How do you celebrate the holidays?

[pandora_parrot]

I'm particularly interested in how pagans celebrate the upcoming holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas are two very big holidays in America. Mabon and Yule are the pagan equivalents. Do you celebrate the pagan holidays? The "mainstream" ones? Both? How do you celebrate them? This poll was created to try to divine the answers. Mostly... Since moving out here and becoming separated from my extended family, I haven't had the opportunity to really celebrate the holidays... and since they used to be a big deal for me, I want to learn how folks celebrate such things and start to build my own traditions and such. :)

[Poll #1059206]

Comments

[peaceofpie.livejournal.com]

My friends at the Pagan shop have a big sale day to celebrate Mabon, and that's where I'll mostly be tomorrow. I need to get a better rhythm going with the Wheel of the Year. My big-deal day is always Samhain, though.

I have two Thanksgiving celebrations that I traditionally do that correlate with US Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the anniversary of when I went vegan, and I like to honor that day as a day of Thanksgiving for the things I am thankful for in my life. I like to treat it as a day of celebration because until the year I went vegan, it was always a miserable day for me, and now it's not! Also, my friends in New York and I had a tradition of getting together the day before Thanksgiving and having a vegan potluck. We called it "Unthanksgiving" and it was kinda more of a day of mourning than a day of celebration. I didn't do it last year because I didn't go back to NY for the holiday and I wasn't really in that kind of consciousness to have a day of mourning "party"...but I dunno what I'll do this year! (So, both "both" and "other" apply to me. As usual.)

I have never celebrated Christmas before, so I don't really know how, but this year I will probably celebrate it because my housemate celebrates Christmas and my church choirs all celebrate Christmas. I always try to do something for Yule because that was the first Pagan holiday I celebrated. I'm most used to celebrating Hanukkah because I grew up Jewish. Last year I integrated a little Kwanzaa celebration into my consciousness and I got a lot out of that.

I pretty much like to celebrate as much as humanly possible. All the time. :D

[paradox-puree.livejournal.com]

I don't really celebrate the mass genocide celebration, but I think a harvest holiday is nice, and my company gives me time off during it, so it is a good time to celebrate something.