# Remnants of paganism in american/western culture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 24, 2010, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412 "2010-06-24T22:02:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/1 "2010-06-24T22:02:21Z")
What are some of the things/names/tradition that are influenced or remnants/references from earlier paganism cultures? At the top of my head I could think of Names of some days of the week (ex. Friday= FRIGGA the germanic god) Names of some of some months (ex. January from the roman god Janus) Eastern holiday Christmas what are some of the less obvious examples? ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/2 "2010-06-24T22:09:46Z")
Halloween/Samhain, and associated occultic lore If we are talking about non-religious things we inherited from ancient pagan cultures, you can count pretty much the entirety of philosophy and mathematics (except calculus). ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/3 "2010-06-24T22:14:38Z")
the alphabet ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/4 "2010-06-24T22:21:57Z")
And our 24 hour day with 60 minutes per hour - that’s right out of Babylon. And the Zodiac. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/5 "2010-06-24T22:44:22Z")
June weddings were supposedly favored as far back as Roman times because the month is named after the goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter and the goddess of marriage. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/6 "2010-06-24T23:01:20Z")
Some superstitions, such as knocking wood, might date back to pre-Christian Europe. Some Indian nations still maintain some of their pre-Columbian beliefs and customs, but that’s probably not at the level of social visibility you’re asking about. There are [neopagans,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopaganism) but that’s really more of a revival than a survival, despite [Gerald Gardner’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Gardner) claims to the contrary. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/7 "2010-06-24T23:16:45Z")
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, respectively, carry strong echoes of Beltaine and Summer Solstice traditions. Beltaine is/was a holiday in early May (May 1, actually) dedicated to the Earth Goddess, one which celebrates fertility…not a far leap to honoring mothers. Summer’s Solstice, which falls within a few days of Father’s Day every year, is/was the height of the Solar God’s generative powers before he enters the harvest and decline of autumn…again, not a far leap to honoring fathers. I always thought that was kind of neat. There are others, like Groundhog Day = Lughnassah, Samhain = Halloween, but I think those may be as much the secular holiday informing the neopagan tradition as the pagan traditions inform the neopagan trad. In other words, I’m not entirely convinced that Samhain was as “Haloweeney” to ancient pagans as modern ones. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/8 "2010-06-24T23:48:44Z")
Harvest festivals are nearly universal in pre-Christian cultures, and indirectly give rise to our Thanksgiving holiday. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/9 "2010-06-24T23:57:56Z")
Considering Julius and Augustus Caeser both were considered divinities, I suppose July and August count as paganish as well. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/10 "2010-06-25T00:15:51Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, respectively, carry strong echoes of Beltaine and Summer Solstice traditions. Beltaine is/was a holiday in early May (May 1, actually) dedicated to the Earth Goddess, one which celebrates fertility…not a far leap to honoring mothers. Summer’s Solstice, which falls within a few days of Father’s Day every year, is/was the height of the Solar God’s generative powers before he enters the harvest and decline of autumn…again, not a far leap to honoring fathers. The date connection for Father’s Day, anyway, is purely a coincidence. Father’s Day was invented in 1910 by a woman who wanted it to be in June because her father was born in June. And actually, in some countries it’s not in June at all. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/11 "2010-06-25T00:19:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Some superstitions, such as knocking wood, might date back to pre-Christian Europe. What I came here to post. Go through Snopes’s stuff on superstitions, and you’ll find a lot of them started from pagan, or at least pseudo-Christian, beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/12 "2010-06-25T00:23:39Z")
Arguably the use of religious icons was borrowed from pagans. (Judaism did not traditionally tolerate figurative religious art.) ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/13 "2010-06-25T00:55:02Z")
