Origins of Sunday Worship Might Not Be Pagan

Some of you know this about me already, but for some time now I've had issues with participating in "Christian holidays." The first problem is that none of these special days of worship were instituted by God, as opposed to the Old testament ones such as Passover or Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles). But if that were my only qualm, that would be insufficient because we see that even Jesus participated in Chanukah (see John 10), which is not a specifically God-ordained festival. The real struggle I continue to have with Christian holidays is their origins in pagan worship.

For example, Easter is directly related to the Babylonian spring time worship of their queen of heaven, Astarte (Isthar). The 40 days of Lent have strong similarities to the ancient fasting and mourning practices of the pagan Babylonians, Egyptians, and Mexican sun worshipers. Christmas was used as a substitute for the disgusting celebration of Saturnalia, though history shows us that many of the sinful practices were allowed to continue under the supposed new Christian celebration.

Here are a couple of links that provide more details on the pagan origins of Christian holidays. I don't agree with everything they say by any means, they simply provide some good historical and biblical references in regards to this topic.

Pagan-Holidays

Christmas_The Real Story

This concern about pagan origins has also been associated with Christians gathering to worship on Sundays. However, I was recently encouraged when I came across an article that argues against the idea that Sunday worship was another substitute for pagan practices. Click here for a chance to read the whole article. Here's my quick summary...

D.M. Canright, a seventh-day adventist minister researched this in the early 1900's, inquiring of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum in London, Harvard University, The Smithsonian and a few others. The compiled answers from each institution give a resounding "No" in answer to the question "Did Sunday worship come from paganism?" See some examples...

Question 1: Did the pagan Romans and Greeks ever

have any regular weekly day of rest from secular

work?

Answer: No.

Question 4: Did they have any special day of the

week when individuals went to the temples to pray

or make offerings?

Answer: No; both for Greeks and Romans the month

was the unit and not the week.

Question 5: As Sunday was sacred to the Sun, Monday

to the Moon, Saturday to Saturn, etc., were those

supposed deities worshipped on their own particular

days more than on any other days?

Answer: No; the old worship of the gods was disappearing

when the seven-day week came about. The

signifi cance of the deities’ names was astrological,

not religious, e.g.,

Question 10: Did the pagan reverence for Sunday

have anything to do in influencing Christians to

select that day as their rest day?

Answer: No; it can hardly be said that there

was any special reverence for Sunday in pagan

times (see answer to Number 5).

My conclusion is that there is not a strong argument against Sunday worship in the way that there is against Easter or Christmas, nor is there a strong biblical case in favor of the church meeting primarily on Sundays. There's some liberty there. That's helpful to me cause now I can just wrestle with the days that happen a couple times a year, and not the one that happens weekly :)