From Wikepedia about Palestinian Christians
I just thought this was interesting. It is not necessarily linked to any post.
Catholics merged Saints with Roman
and South American pagan gods
so I can understand how an element of compatibility between Muslims and Christians as described here might have come about.
Most Palestinian Christians nowadays see themselves as culturally and linguistically Arab Christians with ancestors dating back to the first followers of Christ. They claim descent from Romans, Ghassanid Arabs, Byzantines, and Crusaders.[9]
That Christian Arabs in Palestine see themselves as Arab nationalistically reflects also the fact that, as of the beginning of the twentieth century, they shared many of the same customs as their Muslim neighbors.
In some respects, this was a consequence of Christians adopting what were essentially Islamic practices, many of which were derived of sharî'ah. In others, it was more the case that the customs shared by both Muslims and Christians derived from neither faith, but rather were a result of a process of syncretization, whereby what had once been pagan practices were later redefined as Christian and subsequently adopted by Muslims. This was especially evident in the fact that Palestine's Muslims and Christians shared many of the same feast days, in honor of the same saints, even if they referred to them by different names. "Shrines dedicated to St. George, for instance, were transformed into shrines honoring Khidr-Ilyas, a conflation of the Prophet Elijah and the mythical sprite Khidr". Added to this, many Muslims viewed local Christian churches as saints' shrines. Thus, for instance, a "Muslim women having difficulties conceiving, for instance, might travel to Bethlehem to pray for a child before the Virgin Mary".[10] It was even not uncommon for a Muslim to have his child baptized in a Christian church, in the name of Khaḍr.[11]