I made an earlier post here, from which I make the following quote about similarities between Akitu and Christmas. "Doing an internet search for "Zagmuk", one finds many sites which claim the Akitu to be the source of many of the features of Christmas (gift-giving, feasting, parades and floats, pageantry, yule log, house-to-house carollers, and the 12 days of Christmas = 12 days of Akitu). Unfortunately, they all seem to have used the same original site to take their phraseology from, and that site makes a couple of mistakes. They associate Zagmuk solely with the winter solstice rather than also with the spring equinox, and they refer to the 12 day holiday as Zagmuk rather than the Akitu. Zagmuk is just the day that it starts, the New Year's Day. Rather than trying to illegitimize Christmas by saying that an earlier celebration preceded it, I prefer to think that (if these sites are correct) early Hebrews and Christians knew a good way to celebrate a festival when they saw one. The only feature these sites mention that I hadn't heard of before about the Akitu is the exchanging of gifts. I would certainly be willing to accept it as a feature of our Akitu (though I'd really like to find out where they originally heard about it)." I think there is strong reason to believe that the style of celebrating Christmas was derived from Akitu. But that doesn't mean the Judaeo-Christians borrowed their religion from the earlier Mesopotamians. They just carried on their way of partying over it from a way of partying that was around long before in a neighboring region. Similar things have happened before.....ever notice the similarity between Easter and Ishtar?