Kekri Preparations

This is my Kekri altar with decorations
in 2011.

Moi!

It's time for me to start preparing for Kekri. Kekri is an old Finnish pagan celebration, which is quite similar to Samhain, Dia de los Muertos and many other celebrations around the world celebrated in the start of November. For ancient Finns Kekri was the celebration of harvest, and therefore also the celebration of a new year. One of it's traditions was to invite the spirits of the dead family members to join the celebration.

Finnish neo-pagans celebrate Kekri nowadays in the start of November, more precisely from the 1st to 3rd of November. To me it's one of the most important celebrations among Juhannus (Midsummer) and Joulu (or Yule).

As an Eclectic Pagan I don't follow any certain tradition purely. My Kekri celebration is centered around two things: 1) my altar and 2) a Kekri dinner with my family. (My mother is a Pagan too. The others are Christians and Atheists, but they still follow the long tradition of Kekri - but without the clearly pagan sides obviously.)

I traditionally start preparing my altar already about a week before Kekri. I clean it (both, physically and spiritually) and decorate it. And when the Kekri days finally arrive, I meditate, make a ritual and sacrifice for my gods and goddesses. [No, I don't kill humans nor other animals as a sacrifice. That's a very inaccurate stereotype about Pagans created by popular culture. :P]

One important and fun part of the tradition for me is the decoration of my altar. I enjoy doing lots of different kinds of handicraft, and every year I want to do something different and fun. This year I'll most probably make my altar very colorful. Colorfulness to me symbolizes happiness, adventures, learning and the joy of life. One just can't embrace those things too much. ^^ But otherwise the decorations and rituals are something I'm just starting to plan more precisely. I have no clearer ideas yet.

What comes to the rituals, they're something I won't publish in this blog. I have a principle that I keep the most important parts and details of my personal spirituality within myself. I can talk about them with certain people, but it's just as personal to me as - for example - details of one's sex life would be for someone else. You don't share those things to all of the world. ;)

Tip of the Day #1: Wrapping a gift

The life of gift wrapping paper is basically this: buy it from shop, wrap a gift with it, then give it to someone who will throw it to a trash can as soon as the gift has been opened. And no matter how pretty paper you buy, I bet that 99% of people don't even pay attention on it, they're too busy to see their gift. Not a recycling-friendly way of giving a gift.

If you like to be creative and not wasting your money for the gift paper from shop, here's a way for you to wrap a gift and make sure that the person who you give the gift will also notice the wrapping paper before he /she throws it away.

Newspaper. Yes, you read right, newspaper. But who would want to give a gift wrapped with an ugly newspaper? Here's the point.

What you need is either paint or color pens. Not everybody necessarily has paint at their home, but I'm sure almost everybody has colorful pens and newspaper that you want to get rid of. Only thing more you need is imagination or/and sense of humor. The newspaper is your canvas to create an unique wrapping paper that shows the other person that you really thought of her/him. Just remember to decorate the newspaper the way that reminds about the personality of the gift receiver. And the cool thing you can also do is to use the content of the actual newspaper in creative and humorous ways.

You don't really need to know how to draw or paint. The most important thing is that you know the person you give the thing. They don't really care about your artistic talent, but the thing that matters to them is that you did all this effort just for them.

This definitely will make the gift receiver to notice it in a positive way - using newspaper as your canvas is a very unexpected thing for most of people and therefore it will gain attention. Not to mention that it's personalized for the person. And thanks to the attention, it's more worth it than buying a traditional and boring paper from shop that nobody pays attention on.

I've done this few times, and every time it has gained extremely positive and surprisingly long lasting attention. Next time I do this, I'll take a photo and add it on this post. :)