Non pagan holidays are celebrations or observances that are not rooted in pagan traditions or beliefs. These holidays often have religious, cultural, or historical significance and are widely celebrated by people of different faiths and backgrounds. One example of a non pagan holiday is Christmas. Christmas is a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. It is observed on December 25th each year and is marked by religious ceremonies, gift-giving, and festive decorations such as Christmas trees and lights. Another example is Easter.

No, Christmas Is Not Based on a Pagan Holiday

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Christmas is a much-beloved holiday, celebrated by billions of people across the globe. In the U.S. alone, the Pew Center reports that nearly 96% of the population celebrates Christmas, including eight out of ten non-Christians, including atheists, agnostics, and those who have no faith commitment. [1] However, Christmas is also a uniquely Christian holiday; its core message is about a personal God taking humanity upon Himself and stepping into the world to redeem sinful human beings who could never redeem themselves. The Christian message is inescapable. I believe the love of Christmas coupled with the loathing of Christianity is one reason why atheists continue to repeat the claim that Christmas is a repurposing of a pagan Roman holiday. Two of the most popular pagan holidays put forth are the celebration of Saturnalia , which honored the Roman god Saturn, or the Dies Natalis of Sol Invictus , which is the “Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun.” Both of these celebrations were held in the second half of December, making them somewhat close to Christmas. The claim that the roots of Christmas are pagan isn't new. The New England Puritans, who valued work more than celebration, taught such. [2] Increase Mather preached that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that ‘Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian.’” [3] When one digs into the actual history, however, a much different picture arises. There are two ways to approach the question: one is to see how December 25 became associated with the Nativity, which is how the early church would have referred to the day of Christ's birth. The other is to look at the celebrations like Saturnalia and Sol Invictus. Let’s explore both. Looking at the History of Christmas Much of the thrust of the “pagan Christmas” claim rests on the idea of a Christianized Rome trying to convert a populace that wouldn't want to give up its feast traditions, akin to the practice of churches celebrating a “Harvest Festival” instead of Halloween. Yet, scholars like Yale University's T.C. Schmidt find the marking of December 25 to appear much earlier in Christian history. When translating Hippolytus' Commentary on Daniel , written just after AD 200, Schmidt notes that five of the seven manuscripts contain December 25 as the date for Jesus' birth and another offers the 25th of either December or March. [4] Clement of Alexandria in this same time offers the date of March 25 as the date of the incarnation—that is, the conception of Jesus—in his Stromata (1.21.145-146). [5] Both works assert the idea that Jesus' death would have happened on the same day as his conception. Christmas and Easter are Linked Why the December 25th date? As Thomas Tulley works out in his book The Origins of the Liturgical Year , early church members believed the date of the death of Jesus would also reflect either his birth or his conception. [6] Augustine wrote of this, saying, “For He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which He was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which He was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before nor since. But He was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.” [7] St. John Chrysostom goes ever further, noting the Angel Gabriel's announcement of Mary's conception happened while Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John the Baptist (Luke 1:26). Chrysostom argues Zechariah's service was the Day of Atonement, thus making the conception of John the Baptist happen in the fall. Add six months and Jesus's conception lands in the spring, that is, March 25. I don't know if this calculation is accurate, but it shows how much the early church tied the events together. The idea of randomly choosing a pagan date instead seems a pretty big stretch. Here's the thing. If Christians were recognizing the birth of Christ by the beginning of the third century, does it make sense to think that this was a fourth century invention to sway the Roman populous over to Christianity? Christianity was gaining ground in the time of Clement, but it was by no means out from under the shadow of persecution. It also wasn't borrowing much from pagan customs at the time. So why believe they would do so for this date? Roman Time and Saturnalia What about the year-end Roman celebration of Saturnalia, though? When studying this holiday, one primary source is Macrobius, a Roman who lived in the fifth century. His Saturnalia provides details on the origin stories of the celebration as well as its customs. T.C. Schmidt highlights this passage from Saturnalia book 1, chapter 10, giving the dates of the celebration:

Our ancestors restricted the Saturnalia to a single day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January, but, after Gaius Caesar had added two days to December, the day on which the festival was held became the sixteenth before the Kalends of January [January 1] , with the result that, since the exact day was not commonly known—some observing the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others following the old usage —the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more days than one.

