​A recent headline proclaimed, "Man claims he accidentally stabbed his father 50 times." Mark me as skeptical that it is possible to stab someone 50 times accidentally. 50 repetitions clearly speaks of intentionality, of purpose.
One can do a good thing accidentally and also a bad thing accidentally. However, some actions require specific intention. In my mind, worship is one of these. Worship requires a plan, a focus, a desire to offer honor to God. Jumping in a pool is not baptism nor is standing in the rain.
Also doing things that pagans do does not necessarily make one a pagan. As Yeshua (Jesus) said in Matthew 5, when you greet only your brothers in the marketplace you are merely doing what pagans do. This doesn't mean that greeting your brothers in the marketplace is pagan but that God expects more from us.
In Messianic circles there is a pervasive belief that Easter and Christmas are pagan observances. To be quite honest I see plenty that is wrong in both celebrations--particularly as it plays out in modern culture. However, I don't think the "pagan" designation is either truthful or helpful. The people following these observances clearly do not have the intention to perform pagan rituals. That is the last thing on their minds.
One of my favorite Christian speakers recently reflected that he had been told that all of the Christmas trappings were pagan. "So," he said, "I sit here surrounded by the trophies of my defeated enemies." There's always more than one way to view a situation. :)

​In Gulliver's Travels, a book written by Jonathan Swift in 1726, talks of two Islands Lilliput and Blefuscu. These islands are inhabited by small people (1/12 the size of normal people) and are constantly at war with each other. Both islands are ruled by emperors and both subscribe to a prophet Lustrog whose teachings are detailed in their holy book the Blundecral.
In the teachings of the Blundecral it details that eggs should be broken on the convenient end. The Lilliputians believe that this means the smaller end as generations before a son of the emperor had cut his finger breaking an egg on the big end. He thus mandated that all eggs be broken on the small end. The Blefuscans, on the contrary, believe an egg must be broken on the big end.
This resulted in centuries of conflict with many people displaced from their homes and others slain in conflict through the strife between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians. In the story Gulliver washes up on the shore of Lilliput and gains their good graces until he refuses to conquer Blefuscu and force them to adopt the practice of Little-Endians. Gulliver is subsequently charged with treason.
Shakespeare famously said, "A rose by any name would smell as sweet." I am a bit of a word-smith and I love the many wonderful ways words can be used. However, sometimes our debates are as silly and lacking in importance as the debate between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians. A word never has the weight of its referent--as beautiful as the word "rose" is, it never can approach the beauty and fragrance of the flower itself. In our religious squabbles it pays to remember this.

​Abba Eban reputedly said, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but everyone is not entitled to their own facts." This year the church will celebrate Easter (Resurrection Sunday) nearly a month before traditional Judaism celebrates Pesach (Passover) and the internet has already gone into overdrive on posts linking Easter to Ishtar and various other pagan entities.
First early Christianity does appear to have celebrated the Resurrection on the Passover week also observed by Judaism. Within less than a couple of hundred years a controversy developed over whether the Resurrection should be celebrated on the 14th day of Nisan (traditional night of the Passover Seder) or on the Sunday occurring during the week of Unleavened Bread. The famous martyr Polycarp was one of those pushing for the 14th of Nisan. This controversy never was really resolved but more and more Christians moved to the Sunday celebration.
By the Council of Nicaea convened by the emperor Constantine in 325 AD the decision was made that the Resurrection should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring after the Spring Equinox. Two major reasons for their decision was to produce uniformity of observance and completely separate Christian observance of the Resurrection from the Jewish calendar. Sadly while there is no evidence of paganism influencing this choice it is plain that Antisemitism was a major force in the change.
All through church history and still today in the ancient churches of Rome, Istanbul, etc. the name of the Resurrection observance is some form of "pascha" taken from the Hebrew "pesach." In the Dutch, German and English churches the term for the Resurrection became some variant of Easter. This appears to have occurred some time in the 600s AD. In Tyndale's English translation of the Bible in the late 1300s he didn't want to use the Christian term "Easter" for the Hebrew pesach found all through the Tanach (Old Testament.) So he coined the word "Passover" to be the English equivalent of the Hebrew "pesach." Thus in terms of chronological age the term Easter is older than Passover.
However much you like or don't like the silly Easter egg hunts or Easter bunnies they have nothing to do with the name Easter and it is not at all related to the Semitic Ishtar. Eggs are associated with the Resurrection celebration through most of Christianity and most of them have never used or had the word Easter in their vocabulary. They are clearly extraBiblical.
You are all entitled to your opinion but for the sake of peace try to ascertain the facts of the situation. There are plenty of places you can do the research but I would suggest you don't pay much attention to FB memes. We can all make our choices without castigating those we disagree with. It also makes sense to develop a sound case for why you believe in the practice you follow but perhaps we could be a little less severe with those who haven't seen our light as of yet.

​Many times traditions spring up that become so much a part of common understanding that everyone accepts them as truth. I was listening to an excellent preacher this morning who gave a powerful and transformative message. However, he said something that we often hear that is problematic.
His statement was that "the church was born at Pentecost." The danger in this statement is that it may give us the idea that the church was a new thing, birthed after Yeshua's (Jesus) ascension, that burst unknown into the story of the world.
The Bible that Greek-speaking Jews used at the time of the Messiah was the Septuagint. It was composed a couple hundred years before his birth and was a Greek translation of the Tanach (Old Testament) that had rabbinical approval. So many Jews of Yeshua's time would have been familiar with the Septuagint and the words contained in it. Its terminology would have been familiar to Jews at the time of Yeshua.
Interestingly the word "ekklesia" appears 100 times in the Septuagint if you include the apocrypha. This means that the Greek word translated "church" in all our English Bibles was already a common term Jews used to refer to the congregation, the assembly, the synagogue.
So while it may be correct to say the "church" was renewed or revitalized at Pentecost (Shavuot in the Tanach) it was not in a vacuum. It was seen by early believers as a continuation of God's people already assembled. Understanding this can help with the lack of connection many Christians have with their Jewish brothers and sisters. As Paul says we are grafted into their tree not vice versa. We are family.