Letting go, old-school

You might be in need of a good ritual, and not even know it.

It’s Sunday evening as I write this, and I spent my morning burning greens at the local Unitarian congregation. That may seem like an odd way to spend a Sunday morning, but it’s a mighty powerful one.

February 2 is mostly known in the US as Groundhog Day, but that’s not its only significance. In Catholic circles, it’s celebrated as Candlemas and St. Brigid’s Day (on February 1, but who’s counting?). Oh, and Groundhog Day’s timing isn’t a coincidence, either—my Pennsylvania German ancestors adapted an old German Candlemas tradition, which featured a weather-predicting badger. All of them, including Candlemas, are associated with the change of season and the return of the light after the darkness of winter.

More specifically, February 2 is the midpoint between the winter solstice, which roughly coincides with Christmas, and the vernal equinox, which is, not coincidentally, close to Easter—specifically, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which is also usually considered the official start of spring.

There are a whole lot of interesting connections between ancient traditions and Christian holidays (church fathers were nothing if not clever about overlapping their holidays with existing practices in order to bring new folks into the fold), but I’m going to set those aside for now, because today’s celebration was specifically for Imbolc, the ancient Celtic tradition that celebrated fertility (welcome to lambing season!) and the goddess Brigid, also known in modern religion at St. Brigid.

There are a lot of ways to celebrate Imbolc, from making Brigid crosses to building fires. The local Unitarian congregation burns the greens from the Yule tree (the trunk then goes on to become the next Maypole) in an expression of faith, since it’s not quite spring yet, that the green will return.

Burning the greens

Now, this is not just about tossing evergreen branches onto a fire and going home. The idea is that, when you grab some branches to burn, they represent something you’re surrendering to the flames in order to let go of them. It can be anything you need to let go of in your life. Some things that came up today include “saying ‘yes’ when I mean ‘no,’” “taking on other people’s shame as my own,” “being broke,” and more basic things like anger and resentment.

This all sounds simple, and maybe ineffective, but most rituals or religious services I’ve ever attended were really pretty simple, and may also have seemed superficial at the time. Human beings are meaning-making machines, though, and the act of intentionally deciding that a handful of branches represent the resentment you’ve had enough of, and then tossing them onto a fire and watching them burn is, at the very least, some powerful symbolism. Bringing that intention into three dimensions turns it into a living metaphor for the transformation so many of us are seeking at any given moment.

It’s also a powerful example of why most rituals, from regular religious services to more specific instances like weddings or inaugurations or even your kid’s graduation, are more potent in groups. Not only does the group provide community recognition of a specific moment, and a reminder that we’re not alone on this journey we call life, it can also inspire further reflection and recognition of things we want to work on for ourselves. A whole lot of anger and resentment went into that fire, for instance, and there were several moments where one person’s intention to release something brought up a related intention for someone else.

And, of course, there’s something visceral about burning these things. We’re not just saying them out loud (though that was not a requirement), or writing them down and throwing them away—we set those things on fire. “Burn, baby, burn!” as the saying goes. Watching the flames reduce something we don’t want anymore to ash reinforces the idea that we really can be free of them, even if it might take some additional effort on our part.

For my money, burning the greens is better than any New Year’s resolution, not only because most resolutions are forgotten in a few weeks, if not days, but also because it brings the power of that intention into the real world, where we can see and interact with it.

What do you want to let go of this year? How will you symbolize the intention to let go?