Where Were You
When Winter Began?
Sometime around 2005, Winter began. Future historians will debate exactly when it happened. Was it on September 11, with the attacks in New York, in Washington, and on Flight 93? Was it in March 2003 when we began the war in Iraq? Was it in September 2008 with the stock market crash, the beginning of the largest economic disruption since the Great Depression? Was it with the election of Barack Obama eight weeks later? Just as we can debate what moment in the 1920s began the last Winter, a hundred years from now people will parse out our newscasts and our cultural artifacts trying to decide what point in the mid-2000s was unmistakably Winter. From this short distance it’s hard to know what the key moment was, but it really doesn’t matter. We know that Winter began.
Who were you, personally? What were you doing? We’re going to find our bearings in this current Winter by taking a little trip back to 2000, just before our current Winter began. Year 2000 was Samhain on the Great Wheel of the Saeculum, when we entered the dark of the year.
Samhain
First of all, 2000 is not the present. Just as there were massive cultural changes between 1920 and 1940, so there are massive cultural changes between 2000 and 2020. Let’s look at the cultural changes first. In 2000
• there were no smartphones—they hadn’t been invented yet;
• Bill Clinton was president of the United States;
• there was no Facebook;
• there was no Twitter;
• same-sex marriage was not legal anywhere—in thirteen states it was still illegal to have sex with a consenting adult of the same sex;
• top movies included X-Men, The Perfect Storm, Gladiator, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon;
• the hot new TV shows included CSI, Malcolm in the Middle, Dora the Explorer, and Survivor;
• Destiny’s Child rocked it with “Say My Name,” Faith Hill sang “Breathe,” and Santana was “Smooth”; and
• the United States was not at war with anybody.
Year 2000 is a moment in the past. In 2000, the generational constellation was different than in 2020.
The Greatest Generation was still with us in large numbers, the youngest of them 75 years old. Many were still active in their communities and as voters. While their influence was waning, they were not yet gone. In fact, Senator Strom Thurmond, the president pro tempore of the Senate, belonged to the Lost Generation. The Supreme Court was dominated by the Greatest Generation, including Chief Justice Rehnquist.
The Silent Generation, ages 57–74, held most of the institutional power in the United States as elected officials, CEOs, owners and operators, tenured professors, and so on. Their emphasis on bipartisanship, cooperation, and compromise frustrated their Baby Boomer juniors.
The Baby Boomers, ages 40–56, had ignited the Culture Wars and were fighting them bitterly. They were just beginning to finally escape from cautious elders, ushering in a new era of scorched-earth politics rather than emphasizing incremental change. Left and right prepared for the fight to come.
Generation X, ages 19–39, had just completely come of age and occupied the junior positions in work and community. Now becoming parents and workers themselves, they were largely focused on personal things rather than the state of the world, though their polarization was inevitable in the partisan atmosphere of the Culture Wars.
The Millennials, ages 18 and younger, were the teens and children. They were the ones who had the most to lose from instability, and many parents protected them a great deal, giving rise to the term “helicopter parent.”
Journaling Exercise
If you have journals, datebooks and calendars, photographs, or other memoirs from 2000, get them out and look through them. Take some time doing this. Really remember who you were and what you were doing.
If you are too young to have your own memoirs of 2000, look back at pictures or documents that others may have saved for you. Maybe it’s your kindergarten picture and the artwork you did, or even your discharge papers from the hospital where you were born. Ask yourself the following questions:
• What did you think and feel? Was this a good time or bad time? Would you return there if you could?
• What changes would you potentially make if you could talk to your 2000 self? What would you never want to change?
• How is your life different now than it was in 2000? Do you live somewhere different? Work somewhere different? Have different people in your life?
When you have finished thinking about your personal experience, consider these questions as well:
• How is the world better than it was in 2000? How is it worse?
• What trends today were apparent in 2000 but not important or not really in the mainstream?
• How have technologies that didn’t exist in 2000 impacted your life? How are those impacts positive and how are they negative?
Once you have recorded your thoughts, move on to the next section.
Winter Comes
It’s tempting to think that if we could go back, Winter could have been prevented. What if Al Gore had become president in 2001? What if there had been no Iraq War? What if, somehow, September 11 had never happened?
It’s important to remember that Winter is a natural part of the turning seasons of the saeculum. Specific events may or may not happen, just as the weather on a particular day in January may vary, but Winter as a season is inevitable.
