Ostara (bit long windd)
De Roberts
really incorporated "my" holidays into the family celebrations. I celebrate
the esbats alone but always try to include everyone in the sabbats. I
decided it was strange to celebrate easter as no one in our house is a
practicing Christian (youngest wants to be a satanist, we are having
interesting conversations about that : ). So we had a big ham dinner last
night but since it is during the work/school week I decided to spread stuff
out a bit to make it more like a season like Yule. Today we painted the egg
shells I had blown out and dried ( yes I blew eggs, teenagers found that
highly amusing). Tomorrow we are going to dye hardboiled eggs and I plan to
hide them with some plastic eggs filled with candy Saturday morning. Only
problem is my youngest keeps telling everyone that this is the "real easter"
(another talk this one on religious choices etc..) What surprised me was how
much my 15 year old enjoyed this. He really felt comfortable with this. He
is my athiest but enjoys discussing religion more than the others. His best
friend is a Buddist. My question is how do others celebrate Ostara? Do you
include family? Do you celebrate Easter with Christian family members? Do
you have any special traditions?
De
darke
<derob...@earthlink.net> wrote:
<snip>
>My question is how do others celebrate Ostara? Do you
>include family? Do you celebrate Easter with Christian family members? Do
>you have any special traditions?
>
>De
Shortly before the equinox I boil a bunch of eggs with onion skins..
turns them dark red like blood (thinking of fertility and all that).
ON the equinox we do our egg hunt.. the boys (ages 7 and 9) do call it
Ostara for the most part.. and occasionally lapse for buddies who
don't understand and say "Pagan Easter"..
We also plant seeds.. though it is not warm enough to start things
outdoors, I got a grow light and shelves, pots, etc., and we start
things indoors.
-Darke .. introvert thinker
De Roberts
"darke" <the_...@hotmailone.com> wrote in message
news:iheq9u4op89jij6nu...@4ax.com...
I have a serious plant problem called my cat. He loves to chew them so
everything has to be up high. When my children were little I dreamed of the
day I could keep plants on the window sills like I did before they were
born.(not that they did it on purpose but the pots always seemed to get
knocked over). Now the cat knocks everything off. Tried keeping some cut
flowers in a vase on the table and over they went. The only thing he
doesn't knock off of any surface is candles. Can't even keep pens and
pencils on the table. Yes he has toys but he pushes them all under the
stove, couches,beds etc. It doesn't help that I live in a old house and the
floor is tilted by about half a foot. So far we have painted the blown eggs
and this morning we are hunting both colored eggs and plastic ones with
candy. The problem I had was Sabats celebrated in a circle alone didn't
seem to touch me the way the Esbats did. And the traditional once Christian
now secular ones had no meaning. So I have given us new traditions based on
the Sabats and feel more in touch with them because I am sharing them with
my family. I find more spirituality painting eggs with my son. Now that I
am out of the broom closet with my family I feel more comfortable
celebrating Ostara than Easter. I have been sharing with them a story I read
that the bunny gives eggs because long ago he wanted to do something for his
Goddess so he laid eggs and painted them beautiful colors. He gave them to
Her and she was so happy with them She wanted to share them so She asked him
to paint some every year and hide them for the children.
De
FireSong
> >include family? Do you celebrate Easter with Christian
family members?
Do
> >you have any special traditions?
> >
> >De
I celebrate it several ways.We call it Eostar most of the
time in my neck of the woods. At home, I put out yellow
candles and make my own little Easter basket with chocolate
bunny. With the group, we do something different every year
for the Sabbat.
Often we opt for a celebratory theme of welcoming the
coming Spring season by honoring our children.During the
energy raising part of the Sabbat, we do some sort of
activity. One year we had the "Eoster Bunny" come out, and
lead us all in a giant game of Twister. Another year,we all
decorated eggs and put wishes on them, then put them in a
huge basket and then we each picked out an egg and one by
one, we read out loud to the rest of the group what wish egg
we got. This year, we got in touch with our childhood by
having some children at each quarter teach us some sort of
simple arts&crafts. In the North, we took plastic eggs and
filled them with seeds to make rattles, and decorated them.
