13 ways of creating fun and frugal family traditions for Spring Equinox.

(If you wish to pin this to Pinterest, my pin is here...)

Holiday traditions are wonderful. In my family there were some traditions for Christmas, a couple more for Easter and Mayday, something for Midsummer and nothing much for the rest of the year. We didn't celebrate All Hallows' Eve, Pentecost or any other of the Christian holidays.
When I grew up I found myself fascinated by the equinoxes and solstices. There's something matemathical about these things... it makes the Creation to a giant clock, and I have always marked these days in some manner. Then when I realized I am a Pagan, I found the days in between these quarter days... All Hallows', Candelmass, Mayday and Loafmass... To my big surprise the Autumn feasts are not being celebrated... There is no harvest feast in Finland. There used to be Michaelmass, but that's for Autumn Equinox, but nothing for Loafmass...

About a decade ago I noticed that while Christmas is made into a BIGGIE on the internet, the rest of the Pagan sabbaths are virtually ignored. Sure, Beltane and Samhain are big, but... it's like participating in an event within the Pagan community is enough. There are no Lughnasadh-mad people out there trying to promote the ideals of for example Lughnasadh to the whole world.

So - my dream is to reach a world where every Pagan holiday is celebrated a month before the day and during 12 days. Just like Christmas.

Now, I have been a "bad" girl, and let things go without doing much about it. I have been collecting information and writing my books on Pagan sabbaths for the last 15 years, and it doesn't show in my home. If I cannot change myself, how could I even think of changing someone else, and not to talk about the whole Pagan community! No, I have to be the change I want to see, Gandhi was correct in that. I have to step up to my expectations and create a "holiday all year long" home.

Most of the holiday traditions are new, not even 100 years old. People create their own traditions by combining how things were done when they were children, how they wished things were when they were children and what is practical and suitable in their lives at the moment.
You don't need to have a family history of generations behind the tradition and you don't need to stay by the traditions of your own religion. After all, Christians never did, and see how well it went for them...

So - 13 ways of creating fun and frugal family traditions for Spring Equinox.

I will be posting more about each of these later, but here's the "master list" ;-)

#1

Re-enacting the Spring Equinox stories by acting or creating a diorama

#2

"Elf on the Shelf"

#3

Countdown calendars.

#4

Make greeting cards together

#5

Prepare the holiday goodies with the family.

#6

Make ornaments and decorations together.

#7

Take a walk in the nature

#8

Sing together 

#9

Play holiday themed games.

#10

Make the Easter tree the centerpiece of your home during the season.

#11

"Ostara daily" scrapbook

#12

Pick one of the silly, odd, unusual holidays celebrated during the time of the countdown and make it a tradition.

#13

Scavenger hunts, egg hunts and treasure hunts.

Thoughts about Easter Bunny

"The Easter Bunny doesn’t come to our house. There are a few reasons why my husband and I have chosen not to “do” the Easter Bunny, The Easter Bunny, Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc. are all characters that families tell their children to believe in. They can’t see these characters, the kids learn about them from what their parent’s tell them and one day they find out that it was all a myth.

And then there is God; the kids can’t see Him, they learn about Him primarily from their parents and a naive mind could then think that God is mythical as well. I don’t want my children to grow up wondering if we are going to pull the “God” rug out from under them like we did the Easter Bunny. I think there is great potential for confusion."

- Katie

God IS mythical. Not in the "imaginary", "fictitious" or "based on false collective belief", but as part of the story that is so old it cannot be proven to be true or false.

Easter bunny is not mythical. Easter bunny is pure imagination. Invented fairytale character, imaginary creature. To play Easterbunny with your kids is as safe as reading them fairytales - or any fictional stories - allowing them to watch children's movies or participate in any action where imaginary characters are involved.

Now, I don't believe in Santa in that I'd believe any person pretending to be Santa is anything but a person pretending to be Santa. But I believe in Santa as a personification of the well-will, generosity and kindness that infuses December. I have always thought of him as a sort of special angel. Put in place by Goddess to remind people to be kind at the heart of winter and take care of those with less. I see Santa as sort of facade for the anonymous good-doers.

