Yule's on it's way

So aside from putting up my tree (still haven't decided where i'm putting it) and wrapping gifts for a 2 year old who has far too many toys as is, yule this year is still pretty undecided. We are still looking into getting an oak yule log to make with my father for our table as we do not currently have an alter in our tiny apartment due to fear of discrimination from family and children services. For those of you looking into making a yule log that hold 3 candle not the kind you burn (due to most of us don't have a hearth/fireplace) I will briefly explain how we do it.
First choose the type pf log you wish, if you have the luxury. Any log will do if you can't get a particular kind. Remember chrismas tree lots are a great place to get a free log. NEVER cut a log for yule from a LIVING tree.
Ash -- brings protection, prosperity, and health (good for those going through a hard time mentally/emotionally/physically)
Aspen -- invokes understanding of the grand design (good for those seeking wisdom)
Birch -- signifies new beginnings (great for those expecting a child soon, or getting married or recently had a child/got married))
Holly -- inspires visions and reveals past lives (good for those interested in divinity and mystical knowledge)
Oak -- brings healing, strength, and wisdom (we using this for strength and wisdom in raising our daughter)
Pine -- signifies prosperity and growth (good for new relationships, and new chapters in life, moving, schooling, any life change)
Willow -- invokes the Goddess to achieve desires (for wish making)

you find a natural flat in the log if possible. if not make either a stand for it (natural as possible) or sand down a side as little as possible.
Next you drill 3 holes in them as evenly separated as possible, the size depends on the candles you'll be using. My father does this part for us.
Finally you decorate the log as you see fit, flowers and such.

ALWAYS stay with your yule log while it's burning and never let it get more then an inch near the highest decorative part of the log for safety reasons. I don't let my very tall candles burn more then half way down.

Other things we do are make wreaths with our daughter (who also choses what our yule log looks like, not always the prettiest lol) we buy garland and fake flowers from wal*mart and hot glue them together. We make a wreath with garland, we then give fake flowers to our daughter who puts the flowers on top of the garland (which is laying flat on our kitchen table) me and my husband then proceed to glue down the flowers where she puts them making it very clear the glue is "hot" and an "owie". When finished with our very interesting looking wreaths we hang them around the house. One goes on our apartment door, and one in each room.

We also decorate the tree with our daughter. we have all child safe decorations. Fuzzy rainbow 'snowflakes' plastic balls, popcorn on strings, no small pieces or glass. due to the fact we don't have many decorations, my mother buys us some decorations for christmas each year. (we still celebrate christmas with our christian families just as they respect and help us celebrate our sabats) My mother helps us get natural looking ornaments like pine cones and such for our tree. We do not put lights on our tree because it comes with fiber optic 'branches'. I'll show you what I mean when the tree gets up.

I personally have a cool kit that allows me to make window stickers as I call them. I believe I got this kit at wal*mart or zellers. I made the letters for "Blessed Yule" for my window. I also buy window stickers from the dollar stores ones with tree's and nature and avoid santa clause ones.

Speaking of avoiding santa clause, we also get an Advent calender for our daughter. Usually Barbie or Disney themed.

Thats what we've done so far to get ready. What our yule meal and ritual will be is still undecided. Any suggestions are welcomed as well as any stories of what you do with your children.

colliding cultures: mother's view

Halloween has to be the easiest holiday for me. My daughter dresses up and goes trick or treating early in the evening at the mall, because we don't live in an area of the city i feel safe having my daughter trick or treating in. Then we go home and do our samhain celebrations. We bury apples, have dinner with our ancestors, and do simple rituals with our daughter. Our daughter is only in nursery school but I worry and wonder about when she goes to school, growing up in a world run by Christianity is she going to feel out of place? or confused? How does one go about raising their child in a culture that clashes with the world around them? I probably worry too much and read into things too much but I want my daughter to be as happy as can be. I wish I had more pagan parent friends with older children so I could be more ready for everything but I guess thas half he fun, learning as you go.

How do your children deal with the christian's holidays everywhere and our more "hidden" from the public's eyes?