[But] one can infer, then, from all that has been said, that the Saturnalia lasted but one day and was held only on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January; it was on this day alone that the shout of "Io Saturnalia" would be raised, in the temple of Saturn, at a riotous feast. Now, however, during the celebration of the Saturnalia, this day is allotted to the festival of the Opalia, although the day was first assigned to Saturn and Ops in common. [8]

So Saturnalia was a three-day long feast that began sixteen days before January 1st. Their December was 31 days long as is ours, which places Saturnalia on December 17, far too early to be mistaken for December 25. However, Macrobius notes that another celebration, Sigillaria, was celebrated after these three days. Schmidt in his article provides a translation of chapter ten in its entirety, as dates are referenced throughout. He then concludes:

Macrobius does an excellent job summarizing authorities that were available to him, most of which I think have been lost. His conclusion is quite clear, Saturnalia originally was one day and occurred on the 14th day before the Kalends January, but when Caesar altered the calendar it was extended to three days and started on the 16th, later a new Festival of Sigillaria extended the celebrations to complete seven days, meaning that the Festival ended on either the 10th or ninth day before the Kalends of January depending on how we count. Of course neither of these days fall on the eighth day before the Kalends of January, that is December 25. [9]

The Dates Don't Fit Remember, Macrobius was writing in the fifth century AD and we have Christmas sermons from John Chrysostom preached on December 25th from a century earlier. Yet the dates don't correspond. If Christmas was created to supplant Saturnalia, the Christians would have chosen December 17th. Add to that the references I noted about the December 25th date stretching all the way back to A.D. 200 and you have a very real problem with Saturnalia being the origin of the date for Christmas.

Imagine a modern church seeking to replace Halloween celebrations by having a Harvest festival on November 8. It wouldn't work! People could celebrate one and then attend the other. The concept of substitution would be fairly ineffective in such a case.

There is one other possibility suggested when discussing Christmas borrowing from pagan Rome: Sol Invictus—the winter solstice. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space to explore it here. However, you can read about why that suggestion fails as well by visiting https://apologetics-notes.comereason.org/2015/12/christmas-solstice-and-december-25th.html . I hope this little study has encouraged you to see that sometimes historic coincidences aren’t always significant. Our assumptions can be very wrong sometimes! You may celebrate the coming of Jesus confidently knowing this is a very Christian holiday, and let me wish you a very merry and blessed Christmas! References [1] Besheer Mohammed. “Christmas Also Celebrated by Many Non-Christians.” Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center, 23 Dec. 2013. Web. 14 Dec. 2015. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/23/christmas-also-celebrated-by-many-non-christians/ . [2] Rachel N. Schnepper. “Yuletide's Outlaws.” The New York Times . 14 Dec. 2012. Web. 15 Dec. 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/the-puritan-war-on-christmas.html?_r=0 [3] Stephen Nissenbaum. The Battle for Christmas . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Print. 4. [4] T.C. Schmidt. “Hippolytus and the Original Date of Christmas” Chronicon.net . T.C. Schmidt. 21 Nov 2010. Web. http://web.archive.org/web/20130303163053/http://chronicon.net/blog/chronology/hippolytus-and-the-original-date-of-christmas 16 Dec 2015. [5] T.C. Schmidt. “Clement of Alexandria and the Original date of Christmas as December 25th.” Chrinicon.net . T.C. Schmidt. 17 Dec 2010. Web. http://web.archive.org/web/20120822053409/http://chronicon.net/blog/hippolytus/clement-of-alexandria-and-the-original-date-of-christmas-as-december-25th/ 16 Dec 2015. [6] Thomas J. Talley. The Origins of the Liturgical Year . New York: Pueblo Pub, 1986. Print. 91ff. [7] Augustine of Hippo. On the Trinity , IV, 5. Logos Virtual Library. Trans. Arthur West Haddan. Darren L. Slider, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2015. http://www.logoslibrary.org/augustine/trinity/0405.html . [8] T.C. Schmidt. “The dates of Saturnalia (and Sigillaria!) and Christmas.” Chronicon.net . T.C. Schmidt. 18 Dec 2010. Web. https://web.archive.org/web/20140721073230/http:/chronicon.net/blog/christmas/the-dates-of-saturnalia-and-sigillaria-and-christmas/ [9] Ibid. — Author, speaker, and debater Lenny Esposito has been spreading convincing Christianity across the globe by stirring the hearts and minds of the lost and the church for over twenty years. A pioneer in online apologetics with his popular ComeReason.org website and podcast, Lenny has also contributed to books such as the award-winning Apologetics Study Bible for Students (B&H, 2010), A New Kind of Apologist (Harvest House, 2016), and True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism ( Kregel, 2014). His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Southern California Christian Times . Image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay

