PSA to my brethren
Because St. Valentine's day has ONCE AGAIN given fake news regarding Christian holidays AMPLE opportunity to spread like wildfire, I am obligated to point out the following, for the umpteenth time:
No, Christmas is NOT Saturnalia or Sol Invictus. Jeremiah 10, by the way, is NOT a text about Christmas trees.
No, Easter does NOT come from feasts of Ishtar. It is literally called an equivalent of "Passover" in practically all non-English Western languages.
No, Halloween is NOT Samhain. The two do not even fall close on the calendar.
No, St. Valentine's day is NOT Lupercalia. There is no link between the two, any more than the Greco-Italian war is related to the fiscal policies of the Song Dynasty.
No, Sunday worship is NOT a hidden celebration of Sol. We celebrate Communion on Sunday because our Lord rose from the dead on a Sunday, not because we have "changed the day of the Sabbath"; we have not, and I also assure you that Constantine had NOTHING to do with this.
I cannot believe that we have reached the point where I really have to emphasise this: St. Patrick has nothing to do with Pan, much less with Peter Pan.
If you are interested in learning about the origins and evolution of Christian feasts, consult the work of actual scholars like Ronald Hutton. Jack Chick, John Ramirez, The History Channel, and ChatGPT are NOT reliable sources, for crying out loud.
Quoting Isaiah 5:20 and James 4:4 whilst presupposing that your argument about holidays is true...does not prove that your argument about holidays is true.
Most importantly: especially if you are a follower and worshipper of Jesus Christ, washed in the blood of the Lamb and partaker of the holy Sacrament of the altar, then you cannot "accidentally" worship pagan deities which nobody has worshipped for millennia simply by virtue of decorating a tree, or making a log-shaped pudding, or hunting for chocolate eggs, or going to a ball dressed up as Legolas or Esmeralda, or giving your wife red roses.
Please let us calm down at last. The Holy Spirit does not go on annual leave on 2/14, 10/31, 12/25 or ANY other day of the year. Stop propagating lies and half-truths peddled by attention-seeking "armchair pastors" -- this cultivates an increasingly strong mentality of "touch not, taste not, handle not" which borders on adding to the Gospel.
Stop giving the devil right to call dibs over innocuous practices; rather reclaim the good things of life in the power of Christ.