The Old Holidays

The light is changing again. The evenings fall quieter, the trees mostly bare, and the air carries that late-autumn chill that asks for a thick jumper and a mug of something warm. I’ve been walking in it more often, watching the sky turn pewter at five in the afternoon, feeling that faint pull to slow down. There’s a peace in this time of year that I never used to let myself enjoy. It’s sweater weather, yes, but it’s also soul-weather. The kind that invites reflection.

When I was younger, and still inside the walls of fundamentalism, I couldn’t have seen it that way. October was the season to be vigilant. Halloween loomed, and with it came sermons about witchcraft and devils hiding behind masks. I spoke against it, too. I called it a continuation of Samhain, that ancient Celtic festival I barely understood but had been taught to condemn. The irony is that I was never entirely sure what I was afraid of. It wasn’t the ghosts or the candy or the carved pumpkins. It was the idea that something could exist outside my framework and still be sacred.

Now, five years after my awakening, I can see that fear for what it was: a kind of armour. It kept me from seeing the world as alive, breathing, moving with patterns much older than my theology. These days, Samhain feels gentle. It’s simply the turning of the year, the earth preparing for rest. It’s the long nights arriving, a moment to remember those who came before us and to acknowledge that everything cycles back in time. There’s nothing sinister about it. If anything, there’s comfort in knowing nature keeps such careful time.

As a Taoist, that rhythm feels familiar. The descent into darkness isn’t evil; it’s balance. Every rise needs its fall, every spring its winter. We spend so much of our lives running from darkness when all it wants is to teach us how to be still.

My lesson lately has been how to be still. How to stop deciding which holidays are safe and which are forbidden.

Last year, while I was in my kitchen and half-listening to YouTube in the background, the algorithm offered me something unexpected: a recording of Hindu chanting for Diwali. The sound was soft at first, but then it filled the room like sunlight spilling through blinds. I didn’t understand the words, but it didn’t matter. I felt Lakshmi’s presence, or maybe just the essence of abundance itself, settling quietly around me. The music didn’t demand belief. It simply offered beauty.

That’s when I started reading more about Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights. It celebrates the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil. Families light small oil lamps called diyas, exchange sweets, and open their homes to the energy of prosperity. Where I live, not many people even know what Diwali is. But I’ve found that simply acknowledging it, even lighting a single candle, brings warmth to the season. I don’t worship Lakshmi as a goddess who replaces anyone else. I honour her as an archetype. She is a symbol of what it means to welcome abundance in all its forms.

Maybe that’s what’s changing in me. I’ve stopped needing to divide the world into competing truths. There’s room for all of it.

When Thanksgiving approaches, I still feel that familiar pull toward gratitude. The holiday has always been wrapped in stories of faith and providence, the Pilgrims, the survival, and the feast. I know the real history is more complicated, but the act of giving thanks still feels right. It reminds me to stop and take inventory of what the year has given me: the people who love me, the work that challenges me, the small quiet joys that don’t make headlines but build a life.

I don’t feel the need, as some do, to scrub the Christian meaning out of these holidays. The lens has simply widened. I can see that gratitude isn’t owned by any one faith. It’s a current that runs through them all. Whether you call it God or Tao or simply grace, it’s the same flow of giving and receiving.

Then the year tilts toward the Solstice, the longest night. For ancient people, it marked the turning of the wheel, which is the moment when the sun stops retreating and begins to return. I used to see winter as a kind of punishment, the world stripped bare. This was especially true as a teenager growing up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Now I see winter as rest. The Solstice asks nothing more than that we slow down to the pace of nature. It’s a time for candles, quiet music, and a bit of patience.

I find it moving that so many cultures celebrate this moment. In the old European traditions, they called it Yule. Fires were lit, evergreens brought inside, songs sung to coax the light back. Hope was what drove them, not fear. It was a recognition that even in darkness, light waits its turn.

I often think of that line from Linda Ronstadt’s “Winter Light”: wandering in the winter light, the wicked and the sane bear witness to salvation, and life starts over again. That lyric catches the essence of the return, the renewal, and the quiet salvation in simply continuing.

And then comes Christmas. A celebration that somehow belongs to everyone, no matter what path they walk. The layers of history around it are thick with pagan roots, Christian meaning, and modern traditions, blended together like snow falling over an old town. I used to insist on keeping it purely religious, stripping away Santa and the magic of stories. Now I see how unnecessary that was. The myth of Santa Claus, the hope of gifts arriving in the night, the laughter of children all belong to the spirit of giving.

As for Jesus, I no longer see him as God confined to a single body. I see him as wisdom embodied, a story about renewal and compassion. When I hear a choir sing the Messiah or sit in a candlelight service, I still feel something sacred stirring. I don’t have to explain it. I just let it move through me.

This season feels especially meaningful as I wait for my own creation to step into the world. Pure Evil is finally ready, and its release is just around Thanksgiving. It’s been a long journey to this point, one that mirrors my own shift from certainty to curiosity. And it takes place around Christmas in New Orleans, a city alive with contrasts. There's the glow of streetlamps on wet cobblestones, the hum of jazz, the quiet ache of redemption beneath the glitter. Writing it reminded me that darkness and light aren’t enemies. They need each other to tell the full story (Click here if you want to read the first novel in the series).

Maybe that’s why I feel at peace with all these holidays now. They each carry the same whisper: the light returns, always. We are meant to celebrate it in whatever language we know.

I suppose that’s what I want to share most with you. It's this idea that celebration doesn’t have to be limited by belief. The old fear that once kept me from exploring the world’s rhythms has finally loosened its grip. Now, I can appreciate them all.

So as the nights grow longer and the year winds down, I hope you’ll take a moment to ask yourself what fears still linger. Which old boundaries might be ready to dissolve? What if the holidays you once dismissed hold a bit of medicine for you now?

Maybe it’s time to reclaim them, to find joy where you were once told not to look.

I love the new old holidays I’ve discovered as much as the old new ones I’ve always celebrated. And I don’t think there should be any shame in celebrating any of them.

If you’ve enjoyed this reflection, and if it’s stirred something in you, you can always buy me a coffee to help keep the words flowing. It’s a small gesture, but every bit of encouragement helps the stories find their way into the world.

Peace, and keep asking the big questions,

The Sage Wanderer