holiday – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: Why Isn’t Easter Marketable? By Anjeanette LeBoeuf

This as originally posted on March 25, 2018.

A few months ago, a friend and I were having one of our many hundreds of random conversations when we started to talk about the differences in the commercialization of the two major Christian holidays: Christmas and Easter. We started really getting invested it this question and what factors lead to Christmas become the juggernaut that it currently is.

Both holidays are given official status. Christmas is a designated federal holiday due to it being permanently celebrated in the Western Christian community on December 25^th. Whereas Easter shifts due to seasonal and lunar changes but is always celebrated on a Sunday, meaning it did not need to be given a designated status as Sundays are recognized by the State as a non-work day. Schools across the globe used to call it Christmas and Easter breaks. In the last 10 years, all schools have adopted the politically correct terms of Winter and Spring Breaks. Yet, they still function around the religious observances.

Christmas, it seems comes more and more early in shops. Decorations, candy, gifts, and marketing can be seen as early as September. Christmas music can start to play on radio stations and coffee houses as soon as early November.

From the Archives: “Home: A New Pesach Reflection” by Ivy Helman

Author’s note: This post originally published on this website on March 11, 2018. How prescient it is. I live in Prague, about an 8 hour car-ride to the Ukrainian border. Over 300,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived here, with more arriving daily. They need homes, and this need is overwhelming our small country. Yet, we are doing all we can each and everyday to help those fleeing the war. Yet, this housing is not home, not when war still rages and when families are still separated. We need peace. Everyone deserves a home.

In ancient times, Pesach was one of three pilgrimage holidays, the others being Sukkot and Shavuot. According to the the Torah, Israelite men were required to travel to Jerusalem to bring offerings to the temple. Supposedly, this reconnected these Israelites to their religion, to each other and to the deity. Participating in these pilgrimages brought about a deeper sense of community. In short, three times a year, Jerusalem became a home away from home.

Days Like These, by Molly M. Remer

Sometimes the best rituals
are those we cannot plan,
requiring only pine needles and wind,
open eyes
and a long, slow-sinking sun
settling gently into shadows.
Sometimes the best magic
of all is made with
what is exactly right now,
bluestem grass and gray feathers,
raccoon footsteps
between the trees,
laughter and joined hands,
a faith in the cycles of retreat
and renewal.
This is what we are here for,
days like these.

One crow behind the house greeted me on a frosty solstice morning. Five more slid across the road in front of me as I reluctantly left home to go to the dentist. A red-shouldered hawk glided across the road next and I spotted a kestrel perched on a wire. I drove and sang, memories of our bright candles and solstice spiral the night before behind my eyes, sun bread left rising golden on the counter at home. The dentist has devised a pulley system to hang bird feeders by each of his second story windows and I watch house finches collect sunflower seeds as I lie in the chair. I spot a vulture circling in the distance slow and graceful above the trees. The sky is blue. When I leave the office, I hear a crow’s voice call from across the street and as I drive back home to my family and our winter holiday celebrations, another red-shouldered hawk swoops in front of me, while a red-tailed hawk sits solemnly in a tree by the field, watching the ground. I’m amazed how birds, so unbound, tether me so reliably to the magic of place, to being present with the ensouled and singing world as I move within it and I am grateful.

In the late afternoon on the solstice, my family and I carry the sun bread we have made out to the field by our studio. We join hands and sing and then toss small bits of our golden bread to the sun, calling out our wishes for the year to come and offering our thanks to the spinning world we walk on, beneath this burning sun.

The kids go inside and my husband, Mark, and I walk down the road to finish watching the sun set. It sinks low and slow behind the bare oak trees, growing larger and redder as it goes. It seems to be one of the most drawn out sunsets of this year and we sit down in the frost-crisped dittany by the side of the road, our backs against the oak trees, watching. I turn to look at Mark smiling and say: this is what I am here for, days like these.

