I realized this past weekend I’m turning pagan. Not in a Wiccan/animist/Asatru kind of way. No, no acceptance of sky gods around here. Just a reassessment of celebrating the seasons.
Sophia was excited out of her mind about a party she was going to on Saturday—an Easter egg hunt. I asked her, “What do we celebrate on Easter?” and she said, “Bunny rabbits and Easter eggs!” Which was pretty much all she knew about it.
I found myself thinking, You know, that’s okay. It’s as good an excuse as any to have a party.
Now that Easter’s come and gone, I feel as though Spring is really here. The days are getting longer. We can get out of the house. (This last part has been fairly crucial when you have little kids. Of course, then it rained on Sunday and we were stuck inside.) Now that we’ve gone through the ritual of bunnies and chicks and eggs, I have a whole Spring mindset now.
The same thing happened around Christmas. We don’t celebrate Christmas as any sort of religious holiday, but I am completely down with having a giant celebration at the darkest part of winter as an excuse to get together with family and friends, to keep spirits up during the coldest part of the year.
On Sunday I laughed when I realized that while I have zero belief in the religious traditions surrounding these holidays, I have no problem whatsoever with celebrating Easter and Christmas in their roles as markers of the season. I’m a right proper pagan now.
Obviously, I’d have some different rationales for why we’d celebrate these holidays if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere.
You have no idea how much trouble I have with the Pagan calendar down here in Oz. My head is saying one thing, and my spirit is saying another. Autumn = Easter and Christmas = bloody hot. It’s all too strange.
I suppose it really depends upon whether you appreciate “religious” in a literal-factual manner, or in a sacred-metaphorical manner. It’s possible to marry all the meanings of a holiday like Christmas in a manner that enriches the various traditions, but compromises none. It’s something we did for Easter at my house this year, and I look forward to doing the same at Christmastime.