Why does Winter come? According to the sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe, Winter comes when the generational cycle reaches a certain point—when what they call Idealist Generations like the Baby Boomers gain institutional control and power. The deep and painful rifts in that generation were manifest in 1970, but because of Greatest Generation and Silent Generation control of institutions and of the power positions in government, finance, industry, and media, these conflicts were tempered.36 Through the seventies, eighties, and into the nineties, slow and deliberate elders pushed compromise and bipartisanship to left and right alike, whether they sought to stymie the Democratic “Watergate Babies” or Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution.” Eventually, they weren’t there anymore. To better understand what happened, let’s tell a story.
Bob and Frank
Once upon a time, in about 1965, there were two brothers named Bob and Frank. They grew up in a clean, neat suburb in a little brick house with three bedrooms: one for Mom and Dad, one for Bob, and one for Frank. Both boys were smart and made good grades and both were good at sports. They were inseparable, best buddies, blood brothers.
Bob got into a good state university. There, he started thinking about some things. He decided that the war in Vietnam was wrong and that Martin Luther King Jr. was a hero and that his parents sat in their comfortable living room listening to Walter Cronkite and didn’t really care about the rest of the world.
Frank got into a good state university. There, he started thinking about some things. People said that it was wrong that he admired his father who had served in the Pacific in World War II and that he was a square for not smoking pot and joining protests.
Bob and Frank both got draft notices, and they both did some thinking. Bob married his girlfriend, Sandra. They were already living together and married men were usually deferred. He and Sandra moved into an apartment near the university.
Frank reported when he was called and dropped out of school. He was sent to basic training, and in 1970 he was sent to Vietnam. He saw terrible things. He did terrible things. Terrible things happened to him. He came home. He moved back into his room in the little brick house.
Bob and Sandra had a baby girl, Allison. Fathers were deferred. Bob started graduate school. Sandra worked full-time while he was in school, and Bob watched Sesame Street with Allison.
Frank married his girlfriend, Debbie. They had a baby girl named Karen. Frank worked as a mechanic at the truck stop out by the interstate. He drank a lot and dreamed about getting on a motorcycle and just leaving. One day he did. When he got back, Debbie said that she wanted a divorce. She got one, and she kept Karen.
There was Christmas with Mom and Dad in 1976. Dad and Bob had a big fight because Bob had grown long hair. Dad said Bob was a hippie fool. Bob said Dad was a bigoted Archie Bunker. Frank told Bob not to talk to their father that way because it was disrespectful. Bob said Frank was a baby killer and asked him how many children he’d killed. Allison started crying. Frank said that if Bob wasn’t his brother he’d take a swing at him. Mom asked everyone to calm down. Sandra said they were leaving, and they did.
They didn’t come back for six years. Frank took care of Dad when he had his heart attack. Frank married a woman named Bev, and Karen stayed with him some. They bought a house, and eventually part interest in a garage.
Bob and Sandra moved to a Sunbelt city and bought a beautiful house in a gated community. Allison went to a top-ranked university and studied abroad. Bob voted for Bill Clinton.
Frank voted for Bob Dole. He went to AA and got sober and became a Sunday school teacher. He took care of Bev’s two little boys because their dad had no contact. Karen went to community college and became an RN.
Bob voted for John Kerry. He valued expertise and globalism and he thought the Iraq War was a travesty. Frank voted for George W. Bush. He wished he was young enough to go after Bin Laden.
Dad died in 2005. Mom died a few months later. Bob and Frank had a huge fight at the house right after the funeral. They screamed at each other while Allison and Karen stood on the porch looking helpless, Allison in her tailored black pantsuit and Karen in her black dress. Bob and Frank haven’t spoken since.
In 2016 Bob volunteered for Hillary Clinton. In 2016 Frank voted for Donald Trump.
I’m not sure if it was Karen or Allison who said to the other on Facebook, “Do we have to be enemies?” Whoever it was, the other one didn’t answer. But she didn’t block her either.
This is how we got here. Our bitter internal wars aren’t wars between different tribes. They’re literally brother against brother. The bottom line is that Bob and Frank, in all their manifestations in society, want to punish each other. They want to hurt each other. They want to avenge a lifetime of injuries. Can Bob and Frank be reconciled? Can Allison and Karen find common ground, or do they have to simply fight their fathers’ wars?
