The contemporary Pagan holiday calendar is based on astrological timings. We celebrate the solstices, the longest and shortest days of the year, as well as the equinoxes when day and night are of equal length. And, we celebrate the halfway point between each solstice and equinox. These are called cross-quarter days in many traditions since they occur halfway through a quarter section of a year. If you visualize the year as a circle with two lines dividing the circle in half vertically and horizontally, then add two lines to divide those quarters into eighths, you end up with an image of eight evenly spaced lines intersecting the edge of the circle. This way of visualizing the year is where the term “Wheel of the Year” comes from. It looks a bit like a wagon wheel.
I’ve taught Introduction to Paganism classes many times over the years and one of the funnier things that happens pretty regularly occurs when I introduce our holiday calendar. I frequently get the reaction “EIGHT high holidays? That’s a lot of holidays!”
And I suppose, depending on your basis of comparison, it could be. In the Christian supremacist culture around us, there are really only two High Holidays that most of us are aware of: Christmas and Easter. These are the holidays from the Christian calendar that are so important to that faith tradition that they’ve been included in the national calendar to the point that most federal and state employees, not to mention lots of other industries, have those days off work.
When your point of reference is the influence of Christianity on secular culture, yes, eight holidays is a big jump from two holidays.
The thing is, I would invite us to look further back in time. Most cultures, prior to the Reformation in the Western world, engaged with a fairly robust holiday calendar. These holidays, even in countries where Catholicism was the order of the day, were opportunities to celebrate certain seasonal points, come together as a community, connect with the sacred, and generally share a big meal of some sort. This regular pattern was one of the many things that provided the structure for how interconnected a given region’s culture was. Seeing each other regularly for reverence and celebration made a community stronger and more connected. It informed the culture of the region. Even if the given reason for a holiday was that it was a particular saint’s day in Catholic tradition, the real impact was the same: food, fellowship, and festival.
Expanding the lens outside Europe, in Mayan tradition every 20th day is a festival day. The Yoruba tradition honors six major holidays. The Shinto yearly calendar includes seven major holidays. And these are just the highest points of the year – many countries and cultures include both major feast days and minor ones.
My late father was stationed in Germany when he was in the Army. He was fortunate in that he was Army Intelligence and was undercover, so he got live off base and basically incognito. He was able to experience living in Germany without some of the barriers that military service tends to include. One of the things he mentioned several times when talking about those years was the German holiday calendar. Where he was stationed, about every four to six weeks there was some sort of large festival that brought the community together for food and celebration. He thought it was wonderful – it gave people a chance to shake off the doldrums, see each other, and cut loose a little bit.
When I see a pattern repeat across widely diverse cultures, I tend to regard it as a piece of our human spiritual DNA. Shared approaches in different traditions are one of the many things that underpin my own perspectives about life, meaning, and connection. If most of the human world thrives when we come together about once every month and a half, there’s a reason for it. It’s worth exploring that idea more to see where it fits in our lives now.
The big sacred feast days have transformed into our own street festivals, concerts, fairs, and other gatherings. Growing up in Frederick, Maryland, the county fair was so important that we got a day off of school for it and the large number of kids in the agricultural clubs and organizations simply weren’t at school at all that week. When I worked in downtown Frederick, the In The Streets festival was one of the centers of my yoga studio’s business year.
Each of us does have a holiday calendar even if we haven’t really thought about it. That calendar is a combination of personal milestones, yearly events, and seasonal observances. In a workshop at the Sacred Space Conference in 2019, author and teacher John Beckett described regional Paganism: allowing our beliefs to vary by region. He said that Paganism should be the intersection of the Ancestors, the Gods and the physical space in which we live and practice.
Along with festivals and fairs, there are other turning points in the year here in Western Maryland. The gardeners tend to get super excited around Mother’s Day – that’s one of our big markers for when summer vegetables can be planted without danger of frost. The hunters and fishers know exactly when those seasons open. My friends who are water babies and love going swimming look forward to Memorial Day all year long simply because for them, it’s the day the outdoor pools and lakes open.
If we allow our perspective to shift just a little in order to recognize our personal markers as sacred in addition to celebratory, an opportunity for deeper connection opens to us. One of the pieces of deprogramming that a lot of Pagans have to wrestle with is the idea that sacred can only mean serious. That sacred can’t also be fun. The truth, of course, is that if we expand our view outside Western culture or to the times before the Christian conversion, most sacred holidays also contained elements of fun. Parading through the streets dressed as mountain spirits and jangling loud bells is FUN in addition to driving the dark spirits of winter back underground for the growing season. Blessing the fruit trees through singing to them – wassailing them – is FUN in addition to deeply connecting all who participate to the cycle of growth and life.
Our personal Wheels of the Year contain many fun things. What I would encourage us to do is to peel back the next layer: what is sacred there? What does the celebration tell you about where you are in the year? What does it tell you about how you’re connecting to your community?
