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S2E02 TRANSCRIPT:  

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Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark.

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

And today we are going to be talking about holidays. What they are, how they fit into our human experience here in the world. A little bit about the Wheel of the Year as celebrated by pagan folk, many pagan folk, and then some tips on inventing your own holidays and some fun holidays that have already been invented that we want to make sure you're aware of.

Yucca: So that's one of yours coming up.

Mark: Yes. Yes. Slogg is coming up in January and we'll tell you all about it. So holidays much. That this is an important topic for pagans, because for many pagans much, if not all of their celebration of their religion is focused on those eight days around the course of the year.

You know, some people like me and you have daily practices and other things that we do on a more frequent basis, but for an awful lot of pagans, I know it's really those eight holidays, the four solstices and equinoxes, and then the points in between the solstices and equinoxes to create eight equidistant spokes to a wheel around the course of the year

Yucca: and some- it doesn't seem to be quite as common, have a, a lunar observance as well.

Mark: Oh, you're right about that. I completely overlooked it. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Yucca: But it, at least from what I have been exposed to, it seems like the, the solar wheel of the year is more, it seems to be more universal.

Mark: And that's of course there are, you know, there are folks following Norse traditions and Greek traditions and Roman traditions and so forth, which are not in any way oriented that way.

The wheel of the year was originally created as a Wiccan idea synthesizing folk traditions from throughout Europe and kind of pulling them all together into this system. But it works very well for nature-based pagans because it's rooted in reality and the reality of where the Sun is in relation to the Earth and what the axis of the earth is relative to the sun.

And so over the course of the year, we go through these seasonal observations that have direct correlation in what's happening in the physical world, outside us.

Yucca: Yeah.

Well, let's, let's pause on the Wheel of the Year and talk about holidays first. Just holidays in general.

Mark: We've just got a whole bunch of them

Yucca: we have, right.

And we're not talking about the holidays as is in the cluster of a bunch of things that often happen in December, but. Holidays as in moments set aside throughout the year that have special meaning and that have special behaviors around them.

Mark: Yes. This is one of those things that is ubiquitous, so it must have some inherent human need.

In every culture throughout the world, there are special days where you don't just do your routine of food gathering and processing and, you know, making shelter and doing all those various kinds of things. Instead, you suspend all that stuff and you do things that are often cultural, religious, freighted with symbolic meaning, right?

And so so holidays become one of those interesting topics like laughter and music and dancing, where you have to ask yourself how and religion. Of course these things are universal. So what does it say about the human organism that we have these things and that we value them? Yeah. So what is a holiday then?

Well, we've just described it as a day that you take when you do something cultural or religious, instead of doing instead of doing your ordinary routine, and that can even be true of holidays that are highly secular. I mean, 4th of July is it doesn't really have much in the way of a kind of deep metaphorical content to it, but there is the tradition of fireworks and there is the tradition of barbecues and there's tradition of football, all these things that people associate with that day and f