I have also never thought of God and Santa as similar concepts. God is the Creatrix of everything, omnipresent and very real in that She speaks to me all the time. Santa is more of a storybook character that we make believe. I don't make believe God. I KNOW God is. I feel Her presence in my life all the time. 

Easterbunny is a symbol of childish joy. The gifts of Easterbunny are silly and funny, Easterbunny makes grown-ups play. If you look at the other feasts around 20th of March, you'll have St.Patrick's with leprechauns and you'll have April's Fools... There's the Annunciation, which in Swedish is "Vår Fru Dag" (The Day of Our Lady) which has turned in the folk mouth to "våffeldag" (Waffleday). There's the Crane Day, that reminds a bit of St Nicholas Day in Holland - the Crane leaves presents in children's shoes and while doing so leaves sooty footprints all over the home... and the kids follow the footprints to find the gifts. Silly, funny, joyful celebrations.

I don't think it's a good idea to reduce the Easterbunny into a caricature built of lies. But, that's me. I believe in the wisdom of people, and as the Easterbunny has become a tradition, there must be something in it the human kind needs. I suppose it has something to do with what the farmanimals do the first day of green grass... I don't know what it's called in English, but everyone with cows or sheep knows that the first day the animals get out after long winter inside, they act like wild kids. :-D Grown up, serious and distinquished cow ladies jump and dance and frolick... It's absolutely lovely.

And I think it's the same mechanism with people too. There's something with spring that is relieving, soothing and makes us want to act as if we were sorrowless children again.

BTW, I don't get the photos of children sitting in Santa's or Easter bunny's lap... and how could any kid believe Easter bunny is real, when it is so not a bunny, but something big and scary and strange and... DANG! I'd scream! :-D

Three weeks to Ostara

Three weeks to Ostara... At this time before any holiday I start thinking "what if this was Yule?"

The home would be decorated and ready to welcome Yule on 5th of December.
I would have been burning the candle for first advent, and opening the surprises of the countdown calendar.
I would have planned all the baking, food, gifts and cards, what to wear and where to be...

I have been talking about this - the fact that all the other Pagan sabbaths, even Samhain and Beltane, are being overshadowed by Yule. Christmas is a big business and there's so much of it... I have been talking about this for several years now, and I'm ashamed of myself that I haven't done anything much to change this situation, in my own life at least. Last year was a good year, and I had a good plan... but somehow, somewhere my balloon was inflated, and there wasn't much Ostara to speak of.

I wish I knew how to compose good music. I wish I could make myself an Ostara playlist to get me in the holiday mood, like with Christmas. Songs of spring and sheep and chicks and bunnies frolicking around, girls like butterflies in flower dresses and pastel colored cardies, trying out their new summer shoes for the first time... Easter bonnets."Passion of Christ" really doesn't do it for me. I find it only depressing.

I am more "holistic" when it comes to holiday decorations. I want to decorate the whole home, from window treatments to mantelpieces and have special rugs and scents and flowers and... yeah. You get the idea. Last year I was planning on covering my cookbooks that stand on the counter with Ostara-y paper and making them removable plastic covers, so that I can change the paper by holiday :-D That's how sabbath-mad I am :-D

I didn't do anything, though. I haven't done anything this year either. I suppose I need to go to my sister's and paint the dang cookie tins as I planned :-D And then fill them. There's so many wonderful cookie recipes for Ostara! And you can't believe how amazing some people are at decorating cookies!!! 8-o

Like these by Ljuba Slatkova

Uh... go here: Ketutar's Ostara Board - to see more Ostara goodness :-)

Ostara is coming, are you ready? ;-)

This year it's March 20th - like usually :-D - and it's a Tuesday, so adjust the time table to that fact.
I suggest you have the cleaning already on Saturday 10th and card making day Sunday 11th, so that they are all ready to be posted latest on Wednesday 14th.

