From: martini@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (ok)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: pagan origin of Christmas customs?
Date: 15 Dec 92 16:50:05 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

In article <Bz3vzM.DCv@apollo.hp.com> stave@apollo.hp.com writes:
>..  Also what, if any, other customs that are practiced
>have their origins in pagan worship?

ok, lets try Easter, from Ester/Ishtarte/similarly named goddess of farming..
it's set onthe first sunday after the first full moon of spring, and outside
of the "first sunday" part, it sounds like a pagan timetabe.. the bunny and
the egg of easter comes from the moon (i may try to post all the figures
that I can see in the moon, from yin yang, to a man, to a bunny, to a woman
picking up a child, to another bunny facing the other way, to a cameo-profile
of a girl... I'll have to ask m' sweet-tart if he can help me get it all 
worked out.. it'd have to be a gif or soemthing)..

St Nick could have been a folk hero that got turned into a saint for 
advertising reason.. dunno.

pick a catholic holiday that started in the middle ages, and see if it had
peasant-in-the-field type origins.. fish friday, which my parents stil try
to follow in honor of christ suffering on good friday is apparently orriginally
from Freya or some other love goddess type, a-phro-dite, and freya's day is
friday, and whichever love-lady-goddess this was, fish were her symbol, and
fish friday would have been in honor of fertility and love, long before that
unfortunate carpenter tangled with the romans..

woldnt it just *upset* people if a nationwide article was published inthe
papers as to the pagan origins of *everything*.. burning your leaves in the
fall?  merry meet!  leaving cookies out for santa??  dont forget to feed the
little people *all* year for good luck!  Ya like full moons, ma'am?  try
counting how  man there are ina year, yes, just almost pre-cisely 13 full
moons, and yes that is where we got the word 'month', and 13 only got a bad
rap after some patriarcle government decided to propaganda pagans out of
the lime light..

people had entertainment before nintendo, constellations and stories to
go with them facsinated me when my pong(goodness, how long ago was that?)
game was taken from me.. a small creek in the neighborhood got me in touch
with nature & beasts long before I had anythought of *not* wanting to grow
up to be a nun.. ya see, we had these sisters, the pink sisters, swear to ya,
who wore habits of a muted baskin robbins pink.. most of them over 40, and
in a convent in austin.. they're gone from austin now, but they're still in
corpus christi, and any pagan would adore their chappel:  a huge purple door,
pink, green, blue, all sorts of stained glass window colors, all over the
walls like just part of the paneling.. wild.  people worry that vrtual
reality will suck their childrens minds away, when there is so much plain 
old reality right handy..  Halloween and Christmas and Easter work *very*
well with a ecological view of the word, if you celebrate them as an american
tradition that recaptures the spirit of "very old" human customs.. parks and
camping and gardening and saying "hi" to strangers are all nearly free enter-
tainment, or even entertainment that pays you back (hi's and gardens)..

celebrate!  be human, and dont forget to breate regularly..
sheilagh,
quite happy to go to a midnight xmas mass and get whatever good can be had
from it.. hell, if protestants can get something good out of a catholic mass,
why should *I* have to give up stained glass and candlelight and family?
merry meet
Newsgroups: alt.pagan