Keeping a Peaceful Holiday

Everyone seems to love the holidays. Food, drinks, sights, and presents; depending on what you celebrate. Spending time with family and friends can also be a joy, depending on the family you have. I come from a Christian family, and none of them are very pleased with my path, so the holiday season for me is filled with ridicule, insults, and sometimes being stripped of any religious jewelry I might have on. Not the ideal experience anybody really wants, but hey what can you do?

I tend to try to celebrate Yule with my friends who also follow a similar path to mine when I can but of course family comes first. Coming from a split family that got remarried, there's a crap load of Christmases to go to around here; meaning at least 2-3 regular Christmases plus a New Year's holiday party which revolves around the sharing of a glowing plastic baby Jesus. The last two parties tend to be the worst, one being a Roman Catholic Christmas and the other one being full of very conservative racist old bats who aren't afraid to just say the first thing that comes to their mind. It's just like every holiday, where they try and convince me that I'm fat, where I'm ugly, that I do not fit society's opinion of what is beautiful. I used to believe them, but now I just laugh. There was a post I found online talking about how the Christians did get it right, we are made in the image of our creator, our God. And that means anybody who tries to point out a flaw on me is trying to find flaws and Aphrodite the Goddess of beauty, of love, and of relationships. She has help me to accept myself for the way I am and to realize that these people, just because they are my family does not make them right in any way. Their opinions don't matter. I like myself and Aphrodite loves me.

If any of you out there have a family like mine you probably end up feeling just gross and disgusting after you deal with them; you want to crawl into a hole, hide, hibernate for the rest of the winter, just never show up again. This time of year I am especially grateful to have a tub that I can bathe in, because after two parties I need a good long soak in a bath with salt and sage oil to cleanse myself. Another nice, easy thing to do is slip some rose quartz or snowflake obsidian onto your person, help keep yourself grounded and guarded.

I do tarot readings around the holidays at these family gatherings and the people who have made fun of me and tell me that my path is stupid and pointless and there's only one true God the Christian God, they come sit at my table and ask me for a reading. They asked me if I have communicated with Harvey, my late grandfather, because they know I use Spirit boards. During the holidays I'm only seen as a parlor trick or a Target and that's just how it is. Every holiday they spend time, either side of my family, trying to convince me my way of life is wrong and Evil but I know it's not.

I try to celebrate yule with my friends although we're not very good about celebrating any pagan holiday. We try to look up one festive ritual to do, sometimes we fail. But the main spirit of the season, of any time, is together with friends and enjoy each other. So we choose someone's house to go to, someone brings wine or mead, another one of us will cook an amazing meal, and we'll maybe exchange gifts or will do card readings, we just spend time remembering how lucky we are to have each other and that's what it's about. Good times, good food, good drink, and good company.

---