Don’t Forget the Pagans

Over the weekend, I wished the bagger at our grocery store “Happy Holidays!” She responded with saccharine sweetness, “Happy Halloween!” As we pushed our laden cart away from her and toward the parking lot, I said to Matt, “I don’t understand what just happened, but I think I’m all for it.”

“I think,” he said, “she was passive/aggressively telling you to take your war on Christmas and shove it up your ass.”

“Because I said ‘Happy Holidays’?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Maybe,” I said, secretly thinking Matt was being a paranoid liberal and a bit of a humbug. “But I’m still digging it.”

In my mind, ‘the holidays’ start with Mabon and end with Walpurgisnacht and Beltane (fall equinox through May 1st), so Halloween totally fits right in there. I have never heard anyone else make this argument, but I like to celebrate. Maybe we introverts don’t throw parties, but if a good celebration entails a book and a cup of tea, then why not include the entire couch-weather portion of the calendar in this ‘holidays’ thing? Also, I love a splash of Samhain in my Yule, as evidenced by my ‘Rudolph’ decoration.

Once we got home and were unloading our groceries, I had to admit that Matt was right. The person who crammed that produce under and around those canned goods was definitely operating from a place of malice and resentment.

You might think that harshed my holiday buzz, as if someone had drenched my glowing heart coals with icy-grey-puddle-sludge (which this person would certainly have poured into my reusable shopping bag if she’d had it handy). But no. I worked retail for a couple of years, and I experienced the lower ring of hell that is the furious week pre-Christmas shopping and the furiouser week of post-Christmas returns, and I get it.

I see you, lady! You may hate my inclusive-liberal-pagan sentiments, mirthfully throwing it in your face that you share oxygen with non-Christians, but that’s okay! We have more in common than we have in opposition, no matter how either of us feel about it.

So to that lady and to everyone else, I want to say, “Happy Solstice!” No matter your religion, in a few days, the North Pole will reach its furtherest tilt away from the sun on the Earth’s axis, and then it will begin to tilt back. The days will be longer and we will all get less grumpy (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) and that is something to celebrate. Curl up with a good book, binge some shows, or fill your home with people you love. Whatever you do, just be extra kind to the retail and shop folk. Even the grumpy resentful ones. They know not what they do.