As I am approaching the first anniversary of stepping onto the Pagan spiritual path, I made a decision several weeks ago (after my Happy Ostara! post) to take a short hiatus from blogging in order to spend substantial time reviewing and reflecting on my spiritual growth over the past year and coming to some decisions about what the best next steps will be for me as I begin my second year of dedication to the Goddess.  I continue to review and plan, (and with a few days off as my school observes the traditionally Catholic practice of spring break following the Christian Easter Sunday, I have more time to sleep, too )  but my curiosity got the better of me today, and I looked at my stats to find that a relative stampede of viewers have made their way to Pagan Dawn in the past few days.

I always find there is a small up-tick in views when I post something new (thank you to the three of you out there who are such faithful readers ), but I hadn’t posted since late March, so my curiosity only increased at the Grand Teton-esque line graph indicating something like 40 or 50 viewers had dropped by over the weekend!  Had I the insightfulness, wit, and gift of language of other Pagan bloggers I read regularly (The Green Witch and Anne Johnson of The Gods are Bored come quickly to mind), I might be tempted to think that the increase in my viewership is due to blog surfers not being able to get enough of my writing, but my style is usually more tortured prose than scintillating poetry.  So . . . what could it be? 

Well . . . I’m not totally sure, but I think it might have something to do with Easter wars.  As you’ll recall if you read my late March post, “Happy Ostara,” I celebrated the arrival of spring at the time of the vernal equinox, and although I still have a lot to learn about Paganism, I understand that most other Pagans/Witches/Wicca celebrate it then, too.  Surprisingly to me, though, as I was catching up on my blog reading, I found a large-ish number of posts by indignant Pagan bloggers addressing the supposed co-opting of Pagan vernal traditions (painted eggs being the real biggie) by Christians who have supposedly morphed them into something associated with the resurrection story.  Another small-but-statistically-significant group of Pagan writers (possibly in an attempt to keep the peace with Christian soldiers??) wrote that really, the origins of celebrations abounding at this time of year are really all too old for any of us to know the absolute truth of, and yes, possibly the Pagan fertility lore and traditions are no older than Christian resurrection celebrations. 

I’m surprised by all of this, not so much because of the content—it’s pretty typical that minority groups of any type will have some members that are militant and others that prefer to appease—but because of the timing of these posts—most were published on the Christian Easter weekend of April 11 and 12.  Wasn’t Easter (Oestara) several weeks ago for us Pagans?  I don’t know about you, but I’m already beginning to look forward to Beltane! 

But content-wise, I guess I’m a little disappointed, too.  When I stepped away from Christianity and toward Paganism, I saw myself as moving toward a culture that accepts and shares with others.  The more we fight for “ownership” of any seasonal celebration, the more likely it is that we will lose any joy and deep meaning it has held for us.  If any of the readers stampeding over to Pagan Dawn last weekend were looking for a Pagan blogger with a bad-ass attitude about Oestara/Easter, I don’t think they found it here.  So I’m probably back to a readership of three now that they’ve seen this site is just one middle-aged woman’s musings about her quite ordinary Pagan life. . .

This year, the Christian celebration of Easter falls quite late—April 12, while the Pagan celebration of Ostara, as it is connected to the occurrence of the vernal equinox, is more than 3 weeks earlier.  Had I stepped into Paganism a year earlier, I might have felt quite conflicted about how to make sure my observance of Ostara didn’t get lost in the shuffle of my largely-Christian family’s Easter celebration, which was on March 23 last year.  As there is such a gap between the two celebrations this year, though, I’m feeling quite relaxed about it, including drawing out my observance over a matter of a week or more, as I gather both some physical symbols and my thoughts on the key aspects of Ostara.

To me, this observance seems to have been particularly long in coming.  I’ve been through one of the snowiest winters I can remember in decades (right up through last weekend!), I’ve been dealing with some thorny family issues, and I’m trying to address my own growing dissatisfaction with my current employment situation without causing household financial wreckage beyond that done by the national/global situation.   Despite the worries of my daily life, though, I feel joyful as the wheel of the year advances to the celebration of Ostara—a time to celebrate balance and potentiality.  As I continue to study the seasons and cycles in the physical world and my spiritual life, I find it helpful to have something specific to focus on during times of reflection, so I’m using the photos of seeds and nest eggs you see here as symbols of the season. 

Blessings to all who read this!  May this season be a time of renewal for all who desire it.