Pagan Origins

The COG Hatred of Paganism

“Man shall not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” -Denis Diderot

However, Armstrongism only feels this way when it comes to anything it perceives to be pagan. Herbert W. Armstrong waged a war against any religious rite, tradition, holiday or celebration with even the slightest hint of ancient pagan origins.

This irrational, often conspiratorially-minded stance wedges a rift not only between the COG and mainstream Christianity, but between friends and family members as Armstrongites refuse to mingle among anyone in their social circles or extended relatives who partake in traditions they see as heathen.

The COG weaves intricate tales of historical fiction to show some satanic conspiracy tinging everything “of the world” with the legacy of long-dead heathens. It really does more harm than good and serves only to promote historical inaccuracy and misinformation.

What’s Really Pagan?

Paganism is a large umbrella of beliefs usually referring to indigenous polytheistic beliefs. This not only covers tribal religious traditions, but the pervasive state religions of Greece and Rome and the many Mystery cults that thrived within.

Some pagan-dominated cultures, such as certain Germanic tribes and even the Northern Israelites as described in the Bible, were indeed often brutal, irrational and seemingly amoral, partaking in human sacrifice and other horrific rituals.

However, the COG takes these extreme examples and paints all non-Abrahamic religions as being rooted in blood-letting, Satan-worshiping terror. They often miss that modern-day pagans are peaceful, often rational people, and in the case of the many strains of Hinduism, peaceful and coexistent, something that Christianity’s long history cannot claim.

The classical religious beliefs of the Greeks and Romans may seem strange to us today, but were they really all that different from the Old Testament Levitical priesthood? Certainly, there are codified differences in purity rites and the types of animals they sacrificed, and to what gods. However, the differences are really superficial. Both built temples, both made animal sacrifices on altars, prayed to their deities in earnest and brought their divinities to war as they conquered their neighbors.

The COG likes to point to monotheism as the defining factor separating “the truth” from the polytheism within paganism. Yet, monotheism wasn’t at all confined to Mosiac tradition, and many ancient religious movements the COG would also call pagan worshiped a single supreme deity (Zoroastrianism, Atenism, Mardukism, etc).

Ultimately, pagan mystery religions, with all of their rites, symbols, festivals and traditions, were centered around survival in a harsh world. This is why they focused on elements such as fertility and reproduction, agriculture, harmony with nature, the sun, moon, seasons and stars. They were ways to distribute information important to the well-being of growing societies between generations through oral tradition.

The Levitical prescriptions in the Bible are really more of the same, as they focus on harvests, moons, disease control and other elements necessary to help primitive peoples thrive in a dire world bereft of the critical infrastructure science produced to comfort us today.

The underlying point of all this is to show that the differences between the ancient religious traditions found in the Bible and everyone else are technical at best, and they all soak the same soup of necessity of survival, which sometimes translated to irrationality and violence as early humanity carved its mark into the Earth.

True Pagan Roots of Holidays

The COG often relies on 19th century “scholarly works” written to concoct crazy relationships between present-day holiday and cultural traditions, and what they view as Satan-molesting baby killers.

Garner Ted Armstrong and other WCG church leaders produced historically errant church literature that filled the heads of COG members, who propagate the same misinformation about the origins of Christmas and Easter today. A favorite that still sits in congregational libraries is The Two Babylons by Rev. Alexander Hislop, a poorly-researched tomb from 1853 that’s nothing more than an anti-Catholic hit-piece.

While it is definitely true that both Christmas and Easter, far from being “Christian” in origin, do in fact have strong ties to pagan tradition, the lineage isn’t nearly so direct as the COG would insist, and the celebrations as they exist today are far removed from their ancient counterparts.

There’s plenty of Christ in Christmas

The Bible doesn’t give a date for the birth of Jesus Christ, and it’s unlikely December 25 would be an accurate day to celebrate his birthday, if he was born at all. Prior to Christmas, there were many solar holidays revolving around the date of the Winter Solstice, an important event to ancient societies that promised the return of spring and life.

However, the COG and other fundamentalists like to say Christmas is nothing more than a repackaged version of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (the birthday of the unconquered sun), a supposedly Roman solstice holiday that took place on December 25. The problem is, there’s no definitive proof that this celebration actually ever existed. Again, solstice celebrations were common during the era, but this isn’t likely to have been one of them.

Some paganism associated with Christmas can indeed be found in the Bible where it discusses fastening ornate trees. And it’s obvious when the Catholic Church instituted Christmas, they allowed people to craft a large amalgamation of traditional pagan solstice rites into their celebrations of Christ’s birthday, in the name of converting the heathen masses to the new religion.

However, rather than Christmas being a continuation of a specific pagan celebration (the holiday didn’t arise and spread until the 4th century CE), it’s a Christian-created holiday. In fact, before Christmas was established as the “official” birthday celebration for Jesus Christ, many Christians celebrated Epiphany on January 6 in its place, after the Winter Solstice and its pagan connotations would have already passed for the year.

