As a pagan, I've been amazed down the years at the number of festivals that were taken over by the early Church. The Summer Solstice was replaced by St John's Day, just a day or so later; the Winter Solstice by St THomas' Day and Christmas Day... but what happened in August?
Many modern pagans, myself included, tend to celebrate Lammas or Lughnasadh as our biggest August festival, marking yet another turn of the annual wheel as the year changes gear for the autumn. Usually most pagans celebrate these on or around the 1st August... but that does beg the question, what did the early Church do about them?
It's important to remember that the early Church initially concerned itself mostly with Christianising festivals celebrated across the Roman Empire. So Lammas and Lughnasadh, which seem to have been essentially north European festivals, seem to have missed out.
The reason for this was the the Church had targeted a much bigger threat, the birthdays of the twin deities of Artemis and APollo, celebrated right across the classical world on August 13th. To deal with this, they instituted the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August 15th, two days later. (You will find this two day gap regularly seems to crop up when looking at Christianised festivals!)
Many traditions state that Mary was in Ephesus when the Assumption occurred.... and Ephesus had a particularly powerful cult dedicated to Artemis, shown here:
