Christians who don't celebrate Easter?

[MooCowSteph]

I knew there were misguided Christians who think Christmas has pagan roots and refuse to celebrate it, but I just learned many of them also do not celebrate Easter. On the parenting board I go to, some of these Christan families are instead celebrating Jewish holidays. What’s this all about? Have you all heard of this?

 

[Rightlydivide]

I knew there were misguided Christians who think Christmas has pagan roots and refuse to celebrate it, but I just learned many of them also do not celebrate Easter. On the parenting board I go to, some of these Christan families are instead celebrating Jewish holidays. What’s this all about? Have you all heard of this?

Christmas does have pagan roots. I thought that was generally accepted?
But to answer your question some fundamentalist Christians, Jehovah Witnesses, and just about all of the Armstrong groups do not celebrate Easter or Christmas. Essentially based upon their studies of history or insufficient evidence in the NT

 

[Mannyfit75]

Here is some historical information on Christmas.

It is unknown exactly when or why December 25 became associated with Jesus’ birth. The New Testament does not give a specific date.[13] Sextus Julius Africanus popularized the idea that Jesus was born on December 25 in his Chronographiai, a reference book for Christians written in AD 221.[13] This date is nine months after the traditional date of the Incarnation (March 25), now celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation.[17] aa book written in 23 A.D. was also considered to be the date of the vernal equinox and therefore the creation of Adam.[17] Early Christians believed March 25 was also the date Jesus was crucified.[17] The Christian idea that Jesus was conceived on the same date that he died on the cross is consistent with a Jewish belief that a prophet lived an integral number of years.[17]

The identification of the birthdate of Jesus did not at first inspire feasting or celebration. Tertullian does not mention it as a major feast day in the Church of Roman Africa. In 245, the theologian Origen denounced the idea of celebrating Jesus’ birthday “as if he were a king pharaoh.” He contended that only sinners, not saints, celebrated their birthdays.[citation needed]

The earliest reference to the celebration of Christmas is in the Calendar of Filocalus, an illuminated manuscript compiled in Rome in 354.[2][18] In the east, meanwhile, Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus as part of Epiphany (January 6), although** this festival focused on the baptism of Jesus**.[19]

Christmas was promoted in the east as part of the revival of Catholicism following the death of the pro-Arian Emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The** feast was introduced to Constantinople in 379, to Antioch in about 380, and to Alexandria in about 430. Christmas was especially controversial in 4th century Constantinople, being the “fortress of Arianism,” as Edward Gibbon described it. The feast disappeared after Gregory of Nazianzus resigned as bishop in 381, although it was reintroduced by John Chrysostom in about 400**.[2]

 

[Mannyfit75]

Here is the historical background on Easter:

Easter, the Sunday of the Resurrection, Pascha, or Resurrection Day, is, by far, the most important religious feast of the Christian liturgical year. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after His crucifixion some time in the period AD 27 to 33.

Easter also refers to the season of the church year, called Eastertide or the Easter Season. Traditionally the Easter Season lasted for the forty days from Easter Day until Ascension Day but now officially lasts for the fifty days until Pentecost. The first week of the Easter Season is known as Easter Week or the Octave of Easter.

Easter is termed a movable Christian holy day because it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. Easter falls at some point between late March and late April each year (early April to early May in Eastern Christianity), following the cycle of the moon.

Today many families celebrate Easter in a completely secular way, as a non-religious holiday.

Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover not only for much of its symbolism but also for its position in the calendar. The Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover meal, based on the chronology in the Gospels.[1] Some, however, interpreting “Passover” in John 18:28 as a single meal and not a seven-day festival,[2] interpret the Gospel of John as differing from the Synoptic Gospels by placing Christ’s death at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lambs, which would put the Last Supper slightly before Passover, on 14 Nisan of the Bible’s Hebrew calendar.[3] According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "In fact, the Jewish feast was taken over into the Christian Easter celebration."

 

[Mannyfit75]

Here some false assumption on Easter:

Easter alleged a Babylonian festival

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007)

Some** suggest an etymological relationship between Eostre and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar **(variant spelling: Eshtar) and the possibility that aspects of an ancient festival accompanied the name, claiming that the worship of Bel and Astarte was anciently introduced into Britain, and that the hot cross buns of Good Friday and dyed eggs of Easter Sunday figured in the Chaldean rites just as they allegedly do now. [8] These claims fail to account for a complete lack of any evidence of transmission from Mesopotamia through the rest of Europe to Britain. Instead, they posit a sudden appearance in the British Isles without any effects or records anywhere in the intervening continent. Such claims are more likely to be an example of a false etymology.

