The Early Christians Didn’t Celebrate Religious Holidays

We have come to perhaps one of the most important “Christian” Holidays of the year. I refer to Easter, Passion, or Resurrection Sunday. The other holiday that that perhaps surpasses Easter, is Christmas (or Christ’s Mass).

The early Christians, of course, didn’t observe religious holidays at all—at least as far as the record goes. Of course, those who profess Christianity (over 2 billion people) do observe such “holidays” as Christmas, Easter, and others. Some observe Passover, Palm Sunday, All Saints Day,” and so forth. We do search in vain for early Christian observance of such days.

We suppose that religious people keep such days for they want to remember Jesus and those events surrounding His life, death, and resurrection. It seems that people delight in remembering and in observing. They want to “celebrate” everything—especially religious holidays.

Of course, early Jewish believers continued to keep certain Jewish days for some time after the resurrection of Christ (which was about AD 30). We  refer to “days and months and seasons and years” (Galatians 4:10) as well as Jewish observances such as “a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day (Colossians 14:16). Perhaps we also refer to the group at Rome who must have come from a Jewish background who also kept “days” (see Romans 14).

Other than this, I don’t find any reference to Gentile converts observing “holidays” (holy days) of any kind in the New Testament or New Covenant writings (see Acts to Revelation). If my study of “church history” is correct, the earliest reference to holiday observance was from Asia Minor and Rome in the second century. This does seem quite early but we can’t close our eyes to reliable history. Sadly and surprisingly we learn that this was the time of a heated debate between two different factions (or schools of thought) of professing Christians. One faction wanted the resurrection to be celebrated the closest “Sunday” to the Jewish observance of Passover while the other faction wanted “Christians” to observe this celebration the exact time of the Jewish remembrance (regardless of the day in the week). Sadly, we don’t believe that true and early believers wanted to keep any special day as a “holy day”!

Thus, as the “Christian” world celebrates the resurrection this year, it is important for true believers to remember that the early Christians didn’t observe any “holidays” at all. “Easter” came along years later, named after the pagan goddess “Ishtar” (or Venus, a false goddess).. Perhaps we should also include Astarte, the “god of the universe” as they considered her. We also think of  Aphrodite and Athena. Those interested may want to check out “Easter” in Wikipedia or the Britannica . (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday).

Let’s remember that as Christians, we want to follow the teachings of Jesus who never gave instructions on how to remember His resurrection. Holidays came years later. Today, especially in Roman Catholicism,  we find observed many dozens of holidays. This is true of certain other groups, such as Anglicans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, the Orthodox (in its many expressions), and others. Instead, we want to do all things the Bible way and believe things the Bible way. Isn’t this the safe, reasonable, orthodox, and right thing to do!

(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_Triduum)

(Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter)

For those of you who can do it, there is a place where one can go and learn about many different religious festivals and holidays—of many different world religions. We are not providing this for your involvement but for your information. Remember, these people are not at all pleasing to God but are to be rejected by Him. https://www.google.com/search?q=Religious+festivals.