Season 2 Episode 7 – Whose Holiday Is This Anyway?

Scene 1: Holiday Confusion

Jamie: So... is this the Christmas episode? Or Valentine’s? Or St. Patrick’s? Or… whatever we’re doing?

Moderator: You mean Nativity? Feast of Saint Valentine? The memorial of Saint Patrick? Or All Saints' Day—which, by the way, comes before the candy?

Jamie: Okay, chill. I just meant the one with cookies and chimney theology.

Scene 2: Holidays by Denomination

Jamie: So for Evangelicals, it’s pretty simple. Christmas is for singing. Easter is for lilies and candy. Halloween’s... complicated. The rest? Mostly just decorative.

Moderator: That’s because for Catholics and Orthodox, every day is a saint’s day.

Jamie: Wait, what?

Moderator: There are over 365 feast days. Every day, someone’s being remembered—sometimes a dozen someones. For us, Patrick, Valentine, and Nicholas aren’t holidays. They’re family.

Jamie: So when the rest of us are wearing green or buying chocolates, you’re... reading hymns and lighting candles?

Moderator: Pretty much. Culture took the outer shell and ran with it. The Church kept the soul.

Scene 3: The Puritan Purge

Jamie: But didn’t the Puritans, like, cancel Christmas?

Moderator: They banned it, yes. But not because they hated joy. They hated Catholic joy.

Jamie: Rough.

Moderator: In 17th-century New England, Christmas was outlawed for decades. No feasts. No candles. No saints. The goal was to purify the culture of anything that looked like Rome.

Jamie: So it wasn’t anti-Christmas. It was anti-decorated-Jesus?

Moderator: Exactly. Protestant reformers wanted a faith stripped to Scripture alone. Anything seasonal, mystical, or saint-related? Too Catholic.

Scene 4: Babylonian Panic

Jamie: Okay but what about that email my uncle sent me—you know, the one where Easter and Christmas were actually Babylonian festivals for moon goddesses and egg monsters?

Moderator: Ah yes. The Internet Apocrypha.

Jamie: So it's not true?

Moderator: Here's the thing: Some pagan festivals did exist around the same times. But the early Church didn’t adopt them to blend in. They put Christian feasts there to transform them.

Jamie: You mean like spiritual takeover?

Moderator: More like spiritual transfiguration.

Jamie: So it's not cultural appropriation. It's cultural baptism?

Moderator: Exactly. The Church doesn’t erase. It redeems.

Jamie: So even the calendar got baptized.

Moderator: Yes. Just like people do. And places. And objects. In Alaska, when Orthodox missionaries arrived, they didn’t ban the native customs. They sanctified them. Even the graves bear witness—Orthodox crosses beside traditional carvings. It wasn’t erasure. It was redemption.

Scene 5: Baptized Time

Moderator: This is why the liturgical calendar exists. Time isn’t neutral. It’s sacred.

Jamie: So... the Church didn’t just give us holidays. It baptized the year?

Moderator: Yes. Days. Seasons. Rhythms. All of it sanctified. That’s why Christmas isn’t just one day—it’s twelve. Easter is fifty. Time itself is a vessel for grace.

Jamie: And here I thought my Advent calendar was the height of piety.

Moderator: Well, chocolate is a good start.

Scene 6: Closing Reflection

Jamie: So while I’m over here panicking about finding a green tie, you’re remembering a missionary bishop who brought the Trinity to Ireland.

Moderator: Yes. And while the world gives chocolates for Valentine’s, we remember a priest who died for love—God’s love.

Jamie: Dang. Y’all party deep.

Moderator: The world borrowed the wrapping paper. We kept the Gift.

*Jamie nods solemnly, reaches into his hoodie, and pulls out a half-eaten chocolate bunny.*