Special Guest Blogger: Saint Augustine

In the late 6th century, i was pottering around in Rome just doing everyday religious things when Pope Gregory came up with the great idea of sending a group of us to England to convert the whacky Anglo-Saxons from believing whatever nonsense they believed in and start believing in our Christianity instead.
The 6th Century Europe was a great time, we had the shiny new Georgian Calendar, matches had been invented and we were making clothes out of silk so the last thing i wanted to do was travel to rainy old England to try and convert a bunch of smelly Anglo-Saxons so halfway there we got cold feet and decided to turn back.
We sent a messenger saying we were coming back and Gregory sent his own replying no you ain't and that's why two years after we left, we arrived in Kent and were met by King Æthelberht.
Before he could balance our heads on a pike, we held up a silver cross and a panel painted with the image of Christ and said we would bring peace to his land, please don't chop us up and he never, actually was nice about it and gave us some land in Canterbury to use as a base.
Still having a head was the first obstacle passed but we still had to go around and tell the people who built huts out of their own dung that Jesus was the guy for them so we came up with the idea of sneakily allowing all the old, heathen festivals and beliefs to remain intact, but superimpose Jesus and Christianity on them.
It worked a treat because when we rolled up saying you look like a decent British bloke, i'll park the old booties on you if that's okay all they cared about was they could still get drunk as newts and stuff their ugly faces at certain times of the year so they didn't care who it celebrated so gradually, the main heathen feasts became days honouring Christ or one of the Saints who we had ready for any eventuality.
Over several centuries, all the big piss-ups were converted to Christian festivals so Imbolc became Candlemas, Sam-hain on 31 October when the dead relatives popped back for a visit quickly became All Souls’ Night, followed by All Saints’ Day and the 12-day festival of Yule at the end of December became Christmas, the celebration of Christ’s birth although we had to fudge the dates a bit for that one.
However, one festival that was so ancient and so deeply entrenched in the pagan psyche that we didn't dare change the name of was Easter although it became less in celebration of the goddess Eostre and more about Christ being crucified and we quickly mumbled something about the eggs and bunnies being some Jesus related thing.
I did such a good job that i was made the very the first Archbishop of Canterbury and kickstarted the whole rubbing out the original Gods and pasting in our own guy thing.