This approach – understanding that our personal Wheel of the Year is unique to us and meaningful in specific ways – also allows for some revision work around days that are challenging. The night I left my abusive first marriage is August 31st. I told my abuser I was leaving, packed a bag, and left. I never slept again at that home, or stayed more than a few hours. That day could be dark, depending on whether I focus on the pain that preceded my leaving that life, or on the sovereignty that action returned to me. For me, August 31st is my personal liberation day. I spend that day every year reminding myself how strong I am. I celebrate the way I escaped and overcame that darkness. I honor the person I have become and the life I built since leaving.
My late father’s birthday is May 31st. I miss him terribly, he was a wonderful father. Again, there’s a possibility here for that day to be one of pain, and there’s definitely grief present. But, my sister and I built a new tradition. My dad absolutely adored both Popeye’s Fried Chicken and margaritas. So, on or near his birthday, my sister and I sneak some Popeye’s and pre-mixed margaritas into the cemetery and have a picnic on his grave. We tell stories about him and talk about our childhoods. We discuss what we think he might say or think about the world right now. We tidy up his headstone if needed and pour out a little bit of margarita as an offering. I think he would love this tradition. I feel like I can hear him laughing about it. It is sacred, and fun, and sad all at once.
These are two complex, sacred points in my own Wheel of the Year. They each have holiday traditions around them – specific observances that only occur on those days. They each have an aspect of sacredness – they connect to something bigger than just me, and are focused on an aspect of my relationship with the greater tapestry of life.
Coming back to author John Beckett’s point about regional Paganism, there are also turns in the natural cycle that I celebrate. For me, the first snowfall is still absolutely magical. This day shifts according to the weather, but is met in the same way each time: I race outside and watch the flurries. Then, I begin plans for, or begin making, a big savory dinner of some sort. Usually a rich soup or stew. This weather marker is how I recognize my personal turn toward the winter season. It sets off a whole series of shifts within my household. It is very much a pivot point in the year.
Likewise, I mark summer by the arrival of the lightning bugs or fireflies depending on your regional dialect. When I see that first bright greenish flash in the darkness, I know summer has truly arrived. It is always a moment of great joy and wonder at the incredible beauty of this one world we share.
I think one of the largest draws to Pagan practice is the idea of becoming more connected to the earth. There is, deep within all of us, an ancestral memory of what it is to belong to the land we live with. To live in alignment with our region’s cycles. The thing is, we can begin cultivating that connection whether we’re Pagan or not. The seasons change. Some activities occur every year whether that’s a trip to the beach during summer, a visit to the Renaissance Festival in autumn, heading to a pumpkin patch in late October, remembering someone we lost on their birthday, or marking the day when we changed our own lives. This set of dates is our personal Wheel of the Year – the pattern we repeat.
Once we can see a pattern, we can then start interacting with it more meaningfully. Encountering the sacred is largely about recognition and intention. And remember that the sacred can still be fun. So perhaps when you visit the beach, you spend a morning walking at the edge of the ocean marveling at the seashells you see and the vast power of this life-giving and life-taking force. Maybe when you go to the Renaissance Festival, you also note that it occurs during the harvest season. Perhaps you add some items to your festival wear that represent what you wish to harvest this year, or what you wish to take into winter with you. If you garden and engage in the rush of planting right around Mother’s Day, perhaps you speak to the Green Mother as well – the force that turns our seedlings into flowers and fruit. Intention. Recognition. Working with the pattern we already practice in a more meaningful way.
And I’ll offer you one last thought in closing. We can consciously reshape days that are hard by allowing them to also be holy. Passage through darkness is another piece of shared human spiritual DNA. We see this pattern repeat in the mythologies of every culture. We can feel grief, rage, disappointment, and isolation, and also recognize those feelings as something we are surviving, and the marker of something we survived. We can honor those days in ways more akin to the holidays we associate with death and the underworld. Perhaps there are days that you need to mourn. If so, then build a mourning altar. Lean in. Perhaps there are days when you need to rage. If so, visit a break room or other place of safe destruction. Lean in. Find the thread of the sacred and hold it until you come out the other side. This, too, is real. This, too, is spiritual.
So, think about your Wheel of the Year. Consider the turning points in your personal practice: the important days, the festivals or events you never miss, the hard days you always take note of, and the moments that connect you to the changing of the seasons. This year, perhaps you move into those days and events with more intention. To be in alignment with the land we belong to is to turn with the Wheel of the Year. To feel the passage of the seasons down to our bones and echoed in the lives we build here and now. From seed to harvest to cold winter to the return of the sun, the Wheel turns ever onward. Perhaps now that you see the pattern, the turning of your own Wheel, you can choose to let that turning support your own search for truth and meaning. Your own connection to this one beautiful world we all share.
This sermon was offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Hagerstown on Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
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