Celebrating the Beginning of Harvest

This time around the wheel I am trying not to get too caught up in the philosophy of our Pagan holydays, but to enjoy them at their simple point of origin.  I want to celebrate the passage of time as told by the rhythms of nature.  Being so immersed in my garden this summer made Lammas a little extra special.  Garden season goes so quickly here that it really is the beginning of the end.  I could really get into telling you all about my garden, but that is a different post. 

 

 

As usual, I kept things pretty simple.  I decorated my altar with my most recently harvested garden produce, held a sparse 5 minute ritual which even that was too long since Miss Busy managed to pull a page out of her daddy's new book in that time, and made grain cakes for supper.  Once I got the girls settled for the night, I spent about an hour in the garden doing some maintenance and just enjoying the evening.  I left the candles burning, with the fan in the hall and they melted down very quickly so now I have a waxy mess to clean up off my altar, but I did enjoy my little holyday.  As the littles get a bit older it will all get a bit more in depth.

Tis the Season

Like most modern pagan families we have had to ask,  "What about the holidays?!" 

Living in reverence of the natural world around us makes Yule an important day in our year, but it is closely followed by Christmas and New Year.  As the mama, three major holidays jammed into as many weeks seems like a nightmare.  If we celebrated them all with equal gusto and festivity, I would need a nap that lasted all of January.  To keep the most meaningful aspects of the season and still escape with our sanity, Superman and I had to examine the situation and do some slicing and dicing.

After a long year of struggling through a plethora of holidays, we came to a conclusion.   Religiously we are Pagan, but culturally we are American.  Ach!  Does that mean we have to celebrate everything?!  No matter how much we want to celebrate the Pagan holydays, we cannot bring ourselves to part with the holidays we grew up observing.  So...it is going to look like this at our house:  each Pagan holiday will be celebrated as a family sacred day, while it's American counter part will be celebrated a community based appendage. 

For example Yule was a quiet night at home with lots of candle light, a fake fire compliments of YouTube, a simple altar ceremony to welcome the longest night of the year, a warm hearty dinner, and just some good family time.  We were planning on fresh scones for breakfast, but after Little Bitty Baby woke up seven times over the course of the night I was doing good to slap some peanut butter on a slice of toast.  Christmas morning we will open gifts from our extended family, eat huge stacks of pancakes to celebrate the lengthening of the day light hours, and if there is enough snow spend the afternoon sledding.  New Years will be regarded about as much as the onset of daylight saving time.  Since we feel that the winter solstice is nature's new year, we feel that to celebrate both is redundant.  Plus, we aren't the party type anyway. 

We will adapt this through out the year to work with other observances such as Ostera/Easter and Samhain/Halloween.  We have a secular gathering at my aunts every year over Easter weekend and family camp over Father's Day weekend just before Midsummer.  Both of these traditions will be worked into our own Pagan holyday celebrations.  The details are still up in the air, but I'll let you all know how they land. 

Side note:  Permission to bring home the black fur ball in the photo was Superman's holiday gift.  This new member of our family is named Merlin and is a quiet, slightly more dexterous version of Miss Busy.  Notice the mess he made of my center piece.