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Yule On a Budget
Wondering how you’re going to make it through Yule when you’re working on a tight budget or fixed income? Here are some of my top tips on how to make Yule a budget-friendly part of your year. 1. Look At How Much You’ve Got to Spare First, figure out how much you’re going to spend on gifts for others, and for your family. If cash is tight, think about making gifts instead of buying them. Also, pare down the gift list — is there someone you constantly buy a gift for that you really don’t want or need to? Ask them if it’s okay to skip the exchange this year.…
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Surviving the Holidays with Your Non-Pagan Family
In some families, the holiday get-together is something we look forward to. In fact, it may be the only time you even see some members of your family. However, if you’re a Pagan and the rest of them aren’t, there are times when the winter holidays can be a bit awkward. So what can you do to make the season’s celebrations a bit more harmonious? First of all, remember that this is a day for families to get together and enjoy themselves. It’s not a day to battle about religion or anything else. If your extended family celebrates a Christian holiday, no matter how you feel about Christianity, don’t choose this…
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Don’t Let Yule Stress You Out
It should be the happiest time of year, right? After all, the Yule season is when we celebrate the return of the sun, and the days start to get a little brighter. The mundane world is observing Christmas and Hanukkah, gifts are being given all over the place — it should be a season of great joy. Yet for many people, late fall and early winter are a time when frustrations begin to build, and anxiety (and often depression) set in. Between getting together with family, preparing big meals, shopping for gifts, decorating the house, and spending money on others, for many people Yule can be a time of overwhelming stress. Here…
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Make a Blessing Bag
Does your group or coven ever do a service project to help others? Each year during the Yule season — or at least, when we’re not in the middle of a global pandemic — my group comes up with a community-based project to work on. We’ve adopted needy families, done a hat drive for underprivileged schools, and sent toys to kids who might not have had any otherwise. We’ve given new clothes, diaper packs, feminine hygiene supplies, grocery store gift cards, turkey dinners, you name it. And each year, this simple contribution makes a huge difference in the lives of someone in our community. A few years back, however, my…
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12 Days of Reading for Yule
I love everything about the Yule season — from covering my tree with tiny pentacles and my ever growing collection of Krampus decorations, to decking my altar with boughs of holly, this is one of my favorite times of year. One of the things I always do is drag out my pile of Yule-oriented books and leave them scattered around so that guests can check them out — and so that I can revisit some of my annual traditions. There’s something comforting about curling up under a blanket with a cup of warm tea, flipping through pages that remind me of where many of our current customs originate. So, I’ve…
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19 Random Acts of Kindness for the Holidays
When the Yule season rolls around, it’s easy to find ourselves frustrated and anxious because of the frenzy of the holidays. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to take a step back and just perform small random acts of kindness, to help put things back into perspective. Doing nice things — even small ones — for other people not only helps them, but can help get you back on track, focusing on what Yule means to you. Obviously, there are so many more things you can do besides the ones on this list, but just to get you started, here are 19 random acts of Yuletide kindness. 1. Drop off pet food at…
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10 Ways to Show Gratitude
Man, I tell you. This year has been HARD, y’all. I don’t even have to explain why — all we have to do is say “2020, right?” and everyone is all UGHH NO PLEASE MAKE IT STOP. And when things are the way they’ve been, it’s really hard to find things to be thankful for. Instead of doing the big family turkey-day spread this week, I’m staying home, enjoying my four days off work in solitude, and cleaning out my attic to purge shit to donate to the local Goodwill. That’s it. I don’t even care about turkey this year. And yet, somehow, I’ve found myself this week taking a…
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Mistletoe Myths and Mysteries
Mistletoe as Medicine In 50 C.E., the Greek physician Dioscorides wrote his Materia Medica, establishing himself a place in medical history. As one of the ancient world’s most knowledgeable herbalists, Dioscorides found that mistletoe helped cure his patients of external tumors. He wrote that it “has the power to disperse, soften, drawing and assisting tumors of the parotid gland and other lesions…” Some forty or so years later, Pliny the Elder wrote of the treatment of sores and epilepsy with mistletoe in his Natural History. He also described its use in magic and ritual. Pliny wrote that Druid elders performed rituals in which they harvested mistletoe — a botanical parasite — from oak…
