"Holiday tree"

[Ban my account ffs!]

Arguably?  More like factually.  It represented renewal and rebirth at the time of winter solstice.

Easter is literally named after the goddess of spring and the easter bunny is a celebration of fertility.  Ishtar, which sounds remarkably like easter, was the Babylonian goddess of fertility.  

All the patron saints are just replacements for local pagan deities that offered various protections to the various. Communities.

Arizonan...you should realize your Christmas tree has nothing to do with Christ or his birth.  You are celebrating ancient pagan traditions overlain with Christian mythology.

Nowadays people put their modern traditions and beliefs to practice, but keep the holiday tree.  Christians stole it from the pagans...now the atheists are taking it from the Christians.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Arguably?  More like factually.  It represented renewal and rebirth at the time of winter solstice.

Easter is literally named after the goddess of spring and the easter bunny is a celebration of fertility.  Ishtar, which sounds remarkably like easter, was the Babylonian goddess of fertility. 

All the patron saints are just replacements for local pagan deities that offered various protections to the various. Communities.

Arizonan...you should realize your Christmas tree has nothing to do with Christ or his birth.  You are celebrating ancient pagan traditions overlain with Christian mythology.

Nowadays people put their modern traditions and beliefs to practice, but keep the holiday tree.  Christians stole it from the pagans...now the atheists are taking it from the Christians.

BFD. A lot of Jewish traditions are outgrowths of polytheistic Middle Eastern religions. And Islam has a very conspicuous one in the form of the Ka'aba. But that doesn't mean we can all just erect a big black box somewhere and pretend it has nothing to do with Islam.

Actually you could.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Okay I don't really have any opinion on the actual subject of this thread but there are two assertions in Snowguy's post, other than the one that ingemann covered, that I want to address.

1. While it's more or less indisputably true that the word 'Easter' derives from the name of a pagan Anglo-Saxon goddess (even Bede admits this), Sumerian isn't even an Indo-European language, so the 'Ishtar' connection is almost certainly a false cognate. It's also worth noting that this is only true of a few of the Germanic languages--other languages have words for Easter related to Pesach.
2. That is most certainly not true of 'all' or even most patron saints. It's notably truer in some places (e.g. Ireland, where that was done to a significant chunk of the Druidic pantheon) than in others (e.g. the Mediterranean basin, which has from a very early date had more than enough legit Christian historical or semi-historical figures to go around.)

What is your point here?  I never said Easter came from Ishtar.  I said Ishtar, a Babylonian goddess of fertility, sounds remarkably like Easter, a Name attributed to a relatively unknown goddess of the dawn who presides over a holiday that celebrated fertility and rebirth.  A mere curiosity.  Of course I really doubt the pagan germanic gods just evolved out of nowhere.  There wiuld have been influences, perhaps from the areas where civilization first began?  I have no proof...just speculation.

And while ingemann is right that the fir tree was a replacement for the oak that was meant to represent the trinity, why have a tree at all?

The point is.... These were Christian replacements for pagan practices.  Just like holiday trees and getting together and celebrating secularly is a modern replacement, using many of the same props in a very similar process, of Christianity.

This has been happening forever.  If you want to be holier than me and spar over details in a big blow out of fecal pompousness, go right ahead.  Just don't twist my words against me.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Okay I don't really have any opinion on the actual subject of this thread but there are two assertions in Snowguy's post, other than the one that ingemann covered, that I want to address.

1. While it's more or less indisputably true that the word 'Easter' derives from the name of a pagan Anglo-Saxon goddess (even Bede admits this), Sumerian isn't even an Indo-European language, so the 'Ishtar' connection is almost certainly a false cognate. It's also worth noting that this is only true of a few of the Germanic languages--other languages have words for Easter related to Pesach.
2. That is most certainly not true of 'all' or even most patron saints. It's notably truer in some places (e.g. Ireland, where that was done to a significant chunk of the Druidic pantheon) than in others (e.g. the Mediterranean basin, which has from a very early date had more than enough legit Christian historical or semi-historical figures to go around.)

What is your point here?  I never said Easter came from Ishtar.  I said Ishtar, a Babylonian goddess of fertility, sounds remarkably like Easter, a Name attributed to a relatively unknown goddess of the dawn who presides over a holiday that celebrated fertility and rebirth.  A mere curiosity.  Of course I really doubt the pagan germanic gods just evolved out of nowhere.  There wiuld have been influences, perhaps from the areas where civilization first began?  I have no proof...just speculation.

And while ingemann is right that the fir tree was a replacement for the oak that was meant to represent the trinity, why have a tree at all?

The point is.... These were Christian replacements for pagan practices.  Just like holiday trees and getting together and celebrating secularly is a modern replacement, using many of the same props in a very similar process, of Christianity.

This has been happening forever.  If you want to be holier than me and spar over details in a big blow out of fecal pompousness, go right ahead.  Just don't twist my words against me.

The Christmas tree was and is not connected with the pagan oak or ask, first of all the Christmas tree is developed in a area which have not been pagan for millenium, second the winter solstice was not connected with these trees in pagan rituals, but with feasting, sacrifices to the fey and the ancestors and the Wild Hunt. Third when something was hanged on these trees it was not candle light and gifts, but human and animal who was sacrifised to Odin/Woten through hangings (as he was the hanged god).

Just because Christmas is a pagan holiday, it doesn't mean the ritual we use at Christmas have pagan origins, through some myths connected with Christmas like the Wandering Jew is thinly disguised pagan myths adapted into a Christian context.

You are entitled to your opinion on the matter...but even a cursory glance at the wikipedia article for Christmas trees would inform you of the story of St. Boniface cutting down Donar's oak and replacing it with an evergreen fir, because it is triangle shaped and is a reminder of the trinity.

A bit further down it talks of Scandinavian remnants of tree worship by decorating the farmstead with evergreens to scare away the devil.  Which verse in the book of Luke mentions sprucing up the house to scare off Satan? 

Your assertion that the Christmas tree is a purely Christian tradition is ludicrous.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Funnily enough... Martin Luther is thought to have originated the Christmas tree tradition in modern tradition.