Holidays and Holy Days

It happens every year.  Twice a year, to be exact.  The first time is in and around December and the second is during Spring.  The Christians allow the media to get them all fired up about The War On Christmas and then, to a lesser degree, The War On Easter.  Godless Heathens everywhere are out to get these holiest of days.

What the Christians don't realize and the media isn't telling them is simple.  These Holiest of Days belonged to the Heathens first, but not Godless ones.  These Heathens had their own Gods and the early Christian Church, in an effort to usurp those Gods, adopted the ceremonial occasions.  Long before it was the birthday of Jesus, December 25 was Saturnalia.  Most of the trappings of Christmas come from various traditions connected to pagan worship.

The same goes for Easter - the name of which is actually derived from the name of a Heathen Goddess.  The bunny, the eggs... guess what Gods they honored originally?

I take no issue with any faith's Holy Days.  I even celebrate a Secular Christmas and I embrace Easter as a celebration of Spring.  The Holy Days of another faith do us no harm.  The Media's upsetting people just to get ratings, however, harms all of us because it creates problems.

Then we have the Holy Days that have been completely usurped by society in general.  Any Catholic will tell you any saint's day is holy.  Not as holy as Jesus's days, but holy nonetheless.  Yet two of the saint's days have come quite... well, unholy is too strong a word, but hear me out.

St Valentine and St Patrick were great men of amazing faith.  Yet most people don't even call February 14 St Valentine's Day.  It's Valentine's Day.  As in be my.  (Actually, many folks think it is Valentimes Day.  I even knew someone named Valentine who did that.)  No one pauses to think about the martyr to his cause because they are too busy doing things that, quite frankly, he would probably have disapproved of.

And poor ole St Patrick.  If people know anything about him, it's simply that he is the patron saint of Ireland.  Maybe they know he ran all the snakes out of Ireland, and that he used the shamrock to teach Trinity Doctrine.  What does this martyr get?  Everyone celebrates the Irish heritage they may or may not have by indulging in, again, behavior the day's namesake frowned upon. Even today, in the society that rails against stereotyping and in which the names of sports teams create heated arguments, the Irish are drunken brawling leprechauns.

The same folks who think I'm out to get Jesus because I say "Season's Greetings" are dressing up like lawn ornaments and getting drunk on green beer.  Most of them aren't even still fornicating with this years "Valentime".  The same media that's got folks screaming down the street about the War On My Religion is not telling them they are doing the same thing, possibly even to themselves.  But I don't blame the media - they're just doing their job.  I blame the ones screaming down the street.