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I got halfway through. It’s interesting and it’s fun, but anyone positing that the Mayans had any influence at all on Christian symbolism is just a bit too far-fetched for me. The Bacchiochi Staley cites as part of his argument was Jewish, no part whatsoever of the Catholic hierarchy (making a lie of the “Catholics State” page he presents). Further, tho Bacchiocchi’s dissertation at Gregorian (to which he was accepted, infidel though he was) was, of course, published by the college, it certainly received no nihil obstat which, in the early days of fulfilling Vatican II, would have been granted far more generously than at any other time in church history. So no,”Catholics” DON’T “state” anything of the kind even though a Jesuit organization was responsible for its printing (think Penn State publishing the patently unscientific raves of greenies). And, of course, the fact that the church published Sabbath to Sunday is hardly exceptional considering that the church has published just about everything ever written, including the Talmud and the Koran, and was the sole publisher of EVERYthing for some 1200 years.. .

I’m 69 years old, and I’ve never heard of a “sun disk” as a Christmas treetop decoration, unless we translate the sun as STAR which, in the days and geography of the Roman empire (never mind the republic) was an unknown conflation. Odin, Norse god of war, poetry, and magic, could, I readily admit, be tied to Mars or even Merlin, but to Santa Claus? That’s quite a reach considering that we meet red-robed Bishop St. Nicholas (Claus!) in the 300s, and the church doesn’t even begin converting the vikings until the early 9th century. And this could go on and on and on.

Some of what Staley says is true; but half-truths (never mind tenth-truths) aren’t truth; and his withholding of readily available information (such as Bacchiocchi’s religious bias and equating publication with general or dogmatic belief) is just plain sleazy. . .