Faith Filled Family Magazine October 2016 | Page 64

through history since the 300s,
turned his charitable and God
loving legacy into a supernatural iconic fabled person that enabled parents to deceive their
children into believing that good
behavior would be rewarded
with Santa Claus entering their
homes and setting out gifts for
them. This idea of gift giving has
elevated and lent itself to commercialism on a grand scale. Gift
giving has grown to such an extreme that people go into more
debt and succumb to events like
Black Friday, Christmas sales,
and decorations to celebrate a
system of secularism which is
so far removed from the celebration of Christ’s birth that the only
thought of Christ is the Christmas Eve church service people
may go to if it doesn’t disrupt
their other holiday plans. The
real Christmas story is nil and
instead we watch cartoons with
Santa Claus and other feel good
shows and movies to make society feel good about themselves.
The Easter Bunny.
The Easter Bunny is another
example of a fable which contorted the Christian celebration
of Christ’s resurrection from its
original modus operandi into
something opposed to Christ by
man. The tradition and legend of
the Easter Bunny was brought
to the United States in the late
1700’s and early 1800’s by German immigrants who settled
in Pennsylvania. The legend
brought with them was similar to
Santa Claus- the Easter Bunny
would bring gifts for good boys
and girls. Two hundred years
or so later, the Easter Bunny
has been commercialized to a
point of not even being related

to Jesus’ resurrection and so to
separate Christianity from this
commercialized and pagan holiday, many Christians call Easter
“Resurrection Day.”
What we know of the Easter
Bunny has a conjectured origin.
The most widely held view is the
Easer Bunny came from ancient
Germanic pagan rituals of fertility
from the great mother goddess
Eostre of the ancient Saxon people of Northern Europe. Eostre
comes from the word “Eastre”
meaning “spring” which is celebrated in line with the spring
equinox, with the bunny, or hare,
being the primary symbol of high
activity for procreation and the
egg symbolizing creation, or
new life.
In early Catholic history, eggs
were forbidden during Lent and
then at the end of lent, eggs
were decorated and eaten on
Easter. Later in history, the egg
was removed from being part of
Lent, but the tradition of decorating eggs remained, continuing
through history to today. There
have been loose attempts to tie
the symbolism of the egg to that
of new life through the resurrection of Jesus, but only in a vain
attempt to bridge the gap of paganism and Christianity.
Christ’s resurrection was speculated to be aligned with the
spring equinox to join together
many religious factions or to diminish the hold this pagan ritual
had on the people in competition
with Christ’s resurrection. Regardless of if this is truth or not,
the celebration of Christ’s resurrection and the pagan celebration of spring are intertwined in
the contemporary world.

The Tooth Fairy
The folklore of the Tooth Fairy
has been a rite of passage for
children centuries ago in Europe
and in America. In Europe, once
a child’s first tooth fell out, the
Europeans would bury their baby’s tooth in the ground to hide it
from witches they believed would
put a curse on their child if they
got hold of the tooth. Once immigrants settled in America, the
ritual of burying the tooth continued but evolved into the modern
day Tooth Fairy.
When the ritual of burying the
tooth dissipated because most
immigrants settled in cities
and did not have the rural land
around them to bury the tooth,
the story of the Tooth Fairy came
about. Parents, instead of burying the tooth, began to place the
tooth under their child’s pillow
and once the child was sound
asleep, parents would replace
the tooth with a gift or money and
hide the tooth in the dirt of potted
plants. To explain the exchange
to children, parents came up
with the story of the Tooth Fairy.
The story of the Tooth Fairy was
born and became mainstream in
America for children, helping the
children to overcome the fear
and pain of losing a tooth.
What the Bible Says
Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny,
and the Tooth Fairy are myths
contrary to our faith in Jesus.
When we look at these myths
in light of the Bible, it is easy to
see the falsity of them and we
should not recognize nor practice them. We should not introduce and play with our children’s
hearts and minds with theses