So basically, there’s no consistent continuation of December 25 celebrations between pagan tradition and early Christianity, and any pagan elements were added gradually over time.

It’s Always Sunny in Rome

The COG and other fundamentalist just love to blame many of the things wrong with mainstream Christianity on the Roman god Sol Invictus, which they see as an avatar for Satan. Aside from Christmas, they like to pin the shift of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday on the ancient Romans once again.

Yes, the Romans dedicated one a day a week, called “Sol” to Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun. Instead of being a day of religious rest and service however, merchants actually used it as pay day for their employees. Sunday wasn’t turned into a day of rest where shops were closed until Constantine instituted it in 321 CE, long after the ancient Romans were running around paying homage to Sol Invictus.

Sunday worship as we know it today was an invention of early Christianity in Rome, and while it bears superficial similarities to pagan sun worship, there was no known “Sabbath day equivalent” among ancient pagan societies. There was no single day of worship common among those societies, and usually, every day was a worship day for one god or another.

While it’s more accurate to say that the Sabbath was never changed from Saturday in the Bible, to say that it was changed by secret pagans just isn’t supported by the facts. It probably had a lot more to do with the rampant antisemitism of the age, and the need for Christians to set themselves apart from the Jews.

A Tale of Bunnies and Eggs

Contrary to silly COG beliefs, Easter is not derived from a Babylonian celebration honoring the goddess Ishtar. Instead, the word Easter derives from the Old English term Ēostre, a reference to an Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess. See the difference?

It’s splitting hairs, but accuracy is important. Easter is supposed to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt. Mainstream Christians usually equate it with the Jewish Passover, though there is much dispute over the timing of this movable festival.

This is a religious holiday that didn’t arise until the late 2nd century CE. Early Christians before this didn’t celebrate any specifically-Christian holidays, though they were aware of the Hebrew calendar.

The traditional symbolism  of bunnies, eggs and other signs of fertility are certainly pagan in origin, but are not from any specific celebration that was transformed into Easter, and they have no root whatsoever in mandates from the early Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

If anything, these traditions were practiced in peasant communities and passed-down, probably as lingering echoes of pagan rites they weren’t allowed to partake in upon their conversion to Christanity. Ironically, they’re attached to a Christian celebration because early Christians were trying, unsuccessfully, to stamp-out heathenism.

Uncommon Roots

The COG is pretty silly when it comes to its crusade against paganism, yet it has a blind spot to the pagan traditions they themselves partake in gleefully. The problem with trying to eliminate paganism is that it’s everywhere, since its origins are tied to the development of the human psyche from ancient times to today.

There is almost nothing that can’t, in some way, be tied to pagan rites of some sort. It’s a game of six degrees from Horus, and the COG and other fundamentalists can drive themselves crazy trying to play it.

One example is Mother’s Day, which has just as many pagan connotations as Christmas or Easter. And yet, because it’s an “American holiday” established by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, it somehow gets a pass.

However, if we wanted to play the COG’s game, we could connect it to the Roman holiday Hilaria to honor the goddess Cybele. It occurred around the same time as Mother’s Day, and involved similar traditions such as games, gift-giving and honoring motherhood.

See how this game works?

Pagan Influences in the Bible

Speaking of conspiratorial pap, let’s watch Zeitgeist: Part I – The Greatest Story Ever Told. While there are many factual errors, including a glaring omission that there was no set date for the birth of Jesus Christ, it does make some salient points about the pervasiveness of pagan influence on our culture and the formation of modern-day religion.

Despite some wild speculation and unsupported details, Zeitgeist is absolutely right to equate Jesus Christ to similar pagan solar deities that died and were reborn. Even the early church fathers saw the similarities between their beliefs and those of Gnostic pagans.

The COG needs to realize how easy this game is to play. When using paganism as a means of disqualifying and dismissing the beliefs and traditions of others, it can actually be used to destroy all of religion when taken to its ultimate conclusion.

Hypocrisy on Parade

There are no new ideas under the sun, not today, and not when Christianity was being established. Whatever pagan rites bled into the early church, and there were indeed many, meanings change.

Paganism wasn’t necessarily a sinister thing to begin with, and its supposed descendants bare little-to-no resemblance to their ancient and medieval counterparts.

Kids weren’t trick-or-treating in plastic costumes and wrecking their teeth with candy in ancient Celtic tribes, and consumerism didn’t run amok like it does today.

Holiday traditions today are about food, family and rampant commercialism, not about honoring long-dead gods and defunct priesthoods from the mystery schools.

The COG’s war against paganism is hypocritical considering the pagan ties to Biblical beliefs themselves, and all it does is serve to make its sheep more ignorant and isolated than they already are.