I decided to take social media break as 2021 drew to a close, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, something I’ve needed to do for a long time, and yet, something I’ve always talked myself out of. I need this for our business, I think. It is part of my work. How else will I reach people? I will just post a few more things. While, inside, the hunger to really listen, to de-fragment my mind and re-collect my soul continued to build to a peak of fervency and desire. The blessing and the curse of social media is that everything is in one place. Convenient, yes. Holds you hostage, also yes. Exposes you to more information than you can reasonably hold and process, also yes. The first day of my break, I was amazed how often I was tempted to cheat, how many ways I came up with to sneak around the limit and to just do one little thing anyway. I was also surprised to discover how much extra space there is in my mind and how liberating it is to step away from the clamor of so many other voices. As Cal Newport explains, we all need time each day when we are outside of the influence of other minds. And, I was surprised by how invisible I felt, how unseen and unheard. As the days passed, I felt it though, my scattered pieces coming home. I knew that social media was affecting my focus and my brain functioning, could feel it fragmenting my thoughts, and making my focus and attention jumpy and scattered. In these days of silence, something began to heal inside. I feel a bit invisible, yes, but I also feel whole. I feel like I am coming back online, to my own life.

What was intended only as a ten day break over the winter solstice, extended through the first month of new year and while I’m not saying I’m never going back, I find I am in no rush to re-engage, certainly not in the way I had before.

In the reclaimed attentional space within, I discovered the soulsong of a new book walking up to me, hands extended and eyes wide.

We walk again under long wings of twilight, last vestiges of day sinking purple and mauve into the horizon. Somehow we end up talking about cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Give me dirt and give me stars, I say, as our feet crunch across the brown gravel, our shoulders hunched slightly against the wind. Give me life, right here, where it is.

As we come back up our driveway, we spot a doe at the compost pile, she watches us silently as we turn to make one more lap down the dusky gravel road.

Molly Remer, MSW, D.Min, is a priestess facilitating women’s circles, seasonal rituals, and family ceremonies in central Missouri. Molly and her husband Mark co-create Story Goddesses at Brigid’s Grove. Molly is the author of nine books, including Walking with Persephone, Whole and Holy, Womanrunes, and the Goddess Devotional. She is the creator of the devotional experience #30DaysofGoddess and she loves savoring small magic and everyday enchantment.

Note: this essay is excerpted in part from a book in progress, tentatively titled Walking with the Goddess.

From the Archives: There Is No Santa-The Antlered Flying Goddess With Gifts by Marie Cartier

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted December 25, 2015. You can visit it here to see the original comments.

*Marie bringing in Elen of the Ways*
*photo by Tony Mierzwicki*

One of my colleagues at Feminism and Religion recently wrote of Xmas and Feminine Wisdom. My blog, for Christmas Day continues this exploration.

Elen of the Ways is a figure primarily studied by scholar, Carolyn Wise. She wrote two core articles available on the web here and here. Wise writes that in order to “track” and find Elen of the Ways she had to peel back the layers:

…to the earliest track ways, the migratory tracks of the Reindeer and Elk. Elen moves across vast tracts of time, and land, cloaked and masked appropriately for each age.

As the Green Lady, she peers out between the trees in forests …As a British Venus… she is guardian of the underground streams that carry the sacred waters. She is the Guardian of the ancient track ways, the Leys, the Kundalini currents in nature. And as the Horned Goddess, she leads us to the first track ways, the migratory tracks of the reindeer and later, to the path of the red deer through the forests. From here she leads us to the lost Shamanism of the isles of Britain and we can follow her across Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, Siberia, India and beyond.

You can read more about Elen in the book edited by Carolyn Wise, Finding Elen: The Quest for Elen of the Ways. Elen is:

…part goddess, part dream, part saint, a green lady and a water nymph, primordial mother and patroness of deer, and guardian of the Old Straight Tracks and solar alignments. …Elen is as real as the roads named after her, as solid as the ancient paths that carry her presence.

What are these tracks? Part of the story can be explained by understanding that there are ley lines, or energy paths throughout the globe. These paths were “tracked” by shamans, pagans, and regular folk and still exert their influence today in very recognizable ways. People celebrated earlier this week on the Solstice (December 21) at Stonehenge. “One of the most important and well-known features of Stonehenge is its alignment on the midwinter sunset-midsummer sunrise solstitial axis,” a spokesperson said. “The midwinter sun sets between the two upright stones of the great trilithon.” The solsitial axis is part of the ley line network that connects sacred sites such as Newgrange in Ireland, a sacred burial mound which lights up only the morning of Solstice.

At dawn in Newgrange, on the mornings surrounding the solstice a narrow beam of light enters the 62-foot long passage and lights the floor. It moves along the ground, from the window box until it lights the rear chamber. This Neolithic light show lasts 17 minutes….Local expert Michael Fox told National Geographic, “Archaeologists have classified Newgrange as a passage tomb but it is more than that. ‘Ancient temple’ is a more fitting label: a place of astronomical, spiritual, and ceremonial importance.”

