The balancing act of celebrating Ostara in a Christian-majority culture

Ostara is one of my children’s favorite holidays. Even as toddlers they remembered the experience of hunting for eggs from one year to the next. One of our other family traditions is decorating a plum tree in the front yard with blown eggs, something that a few people in Bohemia still do as part of their Easter traditions.

Our plum tree the year it snowed on Ostara

While I do love Ostara, it is the time of year when the issue of being Pagan in a Christian-majority society comes to the fore.  I would say that it's a greater issue for me at this time of year than it is at Yule. At Yule the Christmas holiday comes so quickly that it is easy for children to understand the connection and not get confused. They easily realize that some people say Yule or Solstice and some people say Christmas or Hanukkah and these are essentially similar holidays with different names and somewhat different traditions. We usually have our main Yule celebrations around the Solstice and then go to the Czech grandparents' place for a secular Christmas celebration that ties in nicely to a "twelve days of Yule" approach.

But with Ostara things get a bit more complicated. Whether we're in Oregon or the Czech Republic it's rare that Easter falls anywhere near Ostara. If my kids talk about hunting for eggs outside of the family, they are often told that they are doing it at the "wrong" time or that they are "mixed up." We have our celebration anyway and even try to invite neighborhood children for an egg hunt if we're in the Czech Republic, where people don't normally do egg hunts. 

Then when Easter comes my kids want to repeat the process because they hear that other kids are painting eggs again, by which time I am usually sick of egg painting and hiding. The neighborhood parents usually come around asking if we can show their kids "that American Easter tradition with the egg hunt" even if we already did one at Ostara time.  

I have yet to come up with a satisfactory solution to this dilemma. On the one hand, I'm adverse to doing things "just because" that's the way society does it. On the other hand, I could just stop struggling and have the egg hunt on Easter or I could do two. It won't kill me. Some years I have done our private egg hunt and tree decorating on Ostara and then a neighborhood event on Easter, while mumbling something to my kids about how Christians celebrate Easter later in connection with the cycle of the moon as well as the sun, which is in fact true. But one year this came right before Beltane and it really was a bit confusing to the kids. 

Besides that, I simply feel that it weakens our family traditions to have outsiders question what I do and tell my kids that it is "wrong" or "mixed up." 

The fact is that our Pagan tradition has a very simple, reasonable explanation. It's tied to the clearly observable seasons of the year. It can be celebrated merrily by my atheist husband because you don't have to believe in a deity in order to honor nature and be glad that its spring. The most essential thing to me is that I want my children to have a tradition beyond the electronic, commercialized modern world... any tradition really. 

I grew up in an age when it was assumed that there were "ethnic groups" who had traditions. And then there was everyone else (i.e. white people) who are boring and soulless and have no real traditions, except church which only sort of counts even if you're Christian. And we weren't even that. Some young people struggle more than others with the issue of "identity" and I struggled quite a bit. I was raised with earth-based spiritual beliefs, but my parents never used and still don't use the word "Pagan." Our beliefs were unnamed and usually swept to the side whenever a stronger societal, secular tradition like Easter or Christmas intruded. 

I ended up feeling like what we believed was somehow "fake" or "made up." In fact, when I tried to explain my beliefs to friends in my late teens, those are the words they used. The first time I heard about Neoaganism was from Wiccans at collage and I didn't immediately understand that they were fairly close to what we were. They had a name and a clear tradition and the strength of numbers. I wanted to be part of it but I didn't want to "give up" what my family believed and it took ten more years before I realized that we weren't nearly so alone as I'd thought. 

Then when my first child was a baby I read a book called The Heart of a Family, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to raise resilient children in the modern world, whether you follow Pagan, Christian or any other spirituality or philosophy.  The book contains a wealth of practical ideas, including one I'll describe in detail when Lughnasadh comes around. But more than the specific ideas for building family traditions in whatever culture or religion you happen to be in, it gave compelling and research-based reasons for what I had always intuitively known - that family traditions and identity are very important to kids, even crucial to a grounded and resilient self in young adulthood.

One of the most powerful passages in the book sites studies and empirical evidence that shows that the practice of strong family rituals (i.e. traditions that are repeated consciously, not necessarily spiritual or magical rituals) is the most important factor in determining which young people can navigate the self-destructive perils of modern society safely. The studies found that the consistent use of family traditions and rituals was more strongly correlated to good outcomes for young adults when it comes to avoiding problems like substance abuse than economic or social class, single or two parent household status or any of the other factors we tend to think of as so important to raising kids. In short, the conscious practice of family traditions is like a protective shield that you can give your children. It gives them a place to start and the language to express themselves. They may choose to forge new traditions or to carry on your traditions, but whichever they choose it will come from a place of strength.