Monica Dunkley's children's artwork :-) I love these :-)

It might also be a good idea to celebrate Ostara a couple of days beforehand, so that you can have a peaceful celebration.
But - you need to start thinking about this. Four weeks to Ostara. 30 days. You wouldn't be as calm and collected if it was last week of November ;-)

BTW, you need to prepare the countdown calendar...

Some bits and bobs that didn't get in

Feather wreath tutorial

gumdrop wreath

Here's the button wreath tutorial, and a large egg template to print, if you think it's intimidating to make an egg shape.

You can also make the egg mobile by printing out the large egg on construction paper, cutting smaller egg shapes into it and covering the eggs with pretty paper. Then you sew the eggs back together, but from top and bottom only, so that the eggs can swirl.

Here's easter egg wreath, with a smaller egg template, which you can enlarge for your purposes.

Melissa's scrap fabric ornament is no longer available, but I suppose it's made a bit the same way as this rag ball ornament, or this one. Use cheap plastic eggs inside.
You can also find more things to do with the plastic eggs here.
You can also make this kind of wonderful wreath with different scrap fabric balls.
It isn't rocket science to make patchwork balls. You can use likesided triangles, cut 20 and sew them together into a ball, like the paper ball you can make of old Easter cards. If you cut the triangles of scrap fabric and sew the allowance inside the ball, you'll have a scrap ball.
Here's how to make a pentagon ball and here's how to make a ball of segments.

Ming makes wonderful cupcakes and I think her n:o 23 would be very Ostara-y

I love these lemonade bottles with the summer flower tags :-) Can't you just see them with spring flowers and daffodils for Ostara?

I think these bunnies would make a pretty easter basket: crochet four of these panels, a square base and then crochet them together into a basket, add a handle and starch it hard.
Here's one lonely bunny that would work as a book mark or insert on an album or book cover.

30 days of Ostara; Day 30

How to make ribbon pansies


tag monster - I just see a hen, perhaps several, and a rooster, with feathers made this way...

Sew a fabric bowl
pretty fabric flower bowls
scrap fabric bowl

Make yourself and everyone else happy, and don't serve salads made with jello, marshmallows and mayonnaise, but something fresh and green. Use fresh, sweet spinach and dandelions, early strawberries, if you are lucky to live so low South there are strawberries,

Today's ornament is Victorian paperdoll.  Add the girls some bunny ears or Easter bonnet, a basket and flowers and ribbons all over. :-)
(Remember that you can change colors with your paint program, like Paint, Photoshop or Paintshop, if you have such.)

Go and get yourself cute overload! And happy Ostara!

30 days of Ostara; Day 29

Make candy necklaces
You can also make candy garlands and wreaths the same way.
You can also make the candies of fabric, and get a healthy and long-lasting candy garland.

You can also make "conversation hearts", in any shape you like, for example doughnuts, and thread into a rubber string to make the "classic" candy necklace, or make "conversation eggs" for Ostara.

Grow egg heads. Now, this should have been done already two weeks ago, but better late than never, huh? Try different seeds, like cress or herbs.

This pretty ATC is clay on stained glass... 

looks like velvet applique and embroidery on batik.

It's made by Paulie Rollins.

 Puff pastry eggs

Stained glass tulip cookie pops

They say that "Amethyst, Aquamarine, Bloodstone, Moonstone, Red Jasper, Rose Quartz" are stone correspondences of Ostara. I wonder how they come to that conclusion? Moonstone I can understand, but the rest?

30 days of Ostara; Day 28

Ostara symbols: baskets, eggs, chicken, ducklings, lambs, baby animals, bunnies (both hares and rabbits), spring birds (esp. cranes), spring flowers, clovers (flowers, leaves, four leaf clovers), budding twigs, pussy willows, sprouting bulbs, colored ribbons

Use these as you would use hearts for St. Valentine's Day or stars and evergreen trees for Yule.

Here's some pictures on how to make millinery flowers
Hatstruck speaks quite a lot about millinery, and here's how to make stamens for millinery flowers.

