Church-Made Festivals

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 29, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 13.

Church-Made Festivals

Church-Made Festivals.—It is a peculiar fact that all the church-made festivals or days of special observance are an imitation of noted heathen festivals. They all originated (as church occasions) in deference to customs that were popular when Christianity was made universal by law, and these compromises made it easy for pagan adherents to accept Christianity. The final settlement of Christmas on December 25 was practically an ovation to pagan custom. After being celebrated at various seasons of the year, it was finally fixed to correspond with the heathen winter holidays (Saturnalia, Juvenalia, Brumalia), and the pagan customs were brought over into it. So with the Easter holiday; it was patterned after the Teutonic goddess of spring, Ostera or Eastre. So with the Sunday as a religious institution; it was the day dedicated to the sun in heathen worship, and as a compromise with the heathen, when they were made Christians by law, it was given a place in the church instead of the seventh day, which God had "sanctified" and "blessed" as His memorial. All these church days were adopted from the heathen calendar of festivals in order the more easily to wean them over to the profession of Christianity. It was all done on the principle so often urged in our own time, that "it is the business of civil government to make it easy to do right."