History suggests that Bob and Frank won’t reconcile. Osiris and Set, Abel and Cain—the oldest stories tell us that this will end when one of them is dead. This is the furnace that fuels the crisis, the war between brothers, mythic in its scope and as personal as Bob and Frank. This is what makes Winter come. The brothers each call their army to them and they fight until one or the other is annihilated. They use their power as older men, as leaders in society, to clash with one another. It’s not actually about others at all, any more than Set and Osiris is about the government of Egypt or Cain and Abel is about proper ways to worship. It’s about punishing the one you know best. It’s fratricide.
Can that clash be prevented? Probably not. Can its outcome be altered? Assuredly. How the crisis ends rests with Allison and Karen. They are the ones who decide what happens ultimately and how the winners and losers treat one another and the larger society. The people who decide what happens going forward, after Bob and Frank, are Allison and Karen.
Bob and Frank are a microcosm for what we call the Culture Wars. Let’s explore that concept in more depth.
The Culture Wars
Winter began for me late in 2005. I got a fundraising email for an LGBT+ organization I had worked for the previous year. It wasn’t the usual polite request for money to fund programs. It was a long screed about how there were Catholic secret societies that had private assassins and were attempting to undermine pro-gay court rulings, and that to fight the Catholic secret societies I should immediately send money. I simply boggled. Then I thought, some intern in Development has lost their mind. I forwarded the email to a very senior person at the organization I had worked with, asking if he’d seen it and saying that this was not at all the tenor I expected from the organization. He replied saying something like, “Yeah, but the numbers are looking really good on this one. High open rate, high response rate.” I replied again and said, “But it’s not true. This is BS. This is ripped out of the Da Vinci Code! This is a fictional bunch of secret assassins in a book. We’ve got plenty to fundraise on with the Federal Marriage Amendment, which is real legislation in Congress, and Rick Santorum in the Senate who wants to run for president. Those are real problems.” He replied, “Yeah, but it’s performing really well.”
Let me be clear: frightening people with lies so they will give you money is morally wrong. Doing so in a bigoted way and using lies to turn people against a religious, ethnic, racial, or sexual minority is evil.
This is when Winter came for me: when I saw my side, my former coworkers—people I liked, even my friends—justifying evil in the name of winning.
This was the Culture War. It was the historical moment when the polarization of the Baby Boomer generation split society and erased gray areas. Let’s pit LGBT+ people against Catholics and that’s okay. Then is it okay to pit straight people against Pagans? Or rural people against Jews?
There had always been people on the fringe who believed that the government had put chips in their brain or that a cabal of Jewish bankers was ruling the world or that Satanists were infiltrating preschools to steal babies for human sacrifice, but until this time, responsible people didn’t buy into these conspiracies, and ultimately they would stop them. This is how we navigated the eighties and nineties, and as someone twice wary, both queer and Pagan, the saving grace was that when some nut would get off on “witches want to steal your children” or “gays want to spread AIDS because they serve the devil,” sensible people would call BS. Now the reasonable people, even people who ought to know better because they were also part of a marginalized group, thought this behavior was okay if it made a lot of money for their cause.
In the late 2000s we moved into the war of all against all just as we had in the 1930s. Every group was constantly exhorted to anger against every other group. Every misunderstanding became oppression. Every difference of opinion was unsolvable. The old methods—following rules of order, polite discourse, and even the assumption of innocence—were thrown out by people drunk on outrage. It happened in knitting groups, fan communities, parent klatches, and many other places where previously people with differing opinions and differing identities met and mingled. Groups tore themselves apart. Mostly, everyone lost. Fifteen years later, what seems most to remain is sadness among those who lost the joy in participating in things they loved, who lost friends, and who lost community. Winter’s storms blew away support networks first.
