Helping to plan Yule for my local #pagan group. I am new to this kind of thing. Anybody got a good source for Yule celebrations? Rituals?

@jasod Yule is FILLED with all kinds of rites and rituals you could celebrate with! May I ask what path you study? I may be able to boost you for others that share the same path.

Hi, @jasod

Dunno if you've noticed yet, but there is a small subculture of #CoSoPagans here. Click that tag (the common one we use, as opposed to just #pagans), you should see some posts from some who ascribe to Paganism. And I think @PaganMother got a list recently.

As for rituals, I like to rethinnk them each time, consider the cycle, what meaning it could have for us, what nature teaches me in this time, & where the celebrations may have come from. Then I try writing meaningful words/acts.

@FernLovebond @jasod Yep! #CoSoPagans is basically anyone not in a specific domination of Christianity really. Even got a few Buddhists among us. ^^

@PaganMother @jasod

Mm, Buddhism comes in a lot of forms, and in the West/Global North it's become deeply secularized. I still use Buddhist practices for my meditation, & live largely by the layperson's vows.

IDK how much I'd include "non-Christian" of w/e kind within Pagan: there's all the Judaic faiths, the Islamic variants, then Hinduism & its offspring (Buddhism, Jainism, Hare Krishna, et al), Zoroastrians, Baha'i, Scientology, & similar nonsense. [Neo]Pagan for me is far more specific.

@FernLovebond
Just for fun, I looked up the etymology of the word Pagan and it just means "of the countryside" or "rural" as does heathen (lit. of the heath lands).
Never knew that till just now!
So in my imagination that means in a religious sense that it's the way of the rural people. I like that. 😁
Especially when you consider how many old rural traditions have been retained in European (and especially British) Christianity.

@PaganMother @jasod

@stueytheround
Re: retaining pagan traditions in Christianity:
It's actually a great lament to me that Christianity assimilated traditions, altered them to fit the aesthetic of their age. The assimilation which spread the church was often brutal in suppression of native ways, insisting locals obey missionary edicts, reinforced by the local leadership, about celebration of their indigenous traditions.

How much more would we know if they'd simply been allowed to go on?

@PaganMother @jasod

@FernLovebond
I feel it worth acknowledging that there were two fronts in the "conversion" of British pagans.
The Romans who as you rightly pointed out, subjugated Pagans came to our Eastern shores and spread North, mostly. They arrived in 55BCE and didn't convert until Constantine.
But there is an older way.

Those we call The Celts, converted much earlier through interactions with mediterranean traders in the British South West.

THEY retained more Pagan tradition. 1/2
@PaganMother @jasod

Such folk gladly received the Gospel because it was offered gently and with great respect. They recognised much of their religion in Jesus and were not subjugated, but chose to redirect their traditional practices. Especially with regard to prayer. To this day, those of us who follow a Celtic Christian model still do.

For instance:
I have hearth prayers, kitchen, bedroom and doorway prayers.
I pray the Caim (an encircling prayer).
I venerate nature.
(Ok 2/3)

@FernLovebond @PaganMother @jasod

Eh, I'd say most accounts were written by missionaries for the church, so... Not saying they're total lies, just... Every ad telling you how great milk is for you was paid for by the Dairy Farmer's Association, you know?

But probably there were lighter touch forced conversions, & some areas would naturally be less oppressed than others, which isn't a pass for me.

I love that you're open to learning & exploring these things, @stueytheround but I don't forgive churches.

@PaganMother @jasod

@FernLovebond
The problem really is that the Celts' tradition was generally much more oral.
Not much was written down, but what there *is* is archaeological evidence.
Especially where I live in the far South West of Britain, where very few Romans bothered to turn up. Cornwall particularly has retained a great deal of its pagan roots.
The history is there.
Not in books, but in the land itself.

@PaganMother @jasod