This is the view of the
learned ecclesiastical historian Mgr. Duchesne, who points out that
the death of the Saviour was thus made to fall upon the very day on
which, according to a widespread belief, the world had been created.
But the resurrection of Attis, who combined in himself the
characters of the divine Father and the divine Son, was officially
celebrated at Rome on the same day. When we remember that the
festival of St. George in April has replaced the ancient pagan
festival of the Parilia; that the festival of St. John the Baptist
in June has succeeded to a heathen midsummer festival of water: that
the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin in August has ousted
the festival of Diana; that the feast of All Souls in November is a
continuation of an old heathen feast of the dead; and that the
Nativity of Christ himself was assigned to the winter solstice in
December because that day was deemed the Nativity of the Sun; we can
hardly be thought rash or unreasonable in conjecturing that the
other cardinal festival of the Christian church--the solemnisation
of Easter--may have been in like manner, and from like motives of
edification, adapted to a similar celebration of the Phrygian god
Attis at the vernal equinox.
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