I can't believe you went to the Jewish Bible, called the Tenekh, also called the Old Testament by Christians; you looked at God writing to the Jews about a heathen "non Jewish" Holiday; You read how God tells the Jews not to worry about them, then, concluded that it was the Jews who were celebrating the heathen holiday?
Do I have this right?
Don't get me wrong. But the pagan background in the many Christian holidays are a thing of beauty, if one reads the bible.
Modern Biblically literate Christians are absolutely aware that many of the things done out of tradition during Christmas were at one time pagan traditions somewhere. Because Christianity has gone around the world, this is true in about every Christian nation, but each in a different "pagan" way..
Same with Easter, and we all know it. It is not a bad thing. It is what we were told to do in the book of Romans.
Not all are pagan but the idea is the same. Another Example??
Check out Mexico, and how that nation celebrates Christmas. It is done nothing like North America.
Why do Christians in north America celebrate with a tree, but Mexicans have a giant thanksgiving dinner type thing going on?
Its called stable subversion of tradition.
What do I mean?
What is this subversion?
It is something Christians are good at, and take care to do when spreading the gospel. The reason is to keep families and traditions and culture alive and very stable while preaching the good news of the Messiah. "First do no harm". Christians learned early, if you tear up the traditions and calendar of a culture, you get Chaos and destruction, the break up of family, and much unhappiness.
When you start demanding that weddings and holidays and other traditions are wiped out, in any culture you go to to preach the good news, you destabilize the culture, and end up destroying families and the fabric that keeps the tribe or nation together……which is a really bad thing. Only the MEANING of the holiday is changed, but, the culture goes on doing everything it has always done.
Logically, this means almost ALL Christian celebrations will be pagan in their traditions, AND it means that the Christian holidays celebrated around the world are each different, according to the original culture.
Say you go to some third world place to teach the Gospel. If the natives there already have a holiday celebrating some false god, you do not force them to stop their traditions that hold their families together and cause them to gather to meet, or travel etc. What you do is change the pagan celebration into a celebration of Christ. You "Convert" their holidays and traditions.
Where does it say to do this in the Bible?
After Christ died, the book of Romans made it clear to Christians that the sacrifice of Jesus was the final act that set mankind free, and that we were no longer under the Old Covenant [Testament] laws for our salvation. We… could eat bacon, shrimp, etc etc etc. No more animal sacrifice or anything else. Love your neighbor as yourself was paramount, no matter what anyone worshiped, and by the way, love your enemies too. We are told the old law is for our wisdom and learning (like the ten commandments… might want to teach the kids not to kill and steal etc).
See the Christian New Testament in Romans. You will find it does not matter what we do or eat or what date we celebrate the birth of Christ.
What DOES matter though, is that we not try to disturb a Jew who remained under his law. Because if a man "believes" eating bacon is a sin, then, when he eats it, he has sinned. And we are told not to push people to sin against their own "conscience".
This is where you get the Christian respect and love of man regardless of religious faith, and the concept of respect for the conscientious objector in American law. This is the origin of the religious protections in the first amendment too.
Somewhere, the Catholic church ran into pagans there using that tree. I believe Christmas tree ornaments (balls) use to be the gonads of the god Tamuz, and the "yule log" was a baby to be sacrificed ? If instead, you give a people a truth, and something new to celebrate with their old pagan celebration dates, families still meet, the culture is not disrupted, but, it will stop sacrificing babies, it will stop lying, cheating, stealing, raping, and will use the old traditions to celebrate the newly revealed truth.
So. Christians are not pagan.
The pagans are now Christians, and are celebrating the God of the Universe, and the birth of his only son.
Now, we roast chestnuts over the open fire instead of babies, cuz we hung Tamuz by the balls….
We are going to have to rinse and repeat, so, fasten your seat belts Anons.
Tolerance is the hallmark of the Christian religion, and even many Christians have been lied to about their own religion because they do not read their bible, and they listen to the words of men.