And he
took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This
is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me. (Luke 22:19)
Almighty
God and our messiah Jesus Christ did not command us to honour Christmas and Easter
or instruct any of his followers to do so. The only thing Jesus called our attention to be doing is the Holy Communion. Christmas and Easter was incorporated into the Christianity some 300 years after the resurrection
of our Lord Jesus. The biblical Holy
Days have not changed since they were given and recorded in Exodus Chapter 20,
Leviticus chapter 23. The feast and
festivals of the Lord are the Passover, the Day of Atonement and the weekly
Sabbath. Church history was dramatically
shift under the Roman Emperor Constantine who “Legitimized” Christianity as the
official state religion of Rome. As Emperor, Constantine faced the complex
problems of indoctrinating a predominantly pagan and polytheistic (multiple
gods} Rome into the still emerging tenets “new” religion more palatable to the
people of his empire.
Constantine
changed the Sabbath day to Sunday at the council of Nicea, C325 AD, and enacted
other sweeping changes which combined paganism, adulatory worship instead of
the status, precepts and the Commandment of God. Constantine replaced the
biblical feast of Passover with formalized celebration of Easter – a day syncretized
from a pagan festival at the spring Equinox honoring a Babylonian fertility
goddess Ishtar. December 25th,
a long-standing pagan celebration of Saturnalia (Winter Solstice, also believed
to be the birth date of the pagan god Mithra) became Christmas and a commemoration
of the birth of Jesus.
Born a
Roman citizen, Constantine was immersed in a pagan society and entirely estranged
from the Hebrew roots of the Gospel, he professed His efforts to incorporate or syncretize pagan worship, and therefore worshippers, new religion at last into
Rome’s at last divorced Christianity from Hebrew roots. Syncretism changed the face of Christianity,
as well as the Church’s understanding of, and relationship of the word of God
and the Christian faith, throughout the centuries-even to this very day.
References:
(Torah: Law or Grace? Rabbi Ralph Messer)
