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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Okay, that article is a bunch of crap. The first off the list is the good old "Christians took over Christmas from Sol Invictus" which is a story that has been examined in detail.

New Year's Day is not a Christian holiday. Indeed, the mediaeval 'New Year' started in March, on Lady Day (the feast of the Annunciation) and this is why tax years used to start in April in the British Isles. Fun fact, Tolkien fans, this is why the Professor has a lot of significant dates in LOTR happening on that date in March. In fact, New Year's Day is so not a Christian holiday, it's why the Presbyterians in Scotland pushed for it (as Hogmanay) to be the big celebratory winter festival, because traditional Christmas was too Papist.

Easter? Do I really have to go through the whole fucking "No, Eostre is not the goddess" thing once more?

'The Roman version of Halloween' is a new twist, but they got the facts backwards as usual.

May Day - day in honour of Maia, yes. Day repurposed to Mary, yes. But the entirety of May is dedicated to Mary, as are other calendar months dedicated to other Christian themes, e.g. June to the Sacred Heart, November to the Holy Souls. They're really scrabbling for some "Isis and Horus are the originals of Mary and the Child Jesus" parallels here, not to mention that if you're not Catholic, you are probably not celebrating May as the month of Mary. Plus, May Day as International Workers' Day has been dedicated to St Joseph the Worker

Epiphany - the Three Kings. And they take an Italian version of how it's celebrated and then claim that hey, them Christians picked it because it was sacred to Diana! You can well imagine that by now I have my head in my hands. Are we sure this isn't click bait produced by ChatGPT?

Diana is Befana is Santa Claus. Of course it is.

St John's Eve - Midsummer. I'm not going to deny that this was an existing festival repurposed by Christianity, but it's not as simple as "oh we're taking over the old gods".

This article suffers heavily from "we're selling villas in Italy, so we're going to link Italy = Catholicism, Catholicism = Christianity, Italian traditional festivals = Christian festivals = Pagan festivals" bias, since "All Christian feasts were originally Pagan" is something that hardcore Protestant apologists who were anti-Catholic, pagans who want to pretend that what they practice now is an unbroken link to the traditions of the past, and atheists all want to agree on, and it's a perennial favourite to trot out in the news media at Christmas and Easter "did you know these are originally Pagan festivals?" pieces.