Family time, festive traditions & Happy Thanksgiving

It has been a busy week, I am nearly finished with the Pagan Portals Hoodoo book, just a few thousand words to go...

I did have a ticket to go to Witchfest on Saturday but things have been so manic that I decided to pass the ticket on and stay at home.  So instead we had a lovely relaxing family weekend.  Lots of film watching, family meals and yesterday we visited the local garden centre to see their Christmas display.

What is a witch doing looking at Christmas decorations you might ask?  Well, I have blogged about this before but I celebrate 'the festive season' as a whole.   I am the only pagan in my family.   The festive season to me is about family.  When we were children my parents put so much effort into Christmas (and in fact they still do), I still have wonderful memories of amazing Christmases, all my lovely cousins would come to stay, there would be a house full of slightly tipsy adults (OK very tipsy), loads of children, various pets and grandparents - it was chaos but it was fabulous chaos.

Not quite so many people at the dinner table now but we still go to my parents for Christmas day, it wouldn't be the same without spending the day with my husband, children, parents and my brother - we eat loads, we laugh lots, we play games and we spend special time together making new memories.

I like to cook a special dinner for my family on the Winter Solstice and we usually open a present each.  I do my own little ritual and I also take part in the Dorset Grove Yule ritual and this year we will be having our own Kitchen Witch Coven ritual too.

I especially love the build up, yep I am the annoying person that starts watching Christmas films in November.  In fact yesterday on the way to the garden centre the children made me take the ACDC CD out of the car stereo and replace it with a Christmas one...

We do the whole build up, the first weekend of December the decorations go up, we have two trees and both get the full works.  We also have a tradition that we started twenty years ago when hubby and I had our first Christmas together - each year we choose a bauble for the tree to mark another Yule spent together and we started the same tradition with our children, they each choose a bauble now - so we have quite a collection now.

My Yule altar is already up, it is basic at the moment but will be added to once the decorations come down out of the loft in a couple of weeks.

Apologies to our lovely friends in the USA, I know you have Thanksgiving first before you get into the festive mode - I am truly thankful all year round for what I have - the best husband and children in the world, the best parents, friends and family.  So I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving :-)

And now I shall get on with that book writing...

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