I have an embarrassing confession to make. Despite being a witch for over 25 years, I still struggle with some of the festivals. I often feel like I just don’t connect with them.

I love Yule and Samhain (though I’m seriously thinking of celebrating Winter Nights, which comes a bit earlier in the year, instead). They were easy to connect to. Yule is the longest night of the year and I’ve always felt an affinity to nighttime and darkness. And Samhain is the start of the winter half of the year, so I can relate to that in a similar fashion. Plus, I love the ancestors, and Samhain is often associated (at least in modern times) with the ancestors and the dead in general.

I feel a pretty strong connection to Beltane as well. I like the brightness and activity. And let’s face it, I don’t think a person can be a devotee/priest¹ of Freyja or any other sexually charged goddess and not feel something at Beltane.

To a lesser degree, I often feel something at Imbolc as well. That’s usually because here in western New York, we tend to get our first sunny day with some hint of the coming warmth sometime in February. I remember a number of years when I went to my car to head for work, felt that sun, and immediately felt like I was shaking off some sort of slumber or stupor. So I can appreciate Imbolc as a time when we first get that initial hint of the coming spring.

The rest of the traditional eight Sabbats that Wiccans and many Neo-Pagans honor tend to feel distant and forced to me. As such, I don’t really do much for most of them. Some days, that bothers me and leaves me worrying whether I’m “Pagan Enough.” Other days, I just accept that I’m doing my own thing anyway, and that can include focusing on the holidays and festivals that hold meaning to me.

I’ve also been thinking about exploring other festivals outside of the eight ones so commonly used. For example, many Heathen groups have their own schedule of festivals and holy days. (Winter Nights, which I mentioned earlier, is one such example.) So I’ve started looking over their calendar and thinking about what holy days and festivals I might be drawn to.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For more information about the challenge and a list of topics, check out Yvonne Aburrow’s post announcing the challenge.)

Footnote(s)

1. Potential topic for a future blog post. I rarely call myself a priest of Freyja, because that’s making a pretty strong claim. I’m reminded of a conversation of one of the mailing lists for The Troth about how you tell if you’re actually a priest. One half-joking answer given was “when you call yourself a priest of a particular god and the rest of the community doesn’t immediately laugh at the idea.” I’m not sure whether I’m there yet or not. I guess I’d have to do some “testing.” ↩︎