How The West De-Christianised Itself

The day of... What???

The 1 May is a festivity pretty much all over Europe. Even the UK, which does not have the official “Labour Day”, has a public holiday on the first Monday in May.

This is another example of how we have slowly de-Christianised ourselves.

In Christian times, the year was marked, and flew at the rhythm of its religious festivities. We see numerous examples of this in old literature, when Candlemas, St Crispin or the like where days known to all.

The 1 Mai was the feast of St Walpurga, in Germany Walpurgisnacht. It was traditionally celebrated with dances starting on the vigil (in those times dances were chaste affairs, and important social lubricants), hence the German expression of calling it Der Tanz in den Mai, “the dance into May”. The Christian tradition has gone. The social dimension has remained, but it is now linked to a purely secular feast: the self-celebration of the working man. The Social Democrat Party thanks heartily, and the others try to get as big a piece of the cake as they can.

I can see the day when Christmas and Easter will be abolished as public festivities, and will be replaced by festivities of secular character on the same day. The Pollyannas will not protest at all, because they are still allowed to celebraaaate their sweeeet festiviteee. But the blow will be massive, because it will gravely impact the public awareness of Christ's Birth and Resurrection exactly as it has impacted the awareness of St Walpurga or Saint Crispin.

The West de-Christianises itself by accepting to push Christianity in the private dimension, as an option which the Pollyannas ask that it be treated in the same way as other options. At the end of which, it is really not clear why exactly Christmas should be a public holiday, and Yom Kippur shouldn't.

When sanity comes back, one of the ways it will happen will be through the ditching of the secular mentality which has been poisoning Europe since the very dark days of the French Revolution and which, through several populist iterations, has given us the extremely populist feasts of “labour”, in whatever secular way it is called.

Screw “Labour Day”.

I will celebrate the feast of St Walpurga instead.





Posted on April 29, 2016, in Catholicism, Conservative Catholicism, Traditional Catholicism and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.

  1. The de-Christianisation began earlier, don’t you think, when Our Lady’s feasts were relegated to the dustbin in the wake of “reforms” by Martin (sin boldly!) Luther and the serial adulterer Henry the Eighth?

    • In a way, yes.
      In another way, I think it can be said that average Englishman, 100 years ago, had a fear of the lord unknown today to most Catholics.

  2. The Church of St. Walburge, a Roman Catholic church in Preston, Lancashire, England, is a church famous for having the tallest spire of any parish church in England.

  3. In Germany, the process is pretty far along. Easter and Christmas are often simply called “Frühjahrsfest” (spring feast) and “Winterfest” or “Lichterfest” (winter feast or feast of lights). In some especially “diverse” areas, these names have already become official.

    Accordingly, the Christian meaning of Easter and Christmas has largely been forgotten. Almost half the population does not know why Christians celebrate Easter, including a third of Protestants and a fifth of Catholics. Knowledge of the reason for Christmas is still slightly higher, but even there, a quarter did not know that Christians commemorate the birth of Christ…

  4. It’s all in the toilet. The secularization has been in the works for a very long time now and the Catholic Church had held out until Vatican II. Then along came the Council with all of the stary-eyed talk about aggiornamento and making nice-nice with the world.

    Down went our defenses and our sense of being in the world but not of the world. Down went our motivation to convert the world to Christ.

    When you capitulate to the world you get screwed by the world.

  5. It may not just be de-christianized, but islamified. A report of “90% of 13-Year-Olds at Italian School Would Convert to Islam if ISIS Came to Their Home”. The 10% (2 students) that said they wouldn’t were from “devout Catholic homes”. How many of the others were from just “Catholic” indifferentist homes? .

  6. The ONLY holidays secularist will allow are Earth Day, Labor Day, and Election Day

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