Welcome to Alone at the Holidays

This year will be a quiet year for me during the holidays. Normally I would be traveling to one of my many relatives’ homes for Christmas and/or New Years, but not this year. There won’t be any parties to attend, no Japanese New Years feasts, and certainly no surprise Christmas trips (I managed to get my mom to jump about a foot in the air when I surprised her last year).

It’ll be just me and my dad...and my cat.

This isn’t the first time I’ll be spending at least part of the holidays alone. I’ve woken up on Christmas morning without any presents to open - granted I flew a few hundred miles and opened presents a few days later - but I still felt a little depressed because there was no one with me. That year, I didn’t even bother putting up a tree.

But as I stated before, it wasn’t the first time celebrating a holiday all by myself. And I technically won’t be alone this year - unlike a lot of people who will be separated from their friends and family.

How celebrations have changed have been all over social media. This one guy posted about celebrating his first Christmas ever (he said he’s Muslim) and how his roommates were including him in every “mandatory” activity - I feel a little bad for this guy because his roommates seem positively Christmas crazy. While one of my friends posted about celebrating Kwanza. My friend mentioned feeling a little odd celebrating by herself, which I totally understand.

A few years ago, I began celebrating the witch/Wiccan sabbats (basically holidays). Since I wasn’t part of a coven and was a little self conscious about my practices, I didn’t have anyone to celebrate these holidays with. And these holidays are meant to be shared with friends with all the food I end up making.

I’m a solo witch. And a lot of people who I talked to regarding my shift in spiritual practices had a lot of misconceptions about my beliefs. (A side note: I’ve mentioned how I’m a Christian in previous blog posts. I’m still a Christian, but also a practicing witch. Believe it or not the two don’t have to conflict with each other. I am not a Wiccan, but there is some crossover with how witches practice.)

To understand how best to celebrate the witch/Wiccan holidays, I had to do a lot of research. Once I had more information than I knew what to do with, I began to figure out which parts of the celebrations made sense for me. There were a lot of little things I could do to celebrate like taking a walk in nature, baking or cooking food with herbs and spices symbolic of the season, and meditating.

I’m still adjusting my celebrating and practices. This year was the first time I made soul cakes for Samhain as an offering to the dead who were visiting and shared some with my dad (who absolutely loved them and was disappointed when I said I wouldn’t make more until the next year.). My dad sort of rolls his eyes at my witch practices, but he seems to like the food I make for the sabbats.

Tomorrow is Yule. 

I plan on building a fire in the fireplace. I’ll toss in some holly to burn up my woes from 2020 and burn bay leaves with wishes for 2021. I’ll have a feast of root veggies and heavy meat stew in honor of the food that’s readily available at this time of year. Hot wassail will warm my insides. Pine and Frankincense incense will purify my home. Green, white, and gold candles will be lit since it’s the longest night. Oranges will be stuck with cloves to welcome back the sun. And I might try to do some star gazing.

Oh and I’ll make cookies.

Each activity I plan to do has been researched and has meaning. A couple of things were borrowed from my Christian roots (the oranges and the cloves for example), but flow well with my intentions for the celebration. 

Because what matters most in how I practice witchcraft is the intension.  It’s a practice of mindfulness and living in harmony with nature.

I walked a little with my friend about how she plans on celebrating Kwanza. She plans on doing some research and doing a few of the holiday’s rituals. It might not be a lot, but she’s excited to explore this side of her heritage.

A lot of people will probably be celebrating a holiday or five alone this year. Some might be putting in all their free time into it and have a “magazine ready apartment” to post on Instagram. Others might be planning on marathoning Star Wars and that’s it.

However you plan on celebrating the last two weeks of the year, I hope it’s wonderful.

And if you have the opportunity, toss a sprig of holly into a roaring fire to burn the woes of 2020 away.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Ghost Sightings

Ghosts are real. 

They exist at the edges of our minds to help us deal with the reality that one day we will die and no longer exist as we do right now. We might go our whole lives without ever seeing a ghost, but that doesn't mean we aren't followed by them.

I've never seen a ghost. I probably never will. But I know they're there to keep histories and memories alive for just a little longer.

About a month ago, I wrote a blog post about how ghost stories (at least the best ones) are rarely about the ghosts. You can read that blog post by clicking this link. 