In the East, we made brooms(and got straw everywhere);
South, we made "God's Eye" crosses with yarn and toothpicks.
I didden't see what West did.
We had an all-night drum vigil on Friday night to welcome
Spring. This is an annual event.This year's wasen't as
intense as they usually get, though.
Also, my extremly Catholic stepmother loves to do a lot for
Easter, and likes to get the family together for Easter
dinner, and makes us up Easter baskets, and that part's fun,
but then she tries to lure us off to Easter Mass, and that
part's not fun.Easter Mass goes on and on... But in all, it
has begun to be a bright and cheerful time of the year for
me, usually.
--
--FireSong
"Those who wear fig leaves should not dance with hungry
goats"
---Annymous
Moira de Swardt
FireSong <fire...@stny.rr.com> wrote in message
> Also, my extremly Catholic stepmother loves to do a lot for
> Easter, and likes to get the family together for Easter
> dinner, and makes us up Easter baskets, and that part's fun,
> but then she tries to lure us off to Easter Mass, and that
> part's not fun.Easter Mass goes on and on... But in all, it
> has begun to be a bright and cheerful time of the year for
> me, usually.
I love Easter Sunday, although admittedly I am a Christian, so the
Christian rites are very important to my celebration.
The first day of the broken fast after Lent. Although I didn't do
so this year (a trip to the US interfered with my resolve), I
normally only eat vegetarian food in Lent, although I will make an
exception for fish or chicken if I'm being entertained.
I normally spend the Saturday of Easter Saturday at my doctor's home
with him and his lover, also a doctor. They both plan to take the
Easter weekend off, at least until the Monday. The earlier part of
the afternoon is devoted to listening to recordings of Christian
Easter music, sometimes the sad variety and sometimes the happy
variety, and we usually squabble gently about which cuts on Handel's
Messiah we will actually listen to - I think that only ten minutes
of the whole thing is worth listening to, and my doctor's lover
thinks that an Easter without the Messiah oratorio is incomplete and
we are forced to come to a half-hour compromise. We spend the
latter part of the afternoon making a wide variety of breakfast
delicacies such as chipolata sausages, bacon, little cheese puffs,
muffins, a kedgeree, quiche, putting the marzipan on the Simnel
cake, and boiling a whole lot of eggs in red dye. We also prepare a
huge dish of fruit salad, much of which gets eaten while it is still
not assembled. We then vacuum the lounge and put up a display of
soft toy rabbits (collected by all three of us over the years) and
some of these are really outlandish looking rabbits and an Easter
tree (usually a bare branch - it's autumn in the Southern
Hemisphere) with little German wooden rabbit ornaments. A pot of
yellow chrysanthums, some special Easter candles, and the basket of
red eggs completes the display. The dining room is also prepared
with bright Easter cloth used only on that one day a year, a mammoth
display of chocolate eggs of all sorts. Supper consists of a
vegetarian curry purchased from the Hindu take-away not far from
their home and then early to bed unless a call-out for one of the
doctors interrupts. I sleep over as I have no car and live far from
where they live - and the other direction from where we are heading
in the morning.
Very early on the Sunday morning the alarm goes off and the three of
us shower and dress before taking the food out of the fridge and
placing it in the oven ready to heat when we get back. We head out
to the Brixton Tower, a spot with a magnificent view of Johannesburg
in the old days, and the traditional place for one of the gatherings
of Christians. No matter how warm the days surrounding Easter seem
to be, the morning of Easter is usually either cold or wet, and
sometimes both, although there have been some glorious exceptions
over the past years since this has been my particular habit. Once we
arrive at the meeting spot there is a greeting of friends and family
who have been persuaded to join us. The Salvation Army band plays
and several choirs sing, sometimes accompanied by a guitar, but
often a capella. Finally the sun is due to rise and the band begins
their fanfare. The sun *always* rises later than the band and The
Salvation Army have never worked out that they need to give it a
minute or two to rise above the hills on the horizon, so the
bandmaster keeps glancing over his shoulder to get the fanfare part
at the *exact* moment.
