A poster here posits that we are following a religious practice from a religion that started over 1,000 years after the Jewish people entered E”Y. It is as easy to say that the foreigners may have co-opted one of our minhagim for their own.
A few other examples of minhagim that were adopted by other religions are:
We no longer throw seeds at a chuppah because another religion took the practice as their own.
We no longer use ksav Ivris because it was taken by another sect.
The vort, tenayim and aufruf is done by the above mentioned relatively new religion and is called banns.