Holidays and paganism?


Milluw
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If I decide that I hate Christmas (or Easter, or any other so-called "holiday") and that I and my family absolutely will not celebrate it at all, in any sense, my standing in the Church -- and more importantly, my standing before God -- is not in the least affected. That is because they are not true holidays (= holy days), but just cultural celebrations.

Except in the sense that one who is so extreme about something (and particularly as related to the motivations behind doing so) there is potential danger. Factually your are correct. Practically speaking I would worry about said individual.

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This is not even tradition. It is simply one of the different interpretations of D&C 20. Elder Talmage interpreted it as April 6 being the birthday of Christ in his book Jesus the Christ. But, that's not official revelation by the Church.

I recall reading that scripture once and seeing it as pure declaration of Christ's birthdate. Every subsequent reading has interpreted the information as referring to other things entirely.

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Except in the sense that one who is so extreme about something (and particularly as related to the motivations behind doing so) there is potential danger. Factually your are correct. Practically speaking I would worry about said individual.

Agree. Barring some view already in place regarding holidays, one who disdains holidays and points to our technical lack of meaningful doctrinal attachments to them as reason to avoid them would cause me some concern.

To avoid all things not spelled out in doctrine is an odd place to be. Must one look for doctrinal support for every action?

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I remember (as mentioned in the "Holy Fetch" article) both Pres. Kimball and Elder Bednar stating it was Apr 6th in a Gen Conf address. -- Lends credence.  But it also gives an argument for Dec 25th.  I have a big problem with that.

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I remember (as mentioned in the "Holy Fetch" article) both Pres. Kimball and Elder Bednar stating it was Apr 6th in a Gen Conf address. -- Lends credence. But it also gives an argument for Dec 25th. I have a big problem with that.

I don't know what's so big deal about it. What does it matter what day is Christ's actual birthday?

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If your ancestors are European as well, know that there are thousands of aspects of our culture that stem from our pagan ancestors.   Our lives are more inundated by paganism than with the early Christianity of the Romans that forced their religion on us through the threat of death.   A few pagan rituals that we just like to have fun with...no big deal.  

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is just a first impression.

From my vantage point, all pagan beliefs came from the one, true religion of God revealed to Adam, but corrupted as people feel from the truth. This includes holidays.

Adam was the first Christian. Noah came a bit later, but he, too, was a Christian. His descendants would have celebrated many holidays in conjunction with the Gospel: we were given the sun and moon to record the passage of time and "for times and seasons", etc.

Given the Jewish traditions regarding the moon. I assume that there were pre-Jewish holy days, too, and they had something to do with the lights given for marking the passage of time.

With that background, one might assume that all the "pagan" holidays descended from earlier holy days.

As to whether "Christmas" fell on 6 April, 1 B.C., my own feeling is that it did. If we read the Book of Mormon, we see that the appearance of Christ among the Nephites was nearly a year after the Resurrection. The Nephites were assembled at the Temple in Bountiful. We can reasonably assume that it was for the Passover. But it was also thirty-four years after the sign of His birth.

We have six of our grandchildren over right now, so I need to get back to the important things. This has been weighing on me since I first read the topic several days ago, and I had to respond to get it off my mind.

Lehi

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How about this - The "holidays" were created for two purposes, both because of the winter season:

 

1) Back in the old days, people always got the "blues" during winter because of the lack of sunshine.  In order to help them cope, they created celebrations, a time of gathering and festivities to lift the spirit.  In other words, they needed something to combat seasonal depression.

 

2) Before the invention of refrigeration, preservation, and because of the cold and wetness of the season, foods could not be dried or preserved so it tended to go bad quicker.  To avoid loosing all this food, celebrations were created, a time to gather and festivities to serve, share, and partake of the extra food that would have otherwise gone bad.

 

So yea, paganism, but how about pagan celebrations that had a practical value to them.  I dunno, seems to make sense to me.

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Hi all, sorry for the late response!

Thank you all for of the inputs. It gave me a lot of food for thought!

Just to clarify, i did not intend to equate paganism to satanism. It would probably have been more correct to write "paganism and satanism" in stead. Sorry! :) The mention on satanism was more relating to Halloween specifically, and the claims about those being linked together. I do know of the pagan aspect of our culture in the North. However have found that there is a lot more to know about it than i do already, after seeing these replies. I don't have a completely solid understanding of the pagan roots here just yet. Would like to look more into it.

 

As for holidays, it has been weighing on my mind a lot for a while. But i have come to the personal conclusion, that if the core of those holidays really are that much against God as is being claimed, then we surely would have gotten the message somehow from the prophets. And if we have yet to recieve that message, i will find out when and if the time is right. But as of now, it doesn't feel wrong in my spirit to celebrate the holiday. So i am excited for christmas yet again! :D

If anyone feels they have more input to add though, i am always interested.
 

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I don't know what's so big deal about it. What does it matter what day is Christ's actual birthday?

Hi, Anatess.  Sorry this is so late a response.  I never noticed your post before.  I think I poorly worded the statement "I have a big problem with that."  So, let me clarify.

 

1) If we find out through earthly or heavenly means that it was indeed Dec 25th, hey, great.  I have no problem with that.

 

2) But the article showed a certain line of reasoning that I found to be filled with fallacies and poor data.  That was what I had a problem with.

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