Ramblings on raising a child on the Old Path

First of all, thank you all for the sweet comments on my Yule celebration. I really love sharing these moments with you guys , this way it's like you're visiting my home. :0)

It was a little messy sabbath, but in the end everything was fine again. I guess there's no way, sometimes even the best marriages have a stressing time and mine is not different. I was just upset that it happened exactly in the middle of a important time for me and it obviously made things harder. But nothing than a conversation to put things on the right dimension and make us realize that no matter how bad things get, it would be worse if we were apart. Rodrigo is such a prick sometimes... but so am I!

Everybody talks about how sweet it is that I raise my son as a Wiccan little boy. Lucas simply loves to be a Wiccan. He says he will always be one, although I have already told him that he may change his mind later, and that would be ok. We raise him on the Old Path - Rodrigo is half Wiccan, half Buddhist and very open-minded - because is natural for us, I used to celebrate the sacred days long before being pregnant, so he got used to see candles and wands and smell incense scents around the house since he was in my belly! LOL

I just try to make things really natural about it, not forcing him to participate or turning our daily life a mystical experience. I mean, I raise him on a very "rational" way. Meaning that although we talk about fairies, dragons, gnomes and such, I let the mytical creatures on the mytical level, on the legendary part of the path, in some specific child's rituals. When we pray at night or during sabbaths, it's directly to the Goddess and the God. I think it's easier to him than to go praying for different deities on each different issue. There are some intermediary Goddesses or, in othe words, other representations of the Goddess that I feel connected to, like Gaia, Hestia (a new born connection), Rhiannon and Brigith, and I love to have them in my house and Lucas know about them, but we always go first to the "top of the list" when we thank and ask for protection, and then go for the other deities, if it's the case.

I was raised Catholic on a very light way. My parents only went to the church when they felt like it, and I haven't have my first communion.But I was always considered the funny girl, the little witch, as my dad used to call me, because I had a little gnome village on my bedroom shelf, with an apple that wouldn't get rotten - unless my old lovely grandma slept there, then it would quickly get all shrinked and wrinkled - go figure it... So I'm still seen as the weird sweet girl of the family, and probably my faith it's still seen as something of my "capricious" nature.

As Lucas wasn't baptized on the old-fashioned way, this is the only something that haunts my mom's nights... But I don't have any intention to have him baptized as a catholic, because it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't want to hurt my mother's feelings, she's always been such a wonderful mother, but this is so intimate, so personal that I can't yield to it. It would be a contradition to everything I teach/show him. Now being almost five, he would question me about it, and get a messy mind. So she sighs and resigns herself about her little pagan grandson.

Every night I pray to the Gods with Lucas before putting him to sleep, thanking for the protection received that day. I think this is an important moment of our routine - it's the sign our day is really finished and he's going to relax and sleep well. I have a personal prayer that he ended up memorizing and he feels good and asks me to pray after saying goodnight. I usually add something that happened during his day that was important, and he quickly add a specific detail I forgot, and at the end he blow goodnights, kisses and asks for blessings to mama Goddess and papa God. Later I'll translate how this prayer goes.

I celebrate every sabbath, usually doing something special or, when I'm all busy, at least our ritual in front of our altar is performed. We often celebrate esbats, but not every month.

When I take my son to his school, he always asks me to draw with my finger a little pentagram on his forehead, because he says he feels safe this way. It's like the cross some catholic moms draw for the same reason. He has a small sword he drawed and we charged with power to help him to be strong and brave during the schooling year (the first weeks of the year are still hard for him). We did it last year (his first time at kindergarten), the in this February we burned the old one and made a new one to reinforce the purpose.

And that's how it goes. A day at a time. We celebrate Yule, but also Christmas - it's such a fun nd sweet traditional holiday for my family, when we gather at my mom's house, that I want Lucas to have it. The same thing for Ostara & Easter. Now that he's getting older and understands things a little better, I started to explain the differences and origins, but what matter for him are the toys, the food, his funny uncles and aunts and grandma to kiss, his little cousins to play with at Christmas, and the chocolats, the outings and the special lunch with us at Easter, so it's ok. The spiritual aspect lies on Yule and Ostara, let's say, and he loves just the same.

Oh well... there are so many things about being pagan that has to do with the world we live in, like respect for environment, Nature and everything it encompasses. I just can't see us living differently. As long as he respects the different paths people choose, not only spiritual but referred to all other things, that's how we live.