As I think I have stated before, we are trying to celebrate the Pagan sabbats (holidays) more as cultural holidays. For Imbolc, we planned to do a thorough cleaning of the house, to purify it, and have a dinner with my family with Imbolc-appropriate foods. My husband and I spent the first half of the day dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping our house. Even though there were still several areas that needed work, the areas that had been attended to (clothes, books, and papers) were starting to be happy areas amid the rest of the chaos. I was actually starting to be happy with how our house was looking!

Afterwards, we all went to go see two houses that were for sale in our area in our price range. Our price range was low and everything was in a “fixer-upper” category. We’ll see how the process goes!

We got back later than expected. I was going to make cheese pull-apart bread and my husband was going to make sugar-free brownies. He was also going to make homemade cheese curds for poutine (french fries with gravy and cheese curds). He did make the fries from scratch though. They were delicious! Everyone but me had iced cream for dessert.

In talking over the holiday with my mom and step-dad, they seemed to think that there should be something more to the holiday than they saw. Not being Pagan, I expected them to just want to eat dinner with us. However, I guess they wanted some weird Pagany stuff. I told them that divination was common and I could get out my tarot cards if they wanted (I’m really very bad at them, but I’m working to get better). Luckily for me they declined. Lighting candles is a big part of Imbolc, but I couldn’t figure out what we were going to do after those candles were lit! Although at the end of the evening, I realized story telling was also a good idea, so maybe we will try that next year!