Every year when Christmas, Easter and Halloween roll around someone feels the need to point out the pagan roots of Christian Holidays. It’s usually some anti-high church Christian or a smarmy skeptic trying to prove something.

It’s a good argument that goes something like this:

“Easter is a Pagan Holiday, based on the lunar calendar and named after Pagan goddess. Christians are hypocritical for celebrating it.

There is another way of looking at it:

Christmas and Easter are two of the most successful missionary endeavors in history.

In 601 BC, Pope Gregory wrote a letter to missionaries in Brittain suggesting that they use existing Pagan holidays to celebrate the stories of Christian martyrs. I realize there are a lot of problems with this, and many un-Christ-like practices slipped through that may have caused more damage than good. But the idea itself is pure, incarnational theology at it’s best.

All hope in Christ is based on the idea that “God became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” The eternal and unknowable started wearing clothes, eating fish and walking down our streets. He used our language to teach us who he is. The church should look differently everywhere, use local customs and holidays to communicate the story of Jesus in a specific time and place.

What Pagan practices are all around you, waiting to be used to retell the story of Jesus?