Then, here's some old bonnet patterns :-D
19th century sun bonnet
Bonnet from 1952 "How to make hats"
make your own sun bonnet in less than two hours
Apron bonnet
1857 sun bonnet, illustration and pattern
here's a bonnet for a doll. You can enlarge it to fit people. :-) (You can just double all the measurements, that is change the grid to 1 inch in stead of 1/2 inch, but I think it's a bit big bonnet then. Make a dummy of paper or cheap fabric and adjust the pattern to fit your head and preferences.)
Regency bonnet or how to triftfully turn a reticule and a straw hat into a bonnet fit for Eliza Bennet
If you don't have a reticule, use this tutorial :-D

That is, if you'd like to make your own "Easter Bonnet", or just a sun bonnet :-)

Here's some recipes for Easter cookies, but the good old-fashioned sugar cookies are the best :-D

Kusudama balls would be absolutely lovely for Ostara :-)
Tutorial part 1 and 2 at Folding Trees :-) It's a wonderful site.

30 days of Ostara; Day 27

Haven't you always wanted bunny slippers?
Here's also chick slippers :-)
What you do is take any slipper pattern you like, make the ears for the bunnies or pompoms for the chicks/duckies, and sew them on, and give them face. That's it.
Here's free patterns for knitted slippers and here for crocheted slippers
(Yes, they have easter pattern links too. Knitted and crocheted.)

Today's ornament: filet crochet "sun catchers". If you don't want to learn to filet crochet, you can also make them with cross stitches :-)

Animals corresponding to Ostara:
- hares, rabbits, bunnies,
- hens and chickens, all baby birds from ducklings and chicken to wild bird babies, eggs and nests
- sheep and lamb (lambs and kids are born at this time of the year, also sun moves to Aries)
- all baby animals
- snakes (Persephone's animal, symbol of the Great Mother, start to move at this time of the year after long winter sleep.)

What to do with this information? Come on, look around you! There's depiction of these symbols everywhere, bunnies and chicks as long as one can see! Every and each bunnyrabbit or spring chicken is a small prayer to Eostre. Make candy that looks like these animals, make toys, embroider them on dish towels, print them on table cloth, applique them on cushions... you know what to do with them. :-)

How to make jellybeans at home

I recommend using cornstarch jelly as centers. The flavor and color is in the sugar coating, not in the jelly itself. You can leave the lemon from the recipe, but it gives the candy a slightly sour, fruity flavor.

Corn Starch Jelly

5 cups water - a quart and a cup.
1 1/2 cups sugar - 12 ounces.
1 small lemon
3 heaping tablespoons starch - 3 ounces.

Boil 4 cups water with the sugar in it, and juice of the lemon.
Mix the starch with the other cup, and stir it into the boiling syrup.
Let simmer about 15 minutes to become transparent and almost clear.
Pour it into moulds.
(Be careful though, because the "jelly juice" might damage the mold)

How to make cornstarch molds for jellybeans

You can make any shape with any clay, air-drying, paper clay, polymer clay, ordinary earthen clay, as nothing of your negative will be left in the mold. It's just cornstarch.

(This is, BTW, how you make bunny shaped sugar cubes... You just make the sugar and water blend runnier, and use half caster sugar and half confectioner's sugar. It takes a bit longer to dry than the ordinary sugar cubes, but you could dry them in not too warm oven, like meringues, to avoid browning them.)

Jellybean bracelets

Well, it's not rocket science to figure out how to 

decorate cupcakes with jellybeans to make these pretty flowers, 

but here's how...

30 days of Ostara; Day 26

  Egg carton of curiosities

 egg carton sewing kit

 egg carton bulletin board
egg carton eggs
"whimsicle" flowers :-)
egg carton pendant lamp - absolutely amazing... think in white lilies or yellow daffodils...
cute, cute, cute! egg carton wreath (take a look of the other crafts too, nice :-))

This decor is downloadable

When in Mabon Demeter lost her daughter and we played the first act of the myth of Persephone, in Ostara she returns, together with snakes, and her Mother decorates the world with flowers and greenery.

