[geeks] Goodbye, I guess

[Mike Meredith]

On Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:31:03 +0000, wa2egp at att.net wrote:
> > i find this very interesting.  i've increasingly thought of the
> > catholic church as not so much a religion as the second roman
> > empire. and why [for instance] do they celebrate the saxon
> > fertility goddess eostre's festival, complete with rabbits and
> > eggs?  or samhain [celtic new year's] eve [halloween], complete
> > with demon and undead costumes?
> 
> Actually they don't.  Those are not part of any services.  I guess
> they try to include them since most people celebrate those things in
> various ways.  Probably along the lines of when Christianity came to
> England, they put churches on the sites where more ancient religions
> held their services.

Well it's a mixture of both really ... plus ancient man's tendency to
hang on to those few excuses he's got for a party. You can imagine
a Saxon crying "I'll be dammed if those new priests will stop me
drinking and eating to excess over the week of the winter
solstice" (not a great deal has changed!).

In fact the RCC does include some local elements in services (and the
canon of saints) ... European catholics might be somewhat bewildered at
some South American services.

In the UK, some of the more tradition and prudish of the bishops are
regularly found on TV (or wherever anybody will listen) condemning
Halloween, consumerist Christmas, and Easter.

Not that I'm too familiar with what happens inside those Christian
churches ... some sort of hideous cannibalistic rite I hear.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 By the way, you DON'T want to see what a meat layer buffer overrun
 looks like.... (mjr on fw-wiz)