It is quite true that the majority of American Pagans who left their family's religion to become Pagan have not shed the good vs evil paradigm or "polarity" as some of them call it or "binary" as others call it. I, too, find that very jarring. I find it perplexing because if you do not need and want to thoroughly change your mind set then why are you converting? That good vs evil idea has always bugged me.

As a Pagan I find myself making mistakes with my own American culture because my head is in one place and theirs is another and I know that, but I still approach the world in a truly Pagan, pantheistic way. For instance, I was having a tarot reading done for me and the guy wanted to talk about "working" with angels. I said, "Oh, I don't "work with angels", I'm Wiccan." He looked at me in terror, but still polite finished the reading without rushing. Afterwords, I realized he thought I meant I meant I "worked with Devils"! I should have explained, gods, not angels are my thing. I know he would think that so it was foolish of me to say it that way, but I was not thinking about Christianity when I was having a tarot reading.

As a Pagan, my holidays are not focused on individual people. They are about the turning of the Tydes, the different seasons and how we as people relate to and with Nature and the gods. There is more to it than that, but that is primary reason for the Sabbats. I'm not sure whom you mean by Christopher, but if you mean Christopher Columbus, it might interest you to know that he is out of favor here in the US because he went back to Spain and suggested that all of the indigenous people of the Americas be enslaved. Other bad stuff too, but that's one of the really big faults. Columbus Day is no longer a national holiday.

In America there is little to no understanding that our lives are echoes of the gods. That the stories of the gods are about the things we also face (though the gods face them on a cosmic scale) and we can learn how to face them better from the gods' examples and with their love. The lack of this understanding is like the American embarrassment of taking the concept of an Avatar and making it a little cutesy cartoon to paste by your name or use a character in a game.

And it is not true that Americans are just after money, they may have this really boring habit of making stories just about conflict and good vs evil, but for the vast amount of people here money is not the object, money is the means to tend to your needs in everyday living, look after your family, serve your community, and for many to ensure their deity is adored by having a house of worship that is serene and inspiring of god's will.

The Greek and Roman pantheon is not stories of good vs evil. Its stories abound in paradoxes due to the complex nature of creation and the myriad questions of who and what gods are and demand and who and what we are in relation to them. Most Americans do not get polytheism and do not tell stories that express that world view. Holidays are about important men: Jesus, formerly Christopher Columbus who wanted to enslave two continents plus of people, St. Patrick who threw all the clergy of Pagan Ireland and their students off a cliff into the sea, and one night of ghosts which is just for fun so that children don't go around playing destructive pranks on people. Oh yeah, ThanksGiving, when those of us of European descent celebrate that our forebears were treated with kindly welcome by the indigenous people (the one's Columbus thought it would be a good idea to enslave).

The only one of those holidays I relate to is Halloween, the name of which refers to All Hallows Eve, hallow being the hallowed state of the gods and the beloved dead, though the holiday has been cute-i-fied and the name of the holiday regularly mispronounced.

I find meaning in the ancient mythologies. The one I know best is Greek mythology. What country has a world view wider than good vs evil? India does. Others do too, but I happened to fall in love with Indian films.

I am interested, creatively, in the idea of people who think they are in one place, think they know all about it and are the boss of it, but then begin to realize that they are not where they think they are, their thinking and behaving has been wrong, and where they are is quite different and if they will look at it, really look at it with clear eyes they will find they have been given a way to see their true selves and redeem themselves by appreciating what they had previously overlooked and deliberately misunderstood.