[Smokin' Joe]

The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison, are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.[Cardinal Newman - Development of Christian Doctrine, pg 373]

Please don't forget the cross, itself.

Once a symbol of pagan torture and execution, a device to strike fear into the masses, of a miserable death.

Yet, somehow, that cross has become a Christian symbol of life everlasting.

Funny how those pagan thingies have different meaning now, in a Christian context.

[CynicalBear]

>>Please don't forget the cross, itself.<<

It was God who orchestrated that Christ would be "lifted up" on that "pole".

Numbers 21:9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

But you may also want to check out what happened when the Israelites began using that as an idol.

2 Kings 18:4 He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

Do you burn incense in front of that cross?