I’m not trying to inflame any denominational passions here, I’m simply noting that the whole ‘patron saint’ thing was a post First Century idea. We can go down the whole list of paganisms if you’d like; Christmas being moved on the calendar so it displaced the winter solstice bacchanalia, Christmas trees, numbering passages in the Bible (A Roman thing), and etc. All of those things have been adapted into Christian tradition and not all of them are bad and it’s not a slam on anyone to cite history.
It’s okay, I’m not easily inflamed. :)
I’ve never seen a Christmas Tree in a Catholic Church though we do have mangers. I’m not exactly sure where it came from - Germany? Easter? Not sure either. We call it Pascal.
As for history of the saints - if you read the Acts of the Apostles, the early Christians referred to themselves as “saints”, meaning they were “holy” or “separate” from ordinary people and as persecuted communities, they did tend to keep to themselves. As members died from persecution, their survivors were extremely disheartened, and concerned that the dead would miss the imminent return of Jesus. That is why Paul says in 1 Thess 4:13-14 - “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”
They eventually came to understand that their dead members were still part of the community, still “saints”. The martyrs were honored by the living, who in Rome actually gathered in the catacombs to pray, often over the very tombs of their fallen comrades. In time, the martyrs’ sacrifices were regarded as being joined with the sufferings of Christ. And since they were still community members, they could pray to God as well as living Christians could. So living saints asked dead saints’ help in praying to God.
When Christianity was accepted and legalized in the Fourth Century, the martyrdom ended, and the cult of the martyrs faded. The dead died of natural causes and were no longer as distinct from survivors as before. Christianity went mainstream and the habit of calling onself “separate” (”saint”) made less sense. The word came to be reserved for the dead alone, but the sense of remembering and asking departed Christian heroes for help in praying continued on...and so it has been for 2000 yrs.
It was Martin Luther who repudiated the practice as part of his campaign to delegitimize Roman authority by making any hint of human intercession invalid. It took some careful scripture parsing but by carefully ignoring history (and some contradictory passages), the idea took root among his followers and remains among us today.
I hope that didn’t inflame you. Did you read post 71? There was no confusion until Martin Luther and his followers.