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Tag: Bede

Is Easter Pagan?

Is Easter Pagan?

Every year fundamentalist Christians, New Agers, neo-pagans and many atheists loudly agree that Easter was not originally a Christian feast and was a pagan fertility festival stolen by Christianity. Unfortunately, despite what endless memes and pop history articles claim, this idea is complete nonsense. So is the claim that Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny are also originally pagan. It is rather ironic that a set of false historical claims about the origin of Easter and its customs are propagated…

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Pagan Christmas

Pagan Christmas

It is traditional that the media be filled with pseudo historical nonsense about the pagan elements of Christmas at this time of year. But atheists who claim to be “working for a more rational world” really should be more careful than harried journalists when presenting the “real history” of the season. Unfortunately, they almost never are. As I have noted here before, the media loves giving dubious background stories on traditions and festivals. At Christmas, it fills column inches or…

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Easter, Ishtar, Eostre and Eggs

Easter, Ishtar, Eostre and Eggs

  As I mentioned in my last post, two things we can now be sure the internet will deliver up at Easter are rehashes of the tedious “Jesus never existed” thesis and memes telling us that “Easter is actually pagan!”.  The one above has become one of the most popular in recent years, so much so that its “Ishtar = Easter” claim has taken on internet factoid status. More recently, online New Atheists seem to have finally worked out that…

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