Pagan Parenting: The Silly Season

Amanda Cummings

Here we are again facing the holiday season. This is that time of the year when it is so easy to work ourselves into a frenzy. We run around like crazy people shopping, working, cooking, entertaining and all the other things we have come to associate with the silly season (as we refer to it in my home). How do we as pagans deal with this frenetic activity and remain sane? How do we show our children how to do this? Sometimes a more pertinent question is: Why do we do this at all?

In my home, we start the holidays at Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox. We have a feast and share what we are grateful for in the past. We talk about what we've done during the summer break, and what we look forward to as it gets to be winter. I try to start planning projects for all of us to do as the major holidays of Hallows and Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah approach. We plan nights to make wall hangings, paper chains (which are fun to do for Samhain, too), Yule tree ornaments, and anything else that seems fun. We usually try to make it up to the mountains, as well. We go up and see the fall leaves and feel the cool, crisp air. Then we'll go back after it snows and experience the cold and wet winter weather. That's one of the nice things about southern California. We don't get weather, but we can visit it!

Having discussed what we want to do in the upcoming season, I'll sit with a calendar and try to plan everything in. One reason to do this early in the fall is to keep from getting overwhelmed by waiting till the last minute. Realizing that nothing is set in stone, it at least gives me a framework and some objectives to set my sights on.

Using the season from Mabon to Samhain also gets my mind in gear so that I'm not caught by surprise when the unexpected happens, too. When I know that I have baking to do, and someone drops in from out of town (a frequent occurrence in my house), then it's just a matter of taking that one project and shuffling it in somewhere else. That way I don't get behind by putting things off indefinitely. The other option is to say to my guest, I'm really glad you came to see us for a few days. Today I'm baking. Come keep me company in the kitchen. Most of my guests know that I chat best when in my element (the kitchen) anyway.

Planning early also gives me time to consider how I want to celebrate the holidays. If I need to make costumes for trick-or-treating, I'm in gear. I can also plan to spend time talking about our loved ones who are dead, and telling the family stories to my children. When Samhain finally gets here, we always put out food for the dead before we go trick-or-treating. It's a tradition. I'll leave bread and cheese and milk on the back door step. My children know this is to remind us of our dead loved ones, and they've heard the stories about my grandfather, and my husband's parents, so it holds some significance. Then we go out and ransack the neighborhood for yummy treats! After the children are in bed, my husband and I will offer the food to the spirits and pour the milk as a libation. I'm sure the cats appreciate our offerings as well.

Thanksgiving we always celebrate with a houseful of friends. It is a potluck, much as the Christians and Native Americans enjoyed so long ago. We make a point of using this as an example to our children of tolerance and dependence. Intolerance (particularly against Christians) is not acceptable in our home. When the native people shared their food and knowledge with the immigrant Christians, they gave them what they needed to stay alive. The Christians were grateful and shared with them out of their first harvest. Together they sat at table, regardless of religion or color, pagan and Christian human beings all together, thankful for the supplies to live through the upcoming winter. What a beautiful picture!

Then comes the major holiday—the one that children live for the entire year—Christmas! For me it is simply not worth the effort to try to erase the Christian influence of the holiday. It is too much work and, I feel, too isolating for children and without much benefit. For me, it is easier on my relatives and my children to celebrate both. How we work it is the family exchanges presents for Yule with each other on the solstice. Yule is my anniversary, and it is a very intimate, family evening. Christmas Day we celebrate by opening the presents from Santa, and then on to the relatives' houses (since my family is all local). In this way, my children are learning to celebrate Yule and the spirit of birth/rebirth, while they still get to participate in a cultural experience that is very difficult to avoid.

To prepare for this, again, takes planning. We plan in the public rituals we will attend, what days we will visit friends and relatives, clean our rooms, write Yule cards, bake, decorate, and bring in the tree. We make a sort of advent calendar of activity for the month. It helps keep things from seeming overwhelming, and from getting put off to the last minute. If your plan is not too firmly set in stone, it will allow flexibility for the unexpected and a lot of fun.

I like planning things out because I like the anticipation of the approaching holiday, whatever it is. I'm as much a child myself when it comes down to it. As a practicing Christian, I always enjoyed the seasons of Advent and Lent, not because of the activity of the season alone, but because they prepared my spirit for the holidays that follow. The same is true of the time from Mabon to Samhain, and from Hallows to Yule. We can, with some creative planning, create a spiritual atmosphere and experience for our children that will not become submerged by the holiday festivities, but will become a prelude, or a preparation, for the holidays with all their many facets.

Blessed Samhain! and Joyous Yule!