UPDATE: Today is June 24, Saint John's Day. This is the date that the Church baptized the old pagan summer solstice celebrations by substitution of the great, John the Baptist. I know that the fundies get the vapors over later works of the Church, but they are so ignorant of history, that they think that every thing in theology is frozen about 90 A.D. The problem is that most peoples were Christianized long after that, and that Tradition carries on the work of the Church and Christianity as a whole.
The fundamentalists and dispensationalists are, as I have noted before, Judaizers. They would move Christianity back to the Jews of the first century. St. Paul and the Hellenistic influence moved Christianity far beyond that.
In the East, St. John's Eve is the night that the forces of evil cavort. I recommend that you listen to Modest Mussorgsky's A Night on Bald Mountain.
I know most of you have never seen Fantasia
but one of the sketches features the Mussorgsky music and a review of all the evil forces at work during the night. At dawn the church bells send the evil ones back to their nether abode. The Fantasia sketch refers to Walpurgis night but Mussorgsky refers to St. John's Eve.
In any event, the church bells pealing out Mass on St. John's Day drove the demons back to their lair! The television music introducing Jimmy Swaggart's and many other television ministries wouldn't drive the demons ANYWHERE!
ORIGINAL COMMENT: I know of rural Lutheran churches in the midwest that have summer solstice celebrations. They are carrying on the traditions brought from Scandanavia. I wonder if they know they are carrying on pagan traditions?
