot of ours, and you have a common bond between the two.

As i understand it, Christmas being on December 25 was chosen as time common for druids whom celebrate the winter solstice. Evergreen was converted from the nature worshipping Pagans to being used by Christians to represent the everlasting life of Jesus. (thanks Rick Steeves). I'm sure there are dozens, if not hundreds, more examples but those are the two that are sticking out right now

TresPuertas said:

---

A lot of our "holiday" traditions are a mixture of Christian and Pagan traditions. back in the day the Pope, or other church leaders sought to incorporate pagan rituals as something of a soft landing for those they were trying to convert. Take a little of theirs, add a lot of ours, and you have a common bond between the two.

As i understand it, Christmas being on December 25 was chosen as time common for druids whom celebrate the winter solstice. Evergreen was converted from the nature worshipping Pagans to being used by Christians to represent the everlasting life of Jesus. (thanks Rick Steeves). I'm sure there are dozens, if not hundreds, more examples but those are the two that are sticking out right now

---

Exactly.

Catholic take here.

I asked this very type of question years ago to a priest friend of mine much more knowledgeable than I and remember the general take being somewhat different than expected. It wasn't so much that the Church was seeking to replace a pagan holiday with a religious one, but rather bear witness to the truth of such event. Easter is an obvious example, new life coming out of winter.

What was happening before Christianity was spread to the rest of the world, was man's search for truth and how the truth was twisted towards animism, astrology, and divination. No doubt fueled by an active demonic force that was unchecked until the arrival of the Son of God, Jesus.

Take Our Lady of Guadalupe. Some of you know that this was an apparition to an Aztec, Juan Diego in the year 1531. Up until that time the Spanish friars had difficulty converting the indigenous people of Mexico. However, after this event, in a short amount of time, 10 million people were baptized due to the significance of the miraculous image she left on the tilma of Juan Diego. Her image had a number of symbolic/cosmological references to the Aztec culture and lore. Although some have speculated the friars may have painted this, recent high resolution scans have revealed it is unpainted.

Significantly, she appeared on a hill (Tepeyac) in present day Mexico City, where the Aztecs had built a temple to a mother goddess, Tonantzin. In her apparition to Juan Diego, Our Lady requested that a temple be built on this particular hill, where it stands today as a great Basilica and where more than 12 million people made a pilgrimage in 2022.

If you research about Tonantzin, she was similar in some ways to the Mother of God, but in some accounts the dreaded goddess, Cihuacoatl (a serpent woman). Leave it to Our Lady of Guadalupe to clear things up by stating that she was "Mother of the One Great God of Truth (In Huelnelli Teotl Dios), the One Through Whom We All Live (Ipalnemohuani), the Creator of People (In Teoyocoyani), the Lord of the Near and the Far (In Tloque in Nahuaque), etc." - Section #26 from the Nican Mopohua.

In summary, it was the fullness of truth that was brought by the missionaries to the indigenous people of the Americas.