Beltainne

Beltainne is a weird holiday for me. I love that it’s a holiday about sex and debauchery! But I am asexual - I don’t experience sexual attraction - and so that part of it doesn’t connect with me personally at all. I’m glad other people have it, but it’s not for me. (I accidentally had a long weekend over Beltainne this year, and I was half-planning to go to a festival until I remembered - oh, right, I do not want to go to a Beltainne festival at all.) And on top of that, I seem to be weirdly unstable around the seasonal changes at Beltainne and Samhain - every year this is the time my mental health takes a downturn. It’s better when I’m prepared for it, but it’s always a little rough.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a wonderful holiday. It’s the beginning of summer, which in my climate really means the beginning of the season when you don’t need to wear a coat everywhere. It’s the beginning of outdoors, when it’s too nice out to sit inside, when it seems easy to go out and meet people, old friends and new, to learn new things and take on new challenges. It’s a season of incredible growth, spontaneous and sometimes too fast for noticing. I swear yesterday there were no leaves on the tree outside my window, but today! Everything is green and growing and exciting.

Beltainne for me, then, is bringing that energy into my life - hopefully without it overflowing and leaving me strung out and exhausted inside a week. With all that extra energy going around, it’s easier to pull myself up and out and re-dedicate myself to the goals and projects I started with the return of the sun at the Solstice but which have gotten a little tattered and dingy through the end of winter. And it’s a time for celebration. New energy is always something to celebrate - and this year I’m having friends over for the weekend, and there will be wine and games and - well, probably not dancing. We’re not really dancing people. But there will be joy, which is the point, after all.