Rastelin said:
RyQ_TMC said:
I would refrain from throwing around the "repurposed Roman holiday" narrative so freely.
Oh I am throwing it around quite freely. Christianity adopter the ritual as converting Romans would not let go of it. So why let such a small detail get in the way of getting the numbers. Otherwise people would not convert.
And it's not the only pagan ritual Christianity has nicked for the same reasons. Like Easter, derived from the Saxon Eostre. The ancient Saxons in Northern Europe worshiped the Goddess Oestre. Later Christians nicked the name for themselves and turned a pagan celebration in to their own ritual.
And again, the Christian celebration precedes the conversion of Anglo-Saxons. Easter (not by this name, of course) was the earliest major Christian holiday. You're mixing things here. Yes, the Church, in the process of conversion, mixed elements of existing pagan culture into its existing holidays for "ease of access" - i.e., people would keep doing the same thing they were doing before, but it would have a Christian trademark slapped on. HOWEVER, it was not "look, these new non-Christians we've taken in have a festival where we have a hole in the calendar, let's co-opt it".
So basically, your version:
1) Pagans have a festival on a specific date/time of the year.
2) Christians, who have no previous rituals or celebrations on specific dates, come in to convert the pagans.
3) Christians take the pagan festival wholesale and call it Christian.
My version:
1) Both pagans and Christians have a festival on a specific date/time of the year.
2) Christians come in to convert the pagans.
3) Christians take the name and some of the elements of the pagan celebration and incorporate them into their pre-existing holiday.
Co-opting the rituals for the sake of "marketing" is morally questionable, but calling it "nicking" is going a bit too far.
