Area Pagan Dreading Big Family Vernal Equinox Celebration

MEDFORD, OR — Despite evidence that the planets are aligned in his favor, local pagan Jeff Birch, 27, said Monday that he would "rather have a peaceful weekend at home" than attend his family's Vernal Equinox celebration on March 21.

"I realize it's supposed to be a festive time of conception and new growth in the womb of Mother Earth and all," Birch said. "But I just know that within an hour of arriving, things will get so bad that I'll be reverting to my 12-year-old self, hiding in the rec room downstairs, wearing my Iroquois false face mask and fingering my runes for comfort. It's not worth it."

-snip-

"But I don't want to have to use up my vacation time and travel almost 300 miles to Portland just to listen to Grandma Moon Odin Rhiannon complain during the sunrise ritual that Mom's not putting enough rose petals in the cauldron or is letting the bonfire get too low," Birch continued. "That will just set Mom off bitching at Grandma for constantly trying to undermine her spiritual relationship with the Pagan Goddess of Dawn and then no one will speak to each other until nightfall."

Birch said he has little sympathy for his perfectionist mother, who reportedly tries to do too much and invites too many people. He says she is known to spend countless hours weaving thistle wreaths and sun-drying her own currants for hot cross buns in preparation for the Equinox. "It's hard to feel sorry for her when things don't go exactly according to her elaborate, impossible plans," Birch said. "And she knows better than to invite Aunt Isolde, who always has too much mulled mead and starts moaning about the lack of a good high priest in her life."

More at...The Onion | March 12, 2007 © Copyright 2006 by Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.