"Happy Solstice!"

One thing I noticed over the holy-days was that a surprising number of people, on twitter and elsewhere, wishing one another a happy Solstice. I'm not even talking about Pagans - Buddhists, agnostics, the non-religious, and those whose affiliations I do not know. Some suggested to one another activities like lighting a fire or going out to dance in the snow.

It was strange, and for some reason quite gratifying. This of course is a religious festival for me, and for many of us, and it's very pleasing to see people for whom it is not a religious festival still getting into, shall we say, the spirit of the season, and feeling moved to do something, to say "Happy Solstice", even if it's not, for them, a religious holiday.

The great George Carlin once said that if he was going to worship anything, it would be the sun. You can see it, it gives you food, warmth and light, and without it you would die. (Sounds good to me.) But in a way he has a point... whether or not you consider this a religious celebration, the Solstice exists regardless. It's an astronomical time that you don't need to be religious to mark and celebrate if you feel like it; the sun exists for atheists as much as it does for people who worship sun deities, or whose religious festivals are linked to the movement of the sun through the sky.

Seeing so many different people taking note of the Solstice and pointing it out - along with good wishes and salutations! - to others of myriad different religions and lack thereof really gives me hope that in the future, we can all celebrate the Solstice as a secular holiday as well as a religious one.

How cool would that be?

Spring

I feel like spring has come too soon.

Tomorrow is Candlemas proper. I celebrate on the astronomical dates (I find them here), which tend to fall later than the "traditional" dates on which many others celebrate. So my winter has been up to a week later in ending than it has been for some. And yet, I'm not ready for it to be spring.

I always enjoy winter. It must be my favourite season (though I also enjoy late autumn). By the time August arrives, I know there will still be a bite in the air for a few weeks yet, but I am ready for the coming signs of spring: daffodils, lambs, the first spring buds. These tend to arrive before "calendar" spring, so I have no problems with the beginning of spring being cold... the signs of the changing season have arrived nonetheless. This year, though, I feel no great joy at the coming bulbs. I am regretful. I want to push them back, to say, no, it is not yet time.

Winter, this year, has not been long enough. Late autumn was unseasonably warm. Snow came very late to the southern mountains. And though this winter has had its share of windy and wet weeks, it has been mild of late. I have not spent the amount of time in "winter" mode this year that I do usually, and it saddens me that we are turning once more towards the unpleasant three-month heat stroke that is summer without a proper good old freeze first.

But tomorrow, despite these things, I will welcome spring in ritual the way I always do. And to mark the occasion, I'll change this blog's theme to reflect the changing seasons. I'll wait until I can smell spring on the wind before holding my Heathen blót, as is my wont... I don't garden and the ground doesn't get too cold up here in the sub-tropics, so I tend to refer to it as Idis-thing rather than Charming of the Plough. My nose has been a bit blocked lately, so perhaps spring has arrived on the wind already and I don't know it!

Regardless I hope, dear Reader, if you have celebrated a holiday around this time that your celebrations were good. A happy spring to those of us down south, and a bountiful autumn to those above the equator.