I'm trying to remember how this started, the event doesn't come clearly though. Difficult to remember, especially since the conditions of this years festivities were less than optimal.

Surprised I'm thinking about it.

Draal

The last few years, I've spent Christmas Eve around a table with a lighted candle and tray, burning something I had written or worked on the previous year, while consuming about half a liter of lager a friend from Norway brews and sends me for some reason.

I also leave out a filled glass in thought to my patron deity, in a sort of sacrafice or hope that I'll be joined in thought and contemplation.

Ya, I know of those special Sabbats that Wiccans use, which is also interrelated to other Northern European cultures... I used to be big into Scandenavian/Germanian Wotanism... Until it felt to Christianlike and too much like "Wuotan is the Allfather, we must be in awe...." I decided to take my own route... But if others like being Pagan, that's cool... I just been that route, it was a phase to me, but I am pretty sure your neighbors are traditional, by the way that Rite sounds.. Esp. since Yule til Walburg (in my religion of the Faustian Tradition, we call it Walpurgisnacht). So all you vikinger guys, prepare a feast in your ancestors name, and let some mead from your horns go to the ground in rememberence...


Nihil Vulture

PS I hope I didn't sound condescending and snobish for that lil paragraph, if it is, then I am sorry

\m/ Iblis Akhbar

This is the wrong time to bring up my leaf blower called Njord.




THE
MAYBE IT'S A
HUSQVARNA
AARDVARK

Let's keep this in the same thread, shall we?

Update: I asked someone having a smoke outside if they wouldn't mind telling me the history of their ceremony. It was Yule, which I suspected, and that it happens at 6pm, and those, of whom there are alot, celebrate who have the ancestry of Norway/Sweden (which used to all be Norway, except it was called Vinland) (that much I did know).

It was all sorts of awesome. I just happened to go outside, noticed the fire, everyone holding candles, and figured they were doing Christmas carols, or it was last day of Hanukkah (it was sundown), or the like. When they started calling out Baldur, Odin, Freja, and Thor, to protect them and their families and their religion, I got really fascinated. Listened to the whole thing. I have seen their get-togethers before, and, living in somewhat of a white-trash section of the neighborhood, always wondered why, even with beers, they were quiet, convivial, and not raucous.

They are apparently Scandinavian pagans. Cool! I have Scandinavian pagan neighbors. The mother is a lush, who has caused problems before with the neighbors on the other side, so that takes some figuring. But I suddenly got all pagany and festive, and it was quite cool. I was just glad other neighbors did not call the cops on them, as that seems like the type of thing God-fearing intolerant whites would do.