If we can believe any of it, the hokus-pokus starts shortly after the death of Jesus. Having used words interpreted by the locals to mean he was the son of God, Jesus was in the firing line. Today, you could look at what the ancient scripture says in more than one way. That is just one of the attributes that is so human about it.
The creation of the resurrection myth is down to people like Peter. Its more of that stuff like Abraham speaking to God in a bush. Why should we believe any of this? Its a simple enough question.
Whether it was Peter, or some others of Jesus's followers, to blame, early Christianity adopted existing Pagan customs and traditions, which could have been strategies to make Christianity more palatable to the Pagans. It certainly is so with important dates in the Christian calendar. Christ was not born of the 25th of December. Mid winter festivals were common in early times. Christianity appropriated them. The evergreen tree is a Pagan symbol.
Abrahamic religions have some good points, but the weakness is always the insistence on their own perfection. It is highly likely that the apostles of Christianity did not believe that the people could accept teachings without gimmicks.

Setanta wrote on Mar 29^th, 2018 at 10:41pm:


Not quite, The winter solstice is when the sun seemingly stops for 3 days and then days start growing longer. Christians appropriated the pagan winter solstice festival and turned it into Christmas.

Easter occurs at the northern Spring equinox when the days are quickly getting longer and for much of the world the season of Spring starts.