Believing Philosophy

• The problem of evil
• Rationality and faith
• Free will
• Skeptical theism
• The moral argument for the existence of God
• Reformed epistemology

Surviving the Holidays with Your Non-Pagan Family

In some families, the holiday get-together is something we look forward to. In fact, it may be the only time you even see some members of your family. However, if you’re a Pagan and the rest of them aren’t, there are times when the winter holidays can be a bit awkward. So what can you do to make the season’s celebrations a bit more harmonious?

First of all, remember that this is a day for families to get together and enjoy themselves.

It’s not a day to battle about religion or anything else. If your extended family celebrates a Christian holiday, no matter how you feel about Christianity, don’t choose this as the day to talk about how ridiculous you think the Baby Jesus story is.

Recognize that just because you celebrate the Solstice or Yule doesn’t necessarily mean that your whole family wants to hear about it. If your family is uncomfortable with your choice of spiritual path, Christmas dinner at Grandma’s is not the time to bring it up. While it’s nice to be able to share your beliefs with people you love, if it makes them uncomfortable, drop the subject, at least for now.

Think about starting a new tradition. If your family is willing and open, consider asking them to join you at your home for a Solstice breakfast or something similar. This way, they can see what and how you celebrate, and then you can join them a few days later for Christmas.

Keep communication open. If a parent or sibling asks questions about your beliefs, answer honestly, but don’t let them antagonize you. If your sister tells you you’re a sinner who’s going to burn in hell, step back from the discussion. Say, “You know, I’m sorry you feel this way, and I’d be happy to discuss it another time, but not today. Pass the gravy, please.”

If your family says a Christian blessing before eating, don’t make a scene. You’re not obligated to participate, but what you could do instead is offer up a silent thanks to the gods of your own tradition.

If going to a family member’s home holds unpleasant memories for you — if you grew up in an abusive family, for example — then take something along with you that makes you feel better. Bring along a favorite crystal, a sachet with soothing herbs, or a piece of jewelry that makes you feel grounded.

When you feel yourself getting stressed out, take a few minutes to get away from everyone who’s making you feel frustrated, and try to re-center yourself. Remember, you’re just visiting, and you’ll be going home soon.

If you’re taking your spouse or partner with you, talk to them ahead of time about any concerns or fears you may have about seeing your family. Sharing these worries is healthy, plus it will allow you to present a united front.

Keep your alcohol consumption to a minimum, or don’t drink at all during a holiday event. Booze tends to make us say things we normally wouldn’t, and the last thing you want to do is get in a drunken shouting match with your mom just because she thinks your pentacle necklace is tacky.

Finally, understand that while people can change, they don’t do it overnight. If there’s a conflict about spiritual beliefs at your family’s holiday dinner, wait until another time to work on it. Realize that if even your family doesn’t approve of your religion, they still love you.

Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?

We’ve heard it so many times that it’s practically part of the Christmas story itself.

