Happy Imbolc Groundhogs!

I'm an old fashioned pagan - not a neo-Pagan, or even a Pagan. Small p for me, thank you very much. But I'm a rather uninformed one, as most of the stuff I find focuses on the P vs the p. Or confuses the two with Wicca, and I don't buy much of that. What I do like is the inclusion of the feminine divine, so generally I consider self a Belle-ist. I've never taken the easy road, you know?

What has this to do with Groundhog Day? Well, I just discovered that Imbolc is the celebration of Brigid and celebrates the coming of spring. Of course, once the Church got into the act, they switched Brigid to Mary - thereby doing the normal Christian thing and then the even more normal disempowering the feminine...

Then Feb 1 became Feb 2 (with Mary) and then somehow to Groundhogs as the harbinger of spring. 

So I'm now embracing Imbolc - the Celtic version - as a favorite holiday/holy day. It reimpowers the feminine, snubs nose at the Church (institution, not religion) and nods at cute little ground dwellers.

Happy Imbolc dear readers.