6.20.2008
Happy Summer Solstice
Today (and tomorrow) is the celebration of the Summer Solstice
Druids at Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice
Here are some recent quotes on this day from the press, along with some words from those who celebrate the Summer Solstice as a holiday.
"Party in the sun until midnight. That's what revelers around the world will be doing this weekend to mark summer's official start -- the summer solstice. For most of us, a trip to Stonehenge or Scandinavia is not part of the plan. But what better time to invite friends over for a radiant summer soiree than on the longest day of the year?" - Sue Gleiter, The Patriot-News
"Solstice comes from the Latin words sol and stice, and means literally "sun stands still'' because the sun rises and sets at the same point on the horizon for three days. Ancient peoples celebrated it with festivals, bonfires, feasting, singing and maypole dancing." - Jody Feinberg, GateHouse News Service
"A pagan druid ceremony will be held at the top of [Spinnaker Tower] to mark summer solstice. Leading Stonehenge Druid Frank Somers along with about seven others will be dressed in traditional ceremonial outfits to mark the occasion. The ceremony starts with a procession and a calling of the spirits followed by an explanation of the celebration. There will be chanting, singing and drumming as well as horn blowing." - Portsmouth News
"The dawn of the 2008 Summer Solstice approaches with thousands of revellers expected to descend on Wiltshire's sacred stone circle sites. In 2007, 24,000 people celebrated Summer Solstice at Stonehenge and with this years event falling on a Saturday many more are expected to turn out. Sunrise will occur at Stonehenge at 4.58am on June 21 on what is the longest day of the year." - Victoria Ashford, Wiltshire Times
"Celebrate Solstice time with other Pagans -- take part in the Pagan Spirit Gathering or some other Pagan festival happening during June. Keep a Sacred Fire burning throughout the gathering. Stay up all night on Solstice Eve and welcome the rising Sun at dawn. Make a pledge to Mother Earth of something that you will do to improve the environment and then begin carrying it out. Have a magical gift exchange with friends. Burn your Yule wreath in a Summer Solstice bonfire. Exchange songs, chants, and stories with others in person or through the mail. Do ecstatic dancing to drums around a blazing bonfire." - Selena Fox, "Summer Solstice"
A blessed Midsummer to you all!
* Technically speaking, the 2008 Summer Solstice occurs at 23:59 UTC on June 20th. Please check your local time-zone for accurate Solstice timing.
Labels: holidays, Litha, Midsummer, Paganism, Summer Solstice
4.30.2008
A Merry Beltane
- Ralph W. Emerson
Tonight and tomorrow (in the northern hemisphere) are the traditional dates for many of the major spring/summer festivals in modern Paganism. Beltane, Bealtaine, May Day, Floralia, Protomayia, and Walpurgis Night, to name just a few. This fire festival heralds the coming of summer and is a high holiday, a liminal time when the barriers between our world and the otherworld were thin. In many traditions and cultures it is a time of divine union and fertility.
Walpurgis Night bonfire, near lake Ringsjo, Sweden
Photo by David Castor
"We celebrate the new crops coming in, celebrating initiation and fertility. It is a sharing of Appalachian traditions. West Virginia is among the most Appalachian of the states. A lot of the traditions that were here tonight were celebrated here not even a hundred years ago." - George Fain, president of Marshall University Pagan Association
"On the night itself, hundreds of performers lead a fire-lit procession around [Calton Hill]. They move through a fire gate and round points representing earth, air, water and fire. The festivities reach a climax when the Green Man, a symbol of the first growth of summer, arrives and is crowned by the May Queen." - Martin Couper, The Edinburgh Evening News
"Beltane, meaning bright fire, is one of the four Celtic cross-quarter festivals celebrating the changing of seasons. 'People have, as far as we can tell, [always] celebrated the changing of the seasons,' Dr. Robin Larsen, co-founder and director of the Center for Symbolic Studies says. Beltane, an ancient festival typically celebrated on the last two days of April and the first two days of May is a time to awaken the earth's spirit to get ready for spring. 'March doesn't feel so spring like,' Larsen says. 'When you get to the end of April you're really there and you know summer is coming.'" - Tara Quealy, Chronogram Magazine
"Each year, in the evening of April the 30th, Swedes and Finns celebrate Saint Walpurgis, one of the most popular festivities during the year alongside of Christmas and Midsummer. Walpurgis Night receives the name of "Valborg" in Sweden and "Vappu" in Finland, and is a very lively celebration where people spend the night together and sing traditional songs to welcome spring." - Scandinavica.com
"Thursday is May Day, which, depending on your leanings, is a pagan pole-dancing holiday, a day of labor solidarity against The Man, a day off for immigrants and their supporters, or some combination of all three, a grab-bag of un-American activity. (To the latter group, Happy Law Day!)" - Swati Pandey, Los Angeles Times
"The festival of May Day (May 1st) has been widely celebrated for centuries, even millennia. Essentially a seasonal and floral festival concerned with the spring rebirth of vegetation after its death in winter, it is a festival of all things green in nature ... our modern May Day holiday has a rich past, redolent with symbolism and meaning. Whether we take a deep historical view, or whether we just have fun in the sun, May Day (Beltaine) is one of the key turning points of the ritual year." - Rob Tillett, Astrology on the Web
"The Earth softens under the caress of the sun and all the world is new. We emerge from the darkness of a long, difficult winter; our eyes drink in rolling green hills budding branches and tender shoots. We breathe deeply the fresh fragrance of radiant blossoms. We have survived!" - Selena Fox, Circle Sanctuary
May you all be especially blessed this evening and tomorrow.
