Not easy being a pagan

[skepticscott]

Especially when your family is whackier than a barrel of monkeys :-)

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/area_pagan_dreading_big_family

MEDFORD, OR—Despite evidence that the planets are aligned in his favor, local pagan Jeff Birch, 27, said Monday that he would "rather have a peaceful weekend at home" than attend his family's Vernal Equinox celebration on March 21.

"I realize it's supposed to be a festive time of conception and new growth in the womb of Mother Earth and all," Birch said. "But I just know that within an hour of arriving, things will get so bad that I'll be reverting to my 12-year-old self, hiding in the rec room downstairs, wearing my Iroquois false face mask and fingering my runes for comfort. It's not worth it."

"Anyway, wasn't I just back home for Mabon?" Birch added.

Most pagans look forward to marking the Vernal Equinox, when the hours of sunlight equal the hours of darkness. Yet for some, like Birch, this sacred springtime celebration of balance and harmony means contending with family infighting and undue stress.

"Talking to Mom the other day, it was the same old manipulative 'You're coming home, right?'" said Birch, referring to a recent phone conversation with his mother, Freyja Birch. "If I hesitate for even a second, she piles on the guilt—like how this may be the last year Nana Hippolyta can perform the garden fertility ritual, or that without my masculine energy, the yin-and-yang balance will be thrown off—until I finally give in."

[Mojorabbit]

1. The human condition

no matter what the beliefs/religion. Family dynamics, no?

[texastoast]

2. I don't know

I think it is a lot more "normal," and we all know it is much more fun. After all, those early Christians knew that they weren't going to get very far with the early Pagans without a party here and there. And as to the rituals, well, to each his own.

I love TheOnion.

[pscot]

3. Oh, dog. Not another "hate the equinox" thread

Next you'll be trying to ban the equinox altogether. Have you people no sense of the sacred? I'm telling Chris Wallace about this.

[NMMNG]

6. The War Against The Equinox!

Persecution! Persecution!!! :cry:

[juno jones]

4. But...

Yule can also be a pretty hectic time, but on Lammas we kids get together and rent a bitchin cottage south of Santa Cruz smoke out and let our hair down at the nudists beaches...See it ain't all bad!

[kiahzero]

5. Um... The Onion? (n/t)

[skepticscott]

7. Yes, the Onion

Don't you enjoy getting a smile out of your favorite topics every now and then, instead of always treating them as deadly serious? :silly:

[kiahzero]

9. I thought you were taking it seriously.

Hence the "Um..." reaction. Sorry. :hi:

[nickols_k]

8. Dangerous

It's very dangerous to be a pagan

Be bless!

[saltpoint]

10. Oh no. It's very honorable to be a pagan.

The predate everybody.

They're the originals, baby.

[Book Lover]

11. Well, didn't animists came before pagans

That rock's alive, baby!

[saltpoint]

12. All cousins. And you've got it exactly right about the rocks.

[CarbonDate]

13. Perhaps. But it's more dangerous to be psychotic.

Remember the last guy who went around proclaiming divine knowledge? The burned down his compound with him inside. And the guy before that? They crucified him.