Social media didn’t cause this. This impulse was here before the rise of Facebook and Twitter. But social media made it possible for the storm to go global in the same way that the rise of radio made it possible for demagogues to address millions instead of hundreds in the last Winter. In the 1930s, ideas that previously would have been limited in scope because a speaker simply couldn’t have reached a national audience could suddenly reach millions instantly—and daily. When we listen to recordings of American anti-Semites like Charles Coughlin, they’re not saying anything new. The slurs they repeated had been around for decades. What was new was that Charles Coughlin could tell millions of people directly, in their own living rooms, that Jewish bankers were behind the stock market crash and the Great Depression.37 At its peak, his radio show had nearly twenty million listeners each day. His newsletter, Social Justice, reprinted the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent document supposedly belonging to a secret Jewish conspiracy to rule the world that in fact had been manufactured by Russian intelligence.38
Is this beginning to sound familiar? A new technology suddenly means that conspiracy theorists run wild, reaching a new, wide audience, while in the background Russian intelligence is laughing? We have been in this season before. Our grandparents or our great-grandparents listened to Coughlin, turned off the radio, or railed against him. They wondered who to trust. They wondered what information was real. They wondered who their enemies were, because one thing every speaker on every side hammered home was this—they are coming for you. Be afraid. And donate by return post.
We, with the benefit of eighty years distance, can say that Hitler was a real threat and so was Stalin. They did sign a pact on August 23, 1939, which directly led to the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. We can parse out which voices were homegrown Fascists and which were funded directly by Hitler’s SS, as many “grassroots organizations” in the late 1930s were.39 This was true on the left as well as on the right. For example, one of the bestselling anti-Fascist books was J’Accuse!: The Men Who Betrayed France, by a freedom fighter named André Simon. A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Simon held high-profile Hollywood fundraisers, suave in his bespoke tuxedo, a great Resistance hero. The only problem was that there was no such person as André Simon, and he’d never been anywhere near the Spanish Civil War. He was Czech, a Russian secret agent named Otto Katz who reported directly to the GRU.40
Historians, with the benefit of hindsight and access to millions of documents, can trace propaganda and separate it from activism, can determine the difference between real atrocities and fake news. Those who lived at the time could not do this, any more than you can tell if something you see on Facebook is a real grassroots thing or comes from a Russian bot.
Like those who came before us, when we don’t know who is telling us the truth or whether those we trust are manipulating that trust, we must be guided by our hearts. We must look at everything through the lens of our values and weigh them against the principles that guide our lives.
Values
We have a tendency to think of “values voters” as people on the right, as conservative Christians who aren’t very tolerant of others. So what are we? Voters without values? People who just do whatever suits them?
Of course not. As individuals and as a community, we have strong values: values that may set us apart from the mainstream, values that are very important to us and inform how we live our lives. It’s time to reclaim the word “values.” Having values doesn’t mean being conservative or reactionary, and saying that some things aren’t okay isn’t being intolerant. While there are many different paths within the Pagan community, there are some values that nearly everyone can agree on. Let’s explore some examples of those Pagan values and consider how they can be our strengths in this current Winter. We will consider four values—hospitality, honor, plurality, and reverence for the earth—as beginning points for identifying what Pagan values mean to us.
Hospitality
Many ancient religions stressed the importance of hospitality. From the beliefs of the Old North to the religions of the Mediterranean, from Africa to the New World and beyond, hospitality was an important virtue attested to in story after story. Many cultures had a story like this: a god or goddess is traveling the world in disguise and comes to the home of some poor but good people. These people invite the traveler in, not realizing they are hosting divinity. They give them the best bed to sleep in and the best food to eat, humble as they may be. They share all that they have. Touched by their virtue, the god reveals themself and blesses the poor family, telling them that they will prosper from this day forward as a result of their kindness.
These stories embody a powerful truth: we never know who is asking for our help, and we must always do our utmost to help the stranger among us. Parsimony and selfishness are for the unworthy. The worthy give freely. The old stories have ugly words for the selfish: meager, skinflint, churlish. Saying “I got mine” and refusing to share is being a small person. Meanwhile, those who give magnanimously are favored by the gods.
As you work through the chapters on Winter to come, think about how we, as Pagans, can embody the virtue of hospitality. How can we, as parts of the greater community, live our values?
Honor
Honor is old-fashioned, as old-fashioned as old gods. Honor is doing what’s hard because you promised. It’s keeping your word even when it’s inconvenient. It’s fighting fair even when your opponent doesn’t. It’s protecting the weak and using your strength to guard, not to intimidate. Honor is doing your duty. It’s not descending to an enemy’s level. It’s fair competition and good sportsmanship. It’s loyalty to those who depend on you. It is believing, as my father said, that “other people’s bad behavior doesn’t excuse yours,” whether the others behaving badly are your enemies or your friends.