After the final benediction friends and family gather round and
confirm that they'll be coming for breakfast. We scuttle off home
and heat the breakfast, and start the toasting of hot cross buns.
Shortly after that the guests arrive, bearing containers of
meatballs, miniature kebabs, samoosas, wonderful breads, fish cakes,
pies and pastries (including more hot cross buns) galore. Several
guests bring fruit juice and one or two of the cheekier ones bring
sparkling wine.
A good time is had by all. Usually by lunch time the last guest has
gone and the kitchen returned to its pristine state and we spend the
afternoon watching videos or just chatting, although a call-out for
one of them is standard. If we're lucky it's a short consultation.
In the latter part of the afternoon we dismantle the display of
rabbits, and eat more chocolate - and leftovers - than doctors
should allow their overweight patients, and then head out for our
regular church service, armed with a huge bunch of white flowers
which we arrange for the service just before the people start to
arrive. After the service the doctors take me home, where I set up
my own Easter display of rabbits and chocolate eggs and the Easter
tree in preparation for my nieces' visit on Easter Monday. My
sister is always horrified at the amount of chocolate they consume
and they love my home because I allow them to eat as much chocolate
as they want - at least till their mother says firmly "That's enough
now". My sister and I always recall the Easter spent with my
cousins where we were allowed to eat as much chocolate as we
wanted - not my mother's usual style - and my sister ate until she
was sick.
I am always saddened when I finally put my Easter things away.
Unlike Christmas, Easter hasn't been spoiled by weeks and weeks of
celebrations before the event. Lent is a discipline which keeps
Easter fresh.
Moira, the Faerie Godmother
Shez
Roberts <derob...@earthlink.net> writes
Easter, seeing who had the egg that would roll the furthest,
You got a little present
The egg that rolled the furthest was considered very lucky and was kept
for that year to bring luck to the family. ( mum would carry a spare
boiled egg so the winner didn't lose out. )
We used to paint faces and designs on eggs using natural dyes, like
cochineal, and food colourings, they would be boiled in onion water or
moss to give them a base colour, and like tie dye, would have had little
patterns painted on in oil or lard so that the onion water didn't take,
they were pretty.
Afterwards if Easter was at the right time of year, we would pick
bluebells in a nearby bluebell wood, or pick wild spring flowers,
primroses, violets, daisies, buttercups to make daisy and buttercup
chains, and dandelion coronets.
Everyone got a new outfit for Easter, and we would show them off on
Easter Sunday, when the egg rolling was the order of the day.
And of course their was an Easter picnic if the weather allowed.
The church did not approve of these secular celebrations, but people
enjoyed them so much they kept on going, much like the
May day celebrations.. I still remember going out on May day morning to
gather the dew, it was said to make your face fair, and your skin
soft...
I would brush the golden pollen of golden fern on my Eyes to see the
fairies, I didn't ever see them unfortunately, :)
But I loved the May day celebrations with the maypole, the May dancers
and the food and fun. I was even the May queen one year and a May Queens
maid of honour in other earlier years. :)
--
Shez sh...@oldcity.demon.co.uk
Lynne
was Brown Owl for a Brownie Pack on the Army barracks where we were living.
I asked all the girls to bring a hard boiled egg with them to our last
meeting before Easter/Ostara and we were going to have an egg rolling
contest down the hill, then go back into the hall to do some egg-speriments
and so on. So, trying to get organised, I duly boiled my daughter's egg
earlier in the day, and put it back in the cardboard carton along with the
non-boiled ones for the science-y bits. I marked the boiled one with a
small pencil mark - supposedly to make it easier to tell which was which.