The Romans celebrated their seven-day winter festival, Saturnalia, starting on December 17. It was a thoroughly pagan affair full of debauchery and the worship of the god Saturn. To mark the end of the winter solstice, the Roman emperor established December 25 as a feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun). Wanting to make Christianity more palatable to the Romans and more popular with the people, the church co-opted these pagan festivals and put the celebration of the birth of their Savior on December 25. For whatever the Christmas holiday has become today, it started as a copycat of well-established pagan holidays. If you like Christmas, you have Saturnalia and Sol Invictus to thank.

That’s the story, and everyone from liberal Christians to conservative Christians to non-Christians seem to agree that it’s true.

Except that it isn’t.

For starters, we should distinguish between roots that suggest a rip-off and roots that suggest a rebuke. The presence of some connection between a Christian celebration and a pagan celebration could imply a synchronistic copy-cat (“Hey, let’s Christianize this popular pagan holiday so as to make our celebration more palatable”), or it could mean a deliberate rejection (“Hey, this pagan holiday is horrible, so let’s put something distinctively Christian in its place”). After the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century, Christians did sometimes adapt and Christianize pagan festivals. Whether they did so wisely and effectively is open to historical debate, but the motivation was to transform the paganism of the Roman world rather than raze it to the ground. Even if Christmas was plopped down on December 25 because of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, that by itself does not entail that the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth really began as a pagan festival.

But in the case of Christmas, there is good evidence that December 25 was not chosen because of any pagan winter holidays. This is the argument Andrew McGowan, of Yale Divinity School, makes in his article “How December 25 Became Christmas” (first published in Bible Review in 2002). Let me try to distill McGowan’s fine historical work by addressing three questions.

When did Christians first start celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25?

Unlike Easter, which developed as a Christian holiday much earlier, there is no mention of birth celebrations from the earliest church fathers. Christian writers like Irenaeus (130-200) and Tertullian (160-225) say nothing about a festival in honor of Christ’s birth, and Origen (165-264) even mocks Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries as pagan practices. This is a pretty good indication that Christmas was not yet on the ecclesiastical calendar (or at least not widespread), and that if it were, it would not have been tied to a similar Roman holiday.

This does not mean, however, that no one was interested in the date of Christ’s birth. By the late second century, there was considerable interest in dating the birth of Jesus, with Clement of Alexandria (150-215) noting several different proposals, none of which was December 25. The first mention of December 25 as Jesus’s birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century almanac called the Philocalian Calendar. A few decades later, around AD 400, Augustine would indicate that the Donatists kept Christmas festivals on December 25 but refused to celebrate Epiphany on January 6 because they thought the latter date was a recent invention. Since the Donatists, who arose during the persecution under Diocletian in 312, were stubbornly opposed to any compromise with their Roman oppressors, we can be quite certain they did not consider the celebration of Christmas, or the date of December 25, to be pagan in origin. McGowan concludes that there must have been an older North African tradition that the Donatists were steeped in and, therefore, the earliest celebrations of Christmas (we know about) can be dated to the second half of the third century. This is well before Constantine and during a time period when Christians were trying to steadfastly avoid any connections to pagan religion.

When was it first suggested that Christmas grew out of pagan origins?

None of the church fathers in the first centuries of the church makes any reference to a supposed connection between Christmas and Saturnalia or Sol Invictus. You might think, Well of course they didn’t. That would have been embarrassing. But if the whole point of basing your Christian birth holiday on an existing pagan birth holiday is to make your religion more popular or more understandable, surely someone would say something. Besides, as McGowan points out, it’s not like future Christian leaders shied away from making these connections. Gregory the Great, writing in 601, urged Christian missionaries to turn pagan temples into churches and to repurpose pagan festivals into feast days for Christian martyrs.

There is no suggestion that the birth of Jesus was set at the time of pagan holidays until the 12th century, when Dionysius bar-Salibi stated that Christmas was moved from January 6 to December 25 to correspond with Sol Invictus. Centuries later, post-Enlightenment scholars of comparative religions began popularizing the idea that the early Christians retrofitted winter solstice festivals for their own purposes. For the first millennium of the church’s history, no one made that connection.

Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?

The first answer to the question is that some Christians don’t. In the Eastern branch of the church, Christmas is celebrated on January 6, probably for the same reasons—according to a different calculation—that Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25 in the West. Although we can’t be positive, there is good reason to think that December 25 became the date for Christmas because of its connection to the (presumed) date of Jesus’s death and to the date of Jesus’s conception.

There are three dates at play in this calculation. Let’s start with the date of Jesus’s death.

Around AD 200, Tertullian of Carthage noted that Jesus died on the 14th day of Nisan, which was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman solar calendar. In the East, they made their calculation using the 14th day of the first spring month in their local Greek calendar. In the Roman calendar, this was April 6. So depending on who you asked, Jesus died on either March 25 or April 6.

In both the West and the East, there developed the same tradition that Jesus died on the same date he was conceived. An anonymous Christian treatise from fourth-century North Africa stated that March 25 was “the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.” Augustine in On the Trinity mentioned that same calculation. Similarly, in the East, the fourth-century bishop Epiphanius of Salamis maintained that on April 6 Christ took away the sins of the world and on the same date was “shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin.” The fact that this curious tradition existed in two different parts of the world suggests it may have been rooted in more than mere speculation. If nothing else, as McGowan observes, these early Christians were borrowing from an ancient Jewish tradition that said that the most important events of creation and redemption occurred at the same time of the year.

From the date of Christ’s death, to the (same) date of his conception, we can easily see where the date of Christmas could have come from. If Jesus was conceived on March 25, then the best date to celebrate his birth must be nine months later on December 25 (or, in the East, January 6). While we can’t know for certain that this is where December 25 came from—and we certainly can’t be dogmatic about the historicity of the date—there is much better ancient evidence to suggest that our date for Christmas is tied to Christ’s death and conception than tied to the pagan celebrations of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church (PCA) in Matthews, North Carolina, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He is the author of more than 20 books and a popular columnist, blogger, and podcaster. Kevin’s work can be found on clearlyreformed.org. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children.

Should a Christian celebrate holidays?

The Bible nowhere instructs Christians to celebrate holidays. Days such as Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Independence Day, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., are not mentioned in Scripture. The Bible does not even mandate Christmas or Easter observances. The lack of any biblical command or precedent regarding the celebration of modern holidays has led some to refrain from observing these days, even those holidays that are considered Christian.

The only holidays mentioned in Scripture are the Jewish feast days: Passover (Mark 14:12), Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:6), Firstfruits (Leviticus 23:10; 1 Corinthians 15:20), Pentecost (Acts 2:1), Trumpets (Leviticus 23:24), the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:27), and Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34). Many scholars believe the feast mentioned in John 5:1 is Purim, although it is unnamed. The Old Testament also mentions the New Moon festival, which marked the consecration to God of each new month in the year. New Moon festivals involved sacrifices, the blowing of trumpets (Numbers 10:10), the suspension of all labor and trade (Nehemiah 10:31), and social or family feasts (1 Samuel 20:5). None of these holidays, although “biblical” in the sense that they are in the Bible, are mandated for Christians. Jesus Christ came to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17) and establish a new covenant (Luke 22:20), and the Jewish feasts find their fulfillment in Him.

While there is no command in the Bible for New Testament Christians to celebrate holidays, neither is there a prohibition from doing so. The Bible never speaks against celebrating holidays. On the basis of that alone, it is allowable for Christians to celebrate holidays.

Some Christians avoid celebrating holidays because many of the holidays celebrated today—even those usually labeled as “Christian” holidays—are of questionable origin. It’s true that the Christian celebration of certain holidays may represent a reclamation of pagan celebrations—an ancient pagan holiday was “redeemed” for God’s glory, imbued with new meaning, and adorned with different traditions designed to worship the Lord. Some Christians cannot overlook the historical pagan associations of those holidays; others have come to terms with the history and praise God for the modern opportunity to magnify God’s name.

