Purim to Equinox to Pesach: Getting Up and Shaking Off

A few days before Purim, I read a blog post describing the holiday as “Jewish Carnival.” I hate describing Jewish holidays as “Jewish [NAME OF CHRISTIAN OR SECULAR HOLIDAY HERE].” Purim celebrates a specific event where Persian Jews turned the tables on their persecutors. It’s not “Jewish anything” except Purim. Still, the comparison to Carnival made me notice something that is similar between the two, and I’ve been thinking about that ever since: both are holidays of excess leading into periods of limitation.

Carnival, a holiday of drunkenness, gluttony, and general costumed debauchery, rolls directly into Lent, a period when many Christians up something dear to (and possibly bad for) them for forty days¹, and Catholics in particular have periods of complete fasting and abstaining from meat. A month after Purim, a holiday of drunkenness, gluttony, and general costumed debauchery, comes Pesach, when Jews are commanded to give up leavened goods for eight days.

Paganism – at least my branch of it – doesn’t have anything like that. We move from Imbolc, celebrating the early-season fecundity of domesticated animals (depending on who you ask, the source of the word means either “in the belly,” referring to pregnant farm animals, or “ewe’s milk”), to Spring Equinox, celebrating the balance between darkness and light and the arrival of Spring (the eventual arrival of Spring, in our neck of the woods). Pagans are not, by and large, people of privations, especially not at a time of year when the natural world is waking up and bursting forth with new life. And yet for me, at least, a sort of “shaking off” does happen at this time of year. 

I’m essentially a hermit from mid-December through mid-February. I might attend a couple holiday dos in the Winter Solstice/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa holiday constellation, but otherwise, if something’s not necessary to my life or livelihood, I don’t leave the house for it. 

I make no apologies for this. This period of rest is essential to keep me going the rest of the year. But when spring comes (or at least looks like it’s thinking about coming), it’s time to release not just my hermitude but the complacency that can come with it. 

In the middle of writing this post, I actually left my house, voluntarily, on a Thursday night, to attend a rally for the celebration and protection of trans lives organized in response to the brutal attack of a trans woman not two miles from my house. Overcoming Winter Hermit inertia took a lot of pep talks. But it’s essential to me that I show up for my communities when and how I can, and I knew it was time to shake off sleep and complacency and get ready to re-engage in the fight.

So as we move from Purim to Pesach, Imbolc to Equinox, Carnival to Lent, or whatever we observe at this time of year, let’s celebrate waking up and giving up something that holds us back from full participation in life and community. Although we acknowledge the discomfort the sacrifice brings, let’s stay focused on what we gain – and what the world can gain – in return.

Blessed be.

¹ One year while I was in college, one of my Catholic friends wanted to do a big community service project during Lent – “taking on” rather than “giving up.” Her priest said no; to “count” for Lent, she had to give something up. At the time it seemed ridiculous, but these days I have a better appreciation for the importance of sacrifice in this context. (My friend still did the project. She said she was giving up a certain amount of time with her friends, which she just happened to fill with a community service project.)

Image description: a white banner reading “DEFEND TRANS LIVES.” “Defend” and “lives” in black; “trans” in blue, pink, and white. The backs of some people’s heads are visible beyond the banner. It’s snowing, and everyone is dressed for winter weather. Photo by the author.

Spring Equinox 2021: Accountability

Exactly one year ago, as (at least here in the US) COVID-19 was turning many of our lives world upside down, I was reading Sasha Sagan’s For Small Creatures Such as We. That book has profoundly impacted me as I’ve planned this cycle of seasonal rituals, and none more so than Spring Equinox.

In the book Sagan talks (among many other incredible things; seriously, y’all, read this book if you have interest in ritual creation of any kind, and I definitely don’t mean just Pagan rituals) about the importance of Yom Kippur for individual and community healing. She laments that secular culture has no equivalent day of atonement and accountability. In the absence of a separate deity or intermediary to hear and absolve our misdeeds, Sagan encourages us to offer our apologies and amends to the actual beings we’ve wronged.

Sagan likes March 4th for this practice, noting that, “when you say it out loud, in English, it sounds like a bold command. It’s a pun that seems to cry out a directive to improve.” I’m sure I had this passage in mind when I chose Spring Equinox, the closest Sabbat to March 4, as our accountability day.

Accountability also fits well with my personal view of Spring Equinox. I’ve always experienced the equinoxes as times of pause, moments where everything balances and we hang, almost suspended, in the fulcrum. At Fall Equinox, we make sure we have the resources to get through the cold, dark stillness of Autumn and Winter ahead. At Spring Equinox, we make sure we have the resources to get through the hot, bright frenzy of Spring and Summer ahead. I suspect that will be especially true in 2021 as, in many parts of the world, increased COVID vaccination means that people can start gathering again and will probably do so in droves. I’ve heard people refer to the COVID pandemic as “the Great Pause,” and, for a lot of us, that pause is starting to speed up again. That makes it feel to me like a time well-suited to apologies and amends. How wonderful to “march forth” into what is for many of us the most active part of the year without the weight of past harms, whether done by us or to us, weighing us down.