So, this is why I insist on Ostara traditions, even though society makes it awkward. I can't fully celebrate Easter with a clean conscience. I"m not Christian and simply commercializing it into a secular holiday does no one any good. Ostara truly does mark the beginning of spring in our climate. There is reason to celebrate and the themes of fertility and new life serve to connect us to the natural world. That is essentially one of the reasons I think neo-Pagan traditions are so strong, because without conscious effort it is so easy to live in artificially heated buildings in this age and barely notice the changing of the seasons, let alone the phases of the moon. So, for us to celebrate Ostara is  a truly necessary and practical part of connecting with the earth and raising children who have a deep intuitive sense of that connection rather than a merely intellectual understanding of the seasons.

Crafts

Ostara crafts usually center around eggs, rabbits, rainbows, plants and babies, whether animal or human. Eggs are the obvious and ancient symbol of fertility in too many cultures to name. The rabbit appears to come from the Germanic tradition of the goddess Ostre, who's sacred animal is the hare. The hare is also closely connected with the moon in many cultures.

Ukrainian eggs that I love but can't actually make. Image provided by Carl Fleischhauer, Library of Congress

There is a lot more you can do with eggs than you might think. Beyond dying boiled eggs with natural food colorings (tumeric = yellow, beets or red onion peels = red, purple cabbage = a clear beautiful blue), we also paint blown eggs with acrylic paint so that we can hang them on our plum tree outdoors and not have them washed off by the rain. In Central and Eastern Europe there are extensive traditions involving coloring eggs in fantastic patterns. Many of these techniques involved dying the eggs in layers while keeping bits of the previous layers from the new dye with wax. I am not a skilled enough artist to do these with any great skill but they are fun for experiments.

Two other simple crafts involve the failed attempts to blow eggs. If you do blown eggs and you accidentally break a few, don't worry and don't throw the shells away. All you need is half or three quarters of a shell. Make a ring out of paper as a stand. Then place a bit of candle wick in the bottom of your egg and pour heated wax or even melted crayons on it and you have a beautiful Ostara candle. Or if you would rather, fill the egg shell with a little potting soil and grow lettuce or herb starts in them. What could be a better symbol of new life than tiny plants growing out of an egg shell? If you crack the shell afterward you can plant it directly in the garden that way. All of this egg decore is good for alters and tables.

Another fun Ostara craft involves using the egg shape of a balloon.  If possible put a piece of chocolate or something pretty inside the balloon. Then blow it up. Then dip pieces of yarn in a mixture that is half water and half glue with some flour added and drape these around the balloon until it is completely covered with intricate webs of gooey yarn. Leave this to dry. Pop the balloon and you should have a beautiful egg shape with a surprise inside. 

We usually also make rainbow wands by simply attaching pieces of rainbow-colored tissue paper to the ends of sticks and letting the kids wave them around wildly. We often make some sort of paper hare and various other baby animals, sometimes as window art to put up to brighten the still muddy view outdoors. 

Cooking

It’s still all about eggs. Well, given that a lot of eggs get used in the crafts, it only seems reasonable that one should eat them. We’ll make quiche and pudding at the very least. I usually also manage to make a risoto that is packed with the earliest nettles.  

If I am feeling particularly enthusiastic, I get out the one hare-shaped cookie cutter and make simple lemon-zest Ostara cookies. However, the kids mainly associate Ostara with the chocolate found during their egg hunt, so I am unlikely to be able to create any lasting impression with my seasonal cooking.

Ritual and fun

Ostara isn't a big time for rituals in our family. Between celebrating in a kid-friendly way and all the activities of early gardening we are already steeped in the season and the energy of new life. This is one of those times when our spirituality is simply so intertwined with the practical necessities of life that it is inseparable. I do small blessing and fertility rituals to get our garden beds off to a good start but these are rarely done specifically on Ostara. Instead they are part of the season and are done whenever I happen to be able to dig into the dirt after the ground thaws. This year that has already happened but some years it doesn't happen until after Ostara.

The main attraction of the holiday is a decorating the outdoor plum tree and the egg hunt for the children.

My kids love to dye eggs but they also love to find chocolate eggs. I do not love to have them eat the horrible, fake chocolate tainted with metal that comes in the tinfoil wrapped chocolate eggs from the store. So, instead I have acquired a stash of plastic eggs that I keep hidden in a deep dark drawer. I pull these out on the night before Ostara and put good quality chocolate candies in them. Then I have the magic moment of getting up early on Ostara morning to hide the boiled eggs and the chocolate-surprise in the first morning dew, while communing with the first fairies, sprites and nature spirits of the springtime. When the kids get up they can then run outside and gather them up int heir baskets. 

We decorate the plum tree later on by hanging blown eggs by yarn or ribbon from the branches. Each year some of the eggs get knocked down or broken so this is not a place I put any particularly precious painted eggs. 

Beyond that there is almost always some planting of garden beds and starts at Ostara or during the nearest weekend. The kids will have their own little garden bed that they haphazardly plant, weed and water with variable success.