candles, like incense and lustral water, were commonly employed in pagan worship
All of those things are mentioned in connection with the Temple in the OT, so they were in Jewish worship as well. By God's express command.
The prots forget that circumcision was a pagan practice before it was a Jewish ordinance. And Jesus was circumcised on the 8th day. By prot reasoning that makes all Jews, Jesus, and everyone that was ever circumcised a pagan