Labels: Beltane, Festival, holidays, May Day, Paganism, Walpurgis Night
2.17.2008
Are Pagan Holidays a Very Good Reason?
The Telegraph reports on what seems to be a rather minor matter, a Pagan parent removing her child from school to attend a religious celebration.
"A primary school allowed a mother to take her child out of lessons to attend a summer festival because the family say they are pagans. Newington Green Primary, in the north London borough of Islington, gave permission for the three-day absence last June after the mother of the six-year-old argued that the child should be allowed to attend the celebrations because of her faith ... The family visited the solstice festival that is held each year in Avebury, Wiltshire, near Stonehenge."
But now a school officials says they are "clamping down" on absences, and hinting that Pagan holidays may not make the grade any longer.
"'The three days were put down as authorised absence, but we have subsequently explained to all parents that they will not be given authorised holidays within term time unless there is a very good reason for it,' she said."
A spokesman from the Campaign for Real Education goes quite a bit farther than a hint.
"Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: 'This is the kind of situation we get into by bending over backwards to try to please everybody. One of the main duties of parents is to ensure that children miss out on as little school as possible and, on balance, I don't think they should be missing school for this.'"
Which brings us to the question: are Pagan holidays a "very good reason" to miss school for a few days? If not, why not, and if schools are going to start denying excused absences to Pagan children will they start doing the same to Catholic, Muslim, or Jewish children? One can only imagine the uproar if a Jewish child was denied an excused absence for Yom Kippur because it wasn't a "very good reason".
With there being around 40,000 Pagans in the UK (making it the 8th-largest faith grouping, so long as you don't count the Jedi), it seems completely strange that schools would suddenly have a problem making religious exemptions for a Pagan holiday. Perhaps schools should adopt a "cultural flextime" policy as the British civil service has done. That way we can avoid arbitrary judgment on which holidays are worthy enough to merit a day off.
Labels: cultural flexitime, holidays, Paganism, schools, UK
2.01.2008
Happy Imbolc
Tonight and tomorrow is when most modern Pagans celebrate the fire festival of Imbolc sacred to the goddess Brigid, patroness of poets, healers, and smiths. Today is also the feast day of Saint Brigid of Ireland patron saint of poets, dairymaids, blacksmiths, healers, cattle, fugitives, Irish nuns, midwives, and new-born babies.
Brigid: Saint and Goddess
In Kildare, Ireland's town square, a perpetual flame is kept lit and housed in a statue that pays homage to the Pagan and Christian conceptions of Brigid. Festivities for La Feile Bride in Kildare started on January 25th and will continue through Febrary 3rd.
Here are a collection of quotes on this holiday.
