I know. I wasn't meaning to imply otherwise. But there's a point at issue which Philo-Junius seesm to understand very well, but which I have found a very difficult point to make with most Catholics.
The Hebrew Bible sets up a whole table of holidays. According to the Catholic Church, these were then abolished. Then the Church turned to paganism to come up with a whole table of holidays of its own. (And for Philo-Junius, consider that Jewish chr*stians were forced to abandon Jewish holidays and begin celebrating pagan-originated ones--a situation that exists to this day, and to which the alternative is still considered "Judaizing").
Catholics seem to have trouble understanding the notion of Biblical sentimentalism--that either all holidays and rituals were abolished (as no longer necessary) or else the Biblical rituals and holidays still retained their "mojo."
Catholicism (and all the other ancient liturgical churches) simply don't seem to understand that from the philo-Semitic Fundamentalist Protestant POV they are arguing against themselves. If J*sus made tefillin and Pesach superfluous, then he must have also made rosary beads and chr*stmas superfluous. But if "faith without works is dead," then it is precisely the "works" of the Bible (Biblial rituals and holidays) that should be most meritorious.
Catholicism seems to preach Protestantism to the Jews and Judaism to the Protestants. Does anyone understand this?
A ridiculous claim.
There are basically fourteen great and ancient feasts of the Latin Church, categorized under the old system of feast days as "Doubles of the First Class" or the holiest days of the year.
There are more than fourteen, but a number of them are quite recent, such as the feast of the Kingship of Jesus Christ which is less than 100 years old.
Of the twelve ancient feasts, five are moveables: the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and the Blood of Christ.
All of them are timed in conjunction with the Jewish Passover.
Then there are the feasts of the Dormition of Mary, of St. John the Baptist, of St. Joseph, of Peter And Paul, of All Saints and of Michael the Archangel.
Of these six, St. Michael falls a week after the autumnal equinox and All Saints falls a week after the Celtic festival of Samhain.
The remaining feasts are Christmas, the Circumcision and Epiphany.
Epiphany and Circumcision are timed specifically to Christmas and Christimas falls several days after the winter solstice or Saturnalia.
So, out of fourteen feasts, three fall on days which are roughly the same time as some pagan festival or other.
In the case of All Saints, the celebrations associated with Samhain are completely different from the cultural practices associated with All Saints. Moreover, the feast dates from the specific dedication of a church of All Saints in Rome in the 600s - it had no relation with Celtic festivals.
The feast of St. Michael a week after the autumnal equinox coincides with no European pagan holiday of any kind. There is a Persian holiday on the autumnal equinox, but it's difficult to see any influence.
The supposed relationship of Christmas and Saturnalia is one I've already gone over.
Of all the major Christian feasts, not one can be credibly linked to pagan festivals.
The fact that you have to scrape up extremely minor holidays like St. Valentine's Day, which was never a major feast, is instructive.
The Christian calendar is based on two sources: (1) Passover and (2) historical events in the Christian Church - like the beheading of John the Baptist, the crucifixions of Peter and Paul, etc.