You can act the myth and make dolls yourself.
Here's how to make papier mache puppets, parts 1, 2 and 3
I suggest you use empty eggs as the core of the heads... it's small and light, but also sturdy.
Here's some alternatives
Here's bunny and chick

here's a suggestion for puppet theater. I have been thinking about this kind of theater, but also simply hanging a sheet or blanket across the doorway high enough so that the puppeteers can hide kneeling behind it, but low enough for them to reach up with their puppets.

Veganizing Ostara
I have to say that it's bad to avoid giving children anything that even reminds of eggs, like felt eggs, paper eggs or tin eggs, in their baskets, or avoiding egg hunts, but then eat fake "ham", "chicken" and "eggs" at dinner.

Today's ornament is this: Easter Embroidered Wall Hanging
Make the squares as small as they are in the instructions, and you have ornaments :-)

30 days of Ostara; Day 25

In Norse mythology, Iðunn is a goddess associated with apples and youth. Iðunn is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, she is described as the wife of the skaldic god Bragi, and in the Prose Edda, also as a keeper of apples and granter of eternal youthfulness.

The name Iðunn may mean "ever young" according to John Lindow or "rejuvenator" according to Andy Orchard, or "the rejuvenating one" according to Rudolf Simek.

19th-century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed a potential etymological connection to the idisi. Grimm states that "with the original form idis the goddess Idunn may possibly be connected." Grimm further states that Iðunn may have been known with another name, and that "Iðunn would seem to be an Elvish word, but we do not hear of any other name for the goddess."

Some surviving stories regarding Iðunn focus on her youth-maintaining apples. English scholar H. R. Ellis Davidson points out that buckets of apples were found in the 9th century Oseberg ship burial site in Norway and that fruit and nuts (Iðunn having been described as being transformed into a nut in Skáldskaparmál) have been found in the early graves of the Germanic peoples in England and elsewhere on the continent of Europe which may have had a symbolic meaning and also that nuts are still a recognized symbol of fertility in Southwest England.

  Fertility Goddess Idunn is fetched back by Freya in bird shape (a crow, crows return to Scandinavia at this time of the year), and Idunn is a seed of spring.
- Dannie Druehyld, The Witch's Handbook

In the Ostara pages goes around this recipe:

Fresh Herb Soup

1 tablespoon butter or margarine, unsalted
2 tablespoon fresh chives, minced
2 tablespoon fresh chervil, minced
2 tablespoon lemon sorrel leaves, minced
2 teaspoon fresh tarragon, minced
1 cup celery ribs - finely chopped
4 cups vegetable broth
Salt and Pepper
1 pinch sugar
4 slices whole wheat bread, toasted
Dash freshly ground nutmeg
Grated cheddar cheese

Mix ingredients like you would any other soup, and enjoy! 

Now... are you really to put the toasted bread in the soup (like for pappa al pomodoro)? Or is the bread, nutmeg and cheese supposed to be topping?

 (I found the answer from Aisha's BOS: "Melt the butter over medium heat in a large heavy pot. Add the herbs and celery and cook, stirring, until wilted and soft, about 3 minutes. Add the broth, salt, pepper, and sugar. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.
Place a slice of toast in each soup bowl and pour the soup over. Dust with nutmeg and sprinkle with grated cheese)

Here's another green herb soup with avocado
Spring spinach and herb soup

 In ancient Rome, the calendar year began on March 15. The 15th of each of month was known as the ides, from a Latin word that indicates division of a month. At any rate, back in 44 b.c., the legendary emperor Julius Caesar summoned members of the Senate to meet in the Theatre of Pompey on March 15. Previously, a soothsayer had warned Caesar to "beware the ides of March," but since not much had happened that day, Caesar felt confident attending a Senate session. After all, the men of the Senate were loyal to him, so how much harm could he possibly come to?
Unfortunately, Caesar had enemies within his own Senate, and upon his arrival, several members of a group known as the Liberatores fell upon him and stabbed him to death.

Make Ostara egg surprise ball

Make sock bunny

Dye eggs with silk
Now, I would use old silk ties, blouses and boxers for other projects, but the scraps left over from those projects, that are too small for crazy patchwork ;-), like seams, could be used to tie eggs with.

Birdie in a nest game

30 days of Ostara; Day 24

make felt yourself for ornaments
small flowers to decorate felt egg shapes. They can also be made into bird nests, with appropriate fabrics and wool "eggs"

really cute cookies with windows :-)
I'd like to see hens and roosters with colorful feathers...

many popcorn ball recipes - form them into eggs

lentil salad and edible flower decoration :-) Really sweet!

In ancient Italy in the spring, women planted Gardens of Adonis. They filled urns with grain seeds, kept the in the dark and watered them every two days until they sprouted. You can do this yourself with grass seed in baskets. You can then put your decorated eggs on the altar, etc. in your grass filled baskets. Talk about how this custom persists today in Sicily, where women plant seeds of grains–lentils, fennel, lettuce or flowers–in baskets and pots. When they sprout, the stalks are tied with red ribbons and the “gardens” are placed along roads on the Christian Good Friday. They are meant symbolize the triumph of life over death.

Decorating cookie tins - here's another tutorial on the same thing, with a little more modern expression
doilies used to decorate tins. If you don't want to use Martha's stencils, paint the lid first in the color you wish to have the doily on, carefully glue a doily on with rubber glue, and spray with the color you want your tin to be. Remove the doily, carefully as not to smudge the paint, let dry and nudge the rubber off. Varnish.
Pearly treasury tins

something different: cookie tin banjo and tambourine.

30 days of Ostara; Day 23

Ostara fun for everyone
The games suggested sound fun :-)

About.com has "Countdown to Ostara"

Decor to Adore is going to have a Spring Craft Linky Party

"I will also host a Spring Craft linky party on April 15th for everyone who would like to show off their Easter crafts. To participate in the Spring Craft Linky just grab the button and link up on April 15th."

knitted chicks from Purlbee

Perhaps not at Ostara yet, but soon the nettles will be ready to be picked.

"When the nettle is young, its leaf forms an excellent vegetable; when it matures, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and flax. Nettle fabric is as good as canvas. Chopped, the nettle is good for poultry; pounded it is good for cattle. The seed of the nettle mingled with fodder imparts a gloss to the coats of animals; its root mixed with salt produces a beautiful yellow colour. It is besides excellent hay and can be cut twice. And what does the nettle require? Little earth, no attention, no cultivation. Only the seed falls as it ripens, and is difficult to gather. That is all. With a little trouble, the nettle would be useful; it is neglected, and becomes harmful." '

Nettle recipes
You can use it as spinach and make everything you'd use spinach for, like spinach, pine nut and feta cheese pastries or spanakopita.

catnip bunnies from Coffee&Cream

In the area of Lanark, Scotland, the spring season is welcomed with Whuppity Scoorie, held on March 1. Children assemble in front of a local church at sunrise, and when the sun comes up, they race around the church waving paper balls around their heads. At the end of the third and final lap, the children gather up coins thrown by local assemblymen. According to the Captial Scot, there's a story that this event began ages ago when troublemakers were "scoored" in the Clyde River as punishment for bad behavior. It appears to be unique to Lanark, and does not seem to be observed anywhere else in Scotland.

 For some reason that lamb doesn't look quite as happy as the girl...

One thing that surprised me was that when searching "easter snacks" all I got was sugar, sugar, sugar... cookies, rice crispy treats... don't the kids get more than enough sugar with all the candy and desserts eaten at Holidays?
I found this though: Healthy and fun snacks. I remember coming home from school and being hungry like a bear, and being home alone and capable of cooking and baking already then, I founded a steady base for my obesity. I wish someone had been making a little effort and seeing there was something "healthy and fun" to eat. It would have been nice if there had been just a plate of veggies cut in fingerfood with a bowl of nice dip...
The parents could use this time of the year and make their kids eat "bunny food" (salad) :-D