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Not true. Easter is the Day of Resurrection, it is so important that it is celebrated EVERY week on the "first day after Sabbath." on Lord's Day in many languages (Latin, Greek) or Day of Resurection (Russian). Once a year it is celebrated around/after time of Jewish Passover. Jewish Passover is a prefiguration of Easter (Paskha, Pesah) and the actual Crucifiction/Resurection took place at that time. Christmas was appointed by the Church to celebrate the Birth of Our Saviour, whether the date falls on actual birthday or whether it was around time of some pagan holiday is not relevant. First, there were plenty of pagan holidays, so always some would be close, second the Church has power and authority to establish a holiday and so She did. And what the Church establishes on Earth is established in Heaven.

Actually, the very word "Easter" comes from "Eostre" the Roman goddess of fertility. We get the words "estrus" "estrogen" and other words relating to female reproduction. Thus rabbits and eggs.

The fact that Jesus was resurrected around this time of year made it a great excuse to replace the pagan festivals of "Eostre" with a Christian celebration of the resurrection. However, there was already a pagan revelry around that time of year. The Church simply took it over.

As to the church having "authority" to establish a holiday, the Puritans in England would have disagreed. Under the regulative principle (i.e., you worship God how HE tells you to worship, and not just how it strikes your fancy), Christmas was banned for a short time under Cromwell. They would actually put you in jail if you closed your shop for Christmas! The church also excommunicated Martin Luther, banned Athanasius, burned Hus at the stake, censured Galileo and forced him to recant, killed multitudes of anabaptists, and performed a number of dodgy activities which are certainly not "established in heaven."

I love the church, but you are on VERY thin ice if you are attempting to extrapolate a pericope confirming the pattern and practice of Church Discipline (Mt 26) to a universal approbation of heaven on everything the church does in its official capacity as the church. There is just too much evidence that the official activities and pronouncements of the church in history are shot through with the sin Jesus died for to pretend otherwise.

CL, just because the word "Easter" comes from the name of the pagan goddess Eostre (about whom absolutely nothing else is known with certainty) doesn't mean much wrt the date of the holiday. The only reason we know about it is the Venerable Bede's comment in his Ecclesiastical History of England, and that's all he said, other than that her worship had died out by his time anyway. And your etymology is false -- estrus is from the Greek oistros, meaning a stinger or tormentor. (You can't believe everything the Wiccans say, because they are always over-anxious to find ancient origins for all their stuff. Sadly, they also tend to be ignorant of history, especially the classics.)

But there's not much dispute regarding the date of Easter because it's pinpointed in the Gospels themselves -- we know it was right at the Passover. The Church had a good deal of debate regarding how to set the date of the Easter celebration, because of course Passover being based on the Jewish lunar calendar moves around with respect to both the old and modern Western calendars. But they did figure out a formula, it moves around a little (that's why it's called a "moveable feast") but it stays very close to the actual date. More than you wanted to know about how to calculate the date of Easter.

The date of Christmas is far more uncertain, but believe it or not it's in the ballpark. A list of dates for priestly service in the Temple was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and if you figure out when John the Baptist's father Zechariah served as a priest, you can calculate from there because we know from the Gospels that he was told of his son's conception while he was serving in the Temple, and that Elizabeth was six months pregnant when the Virgin Mary conceived. It works out to some time in December . . . obviously it's much fuzzier than the Passover date, but it wasn't just picked out of thin air as a pagan holiday.

(And A.Pole rightly observes that ANY day you pick will be on or near SOME pagan holiday -- they had a lot of them.)

Actually, the very word "Easter" comes from "Eostre" the Roman goddess of fertility.

This is a problem of English/Germanic languages. In Greek Easter is called Paskha (Pas'ha) from Hebrew Pesah, Pasover, in French Pâques, in Italian Pasqua.

The fact that Jesus was resurrected around this time of year made it a great excuse to replace the pagan festivals of "Eostre" with a Christian celebration of the resurrection.

Anglosaxons who worshiped Eostre became Christians much LATER than Greeks, Romans etc . And King James Bible is the not original Bible :) Trust me. As to the church having "authority" to establish a holiday, the Puritans in England would have disagreed.

Puritans were a sect which came into existence sixteen centuries after the Church was established by Jesus Christ. They were grew up withing the Church of England under the influence of Calvin.

You make the assumption that the Latin church is the Church in your accusations. As an Orthodox Christian, I would suggest that the Church did none of the things you accuse her of, because

The Church supported Athanasius at Nicaea and indeed the Patriarchate of Rome supported him throughout the controversy.
The Patriarchate of Rome, which indeed did all the other things in your accusation, had fallen into heresy and separated herself from the Church in the 11th century.

Of course, the dissenting Puritans of England had fallen into even more grevious heresies, both soteriological and ecclesiological, so quoting them isn't really very moving to us Orthodox as a source of ecclesiology.