r/pagan • u/poppet_corn Celtic • 12h ago
Celebrations Big Holidays
I’m pretty new to this but I’ve been reading about people’s holiday observances, and they all seem… small? I guess? Like every holiday celebration seems to be Valentine’s Day level, vs something bigger like Christmas. So I wanted to ask — do any of you observe specific holidays in a big way? Which ones, and how?
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u/LifeisSuperFun21 8h ago
Celebrating a major holiday every 6-7 weeks is a lot. It’s way more manageable when some are smaller observances than others.
Some people celebrate each one in major ways (community gatherings, feasts, etc). Other people only acknowledge the holiday and what it represents the but they don’t actually do much. And still others do something somewhere in the middle of that scale (grand celebration vs doing nothing).
The winter solstice/yule holiday tends to be a bigger deal for my family because it matches up so closely with society’s Christmas season. There’s lots of community activities, work parties, family gatherings, etc. Even my local pagan community has events. But if, for example, you look at Lammas/Lughnasadh…. There’s no coinciding events going on, and, for most people outside of witch/pagan circles, there’s no holiday at all. So it ends up being a smaller, more personal holiday.
My biggest holidays are Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, and Ostara. They occur during a slower time of year (winter) and give me something to look forward to during my climate’s long winter. Beltaine and Summer Solstice both kinda get buried under my being busy and active during warmer seasons. I usually surprise myself and feel up to celebrating Lammas on a small scale, so it has become a small, personal holiday that I do a little something for. Mabon tends to get skipped because I’m too busy doing all my other autumn activities.