If light that travels around the world lighting up sacred sites and bringing the gift of light to all corners of the world starts to sound like Christmas, let’s extend that thought to understand the connection to flying reindeer. According to Caroline Wise,

…the only kind of female deer to have antlers are Reindeer. Not only does the female reindeer have antlers, but she is stronger than the male and does not shed her antlers in winter. It is an older female reindeer that leads the herds.

So as I like to tell my students, “the McDonald drive through version” of what we’ve heard so far is: Most likely, yes, Rudolph is a girl/female reindeer, keeping her antlers leading a herd of female reindeer keeping their antlers, traveling with Elen (Santa) throughout the sky giving the gift of light—the light of Rudolph’s red nose that keeps the sleigh on track—following the ley lines around the world, and lighting up the sacred sites, turning the sacred wheel towards spring.

Wise continues the thread of Elen and Christmas thus:

…Leys as shamanic flight paths was relevant to Elen in her guises of both Empress and the Reindeer-woman…the Father Christmas story is based on the shamans of the Sámi people. These people (and other reindeer societies) had a symbiotic relationship with the Reindeer. They would follow the herds along their migratory tracks. Their food, clothes, homes, tools, even needles and thread came from the reindeer. ..the Father Christmas story is based on the older, non-Christian Shamans of Lapland. …to aid their shamanic flights, the shamans needed the properties of the Fly Agaric mushroom, the fabulous red and white toadstool of fairy stories. Taking the mushroom can be risky, or at least unpleasant, because of toxins it contains. The Shamans noted that the reindeer ate the mushrooms, which grew around the silver birch trees, and suffered no ill effects.
The shaman lets the substance pass through the reindeer, neutralizing the toxins, and then drinks its urine. The active ingredients are unaffected, and the shaman enters his trance and begins his flight. Above the snow he can see the herds, see the predators, and gains helpful knowledge for the tribe. He gains wisdom of the plants and healing, as the Fly Agaric opens the gateways for him to be able to commune with the spirits of the land, the beasts, and the ancestors. He carries back the gifts of healing, and also news of the herds. When finishing his trance session, the shaman would enter the yurt through the smoke hole, and slide down the central silver birch pole with his bag of healing plants and his paraphernalia – Father Christmas coming down the chimney.

And Christmas trees?…the Fly Agaric is found mainly at the base of the silver birch and pine trees. It can be found beneath conifers, mostly evergreens, such as cedar, and the spruce and firs used for Christmas trees. …Reindeer Shaman spirituality was holistic within its environment, a complete cosmology including the people, the herds, the landscape, the stars…Therefore the trees that the mushrooms grew around were an an important part of the whole.

The Holidays Are Coming: Let’s Celebrate the Saturnalia by Barbara Ardinger

Here we are in December—and what a year 2021 has been. Let’s not even think about what we’ve survived—continuing pandemic, climate change, people with guns, violations of voting rights, the Orange T. Rex still at large. No no no. Let’s celebrate the coming holidays with the antique ancestor of the Feast of Fools. Let’s celebrate the Saturnalia.

Some background: Saturn, who was sometimes conflated with the Greek Titan, Cronus (who became a god of time), was an ancient Latin agricultural god whose name may derive from satur, “stuffed,” or sator, “a sower”; in either case, he stands for abundance. He was a working god who oversaw viniculture and farming and was the king of Italy during the golden age before the rise of imperial Rome. When Jupiter came to conquer him, he hid himself (latuit) in the region that came to be called Latium. The Romans soon proclaimed that Saturn’s body lay beneath the Capitol in Rome. Because his reign (and presumably his hidden corpse) brought prosperity to the city, the state treasury and the standards of the Roman legions were kept in his temple when the army was at home. Saturn’s statue was bound in woolen strips to keep him from leaving Rome. In addition to Saturn, the Romans honored Ops and popular gods like Sol Invictus, Mithra, Consus, Juventas, and Janus in their winter festivals.

