Deborah13
Member
Good thoughts.I'm jumpin in on this waaay late, but...here goes...
...I read something by (of course) CS Lewis once. Lots of things in various forms of paganism overlap with Christianity. The resurrected fertility deity, die to be born again (the mystery cults), the one true God (ancient Egypt, for a time...I think there was also mention of an altar dedicated to great unkown God in the NT somewhere...may be wrong...). Anyway...
...the overlap doesn't invalidate Christianity, or Christian holidays. Lewis called these things "good dreams," sort of like a faint revelation of what was to come, since so much of paganism pre-dates both Christianity and Judaism (Abram, as I recall, was called out of a life in Mesopotamia).
To strip Christianity of all pagan influences is unnecessary, because Christ is the fulfillment, the realization, of all those pagan "good dreams."
And there you have it...my 2 cents...
Maybe consider that God's ways came first and pagans copied and corrupted them.
Abel made offerings to God, so did Noah, Job was upright before God somewhere in there....before Abram.