It’s a new year! Which means it’s time for a new festival calendar! Oh joy! This is actually my first year doing anything like this. And trust me it took a lot of time, a lot of wine, and a lot of me shushing my perfectionism. It was a huge pain in the ass to put together, I’m not going to lie to you, babycakes. But my hope is that now that I have SOMETHING, it’ll make the process less of a hassle in the years to come. And also hopefully this will help you not want to smash your face into the keyboard when you go to plan out your festival year.
Before we get to the actual plan, I want to talk a bit about how I went about constructing the year.
I mainly used the Hellenion.org calendar as a basis along with Baring the Aegis. I went through both month by month looking at the festivals listed and deciding whether I wanted to celebrate those festivals and when exactly I wanted to celebrate them. Both websites provide information on each festival they mention, but I also did independent research just to back everything up and see if I could find any additional information.
It’s important to note that the Hellenic year follows the lunar cycle, so it doesn’t line up with our modern calendar. It’s up to you to decide how you wish to approach that. The Hellenion calendar transfers the Hellenic calendar onto our modern one which is extremely useful for those of you who want to keep your worship as traditional and historically accurate as possible.
I did not go in that direction (shocker!). I chose to instead adopt the calendar to not only fit the modern calendar but fit my own life. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for me so I won’t get overwhelmed.
Some festivals line up with when about they were traditionally celebrated, but others I decided to move around for various reasons. I tried to spread out the holidays because again I didn’t want to get overwhelmed and some festivals I put on the sacred day of the god being honored because why not? I’m already giving them an offering so why not just make a whole celebration out of it?
Like I said, I designed this calendar specifically with my needs, interests, and life in mind. And I encourage you to do the same. In no way are you required to celebrate every festival so don’t put pressure on yourself to do more than what you can manage. Remember you can always alter and update the calendar each year to add more so there’s no need to jump into the deep end right away. Do what makes sense to you, your worship, and your life.
Okay one last thing before the calendar. I want to note that there are some special days that I will be celebrating monthly which are:
Noumenia - Celebrated the first of the month (traditionally on the New Moon) this holiday is used to prepare for the new month. Great time to set goals for the month, reset your energy, and of course ask the gods and any household daemons to bless and protect you.
Sacred Days - Some of the gods had days of the month which were sacred to them and were given offerings or libation in their honor on those days. Athena (3rd), Aphrodite and Hermes (4th), Artemis (6th), Apollo (7th), Poseidon (8th), and my own personal addition Persephone (First Quarter Moon).
Hekate’s Deipnon - Celebrated the last day of the month (traditionally on the Dark Moon) this holiday is all about doing what needs to be done to let go of the old month. Tying up any loose ends, making sure all debts are repaid, all obligations have been fulfilled, reflecting on the lessons learned, and just doing what you need to so you don’t bring any baggage into the new month. You wanna start fresh! Also it’s time of the month to honor Hekate to make sure you stay on her good side and a good day to do some charity or volunteer work. Especially anything involving feeding the homeless and those in need.
And now we can finally get to the calendar! I didn’t include descriptions of the festivals because I’m going to make separate content for each one and update this post with links as I do. Also if you don’t want to wait you can research them with the resource links I already provided!
Okay finally! Here’s my festival calendar for 2020!
4th - Aphrodite and Hermes
4th - Aphrodite and Hermes
14th - Valentine’s Day (Aphrodite, Eros, Psyche)
6th - Elaphebolia (Artemis)
1st- Noumenia, Persephone
10th - Mother’s Day (Hera)
11th - Death of Alexander the Great
21st - Litha, Father’s Day (Zeus)
30th - Hekate’s Deipnon, MY BIRTHDAY!
30th - Thesmophoria, Hekate’s Deipnon
1st - Thesmophoria, Noumenia
7th - Pyanepsia, Oskhophoria
Hope you all have an absolutely blessed year in 2020! <3
