I find my self in an appropriately reflective state of mind as 2005 wanes.  I’ve always found this the most natural and organic of mid-winter preoccupations – examining what has gone, looking forwards to what is to come.  The inherent notion of rebirth, renewal, cleansing – the turning of a new leaf.

Also, when days reach their shortest and gloomiest, things can only get better.  Our thoughts naturally turn to longer and warmer days in Spring and Summer, the pendulum has reached its limit and has started to swing back again.  There is such a symmetry, a perfect balance to nature.  We mere humans should stop and linger and ponder on the greatness of nature more often.  Modern life seems to put a layer of insulation between us and the reality of our environment.  It is only in those fleeting, spiritual moments that we glimpse the truth – on a clear, starry night when we stare into the cosmos and feel tiny, insignificant and filled with childish wonder or when we see the might of the ocean crashing majestically onto a rocky shore, or when we get up close to animals, swim with dolphins and whales for example – this is because we leech (or leach, either works) bandwidth from their cosmic broadband link – our own links were gradually eroded over the millennia, until we now no longer have any link at all, we have had our lines cut, we have ex-communicated ourselves from our environment.  Basically, we have found inner space and lost outer space – it may seem indelicate to couch it in these terms, but we have climbed up our own arses.

So, where is all this mystical rambling headed?  I may have mentioned in the passing that I have long since cast of my Christian vestments.  A Catholic upbringing, a short and undistinguished career as an altar boy (I tripped over the baptismal font during a morning mass, sending holy water cascading down the church aisle and also rang the bells at all the wrong times), a gradual realisation that there is no omnipotent, omnipresent being watching over me – save for Big Brother Blair and  the ubiquitous CCTV cameras, all  have served to erode my fragile faith, which from the outset had all the strength of rice paper.  So what is to fill this void?  Well how about Paganism or its offshoot the Wiccan religion?  Before the righteous, Christian reader picks up his first pebble and takes aim at my balding bonce, please hear me out.  There is a lot of good in Christianity (there is a lot of good in Islam too, that is a subject for another column), and I have no wish to add to the list of fatwas on my head by disparaging anyone’s belief system.  There are many ways however for us to reach spiritual enlightenment and, in my opinion the major, organised religions of the last 3000 years or so, which incidentally have adopted or adapted many of the old, paganistic rituals, cast out the baby with the bathwater when they failed to embrace a worship of our very environment, the sun, moon, trees, plants and all things alive, mountains sky, Earth.  To say that they were all created in seven days, merely for the convenience, sustenance and amusement of the human race, as the Old Testament states, is to devalue the resources which we inherit.  It is only now that we are starting to realise the folly of our ways, and many environmental disaster theorists feel that it may be too late.

So let us reintroduce at least an element of the old pagan Yule celebrations and perhaps we can re-connect in some small but significant way.  From tiny acorns mighty oaks grow,  a potent symbol for pagan children of the Earth.  I have a few suggestions which you could easily knit into the pattern of your usual Christmas activities – none of which are incongruent with the Christian, nor indeed any other faith:

• Give thanks for the rebirth of the Sun god, the lengthening light and shorter nights

• Give an extra hug to your mother/grandmother – they are symbols of birth and re-birth

• Have a Yule tree ( decorated Oak branch – not hacked off a living tree please) and a decorated Yule log to burn

• Deck the halls (if you have any) with Holly and Mistletoe, these are great pagan symbols of the old and new year

• Eat seasonal foods (local, not imported) seeds, nuts, berries, mulled wine, wassail, eggnog

• Tell stories and sing songs of thanks, preferably around a roaring fire, a fine tradition which is fading

• Get closer to animals, domestic and wild, hug your dog/cat and feed the birds

• Contemplate harmony, peace, tolerance, respect and unity

• Look up Wicca and Paganism on the internet and learn a little – at least to appreciate others beliefs and to understand what your ancestors held as sacred

Oli Lodge