A Different Type of Thanksgiving, part 2 by Sara Wright

{Part 1 was posted yesterday. You can see it here}

Soon after I began to create little traditions that I follow to this day. November is the month I begin to celebrate my love for every evergreen tree on the earth. The leaves of broadleaf trees have become nature’s mulch, yet forest green stays with us until spring, thanks to the conifers. Thanksgiving week is the time I choose to go into the forest to tip balsam boughs thanking the trees for being, always choosing a mild day when I can enjoy being outdoors. Then I weave fragrant wreaths sitting on my living room floor listening to choral music sung in Latin, a language I don’t understand, thankfully (!) This year my indoor Norfolk Island pines are already lit with rice lights for a few hours each evening lending a festive glow to the soothing cloak of darkness.

Recently I decided to include a dinner for this week of Wintergreen Tree Celebration and it turned out that the foods I wanted to cook were some of the favorite foods I prepared during those exhausting and meaningless thanksgivings, cooking that I did for others, including my children at my own expense. At first this idea of cooking a feast for myself, (after all the trees couldn’t join me) seemed silly until I recalled how much I loved my own food! I am an excellent cook and I can conjure up just about anything without a recipe.

An All Hallows Story – My Father becomes a Beaver by Sara Wright

Transmutation?

The year my father died I fell in love with beavers. All summer I watched them at dawn and dusk gnaw down the poplars, drag them to the plume, observing keenly how the trees slid so easily into the stream… as the kits grew, little furry heads accompanied their parents carrying whittled sticks in their mouths to help shore up their ever expanding lodge. I always sat quietly so some evenings around dusk the kits would swim right up to me. Occasionally one would slap a leathery flat tail before diving deep.

When the ‘call’ came on All Hallows Eve my father sounded sad and resigned. He was being operated on for colon cancer that week. The shock of finding out so suddenly choked me up with grief so intense I could barely respond. He had told no one he had cancer. We hung up. A trip to NY and to*** the hospital was distressing. I saw my dad twice. The first time he barely acknowledged me; that night he looked into my eyes and called me “his girl,” words he had never used to describe me, his daughter, during our entire life – time together. Two days later, after returning to Maine, I awakened from a dream with the words, “your father has become a beaver” just as the phone rang. My father had died minutes before.

Meditation in July – Weekend of July 4th by Sara Wright

I offered up morning prayers at dawn this July morning to the song of cardinals, rose breasted grosbeaks, and just barely rippling waters. The air was sweetened by water. Peace filtered through the green – seedlings, lichens, mosses, grasses, ferns, trees, clear mountain waters. Silence, except for the birds’ benediction.

I honored my body with a poem. I also repeated my hope that my house will get the necessary structural help she needs, that the work will be completed. At the brook I experienced my body rooting into forested soil… I am loved here; I belong here – at least for now.

The drought drones on, although today at least we have light rain falling, for which I am profoundly grateful, especially because the dreaded 4^th of July weekend is ahead – if only the rain will continue the deafening explosions might be tempered. In case this does not happen the dogs and I are going to retreat to the silence and peace of the woodlands to spend our nights in the car, the back of which has been turned into a comfortable bed.

Fourth of July: A Time to Mourn by Sara Wright

I awakened to dove gray skies and the sweet scent of falling rain. Soaking in the greening of a fully leafed out forest and the stillness of early dawn felt like a gift because these quiet moments are precious and precarious on the weekend Americans celebrate ‘Independence Day’.

As a person with mixed heritage (Passamaquoddy) I am not one of those people. Indigenous peoples of the Americas have nothing to embrace on this weekend. We are still invisible; we are still discriminated against. We are still outsiders.

Along with the emphasis on Black Lives Matter I often wonder why Red people are not included in the current cultural outrage. These are the people who were deliberately poisoned with smallpox, and also murdered and herded onto reservations by the colonists who took over this once wild and untrammeled country, systematically destroying its beauty by slaughtering the trees and animals that once grew into stately giants or roamed free. Why would Indigenous peoples or any other minority celebrate an Independence Day that occurred at their expense?

Beltane and Greek Easter: Mary and the Goddess by Laura Shannon

Today, May 1, we celebrate Beltane, the Celtic festival between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. Starting tonight, we also celebrate Greek Easter, with its ritual drama of life and death.

In the Western Church, Easter never falls as late as May, but in the Orthodox calendar, Easter and Beltane more or less co-incide every few years. It’s a reminder of connections between Christian and pre-Christian traditions, both in the archetypal cycle of life, death, and regeneration, and in links between the Christian Mary and the pre-Christian Goddess in her various names and forms.