What about Easter? How did this pagan, fertility festival enter the Christian calendar? Most certainly there is no mention of Easter eggs in the Scriptures; no mention of bunny rabbits. Where did they come from? Is it wrong to celebrate Easter? The facts will surprise you; but here are a few quotations about Easter from Alexander Hislop's famous book The Two Babylons, published by S W Partridge & Co., 4 Soho Sq., London. (ISBN 0 7136 0470 0).
- "Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was very early introduced into Britain, along with the Druids, 'the priests of the groves.'" (page 103)
- "To conciliate the Pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy, took measures to get the Christian and Pagan festivals amalgamated, and, by a complicated but skilful adjustment of the calendar, it was found no difficult matter, in general to get Paganism and Christianity, now far sunk in idolatry - in this as in so many other things, to shake hands." (page 105)
- "The hot cross buns of Good Friday and the dyed eggs of Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The 'buns' known too by the identical name, were used in the worship of the queen of heaven, the goddess Easter, as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens- that is, 1500 years before the Christian era... The prophet Jeremiah takes notice of this kind of offering when he says: 'The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women make cakes to the queen of heaven" - Astarte! ((Jer.7:18) page 108))
- "In ancient times eggs were used in the religious rites of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and were hung up for mystic purposes in their temples. From Egypt these sacred eggs can be distinctly traced to the banks of the Euphrates. The classic poets are full of the fable of the mystic egg of the Babylonians; and thus it is told by Hyginus, the Egyptian, the learned keeper of the Palatine library at Rome, in the time of Augustus, who was skilled in all the wisdom of his native country: 'An egg of wondrous size is said to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates. The fishes rolled it to the bank, where the doves having settled upon it, and hatched it, out came Venus, who afterwards was called the Syrian Goddess'" - that is Astarte. Hence the egg became one of the symbols of Astarte or Easter." (page 108)
- "The guilt of idolatry is regarded by many as comparatively slight and insignificant guilt. But not so does the God of heaven regard it. Which is the commandment of all the ten that is fenced about with the most solemn and awful sanctions? It is the second: 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.' These words were spoken by God's own lips, they were written by God's own finger on the tables of stone: not for the instruction of the seed of Abraham only, but of all the tribes and generations of mankind. No other commandment has such a threatening attached to it as this. Now, if God has threatened to visit the sin of idolatry above all other sins, and if we find the heavy judgements of God pressing upon us as a nation, while this very sin is crying to heaven against us, ought it not to be a matter of earnest inquiry, if among all our other national sins, which are both many and great, this may not form the very head and front of our offending." (p 127)
Similar quotations can be found in Hislop's 330 page book about other pagan traditions which over the centuries have crept into the Christian calendar, false teachings such as:
- The Nativity of St John (Held immediately after the summer solstice)
- The Feast of the Assumption (A nineteenth century human tradition)
- Idol processions / Relic worship: the clothing and crowning of images etc.
Not one of these practices is endorsed in the holy Scriptures. They are pagan through and through. They were adopted centuries ago by a spiritually blind ecclesiastical hierarchy which had absolutely no idea of the sinfulness of its actions. Celebrating these pagan festivals is nothing but baptised idolatry and as such is abhorrent to the Almighty and His Son.