Hild's Hof

This is a sub of my main Tumblr which is about a very different topic. I want to separate the two very clearly, so I’m moving this blog onto a new account.

Come follow me there: : https://hildshall.tumblr.com/

My parents weren’t especially religiously observant, but Easter was always a big *family* holiday of gathering, so I did the same thing with my children as they grew up. I have an elementary-school age child and when we converted, I didn’t think I wanted to change the tradition. This was with the rationale that the “Easter Bunny”, lots of candy, eat a big meal secular family side of things was always more important to us (and IMO, is very “heathen”), and hey, soon it won’t really be an issue in terms of baskets and egg hunts and whatnot anyway (she’s going to grow out of it eventually, as my older child has).

For some reason, this year... I hit my limit.

I am done celebrating Easter in any way.

Maybe it’s the aftermath of having celebrated our first Sigurblot in a small, private ceremony this year on April 7. Maybe it just took this long for the Christian over-culture to seep further out of my mind and heart and worldview, and my slow, slow, slow attempts to Heathenize myself seep IN.

I don’t have a good reason for this, but as this holiday approached this year, it just started to feel more and more... wrong.  Acutely wrong. Today the feeling solidified and became almost like a pain in my stomach, or a feeling of anxiety that just really wants to get past this.

We can debate its origins but the fact is that this holiday, Easter, is thoroughly Christian. It’s not like Christmas, where it wasn’t even a super-big Christian thing until relatively recently in history (and its Pagan origins are much more obvious and attested), and it’s easily celebrated by non-Christians all over the world.

Easter is different.

Easter is probably THE big holiday for the Christian faith.  I can’t imagine Christians are keen on us non-believers taking part in their thing.  So it’s not just because I do not follow or worship their deit(ies) or wish to participate in marking the event that going by their mythology marks his divinity.

It’s that this feels... disrespectful, and while I definitely am still processing my Abrahamic baggage (and get VERY FRUSTRATED with them at times), I don’t want to deliberately disrespect their highest, most-holy day.

I know, I know, they crap all over us and our stuff but I can’t think that two wrongs make a right here, y’know?

But today, the day before Easter, as my kids are getting ready to color eggs, I looked at my husband and said, “I’m done. This is the last year.”

Am I going to continue Sigurblot and make it a bigger thing?  Probably. Our first small observance felt right. I’d like to make that a bigger thing, and maybe I can incorporate what I liked about the Christian holiday into that.  Make it a real “victory feast” and celebrate!

It’s the right time of year, and the right kind of action, both in my new faith as well as my family tradition, even if it’s at slightly different day of observance (depending on how the solar/lunar years coincide).