Holidays
Happy Lupercalia!
I didn’t do much for Valentine’s yesterday, but Lupercalia is a big deal in our house. This morning we sacrificed a toy stuffed goat, smeared ketchup on our foreheads, and then ran through the woods with our goat thongs (actually canvas) whipping the trees so they would be fertile. Molly and I did this, that [...]
Christmas comes but four or five times a year
Depending on what you count as Christmas. Today is the eve of St. Nicholas Day, a big deal in some European countries. Then there’s December 25, the birth of Sol Invictus Mithras Jesus. There’s Boxing Day, which isn’t really Christmas but might as well be, seeing how the Brits carry on about it. There’s Three [...]
Let’s talk about food, family, home, cooking and baking, spinning and weaving, chickens — no, not chickens!
Freak out your family this Thanksgiving with this hideous centerpiece idea from some magazine. Because really, what’s more festive than blackened lemon slices? Hello, everybody. (Said the way Katherine Hepburn delivered the line in The Philadelphia Story, the morning she wakes up with the mother of all hangovers. Except with a sinus headache instead of [...]
Just in time for Easter: our new religion is here!
It’s time for our new religion! I know, I know. I can hear you out there. “Violet, you lazy freak, it was time for our new religion three months ago.” And you’re right. But things happened, and then more things happened, and then, incredibly, even more things happened! So I’m late. But better late than [...]
Happy Winter Solstice
Other bloggers would use an artsy-fartsy fey kind of glimmering sunray image for this post. But not me. The solstices, both of them, are two of my favorite holidays. Not holidays in the sense that I observe social rituals involving other people, but holidays in the sense that I mark them, and feel them, each [...]
Thanksgiving, Life and Death, and Anti-feminism
My family is trying to talk me into coming back to life. They liked having me alive — I guess it’s some kind of love thing — and with the holidays approaching they’ve been pressuring me pretty heavily to climb back into the ol’ meat suit. My mother keeps calling me up in the Smoking [...]
Virtual Pumpkin Carving
I’ve spent what seems like decades of my life with my hands immersed in wet, sloppy pumpkin goo, scraping out the endless insides of orange gourds, shearing away at the rind to get that front wall thin enough for my magnificent carving to come. Pumpkin poo under my finger nails; pumpkin glop in the big [...]
Pleasingly Plump Tuesday
The scene in Dr. Socks’s yard this morning as thousands of revelers gathered to celebrate Mardi Gras. I’ve been in a vortex the past few days, writing and sleeping at all hours, and when I awoke early this morning I didn’t know what day it was. At first I thought for sure it was Monday, [...]
Happy Valentine’s Day, Christofascist Fucktwits!
As many of you probably know, the American Taliban, Catholic Division, has launched a Holy War against Amanda of Pandagon, Melissa of Shakespeare’s Sister, and indeed anyone who dares to point out that their idiotic religion is a nothing but a load of white hot sticky jism. I’ll have more to say on this later, [...]
Twelve Drummers Drumming
A nearly 350-year old Twelfth Cake, believed to be the same one offered to Samuel Pepys at Sir William Penn’s house. It’s Three Kings Day, the Feast of the Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas (unless in your tradition the Twelfth Day was yesterday, which is another story). Time to get down those evergreens so [...]
