Making Light: A Dionysia Yet to Be Named

Last updated on: January 22, 2015 at 8:52 pm by Sunweaver

Making Light: A Dionysia Yet to Be Named 2015-01-22T20:52:00+00:00 Sunweaver

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Holidays lasting three days or longer are not uncommon in the Athenian calendar, and it sometimes seems to me like it’s the rule rather than the exception. I’ve never done a statistical analysis of it, so I couldn’t say for a certainty, but there are a heck of a lot of these multi-day celebrations. The whole calendar is a daunting thing, and it seems like there’s a holiday or observance every other week. There’s no way anyone could celebrate everything and also have a life or a job, so you’ve got to pick and choose.

Anthesteria is a three-day Dionysia and if you look at what went on back in Classical Greece, you’ll see that it’s like a whole passel of holidays in one. There were drinking contests, costumes, parties with friends, and everything you might expect from a holiday in honor of the god of wine. Back in the day, wine was stored in these enormous jars to ferment and this was the time of year to bring the new wine up out of the ground. They also buried their dead in these same jars, so sometimes you pulled up grandma instead of this year’s vintage. So it was not only a holiday for drinking and shenanigans, but a feast of the dead as well. That was the biggest part of the holiday. There were a lot of traditions and superstitions about the dead in Classical Greece, who are supposed to walk the Earth at this time. Libations were made, food was set out for the dead, and most of the temples were closed. Parts of the holiday were quite somber and serious. In addition to all this, it’s also a springtime festival of flowers. Everything, even the children, had been decorated with flowers. Little ones who had turned three years old by this time got little wine cups and drank their first wine (watered down, of course) as they were made official members of the family.

Very little of this has anything to do with what we decided to do for our Anthesteria. Part of our practice is intentional watching of certain movies at particular times of year. For Anthesteria, we chose to watch the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. It’s a tragedy if I’ve ever seen one. The most cheerful parts include the cancer diagnosis of a main character and a nuclear holocaust. The series pretty much goes downhill from there. When watching intentionally, we try to immerse ourselves in the story, drink, and make libations as we watch without much commentary. This isn’t the only time of year we do intentional watching and there are several movies with which we do this. 300, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, The Lord of the Rings series, Avengers, and the Harry Potter movies are all cathartic for us in different ways, and watching them intentionally honors that part of the relationship we have with Dionysos.

Our resident priestess of Dionysos is my dear friend, Rose, so this holiday is kind of her thing. Lately, this particular approach hasn’t been doing it for her and it’s not really been flipping the spiritual switch for the rest of us, either. So we decided to poke it with a stick to see why or if there’s a way we can change how we do things to make it work. She says: “The primary guise of Dionysos that calls to me is his role as storyteller and theater and exstasis and catharsis and so what I want to do is celebrate and indulge in that, specifically.” I can get behind that 100%, but what we were doing still wasn’t Anthesteria and it still wasn’t doing what we wanted it to.

Rather than looking at the Athenian calendar and trying to reproduce the holiday that comes up, I would much rather do what we are already inclined to or called to do and then find a name for it. More often than you might think, there’s already an ancient name for what we want to do anyway. In this case, Lenaia was it. It’s a theater-centered Dionysia around January/February. We’re still in negotiations about what to watch and we had already decided that it didn’t have to be a tragedy. For me, anyway, calling it Lenaia divorces what we are already inclined to do from an association with the feast of the dead and the need to make tragedy central to the celebration. Tragedies were a late addition to Lenaia, which was originally a competition for comedies. Satyr plays, for some reason, were left out. But we don’t have to do anything the ancients did, so if we want to watch Avengers with a bottle of wine and call it Lenaia, we can do that. Heck, we can watch Henry V with a bottle of Polish vodka and call it Susan if we want.

Rose just wants to call it a Dionysia, Sophia is lukewarm about “Lenaia,” and Isildae (Sophia’s old man) probably doesn’t care what we call it. He values the intentional watching as we all do, but the name on the box isn’t as important to him as doing the thing as far as I can tell. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one of us that likes Lenaia as a name. I may lose this fight — and by “fight,” I mean “civilized grownup conversation,” because that’s how we roll. Last time, I mentioned that our group has a smidge of California Buddhism in our theological/philosophical mix and for me, that means non-attachment to winning the argument in favor of doing what’s right for us as a whole. In other words, I may have to let it go and just call it a Dionysia. That’s what it is and we’ve already decided not to call it what it isn’t, so that’s progress. The important thing is that we honor that relationship to Dionysos and strengthen it in what ways we can, even if we do call it Susan.

Making Light is an occasional column by Hellenic polytheist Sunweaver. Follow it via RSS or e-mail!

Columns

Holidays

Literature, Media, Film, Music

Previous Post

February 5, 2013

The Busy Witch: DIY with Brigid

Next Post

February 7, 2013 Naturalistic Traditions: Exploring the Historical Roots of Naturalistic Paganism

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Lakeside Hearth Adventures in Wortcunning Alone In Her Presence Arts, Crafts & Cooking Birthing Hereditary Witchcraft Book of Blackbirds Book Reviews Born-Again Witch Cauldron, Sword, Spear, & Stone Cermony and Liturgy Columns Community Dandelion Seeds Dear Jasmine Druid Thoughts Editor's Picks Everyday Pagan Family & Household Practice Family Traditions Full Frontal Magic Gateway Goddess Guest Articles Happily Heathen Health and Wellness Hearth of Hellenism Heathen Woman Hills of the Horizon History Holidays Horse Goddesses Interfaith Interviews Irish-American Witchcraft Jewish Witch Lamp & Labyrinth Letters from Midgard Literature, Media, Film, Music Loop of Brighid Love, Sex & Relationships Magic or Magick Making Light Naturalistic Traditions Nature News Outside The Circle Pantheisticon Politics Prayers, Poems, Blessings & Stories Queer Femme Mystic Queer of Swords Recipes Ritual and Practice Science and Research Seekers and Guides Seeking the Grail Socially Responsible Magic Spear of Athena Star Made Witch Syncretic Electric Technology The Blooming Staff The Busy Witch The Cartomancer The Crow's Nest The Dance of Pagan Recovery The Hearth of Hellenism The Lady's Quill The Other Side of the Hedge The Path of She The Rantin' Raven The Witches Next Door The Zen Pagan Theology, Ethics, Philosophy Tree City Witch Urban Earthwitch Wayfaring Woman Witch on Fire Wyrd Words

Select a Month January 2026 March 2025 December 2024 June 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many letters (epistles) did Paul write in the New Testament?

Select your answer to see how you score.

10 14 13 12