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May you have a gentle holiday.

A gentle time of colder degrees to all

May all of you have a gentle holiday.

i am begging some of yall to learn what "syncretism" is. this constant argument over whether christmas is a christian or pagan holiday is very redundant after the 30th post. things can coexist and blend together over time. it's not always an "us vs. them" argument.

Reminder: Dia de los Muertos is not Halloween and it is not Samhain. It is separate. It has its own proscribed traditions and cultural importance. If you have a chance to celebrate with your local Mexican community cool! But it is not a neo-pagan or "witchy" accessory to use in Samhain rituals or pagan festivals, or whatever.

This exact holiday combo post can only happen once every 33 years.

i'm jewish and two of my closest friends are a muslim woman and a christian woman, and today we decided that this weekend would be a more opportune time of year than the month of december to say "happy holidays" since it's good friday and easter sunday, passover, and ramadan all happening on one weekend, rather than like. hanukkah, christmas, kwanzaa, new year's, etc. happening roughly over the course of 4-6 weeks. so. happy holidays to anyone celebrating this weekend :)

Example Modernisation of an Ancient Greek Festival

For times when you want to go all-out and make a fuss! Festivals were exciting events and a celebration of the people and their gods.

Firstly, dress up! This is a fun event, a party even, so try wearing something that gets you in the mood or mindset. Traditionally people would wash or at least wash their hands beforehand for purification.

Light a candle and/or incense and call your god/s. Say a prayer or hymn, or just tell them how great they are and that you want to share in this festival with them. Traditional actions also include a procession toward the sacred space, scattering barley (likely for purification) and making an offering/sacrifice

Festivals were held for a multitude of reasons and featured many different ways to honour the deity or event happening that day. Below are some examples and how you could celebrate in that way, alone or with others.

Imagery

Contests

Plays and Performances

Feast

Seasonal

These are not every day activities and do not have to be enacted for every festival. But if a bit of fun and partying sounds like a good idea, go for it!

Happy holidays to everyone whose holiday isn’t what they want it to be. whether it is illness, poverty, distance from loved ones or something else that’s making things tough for you this year, i hope that you can find peace and warmth. i hope that your year will end and start on a brighter note

Hello! As someone that dumpster dives year-round and usually finds a SHIT TON of perfectly usable items thrown away after the holidays, please listen:

Christmas is over and now comes along the weeks of people returning and exchanging unwanted gifts at retailers. A lot of these stores cannot actaully put a lot of these items back out on the shelf, (especially seasonal items or holiday themed) for one reason or another. Returned brand new items end up in landfills.

This is not only horrible wasteful when good items could be used by people in need, but also insanly bad for the enviroment.

So please consider:

Electronics are not safe either. Perfectly working Items I have found in dumpsters in the past range from: a $300 roomba with the ticket saying it was returned because the customer didn't know how to work it (needed an app to control), not one but TWO tablets (Samsung and Kindle Fire) a working bluetooth speaker, ect. (Items that can not be donated I gave away.)

If you are not going to regift unwanted gifts and you are certain you are not going to use it, please consider donating it (or make a post and just give it away or sell the thing yourself.) You can go get $15 worth of store credit if you return the thing, but it's usually going straight to the trash afterwards.

Unfortunatly, stores like to try and destroy items they throw away as well. On lucky days, I find items that are still in their original package. Other times I find perfectly usuable items destroyed by spray paint or box cutters.

(ALSO this is not a post shaming people who return gifts for money to pay bills/buy food/basically survive. That is a completely different situation.)

Please research the places you donate to before doing so. Do not donate to the Salvation Army (despite them trying to do reputation control, they're still blatantly anti-LGBTQ) If you are a dumpster diver, remember to sanitize the items you find and let the organizations know where you recieved the items.

That's it. Thanks for coming to my soapbox!

to anyone who’s having a tough time this holiday season i offer you my support.

whether it’s because your family doesn’t understand or accept you, you’re going through illness or money troubles, you’re really stressed out, or any other reason- it’s ok if it doesn’t feel as magical and special as society portrays it.

you deserve time to relax, rest, and celebrate, but if that isn’t right now, that’s okay, too.

Sustainable gift wrapping ideas

Introduction:

Everyone likes unwrapping a gift, but why buy new wrapping paper when there are more fun ways to wrap a gift that don't require buying and throwing away new paper?

Two ways to avoid waste when gift-wrapping:

Here's a few ideas:

Reusing materials:

Anything made of paper or cardboard can be drawn on to customise your gift's look.

A gift as a wrap:

(Image source) [ID: a graphic showing 14 ways to wrap an item using furoshiki: otsukai tsutsumi, yotsu musubi, suika tsutsumi, katakake fukuro, entou tutsumi, hira tsutsumi, tesage bukuro, kousa tsutsumi, hon tsutsumi, futatsu tsutsumi, kakushi tsutsumi, bin tsutsumi 1, bin tsutsumi 2, sao tsutsumi.]

(Image source) [ID: a gift wrapped in a newspaper page with cartoons printed on it. Beige yarn is tied around the gift.]

Who's the present for?

If you don't know where to start, think about the person you're wrapping a gift for. Do they like fashion? Maybe get a second-hand scarf they'll like and wrap your gift in it. Do they like cooking? There's plenty of cool casseroles or Tupperware to be found at second-hand stores. Maybe your giftee just started living on their own and still need to buy their own bath linen: why not wrap their gift in a towel?

(Image source) [ID: a gift wrapped in a red dishcloth with white lines and fringes. Twigs of holly and ivy have been tucked in one of the cloth's folds.]

