Why does the church celebrate holidays like Christmas?

I've always been confused on that too. Easter also started out as a pagan celebration. I think that guy you talked to is right. The church decided to take pagan celebrations and change them to honor God. The roots of the celebration are completely un-Christian, but the reason we celebrate them isn't. I figure, hey, at least we do have a time when we can all sit down and thank Jesus Christ for being born, or dying on the cross for us. It's nice to know that all the believers are doing it at once. As to your remarks on ity, I do think it's a sin. But I also think that white lie I told someone yesterday is a sin. I think it's wrong that people try to make one sin bigger than the other. Sin is sin. I've always looked at it like this (kind of weird, but bear with me): A person is a gl of water. The sin they do is like a drop of arsenic. If you sin a lot, lots of drops of arsenic. But even if you sin a little, the gl is still poisonous. You can't drink it. We can't get to heaven on our own by being good because we're stained. We have to ask for God's mercy through the blood of Jesus Christ. I think we need to stop judging people so harshly and follow the Bible's teachings on love. That doesn't mean we can just roll over and say hey, do whatever you want, but people don't respond well to other people telling them they're going to hell.