Spring is here!

Well today (give or take a few hours) is Ostara. And as much as I'd like to say that I know a lot about Sabbats....really I don't. For every piece of information I learn, there are millions more behind it. So I'm trying to take it one Sabbat at a time.

What is a Sabbat you say?

A Sabbat is basically a holiday. In Pagan culture there are 8; and are called the Wheel of the Year. Many of them mirror Christian holidays (or should I say that it's quite possibly the other way around?). 4 of the Sabbats fall on the Equinoxes: Yule (Winter Solstice), Ostara (Spring Equinox/Solstice), Litha (summer/midsummer Solstice), and Mabon (autumnal Solstice).
The other 4 celebrate other holidays such as Samhain (Halloween), Lughnassadh (Thanksgiving), Beltane (May Day), and Imbolc.

As I know it, Ostara marks the beginning of the beginning. This is when we start to prepare our gardens for planting. This is when the days and the nights equal, and soon the days will become longer. This is when color starts to appear in the world again. Ostara is the Pagan Easter, and celebrated for very different reasons, and boy is that a long story that I'm so not typing into here! But you can google Ostara if you'd like, and find many informative sites.

So to celebrate I'm going to build a small altar with some boiled eggs, flowers, seeds, rice and flowers. This is the time to celebrate renewals, starting over, preparing for the year to come.

We still celebrate Easter as a family, of course, but that's all chocolates, dying eggs and hunting for candy. This is my own private time, because I don't know about you, but I sure could use some rebirth....renewal....and to start over.