Perhaps the reason this has happened to us is that we’re not actually tied to our holidays in any way. Pagan holidays will usually be celebrating two different (but normally connected) events, mythological or seasonal.

A mythological event, something like the Rape of Persephone or the slumber of the Calliech is in reality meaningless to Pagans as a community. We don’t share a single mythological identity, and different Pagans are touched differently by all the separate stories, even those separate stories within a single cosmology. As such any mythological context with which to bind ourselves together as a celebratory community is muddied and unclear – the myths have been watered down into generic NeoPagan modifications that hold no deep passion and mystery for the community as a whole. Mythological context for the 8 Sabbats is what should ideally be rooting these holidays in our hearts, souls, and minds, but that doesn’t seem to happen for most. When it does, it happens most often for the individual, and their passion isn’t really shared in a communal context.

This also brings to mind the idea of the loss of other, individual holidays from more specific pantheons or mythological cycles. Most NeoPagans worship individual deities, but how often are those individual deities given communal worship on their own traditional feast days? How many of them are still alive in the heart of a community? Many old world deities (especially European) don’t even have active shrines anymore, let alone temples that are still worshipped at.

Moving on. A seasonal event is obviously the easiest thing for us to experience as a community. Seasons turn, leaves fall, blizzards rage, buds open, fields ripen. But as a community and often as individuals we’re no more connected to this natural cycle than we are to the mythological cycles of the world. Most pagans in this country don’t farm. Many of us aren’t even outside often. We hide from the elements, constantly groaning about the late spring or the bitter cold of winter rather than embracing the seasons and living in them in a more natural, common-sensical manner. Of course it’s cold in the winter time. That’s why you store up food and don’t go outside often.

The disconnection from the seasonal cycle is a societal problem more than anything, of course. But it stands that Pagans feel this disconnect more than anyone, as we pay an empty lip service to the change in seasons without ever actually taking the time out of our normal, busy, internet-ridden lives to actually experience this change, or hopefully change with it. We don’t have anything more than a ritual to celebrate with at Mabon, a major harvest festival, because we don’t actually harvest anything. Paganism was originally a faith of practicality, rooted in the Earth. Celebrating the harvest meant that a person was joyous because of the wheat crop. There was a physicality to the religion that made it so much more real to its practitioners than it is today. Our celebrations and holidays are rooted in our minds, not our bodies or the Earth. This is wonderful and completely valid, of course, but I do think that it’s rather an incomplete spirituality, most especially since we claim to still be a religion rooted in Earth and body.

That went much longer than I intended. This must be what happens on my days off!

Lady Amaranth: Thanks for your thoughts. I think you’re right. It’s something that affects everyone, not just neopagans. I am perhaps more cynical than you are though. I am not sure that so many of us have trouble escaping life so much as we don’t see a problem.

I too work on most of the 8 days, and while I could probably arrange them off, I haven’t in the past. I think for me one of the big things that makes something a holiday is family. To me, taking time to celebrate the people in our lives, to congregate and pool our thoughts and reverence on a holiday is a key element of celebration, and it’s something I’d like to see more of in my life and community.

If someone “walks their walk,” then why would they “behave in a manner that is counter to their espoused beliefs”? Isn’t behaving in a counter manner exactly what it means to NOT walk the walk? It seems as if you have proposed a person who could not possibly exist, one who embodies both of these exclusive properties.

I believe a big part of this is due to the inability to escape our “lives” for even a day. Most of my holidays, I must report to work, and frankly rarely even get to do the simplest things to celebrate the holiday. I hope to change that this year, but as we all know well, the “real” world may have other plans.