What's your Least Favorite Pagan Holiday -- And Why?

[Sage]

I'm with Vale on this one.

 
And I'm with you. My favorite arc of the Wheel of the Year is Lammas - Samhain. The two solstices are cool because they're leading into and out of this arc... and then we get to Imbolc, Ostara, and Beltane.

I feel like I should like Imbolc more than I do, but it's really the winter holiday for me - Yule is too early for me to be sick of the snow and the cold - and so I feel like curling up and wishing February would take a hike. Also, it's Brighid's holiday and I'm still working close with Her, so I feel like Imbolc should be Super Awesome Important Day, and it's not.

Ostara should be more awesome for me too since Ostara 2007 was my dedicating myself a Pagan. But meh, the bunnies and the eggs don't mean much to me, and the whole holiday is too close to Easter symbolism to be of comfort. But it is a few days after my birthday (March 16), so that's cool!

Beltane. Oh Beltane. Now that I'm working with tM I wonder if Beltane will be more important, but I.... am really... super uncomfortable... with sexual imagery. Like whoa. (I don't identify as asexual anymore because now I have a hot girlfriend, but I still don't want sex in my ritual.) Also, at Bryn Mawr - the all women's school I went to for two years before transferring - May Day was a HUGE party, and since I have so much Bryn Mawr angst, May Day gets some of that residual angst as well.

[Aiwelin]

As a counterpart to our long-running What's your favorite holiday? thread, what is your least favorite Pagan holiday? The (fairly important) holiday in your religion that you just can't get into celebrating like you believe you should? Why is this holiday a problem for you?

 
I don't really have a least favorite holiday, as such; but when celebrating the Wheel of the Year, Lammas and Mabon feel so same-y to me, like they're almost one holiday split over a month and a half.  I can usually get into the spirit of Lammas, but by the time Mabon rolls around I'm usually all harvested out.

[Alex]

As a counterpart to our long-running What's your favorite holiday? thread, what is your least favorite Pagan holiday? The (fairly important) holiday in your religion that you just can't get into celebrating like you believe you should? Why is this holiday a problem for you?

 
I am over Beltaine. I am not a fertility person and dislike gendered celebrations of such. It's just not my thing.

[yewberry]

I am over Beltaine. I am not a fertility person and dislike gendered celebrations of such. It's just not my thing.

I've always kinda liked the idea of Beltane.  New growth, festive nookie, all that...just never actually seem to have any enthusiasm for it.  I mean beyond "Oooh, pretty flowers"...

Brina

[Abgeneth]

Don't feel bad, I hate summer.

I'm yet another no-summer-for-me person.

This is probably the reason why I like the summer holidays more than the spring holidays, because they mark the time when it will be over soon *g*

My least "favorite" holidays are both Imbolc and Ostara, as I have a hard time to connect to that Wiccan construction of a story about birth, life, death and rebirth of the God. I simply fail to see the relevance for me as I don't believe any of this.

But as seasonal celebrations they work fine for me. Although the cold stays, the light is perceivably stronger on Imbolc, and with any luck you might find the first flowers poking their heads out. Ostara is also great if I just celebrate the moment of equilibrium between night and day and go consciously into the brighter half of the year, as is Mabon vice versa.

Abgeneth

[Sophia C]

I am over Beltaine. I am not a fertility person and dislike gendered celebrations of such. It's just not my thing.

This. I can't connect with the Wheel of the Year as it's often celebrated in terms of the god/goddess cycle for the same reason.

My OBOD grove leans slightly more in the recon direction with the significance of some of the fire festivals, though, which has helped a bit with some of them, as has putting my own interpretive 'spin' on some others (in a not-recon way - e.g. Mabon meant nothing to me, so I honoured Angus mac Og around that time last year, which is not at all Gaelic or recon but does help me fit my devotions around the Druid cycle my grove/order works with). I need to develop a calendar for private devotion too, though, which I want to start doing at Samhain. I'm happy with the idea of having one community calendar of festivals with my grove and another at home.

[DJ_Bonneromics]

As a counterpart to our long-running What's your favorite holiday? thread, what is your least favorite Pagan holiday? The (fairly important) holiday in your religion that you just can't get into celebrating like you believe you should? Why is this holiday a problem for you?

 
Honestly, I'd have to say Samhain.  Part of the problem is that the modern Halloween has been over-commercialized and that I don't have enough money to spend on lavish costumes.  I think it's also the fact that we start getting bombarded with everything Christmas-related immediately after (and to a modest extent nowadays, BEFORE), so that by the time the actual Yuletide arrives the holiday spirit has been ruined by overexposure.  

It could also have to do that Samhain is the most "occult" themed of the holidays, or at least seems that way.  I'm really not into séances or tarot cards or astrology that much.  And finally the seasonal significance - Samhain is the beginning of the really short days and overcast skies and inversions and stagnant air here in the Pacific Northwest.  (Part of the reason I like Imbolc so much is that you can start noticing faint signs that the transition toward spring is beginning, from longer days to higher sun angle to somewhat fewer clouds and less rain/snow.  We also don't have too many persistent stagnant-air inversions after the first week or so of February.)

