Dec 22 2008
How was your Solstice?
Yesterday we spent the time with family having a Yule celebration, which had begun the day before, with cookie baking and movie watching and dinner out with family.
My brother-in-law and his future wife, are pagans as well, but they celebrate a more Nordic tradition to my Celtic, so we’ve been sharing with each other different traditions and some I think I will be adopting for future events, especially the blessing of the meat tradition.
I generally give a minor thanks when cooking something, but what they did was before the “roast beast” as we call it went in the oven anyone who wished gathered around with their hands over the meat, and each of us gave a pledge of ways we were going to try and make our environment better and asked for some thing back in return. It’s sort of a give/get scenario. This is what I’m going to do for you in the hopes that you will thank me in return by allowing something to happen.
So, we each went around, my BIL pledged to be more proactive in recycling and thanked the gods for allowing them to keep their jobs in the unstable financial industry and we went around. I pledged to actually FIND our recycling bin and sort out when it was supposed to be picked up and to make a start on the garden that Kore and I have been planning, in the hopes that I would be thanked by being able to find a job.
I’m going to introduce this tradition at our next “feast” which will be on Christmas Day itself. I’m doing a roast beef, rather than ham, but it’s still an offering from the Gods, which can be an offering to the Gods as well.
