HOLY AND UNHOLY HOLIDAYS

Psychologist Slobodzien explores the history of some of the most popular holidays in the Western world.

Several commonly celebrated events in the United States have origins within Christian tradition, including Christmas, Easter, and St. Patrick’s Day. However, this book argues, these holidays would have been unrecognizable to first-century Christians. It wasn’t until the fourth century, Slobodzien notes, that Catholicism was institutionalized, and Catholics merged non-Christian holidays with their own faith’s stories and themes. Slobodzien, who was born into a Polish-Italian Roman Catholic family, left that faith in the 1970s and now embraces a version of Christianity centered on home-churches and “The Way” of first-century Christians. The author’s interpretation of his religion embraces a literal view of the Bible, whose verses are found on nearly every page of this book. Fourteen chapters cover a number of major holidays celebrated in the West, from religious celebrations to Thanksgiving, and explore their origins and historical development. A chapter on New Year celebrations, for example, examines the non-Christian origins of several annual festivities, including those in the Babylonian, Roman, Aztec traditions, as well as the Catholic Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. The book’s is encyclopedic in its descriptions of various celebrations, but its polemical style will alienate some readers; from its perspective, many holidays can be traced to “pagan unbiblical Catholic doctrines,” and the author asserts that even well-intentioned Christians may be led astray by participating in them. As the author of several books about addiction and religion, Slobodzien shows a firm command of biblical passages and Christian theology in general. Too often, however, the book lacks nuance, using demonstrative phrases such as “All Bible scholars know…” that overstate scholarly consensus and eschew good-faith counterarguments.

A heavy-handed examination of Christian holidays that some will find problematic.