My Birthday, Ancient Holidays, and New Beginnings

"Your birthday is a special time to celebrate the gift of 'you' to the world" ~ anonymous

Today is my birthday.  Usually I celebrate it by going to my favorite restaurant with a bunch of my friends.  I'm not doing that this year.  I'm not much in the mood for celebrating, so I simply did not plan my annual birthday dinner.  I've been a bit of a curmudgeon today.  But it's my birthday so I'll be a curmudgeon if I want to.

To be honest I am just not where I imagined I would be this year.  I have not done as much with the past year as I had hoped to.  I spent this past year grappling with a quarterlife crisis. It was not a happy year for me.

I suppose that's reason enough to celebrate, isn't it?  This is the end of an unhappy period.

March 21st was traditionally celebrated as the first day of spring.  It is the vernal equinox.  The ancients celebrated a sabbat today--it was a holiday. Today was an ancient holiday.  It had many names and the deities worshiped, though similar, had many faces.

In Germanic lands the fertility goddess Eostre was worshiped.  Modern pagans call this day Ostara after her.  The word 'Easter' is derived from Eostre.  Eostre is a goddess of new birth, new beginnings.  People celebrated by symbolically painting eggs.  Rabbits and baby chicks were given a day of reprieve and were usually not eaten on March 21st.  Rabbits, chicks, and eggs all symbolize fertility and new birth.  Today is thus a day of new beginnings.  It always has been.

So it is appropriate that I celebrate my birth today.  I was born on a day of new beginnings.  Every year I get to begin again, to renew and begin my life with a fresh start, and I get to begin again on a day that was once revered as the day when the whole world and all life experienced a new birth--a new beginning.

So Happy Birthday to me and to the whole world.  Here's to new beginnings and fresh starts!