Planning family activities for Samhain: Mother's View

Our holiday's activities change every year to suit our growing daughters needs, interests and level(s) of abilities. This year's activities are planned around a 2 year old. Some of the activities we are doing this year leading up to Samhain include the following:
- making special symbols to represent our Ancestors. For our daughter Anastasia this means mama will draw something and she gets to colour it in. These art pieces me and my daughter will be making will serve as our "guests" place mat for dinner on Samhain.
- We also buy the coloured scented wax beads to make candles and bowls and clear jars to make them in. I then let Anastasia place the wax beads into the jars/bowls how ever she sees fit. These candles are the very ones (and only ones) we light on Samhain to help guide the spirits.
- We also do baking, Anastasia helps with dry ingredients and stirring while making Soul Cakes which we place some outside for wandering spirits and we make one for our small family of 3's meal.
-now my parents aren't wiccan but they help us to celebrate our holidays any way they can (ie: while they're out for halloween night, we get their house with half an acre of yard to use for our samhain activities.) My parents happen to have crabapple trees which we let our daughter pick apple from and we place them in the freezer. These apples are what we bury on the side of the road infront of my parents house for lost souls.
-On samhain during the day me and my husband take our daugher into the small woods behind my parents house to collect an appropriate size broom handle and lots of small thing twigs to help our daugher make a broom which is later attached to her bedroom wall until the next year.
-On samhain day we will take Anastasia outside to find a stone, when she's found one she likes we take it inside, wash it, and let her paint it. That night she is encouraged to toss said stone into the bonfire we have. The following morning we let her retrieve the stone she painted, this also serves as a decoration for her bedroom for the year.

Now there a lot of other traditions we will not be able to follow until she's a bit older that will be a lot of fun especially for Samhain because we have a little girl but we try to include her as much as possible in the preparation and activities. We have rites and rituals we try to include her in, but sometimes we find ourselves putting her to bed first or having my sister watch her momentarily.

What do you do with your family and children on Samhain??

Faith and Religion and Children: Mother's view

My mother claims to be Catholic, but the girl can't even make it to Christmas mass.
My Step-Father (and only dad I've ever known) chooses faith over religion. What does this mean? This means my dad takes aspects from all religions in his knowledge that he finds true and leaves behind anything possibly "harmful". My dad believes in Angels but not in the Catholic's God sort of thing.

Growing up I found my dad's teaching much more helpful and educational then my mother's "who wants to go to church today." and "Too bad Amanda you are getting confirmed whether you want to or not!" The only potential problem with my dad's teachings are they only came out when requested or needed. An example of which was when I was around the age of 16, a fairly old age for a "child", when we had a long discussion about Angel's because my friend had passed away from cancer just before Christmas and I being bipolar and it being my first death had locked myself away in my room crying and refusing to come out except to go to school and eat dinner. I would from time to time "see" my friend Lauren and she would comfort me during my depressions so feeling more insane then my mother had already made me out to feel for my bipolar I turned to my dad and asked him if he believed in Angels. What he told me became a pillar for my dealing with death and a pillar in my beliefs. My dad told me when people die they are granted an afterlife or condemned to live another life of hardships and difficult lessons here in our world. So if you are granted an afterlife you become an Angel. To become an Angel one must live a very positive helpful and pure life. The saying we established was "Death is simply when we've reached perfection and are granted our wings." mind you this statement usually only rings true with younger people who have died, people who die of old age is usually because they didn't learn the lesson they were destined to and must try again. But of course such knowledge is just guesses and beliefs of our own personal persons.

Most of the religion I learned as a child growing up was taught to me in Sunday school. When I was about 6 my mother put me in a Catholic Sunday school, and then in grade 6 I started attending Catholic schools. I was never fond of the Catholic religion and highly doubted it, and this doubt and dislike for the religion only grew as I progressed through High school learning more and more of the "darker side" of Christianity in general. I also would attend Baptist Sunday school whenever visiting my mothers sister. She is and for as long as I've known her has always been a devoted Baptist. I enjoyed Baptist Sunday school and mass a lot because of the amount of singing I got to do, and their lively teachings but I still disagreed with many important aspects of their religion, mostly the treatment of women.