We had lots of activities going that night, including colouring games and
chocolate eggs as prizes.
Anyway, at the meeting (ex-Brownies will know) things were so chaotic, with
24 8-10 y/o girls rushing about, that I completely forgot to tell my
daughter to get the egg with the mark on it, and when we went to roll our
eggs down the hill, you guessed it!! SMASH! She was most unhappy with me,
as you can imagine! I only managed to get back in the good books by giving
her one of the small choccy eggs that were left over!
L
Shez
s.freeserve.co.uk> writes
grass tufts and shoot up or bash against stones, its not as easy as it
looks and it takes a lot of luck to get it to the bottom of the hill
without it lodging, breaking or getting diverted.
Plus you go barrelling down the hill with the eggs, I don't remember
ever getting to the bottom upright, you ignore the scratches bumps and
bruises, and your mother yelling at you not to tear your new clothes, (
why put us in new clothes when they know we will be tumbling down a hill
? :) because its so much fun.....
I hope you remember to boil the egg next time and colour it, that way
your daughter can do her own hill rolling, make sure she is wearing old
clothes though.
>
--
Shez sh...@oldcity.demon.co.uk
darke
<derob...@earthlink.net> wrote:
<snip>
>I have a serious plant problem called my cat. He loves to chew them so
>everything has to be up high. When my children were little I dreamed of the
>day I could keep plants on the window sills like I did before they were
>born.(not that they did it on purpose but the pots always seemed to get
>knocked over). Now the cat knocks everything off. Tried keeping some cut
>flowers in a vase on the table and over they went. The only thing he
>doesn't knock off of any surface is candles. Can't even keep pens and
>pencils on the table. Yes he has toys but he pushes them all under the
>stove, couches,beds etc. It doesn't help that I live in a old house and the
>floor is tilted by about half a foot. So far we have painted the blown eggs
>and this morning we are hunting both colored eggs and plastic ones with
>candy. The problem I had was Sabats celebrated in a circle alone didn't
>seem to touch me the way the Esbats did. And the traditional once Christian
>now secular ones had no meaning. So I have given us new traditions based on
>the Sabats and feel more in touch with them because I am sharing them with
>my family. I find more spirituality painting eggs with my son. Now that I
>am out of the broom closet with my family I feel more comfortable
>celebrating Ostara than Easter. I have been sharing with them a story I read
>that the bunny gives eggs because long ago he wanted to do something for his
>Goddess so he laid eggs and painted them beautiful colors. He gave them to
>Her and she was so happy with them She wanted to share them so She asked him
>to paint some every year and hide them for the children.
>
>De
My two remaining kitties are old.. and the plants are up high. I keep
cacti around window height.. and they only get knocked over if there
is a cat on the outside to upset the one on the inside.
The story I read some years ago on the 'net (so don't ask me where..
that detail is long gone).. was that the Goddess, loving children,
liked to amuse them in the spring by turning birds into rabbits. The
rabbits would then hop about laying eggs here and there, since they
were really birds, after all.
The boys like that one.
They like making a LOT of noise the minute before sunrise on Yule,
too, to make sure the Sun does rise after it's longest sleep of the
year. I made solstice rattles for them from beans and paper mache.
On Samhain, they like the traditional dress up.. but also like the
table set for the family members who have passed on, that their
spirits might come by for a whiff of beer or in Granddad's case, beer
and a slice of tomato. They look forward to the jack o'lanterns
becoming pumpkin muffins and pumpkin pies in the days that follow, as
well.
We did go to one Summer Solstice drumming a few years ago, but it left
us all rather flat. Not well organized, no permit, a city park in the
middle of a residential area.. I wasn't at all surprised when the
police broke it up, saying residents of the area were complaining.
Now we just do our own thing, keeping what works, replacing what
doesn't.
-Darke .. introvert thinker
Leotine
>Now we just do our own thing, keeping what works, replacing what
>doesn't.
And sharing with us in this NG. And We / I Thank you for that.
Leotine