Some holidays are more overtly compatible with Christianity than others. Christmas and Easter, of course, are Christian celebrations of Jesus’ birth and resurrection. Thanksgiving Day promotes the biblical ideal of gratefulness. Such holidays give Christians plenty of reason to celebrate. Other holidays, such as Halloween and Groundhog Day, are a little more difficult to associate with biblical beliefs.

Christians trying to decide whether or not to celebrate a holiday should consider a few things: a) Does the holiday in any way promote false doctrine, superstition, or immorality (Galatians 5:19–23)? b) Can we thank God for what we observe on a holiday (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18)? c) Will celebrating the holiday detract from our Christian testimony or witness (Philippians 2:15)? d) Is there a way to “redeem” elements of the holiday and use them to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31)? In asking all these questions, we should pray to God, asking Him for guidance (James 1:5).

In the end, the celebration of holidays is a matter of conscience. Romans 14:4–6a makes this clear: “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. . . . One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord.” We can draw several principles from this passage:

1) Christians may have sincere disagreements about the observance of holidays, and such disagreements are not to be a source of conflict.
2) Each of us must give an account to God for our own actions.
3) We do not have the right to judge another believer in the matter of celebrating holidays.
4) In any day that we consider “special,” our observance must be “to the Lord.”

Another example is Easter. Easter is also a Christian holiday that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Easter is often celebrated with church services, family gatherings, and the exchange of Easter eggs and chocolates. In addition to Christian holidays, there are also non pagan holidays that have cultural or historical significance. For example, Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada to give thanks for the blessings of the year and the harvest. It is typically observed on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and the second Monday of October in Canada. Thanksgiving is marked by feasts with family and friends, parades, and expressing gratitude. Other non pagan holidays include New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, among others. Each of these holidays has its own unique customs and traditions that are observed by people of various backgrounds and beliefs. Overall, non pagan holidays are important celebrations that bring people together to commemorate religious, cultural, or historical events. They provide an opportunity for individuals to connect with their faith, heritage, and community, and to celebrate the values and traditions that are meaningful to them..

Reviews for "Non-Pagan Holidays: Balancing Tradition and Innovation"

1. John - 1/5

I found "Non Pagan Holidays" to be extremely dismissive and narrow-minded. The author seemed to have little appreciation for the rich cultural and historical significance of non-pagan holidays. The book only focused on pagan holidays, completely disregarding the value and importance of other religious and cultural celebrations. It felt biased and one-sided, lacking any sort of objective analysis. I was highly disappointed in this book and would not recommend it to anyone seeking a well-rounded perspective on holidays.

2. Sarah - 2/5

I was excited to learn more about non-pagan holidays, but "Non Pagan Holidays" fell short of my expectations. While it did touch on some non-pagan celebrations, it predominantly focused on pagan holidays, leaving little room for other cultural and religious traditions. I was also disappointed by the lack of depth in the explanations and exploration of the holidays discussed. The book seemed more like a superficial overview rather than an in-depth examination. Overall, I felt let down by "Non Pagan Holidays" and wouldn't recommend it to those seeking comprehensive information on diverse holiday traditions.

3. Lisa - 2/5

"Non Pagan Holidays" seemed to have a clear agenda, promoting the superiority of pagan holidays over others. The author's biased perspective overshadowed any potential value the book could have offered. I was hoping for a balanced exploration of various holiday traditions, but instead, I found a narrow focus on pagan celebrations. The lack of inclusivity and the author's disregard for the importance of other religious and cultural festivities made this book unenjoyable for me. Unless you are solely interested in pagan holidays, I would suggest looking for a more comprehensive and unbiased resource.

4. David - 1/5

I had high hopes for "Non Pagan Holidays," but unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. The book's title implies an exploration of diverse holiday traditions, yet it predominantly focuses on pagan celebrations. I was disappointed by the lack of depth and variety in the content. The author seemed to overlook the significance and beauty of non-pagan holidays, making this book feel biased and incomplete. If you are looking for a comprehensive understanding of holiday traditions, I would advise seeking alternative resources that provide a more inclusive perspective.

Non-Pagan Holidays: A Bridge Between Traditions