For various reasons I’m not going into detail with here, I wasn’t able to celebrate holidays from the time I was 13 to the time I was turning 30. In short: first my mother and her shifting religious views, then my abusive ex who hated celebrating anything… They both put a stop to me celebrating birthdays and just about any holiday. I tried a couple times with Thanksgiving, with my ex, but he basically ignored me when I laid out a gorgeous dinner for Thanksgiving and told me he’d eat when he was damned ready, and that ended that attempt.
But…then, I left him. And life got better. By that time I was Pagan, and I started celebrating the Sabbats. One of my fave is/was Yule, and I knew that all the sparkly and glitter of my childhood dreams wasn’t going unheeded. By the time I married Samwise, he knew about the lack of holidays, and when I told him I wanted to decorate for Yule (the solstice–after all, the Yule tree belonged to us Pagans first), he stood back, said go for it, and over the years, he quietly appreciates all the work that goes into it, and he never once complains about me decorating “too early” or anything like that. He understands my need for the beauty of the season.
It took me over ten years to gather all the ornaments we have now, and each year we decide on our yearly ornament together. We have 32 special ornaments–for the 32 Yuletides we’ve seen together. And we love them and each one symbolizes something in our lives. The year we lost Meerclar, we bought an old world black cat ornament for her. In 2021 we actually got two ornaments–one for Morgan and one for Caly. In 2006, when Witchling came out and hit big, we bought a sparkly white ball to represent the moon, for the “Sisters of the Moon” (my unofficial series title for the Otherworld Series).
So yes, now we have three trees, and a gazillion decorations, and a yard full of sparkly lights. Here are a few pictures of our indoor decorations, and each year, they go up at the beginning of November, and come down shortly after New Year’s.
So, do you like to decorate? What do you do for whatever holidays you celebrate?
Yasmine