Anselm's Explanation of the Trinity
How can the Father, Son and Holy Spirit each be God, but not be each other? This is Archbishop Anselm's explanation - the best I've heard so far.
Anselm at Starbucks
A new look at Anselm's argument for the existence of God.
The Divine Inferno
Why the existance of Hell is a demonstration of God's mercy.
1000 Easter Balloons
What if, on Easter Sunday morning, after services, every church in town released yellow balloons?
Scary Meditation
What is the difference between Eastern meditation and Christian meditation?
The Golfer of the Gaps
Have you heard that our God is a "God of the Gaps," only invoked to explain increasingly small gaps in science? Here's that logic applied to golf.
Esther's Japanese Origins
Using the approved "wild extrapolation" method, I've conclusively shown that the Biblical Book of Esther is of Japanese origin.
But I Was Born That Way
When people use this excuse, why do we keep trying to talk them out of it?
Digital Reality
Is reality digital? I couldn't care less, but if it is, maybe that's one point for the theistic view.
Church Economics
It's kind of fun to see companies becoming successful using the kind of financing churches have used for ages.
Legislating Morality
You can't legislate morality! Really? If you can't legislate morality, what can you legislate?
Paganism in Christmas and Easter?
A writer thought I ought to stop celebrating Christmas and Easter. It had pagan origins, he said. So what, I replied.
Shooting the Wounded
In which I launch a diatribe against a phrase I find particularly shallow and offensive.
Evolving Computers
What computers do - or don't - show us about evolution.
Are All Religions the Same?
A Buddhist's view.
A non-Christian reader of an article I wrote about Easter sent me a note saying: "If you are going to be calling yourself a Christian, you shouldn't talk about or celebrate two of the most pagan holidays ever," then listed the pagan elements of Christmas and Easter. It was a reasonably thoughtful and polite letter, so I responded with my thoughts, portions of which appear here.
I don't disagree with your assessment that the dates of Christmas and Easter and a fair amount of both celebrations have pagan elements mixed in to them and that they coincide with early pagan holidays.
But your suggestion that I not celebrate (or even talk about) these holidays goes a bit far. As an American I celebrate Independence Day although my country's founding has a strong streak of Rationalism and anti-clericalism in it (read Tom Paine), and though its history has black marks, and though I'm not in agreement with everything my country does even now. Also, the Fourth of July is not truly the day America became independent of British rule, but if folks want to celebrate it on the Fourth of July that's fine with me.
I also go to church on "Sunday" although I do not worship the Sun. And I have appointments on "Thursday" although I take no account of Thor. If I was an Algerian Christian, perhaps I would celebrate Ramadan, simply to identify with my fellow Algerians, not because I'm a Muslim. There is nothing anti-Christian about fasting (It's been done for ages), so if something is not against my faith, why should I oppose it? Why should I not participate? Why should I build unnecessary walls between myself and my neighbors?
And especially, why should I reject symbols that approximate what I am trying to communicate? Eggs were used, as you pointed out, to symbolize new life, and were logically applied to symbolize the new life that Jesus gives us and that we want to communicate. It hardly makes sense that we should use symbols nobody understands.
Symbols and celebrations are not fixed in stone for all eternity. They reflect the meaning that people give to them. There was a time when the swastika (regardless of which way the thing twirled) was a good luck symbol. Now, because of Hitler, in the Western world it is almost exclusively a symbol of hatred and racism. The symbol is the same, the meaning changed. Probably some of the very letters I'm using in responding to you originally had some runic pagan significance, but the meaning has changed, and what the alphabet meant 500 or 600 years ago doesn't concern me much.
© Copyright 2000 Brad Haugaard
“What a blessed condition is a true believer in! When he dies, he goes to God; and while he lives, everything shall do him good. Affliction is for his good. What hurt does the fire to the gold? It only purifies it.”
–Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial