In a large group of people, most people check with one another and come to a consensus. Noah had his family to check with (assuming Noah existed), and most communities had more than a few people whose job it was to keep track of these things.
@ Shirley Ujest and Rextim: QFT
My own theory is that it somply hasn’t occurred to them that the days of the week are named after pagan gods. Don’t worry, someone who is prone to panicky overreaction will eventually figure this out and draw the conclusion that if nothing is done to change things, G-d will smite us all!!!eleventy-one!!
Until them enjoy the show as people with narrow world-views attack problems they perceive as being more important than other people’s well being.
That’s probably right. Mars= Mangal = Mangalbar= Tuesday. Jupiter= Brihaspati=Brihaspatibar= Thursday and so on. As you said: chicken-and-egg. I have no idea how which planet was chosen for which day. But it certainly seems to have a pre-Christian origin.
Wednesday in Sanskrit is budha. No, not the four noble truths, eightfold path guy. But derived from the same Sanskrit root meaning intelligent. Because Mercury is the planet of intellect. For Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Hindus, Norse, etc. Woden goes with Wednesday and Mercury because of his intellectual development when he drank wisdom from the well of Mimir. In Akan thought, Anansi the Spider is the god of cleverness and is associated with Wednesday too. Who thought of it first? Sumerians, I guess.
According to Bernard Cornwell in his book “The Burning Land”, Alfred, king of Wessex, tried to change the names of the days of the week, for others mentioning Christian saints, but his people didn’t agree and continued to use the Norse gods names.
A (to me) surprising number of churches don’t celebrate Halloween - they celebrate a “Harvest Festival” by, um, dressing up in costumes and giving children candy. This has been going on for 10 years or so, at least.
A growing number I’ve heard of lately don’t celebrate Easter - it’s too pagan, and named after a nonchristian deity - they celebrate “Resurrection Day”.
Well, it worked for Christmas.
Hardly anybody celebrates Saturnalia or Winter Solstice any more. But it was by scheduling their big Christian celebration at the same time, and then gradually taking over the pre-existing festivities that it became the biggest holiday season. Because, after all, Jesus wasn’t born in December, but probably in March (assuming he ever existed at all).
Yep. And I’ve heard of some fundie churches who don’t do the “cultural christmas” thing at all - they celebrate it solely as a religious holiday without trees, Santa, gifts, stockings, or any of it. Just lots of prayer.
So having taken over the pagan holidays, they’re now trying to take out the pagan part, leaving Christianity as the only thing to celebrate. VERY CLEVER, FUNDIES! BUT I AM ON TO YOUR WAYS!