Non-Catholic source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter

 

[Mannyfit75]

Here is a link of History of Easter.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_%28Christian_holiday%29

 

[jmcrae]

We celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25 because it is precisely nine months after the traditional celebration of the Annunciation, on March 25th. It has nothing to do with the pagans, who do their celebrations of the Winter Solstice on the 21 of December.

It is difficult to mistake December 25th for December 21 if you are using the sky as your calendar, as the pagans do. It is only those who know nothing about how pagans determine the dates of their festivals who would even consider this to be a possibility.

We celebrate the Resurrection of Christ at Easter time. Again, it has nothing to do with the pagans; it is the nearest Sunday after the nearest full moon to the Spring Equinox (March 21/22), which puts it anywhere from March 22 to April 19, because the Crucifixion occurred on the full moon after the Spring Equinox, and He rose from the dead on the Sunday immediately following, and again, this is for traditional reasons having to do with when we think Christ was actually crucified.

If we were to pick dates at random, there would be some other religion that celebrates that day for something, at least some of the time, and we’d be accused of pandering to them, too, so I think it makes sense to just leave them as they are.

 

[Publisher]

Traditionally Friends have not “celebrated” Christmas or Easter.

As one Scottish Friend stated…"When I am asked why I “do not celebrate Christmas”, I tell my questioners it is not a case of “not celebrating”. The closer one lives to Christ, who makes all things new, the less proper it seems to treat 364 days as less special than one. So I cannot idolise one day above 364!

Today Christ is born in me, in each of his people, and in us all together. The star never leaves the sky, the song of the angels is never stilled, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”; shepherds and wise men never cease to adore.

Christ’s work in us is the new birth: to preach the good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. This day (each day!) is the scripture fulfilled." Paul Thompson

Similarly many Friends don’t celebrate Easter either for each day is Resurrection Day…each day is a chance to live in the power of the resurrection and meet the Living Christ on every road we take…see him in each face we encounter…eat and drink with him at each meal and know his blessings in our midst.

In our First Day meetings on “Easter Sunday” many will speak of the time as remembering who we are as resurrection people…but Easter and Christmas are not single events one day a year…but are celebrated and lived each day.

Friends have no issue with those who wish to decorate their homes…many of us do…but it is a personal choice…many meetings will have a Meeting for Worship at Christmas time for those so inclined…but it is after the manner of Friends…join in the living silence and share his Presence in our midst.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Here some false assumption on Easter:

Easter alleged a Babylonian festival

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007)

Some** suggest an etymological relationship between Eostre and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar **(variant spelling: Eshtar) and the possibility that aspects of an ancient festival accompanied the name, claiming that the worship of Bel and Astarte was anciently introduced into Britain, and that the hot cross buns of Good Friday and dyed eggs of Easter Sunday figured in the Chaldean rites just as they allegedly do now. [8] These claims fail to account for a complete lack of any evidence of transmission from Mesopotamia through the rest of Europe to Britain. Instead, they posit a sudden appearance in the British Isles without any effects or records anywhere in the intervening continent. Such claims are more likely to be an example of a false etymology.

Non-Catholic source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter

Here we go again… ​

• Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very 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.” Some have imagined that the Druidical worship was first introduced by the Phoenicians, who, centuries before the Christian era, traded to the tin-mines of Cornwall. But the unequivocal traces of that worship are found in regions of the British islands where the Phoenicians never penetrated, and it has everywhere left indelible marks of the strong hold which it must have had on the early British mind. From Bel, the 1st of May is still called Beltane in the Almanac; and we have customs still lingering at this day among us, which prove how exactly the worship of Bel or Moloch (for both titles belonged to the same god) had been observed even in the northern parts of this island.
  philologos.org/__eb-ttb/sect32.htm

There we are - that is the source, & it is not accurate.
Beltane has as much to do with Baal or Bel for that matter, as Captain Kirk has to do with - well, with the Kirk of Scotland; or cats with Catholicism.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Btw, I just heard something about the Melkites, that their Patriarch Gregory Laham had decided that they would celebrate Pascha (a/k/a Easter, btw only the English and Germans use the name derived from a German pagan goddess. ALL other languages either call it simply “Resurection” or use a term derived from Hebrew PsaH, “Passover”) with the Arab Orthodox date, but the pope of Rome vetoes it. Anyone know of anything about this?

 

[bpbasilphx]

Jehovah’s False Witnesses are at least consistent in not celebrating Pascha (Easter), as they don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

And they also deny that He is God Incarnate, of the same nature in His Divinity as the Father–so why bother with Christmas?