[CoraFrost]

As a counterpart to our long-running What's your favorite holiday? thread, what is your least favorite Pagan holiday? The (fairly important) holiday in your religion that you just can't get into celebrating like you believe you should? Why is this holiday a problem for you?

 
As a new pagan who is just starting the wrap up her first turn of the Wheel (I started last year with my first very small and private recognition of Samhain), I've been pretty happy with my first "tastes" of these new practices.  However Lammas and Mabon have left me a little... err... underwhelmed?  Even some of the literature that I've found, and the people I've talked to kinda skim over these two holidays.  I guess I could throw Imbloc in there as well, but growing up I did celebrate Candlemas, so at least I had some basis to go off of.  

If anyone has any cool links or ideas on how to more festively acknowledge Lammas or Mabon, please PM me!  I just bought new "wine" colored candles an a few pumpkins for my Mabon circle and alter, but I'm just not excited about it. TIA!

[garlicandmint]

As a counterpart to our long-running What's your favorite holiday? thread, what is your least favorite Pagan holiday? The (fairly important) holiday in your religion that you just can't get into celebrating like you believe you should? Why is this holiday a problem for you?

 
Lammas/First Fruits/etc. always sneaks up on me and every year I'm like OH CRAP LAMMAS WAS YESTERDAY. Imbolc also to some extent, but I do really like the symbolism behind it. I tend to do best with the holidays that are linked to the solstices and equinoxes (with the exception of Samhain)- I love Mabon, which is a common meh one on here!

[Castus]

The Lemuria.  Hands down the creepiest holiday(s!), and the one actually gives me a bit of a scare.

Lumeria? To be honest that one always seemed like it would be enjoyable. Now as with an unfortunately large majority of festivals I plum forgot about it this year, but I do intend to 'celebrate' next year.

As for myself, I can't stand Lupercalia. I just cannot stand it. Everyone and their mother tries to hack Saint Valentine to death with it and I'm not really one for fertility holidays in general.

[iulla]

Lumeria? To be honest that one always seemed like it would be enjoyable. Now as with an unfortunately large majority of festivals I plum forgot about it this year, but I do intend to 'celebrate' next year.

As for myself, I can't stand Lupercalia. I just cannot stand it. Everyone and their mother tries to hack Saint Valentine to death with it and I'm not really one for fertility holidays in general.

Yeah.  It is fun, in some ways - i.e. clashing around pots and pans in the middle of the night while chanting/yelling.  That's the only thing I like about it, though - there's just a different atmosphere about this one, and I can't say that it's very comfortable.  

Oh, the Lupercalia...you know, if I could time-travel and go back to see one day in the past, I would think about one of the Lupercalia celebrations.  Seems like a pretty exciting festival, hahaha.  But I know what you mean, and I agree - today's celebrations are just...overdone.

[Darkhawk]

As a counterpart to our long-running What's your favorite holiday? thread, what is your least favorite Pagan holiday?

 
Honestly, the more I think about this the more the answer appears to come down to "Whichever neo-Wiccan thing is coming up next, because I keep getting obnoxious fluffs asking me what I'm doing for it and yelling at me when I say it's not actually part of my religion."

I clearly should not go out in public.

[Annie Roonie]

what is your least favorite Pagan holiday? The (fairly important) holiday in your religion that you just can't get into celebrating like you believe you should? Why is this holiday a problem for you?

Some of the holidays of other paths line up with my own personal DIY observances, some don't. Yule means secular Christmas to me and it is a chore. I love my family but the pressure during this time to be together shouldn't be overwhelming but it is. I see and feel the stress of my sisters or whoever is hosting the feast and it makes me stress and can lead to depression. This year I am opting out of it altogether except for gifts for the kids and those will be sent by mail. Hopefully next year I will have the stomach for it. I feel I should at least try because the kids call and ask me to visit and they're a persuasive bunch of sweeties.

[Melamphoros]

Honestly, the more I think about this the more the answer appears to come down to "Whichever neo-Wiccan thing is coming up next, because I keep getting obnoxious fluffs asking me what I'm doing for it and yelling at me when I say it's not actually part of my religion."

I clearly should not go out in public.

 
And this is why I don't interact with pagans in meatspace....or in cyberspace places not called The Cauldron.

[GoldenSiren]

today's celebrations are just...overdone.

THIS. THIS times a thousand.

. . .
I'm just not a holiday person in general. Except Samhain (even though it's ridiculously commercialized. Lovelovelove <3 ) and Yule. Seriously. And even THAT'S pretty much half-assed from me.

I'm more of the kind of person that celebrates the day when I'm struck with the notion. For example if I take a walk in a forest, come upon a stream, and just sit there, listening to the little wilderness critters and letting Daddy Longlegs (aka Harvestmen) scamper all around and over me (I love those things : ), and I just feel more spiritual than usual, I tend to savor the moment, the energy, the feeling. . .

THAT'S more important to me than some puffed up holiday that you MUST-PARTICIPATE-IN blah blah blah. . . :whis: