The Holidays from a Pagan Perspective

Halloween/All Hallows Eve/Samhain

This is a favorite holiday among many a Pagan and there are a few different reasons for why Halloween is so preferred among the Pagan community and why it has such a stronghold and is such a particularly sacred and celebrated time for us. For one thing many Pagans do also tend to have an inclination towards the dark side of things, and we generally love being out at night, under the moon, and of course many of us love black. There are a lot of similarities of areas of interest between Pagan's and the Goth culture, we both like to shop at Hot Topic, and we both tend to favor the same sort of accessories.

There is something very occultic about Halloween, after all it is the night in which the veil between this world and the next is thinnest and the spirits may cross over, which is another aspect of the holiday that is most appealing to us Pagans. In relation to the fact that we have a very different aspect on death, and tend to embrace it and celebrate it, we have a great interest in spiritual activity. Halloween night is a great time for spells, rituals, divination.

Plus on Halloween every one dresses up the way we Pagans dress on a day to day basis. On Halloween everyone does themselves become a little bit Pagan, and there is certain Hedonistic aspects to many Halloween Parties.

Another primary reason for why Halloween is so embraced and important to the Pagan culture is because the Christians haven't tried to give it a Christ makeover. In fact there are many groups of Christians who renounce Halloween and that is just as well for me. So we Pagans can feel as if Halloween is still our own. Though perhaps like all holidays in this modern age it has been commercialized, but at least it has not been taken over the by monotheistic monopoly.

Easter

For me this is the most amusing of the holidays because I love irony and Easter is by far the most ironic of the major holidays. It is good to just sit back enjoy the show and laugh. So what makes Easter such a comic holiday for the Pagan?

The fact that though sure the Christians will claim that it is about the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, but they really did not put much effort into disguising this one, I mean they didn't really try at all. Easter is truly Pagan from its head down to its toe. The very name of Easter is taken directly from the name Ostra or sometimes Estera the name of the fertility goddess in which the traditional Easter is held in celebration of.

When is Easter held? On the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox (otherwise known as Spring) I mean you could not get any more Pagan than that if you tried.

And what about those Easter bunnies and decorated eggs? They are fertility symbols of the goddess.

But the truly best part of it of all is the fact that it is almost inevitable that every year on Easter some community will be hosting an  Easter event which will involve someone dressed up as the Easter Bunny and some group of atheists will protest it, and claim it is offensive and exclusive to non-Christians and some group of Christians will defend the right of the Easter Bunny.

So here we have it, a bunch of Christians defending an ancient Pagan fertility symbols, even though they don't know it, and a group of atheists protesting the Easter Bunny while being completely oblivious to the fact that in truth it really has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever.

Christmas/Yule Tide/Winter Solstice

Now this is the most frustrating of them because this is the one in which the Christians really went all out on. They through "Christ" right into the name of the thing and completely redecorated removing virtually all traces of Paganism from this holiday and making it virtually impossible for the Pagans to reclaim in any way shape or form.

While things like the tree, light decorations, presents etc... have their roots back into the original Pagan tradition, the Yule has been overrun with Christian decorations, of course the Nativity scene is one of the most recognized Christmas decorations, and not the mention the heavy spattering of angels and the three wise men. A great majority of Christmas cards have some religious theme or iconography, and many of the most popular of Christmas Carols also have a religious message behind them.

The one good thing I can say which I do not know if it owed to the growing Pagan/Wiccan community and the more openness and recognition we are gaining, or if  it is owed to the atheists, but more and more tv commercials and business and other institutions do recognize the Winter Solstice in their efforts not to give offence and exclude any particularly group, so among the Merry Christmases, Happy Hanukkahs, Happy Kwanzas, Happy Holidays, you will occasionally hear a Happy Winter Solstice, or Happy Yuletide thrown into the mix.

Thanksgiving

Now this one is sort of the odd man out and yet it is still worthy of note here. The thing which sets Thanksgiving apart from the others is the fact that it is not an international holiday and it is not officially a religious holiday for it is not biblical, and yet it does have its origins in Puritanism and thus as far as I am concerned it is a Puritan holiday.

So what relevance does this have upon Pagans?

Though Thanksgiving as it is known today is seen as a purely American holiday a unique holiday, the truth is before the discover of America, before the first colonists to land upon America, before Christianity, harvest festivals of the exact same nature as Thanksgiving have been taking place throughout a great many different cultures.

Now on a matter of principle in theory I do not celebrate Thanksgiving, for one because I do consider it a Puritan holiday and thus it is of no meaning or significance to me and for two because as far as I am concerned Thanksgiving is synonymous with the genocide of the Native American people and culture. But living in America I cannot all together avoid Thanksgiving, as well my family celebrates all of the holidays in a secular fashion.

But for me Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate and do homage to Demeter the goddess of the harvest, so I do not celebrate the American holiday of Thanksgiving, but I celebrate the rather ancient festival of the harvest in honor of the bounty the Earth Mother gives us.

8:11 PM - 1/24/2011 - post comment

For though All are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them. ~The Monk

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