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We celebrate some Jewish Holidays. In fact, back home we had a family that would come to our Christmas celebration and would send us Latkas for Hanukkah.
The first time the youngest daughter walked into my sister's house for Christmas, she said, “It's just like the Soap Operas!”

Those were the days......

All well and good, but missing my point.

Historically the Catholic Church abolished Jewish holidays (since they had been "fulfilled" and were no longer necessary) but pursued the opposite tactic, inculturation, with regard to pagan holidays.

I don't want to get in a big argument but please try to think of it this way: the Catholic Church made lupercalia (valentine's day), pomonalia/samhain (halloween), and s*t*rnalia/sol invictus (chr*stmas) into into chr*stian holidays. It did not do this with Ro'sh HaShanah, the anniversary of the day Adam and Eve were created.

I'm asking a very simple question: why were pagan and Jewish holidays treated so differently by the ancient church? Why were pagan holidays chr*stianized while Jewish ones were considered obsolete and often proscribed as "judaizing?"

I am afraid this whole question ties in with an issue that Catholics don't seem to be able to understand. Anyone who can defend pagan holidays can defend Jewish ones. Anyone who can say "faith without works is dead" can acknowledge the validity of Torah observance.

Catholics/Orthodox/etc. simply do not seem to understand the simple Biblical sentimentalism of radical Protestants--that if there are valid rituals or holidays they should be Biblical Jewish ones, not extra-Biblical pagan ones; and if the Jewish rituals and holidays of the Bible are of no more use, then neither is any other kind of ritual or holiday.

In defending Catholic rituals and holidays Catholics must resort to using the same apologetics Judaism uses with regard to chr*stianity as a whole. In attacking Jewish rituals and holidays as obsolete they engage in an early (and inconsistent) form of Protestant antinomianism.

Does no one here at least understand the point I'm trying to make?

I understand your point, especially for Jewish Christians, from the point of view of cultural continuity, but it was decided at the Council of Jerusalem that gentiles would not be bound by the Torah in any way.

That being the case, mandating the observance of any of the Torah festivals would be wrong.

That said, I think it’s always a mistake to miss the opportunity for a good party. Again, Purim should be much more widely celebrated.

Honestly, my FRiend, I'm not defending a pagan holiday as we have never celebrated it this way. To us, it's all Hallows Eve, the day before All Saints Day. It comes down to intent.

But more than that, it's an American tradition. Trick or Treating and carving pumpkins. That's American. And that's why we do it.

And I like Jewish Holidays! Get me back to Fairlawn to Lou and Hy's for the end of Rosh Hashana and a nice knish. I'll be one happy woman.

St. Valentine's Day, All Hallow's Eve and Christmas are not derived from or based on pagan holidays.

That is a myth promoted by atheist anthropologists.

Lupercalia may have coincidentally fallen on the Ides of February in the Roman calendar, but Christians do not hold naked races and whip each other with goatskin thongs on St. Valentine's Day.

Samhain technically would have fallen on October 21st not 31st, and was celebrated by feasting, sport and lighting bonfires. In other words, Homecoming Day bears a much closer resemblance in timing and in activity to Samhain than traditional Christian Hallowe'en practices.

Saturnalia was traditionally celebrated on the winter equinox, or December 21st - not December 25th - and was characterized not principally by feasting but by gambling and role-playing. If any modern holiday resembles Saturnalia it is Boxing Day, and that is likely by design.

The Sol Invictus reference is completely anacnronistic. We know that the Church in North Africa observed the Nativity on December 25th as early as 225, and we also know that the feast of Sol Invictus was a novelty introduced to the Roman world by Aurelian in 274. The only previous sun-god feast in Rome began in 222 - but that was the summer solstice feast of Heliogabalus.

The Church had its own calendar from the beginning, based on Sunday worship and on dating yearly events from the feasts of the Resurrection and Pentecost - in other words, the Church year is derivative of Shabbat, Pesach and Shavuos and not from pagan feasts.

To this day, almost every Sunday of the Church year is counted either in terms of its proximity to Pentecost or the Resurrection.