like establishing the date for celebrating the birthday of Jesus when no one really knows what time of year he was born.
But the meshing of Pagan and Christian customs and symbols was often not by deliberate design. In anthropology, the blending of customs and religious beliefs and practices is called religious syncretism. It has happened often in various cultures and religions as an unplanned consequence of cultures coming into contact with each other.
When a culture encounters the religion of another one, it adopts some of the beliefs, customs, and symbols from the other culture, but old customs die hard, so they get retained and blended. People follow many of the old ways and reinterpret the new ones to fit the meanings of the old one and vice versa. This happens naturally, as a result of contact, often through trade, but also through wars and conquests.
So Samhain customs became a celebration of the souls of saints in Christianity, but the ways of celebrating are the customs of Samhain that we practice today as Halloween. The Pagan Roman religion had multiple gods with their own spheres of influence and powers. In Christianity, that custom got carried over into patron saints for various things in life, while accepting the principle of one god instead of many.
In Spanish the word for Easter is Paschal, derived from Latin for the Hebrew word for Passover. Jesus is called the Paschal lamb, referring to the ancient Jewish practice of sacrificing a lamb in the temple for Passover. Spain was part of the Roman Empire before the birth of Jesus so the Latin word and symbol is carried on over in the holiday name. But northern Europe adopted Christianity later and we use the word Easter, from the northern pre Christian goddess, Eostre, who was the goddess of spring and fertility. So our Eater celebrations center on eggs and bunnies, ancient symbols of fertility, reinterpreted in Christianity to mean new life as a result of Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
These absorption of pre Christian names and customs in Christianity are the natural occurrences of religious syncretism due to a meshing of cultures and beliefs.
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