That post primarily focuses on fictional stories and the ones that get passed down from generation to generation as a way to preserve culture or history. It wasn’t my first post on ghosts, nor was it the first time I brought up the fact that ghost stories are a good measure to discover what a culture values. This post will likely not be the last either.

Today I was feeling under the weather. Thankfully nothing COVID related (at least I haven’t heard of a crumbly stomach being associated with the virus). I ended up spending most of the morning under a pile of blankets with a cat curled up next to me and Unsolved Mysteries on in the background. I came back to full awareness when the episode playing was entirely in Japanese.

The episode in question was on the aftermath of the 3.11.2011 earthquake and tsunami. At first I was a bit confused as to why this was on Unsolved Mysteries as I hadn’t heard of anything unusual happening after the tragedy. Then ghosts were mentioned and things began to fall into place.

The episode wasn’t about a murder or disappearance that occurred in conjunction to the day, but about the trauma that happened to the people after over 15,000 were swept away by a wall of water. People began to see ghosts.

I don’t think this is all that unusual after such a horrific disaster. Though the episode does mention that ghost sightings are a rare occurrence in Japan after incidents of mass death (natural or man made), there is a cultural explanation for why this region of Japan had a high number of ghost sightings in the months and years after 3.11 (as the day has become known as).

Mass death isn’t normal. Sudden mass death is traumatic and leaves a gaping impression like a bullet hole.

The amount of death going on right now because of the pandemic feels so much worse. It's like a stab wound that hasn't closed properly and became infected. It'll likely leave a massive scar, if the wound ever heals.

I’ve been lucky. I haven’t seen the mobile morgues. My family has managed to avoid the worst of COVID. I’m still incredibly stressed by the situation.

We’ve seen how humans of the past dealt with pandemics and it was filled with images of death. The great plague that ravaged Asia and Europe in the Middle Ages left us with tons of paintings which featured dancing skeletons and iconography we still closely associate with death. The Dance of the Macabre is familiar enough to most modern people - even if they aren’t aware of its exact origin.

That particular disease really did look like something out of a zombie movie. COVID doesn’t have the tell tale disfiguration or gross puss filled boils like Bubonic or one of its similar plague buddies has. It’s not flashy and easily hidden away from the public eye. 

But the stress and trauma is all around us. I do wonder how our modern world will deal with it.

In the mid-2000s there was a huge uptick in paranormal investigative shows. I won’t deny that I enjoyed them back then. Although, now I much prefer seeing the story unfold rather than watch 40 of people wander around in the dark and then spend 10 minutes trying to tell me that there was a “ghost” on a recording. I like to think I’ve matured in taste since then, but it’s unlikely.

I’m not saying that the trauma of 9/11 was the reason for this sudden splash of TV shlock, but the timing is there. Kind of like how it wasn’t necessarily the counter culture of the 60s and 70s that led to the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s. 

But after traumatic events, we as humans seem to be drawn to what comes after life. Many times the trauma takes the form of ghosts.

I think there’s a reason Gettysburg is known for its battlefields and ghosts more than any other US city. The town and surrounding area was bombarded for three hot days in July. It’s the bloodiest battle to take place on US soil. And the town is filled with ghost stories about those three horrific days.

Will COVID correlate to another surge in live action ghost shows? Will we get more shows or movies like The Haunting of Hill House or Bly Manor? 

If anything, I do hope that the pandemic brings the end of the zombie. For years zombies were equated to disease and that we could fight our way out of it. Nothing remotely like the zombie apocalypse has happened. Please creative types, make zombies go away.

I’m still feeling a little queasy. The only other time I’ve felt like this and didn’t actually get sick was when I had a horribly stressful month at work while I was still new to my career. I couldn’t eat for a couple weeks. COVID has wrecked my nerves in a similar way - don’t know why this was the week for my body to freak out.

I have never seen a ghost - though I wouldn’t mind the experience. I think it’s important to understand that ghosts are very real. Whether or not seeing them is a response to trauma or a suggestion of the mind to rationalize the unknown or they are in fact real is up to you the individual. Right now my body is physically responding to the stress of the pandemic. Years from now, my mind might process the trauma differently.

And boy has my generation lived through a lot of traumatic events. 

If you enjoyed this post or it really (pissed you off), please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.

Stay safe everyone.