So does mine, but I ignore it. haha I light a scented candle probably three days a week.Thanks Mags! Unfortunately my lease has a no candles clause
I've been a practicing pagan for about 30 years. I don't make a big deal out of any of the holidays, except Yule. I've spoken about our wonderful Yules on here before. I can write it again, out if you'd like.
Of course, Halloween/Samhain is an established secular tradition, so I just add in a few extra pagan touches, or maybe do everything more mindfully. I often put on some witchy garb. I decorate quite a bit, take photos of my harvest, think about my beloved dead (my mom and sister, mostly). And we get a pretty good turn-out of trick or treaters in our neighborhood, which is so much fun. A couple times, my fam and I have gone to this particularly gorgeous historic cemetery near Boston (Mt Auburn Cemetery, established 1830), wearing our best goth witchy garb, and taken photos. Our fall colors are spectacular in New England. The cemetery was the first of its kind, a big park-like one, with thousands of neo-Gothic Regency and Victorian-era monuments and crypts, ponds, specimen trees like weeping willows, cherries and beeches, (flowers in spring and summer), two chapels, statuary galore, wildlife (eagles, white squirrels, skunks, coyotes, frogs), rolling terrain, a "castle" tower on a hill with amazing views of Boston to the East, and the mountains to the West, grave sites of famous Bostonians (scientists, religious figures, Harvard luminaries), etc. So wonderfully spooky.
One year for Beltane, for my kids and our neighbor/friend across the street, who turned out to be pagan, I baked a vanilla cake, decorated with floral motifs, and made a "Maypole" for it with a straw and ribbons. And before cutting it, I poured cream over the pole. (Symbolizing sex, yes. Sadly, my annoying ex-h was all inappropriate and yelled out, "Ew, jizz!" Reason #387 why I divorced him. I mean, what an example to set for the kids [who were tweens and teens] about the sacredness of sex.)
My polycule, my son, and a few friends do "Friendsgiving" every year before our official US Thanksgiving, so that serves as our cozy harvest festival.
Ostara and Easter, pretty easy, as the egg coloring, dressing up, candy hunts and decorations are pagan. I even equate the whole Jesus thing with the 1000 dying and rising gods, symbolizing the spring, in cultures worldwide. I used to read the story of Persephone and Hades to the kids sometimes, from one of my pagan ritual books.
A few years back, Aries and I went to a Scandinavian "Midsommer" festival in a nearby city. It was so great. This past June 21 I officiated at the gay handfasting of two of my bffs. They wanted to do it up pagan style, so we created a sacred space, and all that jazz.
The tech was like, "yep, I can see what you're feeling," and, "because it's nearing Xmas the results could take more like four days rather than two to get to your GP." Sweet, if there's no urgency it can't be anything too bad hehe. Techs know, even if they aren't allowed to say. I probably have some underlying infection that is just making my lymph node do some work. Odd it's just one, but then the body is strange.