As I got older, about 14, I stumbled across Paganism, literally. I was in the town's market place in my one of my favorite stores debating on how to spend my allowance. My parents never gave much of an allowance growing up, instead on the rare occasion I wanted to go to the mall I would get $20, this happened less then once a month usually. Most of what would have been my allowance went towards books from school book orders, much like the $20 I spent at the mall usually in Chapters. But unfortunately my family moved from the city to a town with out a mall, but a market place only open on the weekend, so weekly allowances for doing chores became more reasonable within our household. ANYWAYS, I usually spent my allowance on comics, most commonly single issues of Sailor Moon. I would often drool over video games which were out of my price range and buy sailor moon toys from the booths that specialized in toys, a lot of which where nic-nac's from other countries and overly interested me. But amongst the whole market place I had a favorite store, one that was usually out of my price range. This store, who's name is lost to me as it has been out of buisness since about 2001, was full of many interesting things, incents, oils, stones of all sorts, daggers, swords, gems, jewelery, candles and books upon books on topics I didn't understand. One day when I was in there I found a glass tea light candle holder and was examining it curiously. The kind lady running the shop took the time to inform me of what it was, the metal decoration on it that I was naturally drawn to, for a love of stars and moons and planets and space, was non other then a pentagram/pentacle She explained it's protective nature to me and a bit about paganism. I was easily hooked, I was always a lover of magic and deep believer in all things magical, from dragons to spells and everything in between. My parents had given me access to a lot of information on magic, we had text books on faeries, dragons, and even gnomes. My mother would tell us stories of "borrowers" pixies, brownies, sprites and anything else of interest. But the second my mother saw that tea light candle holder she snapped and took it away demanding I return it, something about devil worship. I tried to explain to her and my dad what the lady at the store had to me but I was a child and disregarded as such. My parents looked it up on the net and eventually gave up their talk of devil worship and let me keep it claiming it stood for the 5 wounds of Jesus.

That was when I began my studies into Wicca, and claimed myself as a wiccan in training. I did most of my studying online at Witchschool.com and the rest from books I slowly purchased with recommendations from other people I had begun to trust and Witch School. As I attended high school outside of our little town, in the near by city where I had made all my childhood memories I stumbled across another Pagan shop, this one in the heart of downtown. After school I would have art school, in the same city as my high school. This city was about a 30 min drive from our small town and both my parents worked until 7pm and later. My art school classes began at 6pm and ended at 8pm thus I stayed in the city for classes. My high school got out at 2:45pm and I was out of the school by 2:50-3:00 after getting changed out of my uniform into regular clothes. I would hang out mostly at the comic book shop downtown and explore all the little shops we had. As soon as I wondered into Eagles and Auracles I fell in love happy to have found another store full of paganism.

Now I am a full grown adult, happily married, with a beautiful daughter (whom looks nothing like me, and exactly like my half sister) My husband is also Wiccan, and we even got the joys of having a hand fasting matrimonial ceremony.

My husband unlike myself was raised Wiccan, but I don't know how intently. I personally believe my mother has completely disregarded Wicca as ever being a religion honestly and she is constantly pushing me to raise my daughter into a religion. In fact only as of recently, this year I believe, my mother has given up on attempting to force me to Baptize my daughter, specifically into Christianity, at which I laughed in her face for even thinking I would do. But being raised as a Catholic and stumbling through parenthood quite a bit as is I find myself at a lost for how to go about teaching my daughter of Wicca. I thaught myself Wicca between the ages of 14-18 and of course I am still ALWAYS learning. But evidently I had a a better grasp on the world and religion at 14 then my daughter does at 2. So now I stand here confused as to how to do anything but have her help with the holiday celebrations, mostly with decorations, crafts and basic baking ie) I let her pour mix into a bowl and attempt to stir in hopes of her not trying to eat it. I'm not sure if I should be doing more, I always fell like I'm not doing enough, this being my first and only child currently. I also find it very hard and confusing for my daughter being in the Christian world we live in, their holidays marking all calenders and being what's taught in all schools, and even in my family, Christmas, and Easter, while I'm celebrating Ostara and Yule with her, usually on different days. I wonder if I'm going about teaching her 'wrong' confusing her more then helping her to understand. But along with my mother's belief I think it's good to teach a child about religion and it's morals, holidays and beliefs. I was taught in high school religion is important for humans it gives them answers to unexplainable questions and a greater power to look up to and believe in when then need hope and guidance.

All I can do for now is hope that I am doing a good job and guide my daughter in what I believe is a good, and the 'right' direction and hope for the best. Any and all insight on the ways in which other pagans raise and teach their children is very welcomed and encouraged. I thank you in advance for you time in reading this and if you so choose you time in responding with your ideas and methods.

Thank you all, and blessed be.

Amanda Miller aka The Wiccan Mother from Wiccan Parents