The study of Folklore is like trying to hold water in a paper bag. This threads attempts a sort of study-of-the-study of folklore but is barely adequate for the purposes as it seems to have made its mind up from the off & is predicated on a confusion of FOLKLORE and THE STUDY OF FOLKLORE which are two very different things. Evidences have been offered, and roundly ignored. Before FOLKLORE was invented, there was still FOLKLORE; same as BIRDS predate the study of ORNITHOLOGY by several million years or so.

To reiterate : the thinning of the veil was a METAPHOR used by Folklorists to account of a number of indicators in folkloric usage which all seem to derive from a core belief born out in folktale, folksong, ballad, and customs both solemn and otherwise. The Folklorists sought to collect and analyse these things - as such they are the accumulated evidences that account for the Veil Concept. The concept is no older than Folklore itself, but the evidences for a belief in the confusion of given dualities are ancient. To quote Sherlock Holmes : 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' And to quote Ronald Hutton (again):

For the Celts Samhain was a time when the gates between this world and the next were open. It was a time of communion with the spirits of the dead, who, like the wild autumnal winds, were free to roam the earth. At Samhain the Celts called upon their ancestors, who might bring warnings and guidance to help with the year to come.' (The Stations of the Sun, 1996. Ch 35, p 360)

Why should this surprise us? Like many others I regularly consult a ZODIAC which was ancient even when the PHARAOHS had it carved on their tombs. I have seen the same signs in medieval brass gleaming on the marble floors of Canterbury Cathedral wherein the wild imagery of the Romanesque hints at all manner of ritual vernacular misrule which even the mediaeval churchmen adopted as an essential ingredient for their own Ritual Reversals in the Feast of the Ass. You can see the same signs daily in The Mirror. The past is everywhere & defines everything that we are.   

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The Romans are known to have taken many local deities & places of worship. On the Tyneside end of the Roman Wall (now in the middle of housing estate at Benwell) there is a temple to one Antenociticus - a horned God of Celtic origin. There are also decorated well-heads venerating local spirits (as mentioned by Graves in The White Goddess). Like the Borg, the Romans assimilated a lot of stuff on their travels, but things get assimilated anyway, it's the Brownian Motion of Cultures that negates precious notions of indigineity so beloved of racists. On account of its diverse and myriad borrowings Christianity has been called the most pagan religion of them all.

The Roman Church had a mission statement to take over local sacred sites & feast days to make their job easier in the supplanting of paganism. The very name EASTER is pagan - the fact that it's STILL a moveable feast (celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox) is also an indicator of just how sacred this day was to the pre-Christian religions. Other moveable lunar feasts were nailed down to specific days (Samhain, Beltane, Imbolc & Lammas) - not so Eostre.

The fact that Christian churches were sited on pre-Roman places of worship tells us a good deal of what was still regarded as 'sacred' long after the Romans had ite domum. On the back of this we have LeyLines - a contentious theory, of course, but with many hill-mounted churches dedicated to that arch dragon slayer Saint Michael - from Saint Michael's Mount to that most sacred of hills Glastonbury Tor - then there must be something in it.

This is but part the hoary lore of Merlin's Isle of Gramarye that underwrites the visionary mystery of sacred Albion. So mote it be!