Secular versus Religious holidays

We are firmly in what I think of as the Holiday season.  Even though, as a Pagan, I celebrate a holiday every month and a half, this time from Halloween until Valentines, just feels like the whole world is rushing from one holiday to the next.

Everything is holiday themed, and not only that, we experience holiday creep.  I understand why many people might not spend as much time on Halloween (okay I understand it in theory *grin), but there is this desire to start pushing the next holiday before the last one has even finished.  The fact that we have Christmas things being highlighted in stores in October is crazy to me.

Now, when I think of secular versus religious holidays, I am mostly thinking about the mass marketed versions of holidays compared to the actual traditions we hold dear and practice.  Even when I was little, Christmas at home was different from Christmas in the greater world.  My childhood memories of Christmas aren't as much about the gifts (yes, I was a child, I loved gifts...but gifts were only a small part of Christmas), but the whole process.

I loved it from the moment we broke out the boxes of decorations.  We always put up a tree, but we also had a nativity, we had a (reusable) advent calendar we did every year (and if I was lucky I got a chocolate advent as well!), we hung garlands all over the house.  We put lights in the windows and on the bushes out front. 

And it was a process.  We put on holiday music and sang while we decorated.  We baked cookies and bread to give as gifts.  We had eggnog and lit fires in the fireplace.  We gathered with family to celebrate and eat and spend time together.

Outside the house, it was all consumerism.  Buy this stuff, then buy this other stuff.  In the greater world, nothing about Christmas was actually about the holiday itself, it was all just trying to get you to buy things.  And that is a pretty common theme with a lot of secular holidays.  We push all these things that are being sold, even for holidays that don't traditionally require stuff.

I feel like we sometimes forget what holidays are even about.  We are so busy handling all the stuff, we neglect the actual heart of the holiday.  Thanksgiving isn't about family time anymore or giving thanks, it's about all the sales (for Christmas).  Veterans day isn't about remembering and honoring our soldiers but about buying ribbons (which sometimes don't even benefit soldiers, there are a lot of horrible scams out there that prey on people's desire to fit in and do good).  Valentines isn't about spending time with your loved one but buying stuff to 'prove' how much you love them.

And sometimes it can be hard to juggle all of this!  Thanksgiving comes at the end of the three harvest festivals for Pagans, so we have already celebrated the harvest and given thanks.  But many of us still do Thanksgiving with our non-Pagan families.  Instead of taking it as a literal time to give thanks for the bounty of the season, we can take the time to focus on our gratitude for the family we have (whether it is our blood family or our chosen family, or both!). 

We almost always do something for Thanksgiving, even if it's just a meal we planned ahead of time.  It's not always a huge deal (this year we are making chili, yum!), and depending on work schedules we may not do much more than eat.  If we have time, we do like to do family stuff on holidays, like play board games or watch movies together...really just spending time doing the things we like to do.

And to me, that is what a lot of secular holidays are about.  They may have roots in other things, but they are often community builders in some way.  They remind us to think about our loved ones, to remember our soldiers, to honor our dead, to acknowledge the people who came before us and made our country into what it is.  Each and every holiday calls us to focus on one particular community, and to appreciate it.

Community is what binds us together.  Holidays help us keep those community connections, they help build strong societies that care about each other.  Without holidays, we might forget the sacrifices that have been made in the past and continue to be made every day.  It is very easy to get caught up in our own lives, to think only about what directly effects us, and to not remember that there are a million things and people that are working day and night (and have worked throughout our history) to give us the life we have today.

With religious holidays, we place a greater importance on looking at why we are celebrating, and I think that bringing that emphasis back into secular holidays will make them have more impact.  New Years shouldn't just be a day to justify getting drunk, but celebrating a new start, a brand new year, a new chance to create the life we want to live.  Valentines shouldn't be a day to make up for the rest of the year or buy your way into your loved one's graces, but a celebration of the emotions that bond you together.

Over the years, we have lost the soul of our holidays, but we can bring them back.  If we look into the origins of the holidays, if we think about what they mean, not only when they were first celebrated, but the evolution of that meaning in our current day and age.  Some holidays have changed, and have taken on new meanings. 

Keeping that meaning in mind, we can then start bringing that message into our celebrations.  We can search out ways to honor those energies and experiences in our lives, to reach out and support the people who are being recognized, and to infuse our activities with power, instead of just buying a themed decoration and then tossing it without a thought when the holiday is over, already looking towards what we need to buy for the next one.