I was in college and my grandpa asked when Easter was, and when my mom looked at the calendar and told him, he said that wasn’t right and said it should be the first Sunday after the 4th full moon (he was a farmer and that’s always when he started his gardens). So, she counted the full moons from Jan on, and sure enough, that week was Passover, and Easter was 2 weeks off, which made no sense, b/c the Bible tells us the Last Supper was a Passover seder.

Well, Mom looked up Easter in an old set of Encyclopedias she had and read all about its pagan roots. We had certainly never heard that at church!! So she looked up Christmas, and sure enough… same thing.

Then we went to the Bible which tells us that God’s Feasts are a picture of things to come. From that year on, we have never celebrated Easter or Christmas. I know there are MANY Christians who do both the Feasts and “traditional Christian” holidays, but we just felt very strongly that God was convicting our hearts about this and that we shouldn’t be putting up a tree

(Jeremiah 10 – Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. 2 This is what the Lord says:

“Do not learn the ways of the nations
or be terrified by signs in the heavens,
though the nations are terrified by them.
3 For the practices of the peoples are worthless;
they cut a tree out of the forest,
and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.
4 They adorn it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails
so it will not totter…”)

or otherwise celebrating the holidays we had grown up with.

We don’t do the Feasts because we think we have to, but because God created them. However, Christmas and Easter, are based on the pagan traditions of man. (Isaiah 55:8 – For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.”).

I don’t think you can “baptize” a pagan holiday and call it Christian. God’s people tried to integrate pagan practices into their worship of Him over and over again (Read 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles, and all of the prophets, to see our Lord’s opinion of and reaction to that).

People actually get mad at us when we tell them that our 5 and almost 3 year old children don’t do egg hunts, etc. It is hard, apparently, for me to be passionate about something w/o coming across as condescending, so I usually avoid the subject altogether. My husband never shies away from telling others our beliefs, and people tend not to get as defensive. They even ask for more information, and he provides it. So far, none of them have done anything so drastic and stop celebrating Christmas or Easter, but several have started studying the Feasts and are acknowledging that our Savior is in fact a Hebrew.

For what it’s worth, we still go to church on Sunday. I love worshiping with other believers, and the awesome children’s program there, but I don’t pretend that God changed the Sabbath to Sunday. Our pastor recently went to an intense study-trip to Israel and has has been sharing some wonderful insights in his sermons. He’s been impressed how even the seeing the geography of the Holy Land gives you a better understanding of the Scriptures. I don’t see him proposing that we abandon “traditional Christian” holidays for the Feasts anytime soon though. :-/

There is a small Messianic group in my town, made up of a dozen or so Jewish and Gentile believers, who gather on Friday nights for a Sabbath dinner, and Sat. morning for Bible study, and we enjoy that too, and pray that others will join us as God leads them.

Thanks

Steve

Please note all the “obey” references. Then, do a study on the Sabbath. It will blow you away to see just how important that Sabbath is to our Lord.

Remember the Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever. Jer 6:16 “Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the OLD PATHS, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” In the kingdom, “he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.” Just what do we think his paths and his laws are? We find in Ezekiel 43-46, his laws for the future are the same as they were in the past. We better practice now! God Bless