>> Care to explain why the English and Dutch would be naming things after Babylonian goddesses?<<
Sure, this may help.
The historian Edward Gibbon records that the Apostolic church “united the law of Moses with the teachings of Jesus Christ” (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 15). The early church fled from Jerusalem when the Romans destroyed the city in 70AD. After languishing for over 60 years in Pella, “a considerable part of the congregation renounced the Mosaic law” which the church had observed for over a century (ibid.). This was done not to obey God, but to gain admission to the new Roman colony that Hadrian established at Jerusalem, which forbade admission to Jews (or to those whose religious practices would make them appear Jewish). Gibbon indicates that a major part of the early Jerusalem church compromised their beliefs in order to cement their union with the emerging universal Christian church (ibid.).
This sentiment against anything that appeared to be Jewish continued to build throughout the first several centuries of the New Testament church era. Under the influence of the Apostle John, the churches in Asia Minor continued to observe the Passover on the 14th of Nisan, while churches in the western part of the Roman Empire began to observe Easter.
We read of an encounter (in 159AD) between Polycarp (the Bishop of Smyrna and a disciple of John) and Anicetus (the Bishop of Rome), in which Polycarp argued successfully against dropping the Passover observance on the 14th of Nisan in favor of Easter. However, about 40 years later, Victor, the bishop of Rome, excommunicated Polycrates, a leader of the church in Asia Minor (and a disciple of Polycarp) for refusing to go along with Easter observance—which was becoming the accepted custom in Christendom. At the time of Polycrates (about 200AD), the churches in Asia Minor were the only ones still keeping the Passover on the 14th of Nisan instead of Easter. They did so because they were taught to do this by the Apostle John, who had been trained by Jesus Christ. This debate over keeping Passover on the 14th of Nisan or observing Easter is called the Quartodecimian controversy. It was finally settled by the Roman Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in 325AD when it was decreed that the Christian world would keep Easter and “that none should hereafter follow the blindness of the Jews” (Encyclopædia Britannica 11th ed., Easter). However, remnants of the Apostolic Church that kept the Holy Days continued to exist on the fringes of the Roman Empire—but these Christians, though faithful to Apostolic Christianity, were branded as heretics.
The lesson of history is that a church council, presided over by a sun-worshipping Roman emperor who was converted to nominal Christianity on his deathbed, simply overruled the Scripture and disregarded the clear example and teachings of Jesus Christ and the historical record of the Apostles.
That source you are quoting is flat-out misrepresenting the Quartodeciman controversy. Read the primary source account in Eusebius.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.x.xxv.html
Now answer me this. If the folks who kept Easter on Sunday were so all-fired bad, they why the heck did the great Polycarp keep communion with them?? Is this normal behavior with heretics, idolaters and apostates??
No, it isn’t. Because what your little source there completely fails to state is that the two sides, though differing on the *date* of Easter, both thought of each other as *within the same Church*. It was a difference in *custom*, not a difference in *theology*.