Conclusion:

Unconventional wrapping methods are fine, and so is not wrapping a gift at all. People are happy they're getting a gift! So what if it's not wrapped in fancy paper?

There's plenty of ways to wrap a gift in a sustainable way without taking away the fun of unwrapping. Want some more ideas? Check out these zero waste gift wrapping guides by Trash Is For Tossers, Greenpeace, and Sustainably Chic.

(And while we're on the topic: it's totally fine to give someone a handmade or second-hand gift, too. The perfect gift isn't new or store-bought, but thoughtful.)

make your own holidays

Absolutely.

Make a holiday when the last frost melts away and the soil can be broken with hands that go white with cold; make a holiday when the first frost comes to coat the leaves and steal the last of the life from a post-harvest garden.

Make offerings when the lilacs bloom and their herald scent calls the dead that linger to your beckoning arms, set fires and dance around them when the tomatoes flower and the bumblebees come back. Steal corn from the fields when it is ripe and call it a solemnity; fast when the creek freezes over and you must leave a piece of yourself behind to recover next year. Feast when the mulberries are ripe and cut switches of raspberry vines to decorate your altar, sacrifice the first of the morels to the timber you pulled them from, placate the river spirits at the first flood of the year to stave off the wrath of another set of churning banks.

make a day of honor when the sun is at her hottest, bathe in the cut-cold of the streams when the melting snow makes them swell once again to full.

Why wait for the holidays that mean nothing to you and your craft? The violets are blooming, it's time to begin again.

I can’t agree more.

One of the best decisions we’ve made in the service of our Craft was using our instincts, spiritual communication, and connections to the nature we live within to forge personally significant seasonal Sabbaths. Having the pulse of the Land to guide us and our propitiations with its intimate rhythm has truly been a boon.

ok since it’s november im making this post again. happy holidays. if you make jewish characters participate in christmas you’re wrong and your writing sucks

bringing this back again bc it’s chanukah

Holiday season is around the corner and it's once again time to remind you that PETS ARE NOT PRESENTS unless you and the recipient have had a nice long conversation about the care and responsibility that goes into keeping one.

Heyo! It's that time of year again!

if a pet had been discussed still don't give the live animal on the holiday!! my family always gifts a representative item eg cage, bed, as an animal during a hectic holiday can be a lot

It is the time of the year to celebrate as this year Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) falls on 21st September 2021. Also known as Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival, it is a traditional festival celebrated by many East and Southeast Asian people. It is the second-most important holiday after Chinese New Year with a history dating back 3,000 years, when China’s emperors worshipped the moon for bountiful harvests.

There are many versions of the myth and story behind Mid-Autumn Festival, but the most well-known revolves around an archer hero named Hou Yi (后羿), and his wife Chang’e (嫦娥). As the legend goes, Hou Yi was rewarded an elixir of immortality after shooting down nine out of ten suns which ravaged the land with drought and disaster. However, when Hou Yi’s apprentice, Feng Meng, attempted to steal the elixir, Hou Yi’s wife, Chang’e tried to save the elixir by drinking it, which made her immortal and she floated to the moon, never to be seen by her beloved husband again. After learning what had happened to Chang’e, Hou Yi prepared a feast on this day every year, when the moon is believed to be the fullest, in hope of catching a glimpse of his wife’s shadow who had became the Moon Goddess.

On this Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), I take the opportunity to wish you and your family health and happiness.

Bright moon and stars twinkling and shining, wishing you a Mooncake Festival full of bliss and happiness!

皓月闪烁，星光闪耀，中秋佳节，美满快乐！

The Right to Non-Christian Secularity

About ten days ago, I wrote a series of posts regarding the difficulties Jews and people of other minority faiths encounter in western society when it comes to having our holidays respected and recognized. I got a lot of feedback from Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, etc. echoing my sentiments (some of which was absolutely heartbreaking), and I have additionally seen a variety of other posts on the matter that underline my point. When reading all of the notes and comments relevant to these posts, I noticed a very similar theme reappearing time after time:

Indeed, I had previously quoted former MLB player Gabe Kapler, who once made the justification to play baseball on Yom Kippur by saying: 

It would seem that many people have been led to believe that observing a Jewish or Muslim or Hindu holiday is cheating unless you are sincerely devout. 

Well, I have an important message for those people: 

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NON-CHRISTIAN SECULAR OBSERVANCES

This is important, so I’m going to say it again: 

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NON-CHRISTIAN SECULAR OBSERVANCE

Think of all the times you have been chided by secular Christian friends for not celebrating Christmas.

“It’s not really even a religious holiday anymore,” people will tell you. “It’s just a nice time for families to get together and celebrate.” 

Well, guess what? So is Rosh Hashanah. So is Eid. So is Diwali. 

A secular Jew might not want to go to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to fly home for Rosh Hashanah dinner to be with their family. 

A non-practicing Muslim may have lost interest in regular religious practices, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still look forward to Eid celebrations.

A lapsed Hindu can still have fond memories of celebrating Diwali as a youth, and want to continue on with their family traditions. 

There is no written rule that says only people from Christian backgrounds can be non-religious and still celebrate their cultural holidays. There is no law that says only Christmas and Easter can be boiled down to family dinners and fun festivities. 

BEING A SECULAR PERSON FROM A MINORITY FAITH DOES NOT INVALIDATE YOUR RIGHT TO YOUR OWN CULTURAL BACKGROUND. 

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t prayed in years or don’t believe in God. If you want a day off for your holiday, take it. No matter what, it’s still yours. 

With the High Holidays coming up, I wanted to share this again. 

I feel very strongly that we need to start normalizing non-Christian holiday observances (both secular and religious) throughout the year for people of all backgrounds. 

If you’re Jewish, next week is a good time to start.