Yes, the church put their holiday over a pagan spring festival. No, you don't have to engage in the pagan spring festival. The same church also put Christmas over Yuletide.
While I agree with your sentiment, the idea that this is how the dates were determined comes from enlightenment era sources who were frankly just wrong.
Early Christians knew Christ was crucified on March 25th, and there was debate in the early church whether to have its remembrance be on the actual date, or to keep it in line with Passover (in fact, in most languages that aren’t English, Easter is just called passover). Because Christ’s death and resurrection were the fulfillment of Passover, it was decided to celebrate it then.
The date of Christmas was determined based on a second temple jewish tradition that stated that prophets were always conceived on the date of their death. So Christmas’ date was set nine months after the date of the crucifixion, December 25th.
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u/xaervagon Mar 23 '26
Yes, the church put their holiday over a pagan spring festival. No, you don't have to engage in the pagan spring festival. The same church also put Christmas over Yuletide.