When I was a child, I loved the Easter holidays. A week off from school, spending time with my mother and brother coloring Easter eggs, beautiful baskets decorated in the colors of spring, and oh, yes, bunnies. I always loved the bunnies. To this day, if we choose to celebrate Easter, Ken will buy me a new stuffed bunny to love.
As I’ve grown older, though, the magic of Easter has worn thin for me. Try as I might, I can’t connect with the religious side of the holiday: Easter church services and fancy family meals. Deep intonations of the Christian view of the day. Don’t ask me why. I’m normally a spiritual person and I connect just fine with my mother’s Christian beliefs most of the time. We grew up in a house where Christ was Lord but there was no strict judgement about sin or condemnation of those with different beliefs. I was never taught to hate anyone and to this day my mother embodies the loving, patient, compassionate Christ, and I put faith in the same.
There’s two sides to me when it comes to spirituality, though. There’s room in my heart for my mother’s Christian faith... but there’s also a part of me that feels the call of my pagan, druidic ancestors. The Brantwijn who studies Norse runes and has a wood carving of Green Man on my wall, who invokes the deities of nature and womanhood in my soul and longs to celebrate Beltane and Imbolc and, most of all, Ostara.
That’s the side of me that comes out most when Easter holidays roll around. I don’t think of crucifixes or of the stone being rolled away from the tomb. I think of rabbits. I think about how the egg symbolizes fertility and new life, and how the frosty fingers of winter are drawing back to let the full, colorful splendor of spring shine forth. I think of green fields full of wildflowers and bees, and of a vibrant, lively goddess striding through them with a basket full of beautiful symbols of rebirth and renewal. I think of Ostara, not Easter. And even though Ostara’s come and gone this year (at least in terms of calendar date) these are the wishes I bring to my readers this Easter: that springtime bring renewal and light and hope to your spirit, and the joy of waking up to the bright morning of a new year. I’m thankful for the period of winter rest we’re now leaving behind and look forward to April days full of creativity and life.
So Happy Easter, if that’s what you celebrate today, and Blessed Ostara, if you like. Today let’s all be grateful for new life and new opportunities, and the shining fullness of spring.
To celebrate Ostara, I usually offer my sexy short story, Equinox, for free. In keeping with tradition, here’s your chance to pick up this sweet, steamy, erotic shifter romance, in which a dragon shifter and her druidic lover discover a wonderful way to celebrate rebirth!
Click on the cover to claim