The month of May was considered an unlucky month to get married in, for many reasons dating back to ancient times. Romans deemed May the month to honor maiores, or elders, June to honor the young. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/14 "2010-06-25T01:07:20Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Arguably the use of religious icons was borrowed from pagans. (Judaism did not traditionally tolerate figurative religious art.) So did veneration of the saints icons represent. Many pagan gods were baptized, as it were – the early Church, as it expanded through Europe, substituted a saint for an old god, with a sphere of patronage similar to the god’s, and some elements of the god’s worship incorporated into the saint’s veneration. The Virgin Mary substituted for a **lot** of mother-goddesses. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/15 "2010-06-25T01:11:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So did veneration of the saints icons represent. Many pagan gods were baptized, as it were – the early Church, as it expanded through Europe, substituted a saint for an old god, with a sphere of patronage similar to the god’s, and some elements of the god’s worship incorporated into the saint’s veneration. The Virgin Mary substituted for a **lot** of mother-goddesses. And it’s possible that some Saints, like Brigid, weren’t actual Christians made Saints at all, but local God/dess(es) who were “promoted” outright. [http://www.kildare.ie/local-history/kildare/saint-brigid.htm](http://www.kildare.ie/local-history/kildare/saint-brigid.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/16 "2010-06-25T01:38:33Z")
This question is next to impossible to answer for the following reasons: 1. A lot of European pagan culture was directly continued by European Christians. If you compare the Bible’s attitude toward money with that of early Germanic literature, it’s pretty clear that our capitalist culture has some nice pagan roots. 2. Some of this is deliberate borrowing. Churches were built on pagan centers of power, holidays were co-opted. Early Christians were quite forthright about this. That means a mixture: Christmas is not a pagan holiday, but it is not a Jewish holiday, either. It’s a Christian invention drawing on their mythology and already-existing (and therefore originally pagan) customary / festival behavior. 3. Some is coincidental: the Roman planets were named after gods. In Old English the planets were given names of equivalent gods, but the days of the week were only indirectly named after anything pagan. The bulk of it is folk tradition: people continuing any beliefs, behaviors, and value systems that did not directly contravene the church. 4. A lot of the reference material, even seemingly reputable stuff, is absolute nonsense. It’s either flat-out wrong or unsupported speculation, even things published by people with PhD after their names. A lot of this is due to enthusiastic pagan-friendly folks who post public-domain Victorian scholarship online. It’s pretty easy to find authoritative cites on the relevance of the Celtic quarter days to modern celebrations, but most of it doesn’t hold up to academic scrutiny. The origins of superstitions, in particular, are often projected back into the misty mists of time without much evidence. The OP mentions the days of the week, but in a sense the whole language is pagan: most of our words and all of our grammar predates Christianity, even specifically religious terminology like the word “god.” There is no evidence I know of that the Easter holiday is especially pagan; Bede was famously wrong here. Groundhog Day isn’t Lughnasadh (or Imbolg: I suspect a typo on **WhyNot’s** part). Imbolg might or might not have had a role in the creation of Candlemas. I believe it does, but there’s no evidence. Brigit is pretty clearly a pre-Christian deity, but there may also have been a human woman named after her who really existed. In short (too late!), I think the answer can be “almost everything” or “nothing,” depending on how you view it. Cultural continuity was both far stronger than the Christians would have you believe, and far less organized than some Neopagans believe. ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/17 "2010-06-25T01:54:43Z")
:smack: Ah, never mind. Bits of what **Dr. Drake** said, while I wandered off with my “post reply” box open. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/18 "2010-06-25T02:18:24Z")
People [concealed shoes and other garments in chimneys](http://www.concealedgarments.org/general/home.html) and other parts of the [home](http://www.oldhouses.com.au/docs/ritual.html) as recently as the early C20th. I can’t find a link but there were some shoes, and even bodies of cats, found in houses here in Sydney quite recently. The practice comes from pagan superstitions about personal articles and the home. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/19 "2010-06-25T03:18:44Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Groundhog Day isn’t Lughnasadh (or Imbolg: I suspect a typo on **WhyNot’s** part). Typo? You’re too kind :smack: Nah, that was **WhyNot’s** big ol’ brainfart. Sorry! \*\*Skald \*\*says I get 14 brainfarts a week, so I’m left with 12. Yes, of course I meant Imbolc/Imbolg. And the reason I meant to bring up Imbolc simply to discard it is that it’s one I hear (overenthusiatic) neopagans bring up to try to draw misplaced parallels between our celebrations and secular ones. I agree with you that they have nothing in common, historically, except a coincidence of date. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412/20 "2010-06-25T08:26:13Z")
See the recent thread about the summer solstice celebrations in Europe. Holy springs whose water is supposed to heal some ailment or another, cure sterility, etc…and similar places, placed now under the patronage of some saint but are pre-christian sites. Saints who probably originated in previous pagan deities. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remnants-of-paganism-in-american-western-culture/544412.md?page=2)