Good night, Cubao!

I am a Religious Studies major, but I was never--am not, and never will be--a cultural ignoramus. Sadly, most, if not all, of my classmates in the Adult Theological Education Program (ATEP) were. They knew nothing of Thai mysticism, the Tao and Egyptian pantheons, Hinduism, Voudon, and the Visayan babaylans, for example, and it is possible that their Religion supervisors even considered those to be cultures of The Devil.

The fact is, culture is man-made. Especially Christian culture.

Christianity gobbles up and absorbs everything in its path, like an ideological Pacman.

Christian holidays were superimposed on pagan holidays--such as Christmas Day, which originally was the Feast of the Saturnalia--and Christian churches built over the ruins of pagan temples, oracle sites, and sacred wells.

Not even my American Jesuit teachers in college Theology knew that.