To Every Thing Turn
For the most part, the Faeries celebrate the neo-pagan holidays. I sometimes felt at a remove from those holidays because I felt the symbolism was built on both an agricultural society very much unlike my own and an often strictly and traditionally gendered understanding of the world. The very idea that there were holidays other than those I grew up with was eye-opening to me, though; a community -- no matter how small -- choosing certain days to reserve and celebrate the values they share was a powerful concept to me.
At one point, I looked at the Wiccan Wheel of the Year and realized that, of course, the cycle of sabbats stood for key points of maturation in a life and that those points could be extracted from an obsoletely agricultural and overly gendered belief matrix and fleshed out with similar but more personally and contemporarily charged symbolism and values. And, of course, the holidays didn't have to be religious, just symbolic.
When with the Faeries, as a personal project, I went about personalizing the Wheel of the Year for myself and then even kind of conceptualized an Ostara celebration with the local Faeries. I had decided that Ostara was about that child-like perspective where creativity knew no critique or bounds, where fantasy shadowed (sometimes ominously) reality, and craft is valued specifically for its potential to pull the surreal vision into the world of the actual. Children figure symbolically, even inflecting the world of the adult. This is the world of Lewis Carroll, Aesop, Saki, Beatrix Potter, the Brothers Grimm, Edwards Lear and Gorey, Stevie Smith and Sylvia Plath, Gregg Araki and John Cameron Mitchell, Mother Goose, Tim Burton, Gene Wilder, Jan Svankmajer, and Guillermo del Toro. It was a time when telling fantastic stories, making home-made dolls -- ventriloquist or not -- and painting eggs and making woodblock prints would be natural expressions of such a perspective. It's a time for people to re-charge their creative faculties, their ability to brainstorm, to exercise their capacity for vision.
Imagining such a holiday made me think of how such days are vital to re-inforce those values we believe in. I thought of how so many of us dis-invest in existing holidays like Xmas and the 4th of July and spend so much time criticizing what those holidays now stand for, what they have become. I wonder, though, if we also -- knowingly or not -- create other days to invest meaning with. After thinking about how I might've subconsciously done this myself, here is a sketch of what my personal holiday calendar would look like:
New Year: I used to spend a few days after New Tear's Eve being hung over and low-key, recovering from the depression of Xmas. Now, I rarely even drink more than a glass of champagne or wine on NY'sE, purposely stay sober, and use the days off for hibernation time, usually stocking my space with books and movies and avoiding broader socializing to stay at home on a few gray, introspective days.
The Academy Awards: As irritated as I can get with the actual awards, I revel in the combination of classic tradition and rascally upstarts, sharing in a posed respect for a very public art as art, at least in word.
April Fool's Day: A co-worker of mine loves to get people's goats on this day, and although I am less active in fooling others myself, I am very eager to be aware and not be fooled.
April 16th: The day I get over the jitters of procrastinating on filing my taxes and realize I'm poor enough to get a return and can allow myself to imagine it's "free stuff"!
May Day/Cinco de Mayo: I like the implicit connection between pagan holidays of sexual exuberance and the commemoration of various socialist/labor uprisings and then the celebration of a neighboring and influential culture. All the while with a margarita on a patio.
Labor Day: The best long weekend in my book for cookouts.
My Birthday: I am learning to treat this day as I get older as a WhateverthefuckIwant Day. :)
Fall Back Day: Yes, daylight savings is kind of stupid, but I get ridiculously excited about the idea of having a whole 'nother surprise hour to sleep and so stay out later on this eve. This is also around the time that various Homecomings begin and I am led to be nostalgic -- maybe a bit mournful -- for times, events, and people that have passed from my life.
Thanksgiving: This may be my favorite actually existing holiday. Mostly because a) it's all about food and b) I've started a tradition of doing it with my chosen rather than my birth family.
Looking at my year, I realize I need a mid-summer holiday as well as a way to cope with how miserable Xmas usually is for me. I'll take any suggestions.
And, too, I wonder how any of you others might treat holidays -- official or not --creatively.