"Bridget, the ancient Celtic Goddess of Poetry, Healing and Smithcraft was highly revered by our ancestors, and honoured at Imbolc (Feb. 1), a holiday marking the birth of the tribe's sheep, essential for their milk, meat and wool. It was said that the ocean became warm on that day as Bridget, also associated with fire, put her hand into the water. At Imbolc, she was welcomed into the family home, and many wonderful customs were maintained when she was later venerated as St. Bridget, the daughter of a druid. She is much beloved in Ireland and Scotland, her powers as Goddess and saint interwoven still." - Sharynne NicMhacha
"Before Candlemas there was, indeed, the Celtic festival of Imbolc (pronounced IMolk) meaning 'in the belly,' as in a pregnant ewe, but also symbolic of the earth right before spring. It is associated with the goddess Brigid, who some say became St. Brigid, whose feast day is Feb. 1. Imbolc was much concerned with fertility and weather prognostication. According to Gaelic folklore, the hag goddess Cailleach would gather firewood on Imbolc. If she intended to prolong winter she would make the day bright and sunny, the better to gather firewood. If Imbolc turned out overcast, it meant that Cailleach was asleep in her den and that there would be an early spring. Sound familiar?" - Daniel Deagler, The Morning Call
"Brigid's protection of agriculture and poetry underscores the need to tend our inner fertility. Tending our forms of creativity is crucial to a fulfilling life. The ancients believed that gifts of expression were only on loan. We are reminded to remain grateful, and to be good custodians of artistic talents." - Jonathan Young, The Center for Story & Symbol
"Although Carolyn Deby has named her new performance Imbolc (in the belly), the choreographer said she's not trying to transplant a Celtic festival to the West Coast. She's interested in exploring how the eternal rhythms of life, death and birth celebrated by pagan Celts affect multicultural urban Vancouverites. 'I'm interested in how people see themselves as part of the natural world,' Deby said." - Kevin Griffin, The Vancouver Sun
"I call it Candlemas. Some people call it Imbolc. And for me it's the start of spring, which is not most people's understanding of when the season starts. Candlemas is celebrated on Feb. 1 and 2, and here in Seattle the first buds are on the trees and the first green shoots are coming out of the ground already, so there are really very clear signs that something is changing. I also like to use it as a new beginning time, so instead of doing New Year's resolutions on Jan. 1, I wait until Feb. 1, and then make some kind of intention - that I'm either going to symbolize in a collage or a pledge that I'll make to myself. For me it's really the start of a new year." - Waverly Fitzgerald, The San Francisco Gate
"I'd sit with the men, the women of God, There by the lake of beer, We'd be drinking good health forever, And every drop would be a prayer." - Excerpt from "Saint Brigit's Prayer"
Many blessings to you this holiday! Be sure to check out the third annual Brigid in Cyperspace Poetry Reading in your travels around the web today, I'll see you by the lake of beer!
11.12.2007
Britain Finds a Way (To Give you a Holiday)
There was quite a bit of reporting recently on the decision by Marshall University to allow excused absences for Pagan holidays. It prompted discussion on how such a system would work, and if it could be abused. Can the variety of holy days from modern Pagan religions be reasonably fit into a largely Christian-oriented holiday calendar? What about Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim holy days? Would inefficiency reign as every faith demanded their holidays be honored?
Leave it to Britain, where the influence of minority religions are more keenly felt, to come up with a compromise measure to address the growing numbers of non-Christian workers.
"Civil servants will be able to take bank holidays on the religious days of their choice under moves to introduce "cultural flexitime". Officials in the education department will be allowed to work from home on statutory days off and take the time owed to mark their own religious traditions. It means staff will be able to work at home on Christmas Day for the first time this year and swap it for a different religious festival such as Eid or Diwali. The pioneering arrangements also apply to cultural traditions, meaning a Welsh employee could move a bank holiday to St David's Day ... The arrangements also apply to minority religions such as Baha'i and Zoroastrianism, and staff could ask for time off to mark pagan festivals such as the summer solstice ... Staff choosing to swap bank holidays for other key dates will not be required to prove that they follow a different faith."
With the growing adoption of "cultural flexitime", Britain is slowly moving into adopting a post-Christian calendar. For instance, while Christmas may be one of the most important Christian holidays (next to Easter), Yule as celebrated by some Pagans, or Hanukkah as celebrated by most Jews, don't hold the same level of importance in their ritual years as other holy days. In this new "flexitime" scenario, a non-Christian could work through the winter holidays and instead take time off for Samhain or Yom Kippur instead. No questions asked.
As this system gains in popularity, it will no doubt be adopted by civil and private businesses in America as well. Especially if it is painted as a way to solve all the holiday "problems" caused by the needs of religious minority workers. In the long run it could mean a more secular society as religious observance becomes are more private affair, and less an assumed cultural norm for everyone. Christianity will still be dominant in numbers and influence, but it could slowly cease to be seen as the only religion that "matters" when asking for a day off of work or school.
Labels: cultural flexitime, holidays, Marshall University, Paganism, UK
