Gah, this stuff annoys me even more than most religions. At least someone raised into Catholicism can claim the excuse of indoctrination, but this is part romanticism and part ostentatious iconoclasm IMO.
[quote]Paganism is believed to be Britain's fastest growing religion, [/quot6e]
Every niche religion says that, just like every niche sport. Sometimes it's even true, as they grow rapidly into a gap, and then stop.
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Major festivals include Yule, an ancient precursor to Christmas in which pagans burn a Yule log in honour of the Germanic god Kriss Kringle,
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Yule as such is legitimately pre-Christian, although it;s meaning is mostly lost, but Kriss Kringle isn't a God, German or otherwise - it's German form of "christkindle" i.e. christ-child.
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and Samhain, on Halloween, when food is left for the dead and worshippers cast spells as ghosts.
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Bah humbug. Samhain was an intercalary date; because it was therefore "outside of time" it was concluded that unnatural things could happen, which then lead to the idea the dead could stalk the land. Maybe you leave food out for them to keep them appeased, but you also don't set foot out of doors. At any rate, 29th Feb is also an intercalary date but we don't have the cultural background that leads to those sorts of deduction, and I'll bet neither do most modern celebrants actually have them. Similar sort of thinking lead to the modern trope that a vampire cannt enter a house univited.
There isn't enough information to reconstruct real pagan beliefs, and no point in doing so.
Pagan Police Officers granted days off for religious festival
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