Pagan Pride Days

Posted by owner on July 27, 2009

As the wheel of the year rolls on, we’re coming to some of the most significant days marked on the Wiccan and neopagan calendar. There’s Mabon on September 21, the fall equinox, that’s viewed as sort of a pagan Thanksgiving, and there’s Samhain on October 31, rooted in an ancient Gaelic festival for the dead. It’s in the fall that throughout the United States many get together and sponsor Pagan Pride days.

Here in central North Carolina this year’s Pagan Pride Days will be celebrated at the State Fair Grounds in Raleigh on September 19th and 20th . There’ll be vendors, entertainment, costume contests, workshops and rituals.

It was different some years ago when Dan Nelson and some friends decided to be a Christian presence at the one day Pagan Pride celebration also held here in Raleigh.
Dan approached the event with prayer and some trepidation. But when the time came the little group of Christians trooped to the grounds and set up their own booth.

Dan is a local artist of some fame and tremendous talent. His booth featured a large umbrella under which Dan stood with an easel creating what 8×10 pictures he called “prophetic paintings.” It was a dark day, and the organizers had failed to provide electricity for music. But Dan had a generator, and he’d brought his own sound system and a number of CD’s of Irish and Celtic Christian music. He knew that the pagan community was deeply into its Celtic roots  . . . and the folks at the festival had no idea the music he played was Christian.

By the time the day ended Dan felt both relief and disappointment. There’d been no dark or demonic manifestations. [After all, Dan and his friends had prayed hard.] The people who attended seemed ordinary, like normal folks who lived just down the block. You might not know them well, but you’d say “hello” and might even stop to chat sometimes. No one seemed upset as Dan chatted about his beliefs. After all, the pagan community prides itself on its belief that there are many “paths” a person might follow, and a person’s path might well be right for him as your path was right for you. And so the day was spent, as Dan says, just “loving and blessing” these folk who dodn’t yet know Christ, and trusting that the things Dan and his friends said might prepare them to respond to the Gospel one day.

There was one thing that Dan remembers clearly. Before the grounds were opened to the general public, one of the organizers urged the vendors, “Now, don’t treat the people who come here like the Christians treat us.”  How tragic, Dan thought, that the image of Christians these folk had was one of hostility and hate. 

There are Pagan Pride Days being held all over our nation this fall. Probably not as well organized as here in North Carolina, where by the middle of July all the vendor spaces have been spoken for, and the workshops organized. But perhaps wherever Pagan Pride Days are held there’ll be an opportunity for some of us to demonstrate a little Christian love. I don’t mean that we should invade the celebration carrying signs and passing out tracts. I suspect that Dan’s way is more effective in the end.

We may lack artists to do “prophetic paintings” in a vendor’s booth. We probably won’t be able fill the grounds with Celtic Christian music. And it’s possible that demons will be nearby. But demons are no match for Christ, and a little “love and blessing” go a long way when we show we care for neopagans as persons. And a willingness to listen respectfully can earn us the right to speak as well.

Is there a Pagan Pride Day planned for your area?  You may be able to find out by Googling “Pagan Pride Days.” If you do feel led to explore ways to use these days as an opportunity for some gentle evangelism, I suggest you check out earlier posts on demondope that explore neopagan beliefs. And that you not only bathe the effort in payer, but also cloak yourself in Jesus’ love for the lost.