Seven Rites for Super Sunday

You've got the keg, the TV with a screen the size of a billboard, and enough nachos to fill a silo. On the deck, the grill is gassed up, and you've got 35 friends and family coming over. Did you remember to hang the sun wheel made of grain on your front door and light candles in every room to herald the rebirth of the Sun? If not, then you aren't really ready to celebrate Super Bowl Sunday--our national midwinter pagan festival.

Of course, the Super Bowl is not

our midwinter pagan festival. But let's look at the facts: All our religious feast days are rooted in pagan celebrations. Take Christmas. Roman pagans had celebrated the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, on Dec. 25 long before Jesus's time. Pope Julius I, who declared it the day to commemorate the birth of Christ in A.D. 350, knew conversion to Christianity would go more smoothly if it didn't mess up the big solstice feast. Easter is Christianity's version of a spring festival, inaugurated by second-century missionaries who combined their observation of Christ's resurrection with the Pagan festival Me'an Earraigh, which marked the beginning of spring.

These pagan traditions, it seems, will out. It's no coincidence perhaps that the world's faiths provide plenty of chances to burn candles. Just as Christians are decorating their houses and dragging fir trees indoors, the Jewish festival of Hanukkah features a menorah burning brightly. Even Muslims have begun celebrating late-year Eids by stringing lights in the shape of crescents and stars.

That's fine for solstice, but sadly, we Americans lack a day that corresponds to the Pagan rites that followed six or so weeks after solstice, halfway to the Spring equinox. Groundhog Day, when Punxsutawney Phil bobs out of his hole to presage the end of winter, has been the closest tradition we have. As our culture gets farther away from its former familiarity with the groundhog's seasonal habits, the less we truly rely on Phil as a focus of our midwinter hopes and fears.

The Pagans, of course, have an answer. On Feb. 2, while the rest of us go through the motions of watching Phil, many Pagans celebrate the feast of Imbolc. (Some Wiccan sects celebrate it as early as Jan. 29, while others wait till Feb. 3.) Imbolc is the ancient holiday wherein one forgot winter's doldrums and looked forward to spring and renewal. Irish druids considered Imbolc the "festival of lactating sheep," because this was the time of year when the local livestock had just given birth and were producing the milk of life.

The Super Bowl is perfectly suited to be our national Imbolc, a midwinter hurrah looking forward to Spring. It has this same tendency to turn toward the sun--the game is always played in destinations we visit on winter vacations--and anticipates the transition of the seasons--the end of the NFL's winter run, with baseball's pitchers and catchers due at spring training a spare few weeks later.

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