We believe in honor. We believe in heroism.
Yes, that’s old-fashioned. And those are values worth believing in, values that are worth living by. Long before there was philosophy there was honor. The old stories are hero stories—stories about men and women who behaved in accordance with honor, even when that meant terrible sacrifices. Who are the villains in so many old tales? Those who behaved without honor, who lied and stole, who killed the helpless and offended gods and humans with their crimes. Heroes don’t do those things.
Today, we need honor. We need its companions, dignity and honesty and duty. We can choose to be honest. We can choose to be dignified in our own interactions with others. We can choose to do our duty in our own lives. As we continue deeper into Winter, consider how this value—honor—is part of our response to crisis, both as individuals and as a community.
Plurality
This is something that is inherent in polytheism: There is no one right way. There is no single answer. Life is not a multiple-choice question with three wrong answers and one correct, the way that many of us are taught from early childhood. There are lots of different ways of living just as there are lots of different ways of worshiping, and all of them are correct. If one person worships Cerridwen and another Shakti, if one worships Horus and another Mercury, all of them are right.
We are not a tapestry woven into a single beautiful and elaborate pattern, but a patchwork quilt. Some of the pieces are different sizes, some are colors that don’t go together, some are intricately embroidered and some are embarrassingly plain, but the whole effect is stunning. It’s gorgeous. It’s almost incomprehensibly large. And it’s never completely finished. We don’t want each piece to conform. We like it the way it is.
Because we live in a complex society, we have much to teach the greater society about how to comprehend plurality. Rather than engaging in a tug-of-war about whose answer is correct, we can say that it’s okay for different people to have different correct answers. It’s even okay for different communities to reach different consensuses and to live according to the principles they’ve consented to, just as we know that different spiritual communities choose to govern themselves differently, teach differently, and live differently. The key is consent—people can choose how their community will live, and those who do not agree with the conclusion reached by the majority in that community have the freedom to leave and live somewhere more in concert with their beliefs. We understand that for anyone, no matter how well-meaning, to impose beliefs on others without their consent is wrong.
As we move through this season and the chapters that follow, consider how the Pagan value of understanding and valuing plurality comes into play.
The World Is Our Home
Earth is not a room we’re passing through on the way to someplace better. This is our home. Whether we embrace reincarnation as part of our belief systems or not, we are of the earth. It’s not “fallen.” It’s not a place we’ve been sent to because we’re deprived of Paradise. This is our home.
For many of us who believe that we have lived and will live again, the future of Earth is our own future. If we make a mess for a hundred years from now, we will be here living in the mess. It’s not about our children, or at least not only about them—it’s about our own personal futures as well. Taking care of the earth, being responsible and helping to solve this environmental crisis, is not an act of altruism. It’s an act of self-interest. We are going to live with the outcomes of our actions. If we make our world uninhabitable, we will be the ones living with the consequences.
More than that, we value the world and all that’s in it. It’s not a temptation. It’s a treasure. The sensual feeling of sand under our feet, the wind against our skin, the warmth of sunshine after days of cold, the heady scent of ripe summer vegetables—these are good. These are gifts. Our religion teaches us to value them and to value the experiences of the body. We are not meant for suffering. We are meant for joy. The world is meant to be a place of beauty and wonder, and when it is not, it needs to be restored to wholeness just as we do when we are suffering. We love the world.
As we experience the season of Winter, think about how our love for the world and the natural cycles of life helps us to live in this season.
Journaling Exercise
You will need your journal for this (or a computer or an alternate means of journaling as you prefer). Consider the following questions about the values suggested above:
• How do you respond to hospitality as a value? Is this something that has meaning in your life? How do you feel that you live out this value? Are there ways in which you would like to be more hospitable?
• How do you respond to honor as a value? Are there things about it that make you uncomfortable? How do you feel about duty, dignity, honesty, and self-sacrifice? How do you think your community responds to those ideas?
• How do you feel about plurality? What are some ways that you are different from those you are close to? How do you honor those differences? Do you feel pressure to conform to some community ideal? Are there things that you believe that you would not be comfortable saying publicly because you think they would be disapproved of?
• How do you relate to the earth? Where do you most appreciate earth’s gifts? How do you help with this current environmental crisis in ways great or small? How is winter a part of a natural cycle?
• What other ideas would you classify as Pagan values? What do you think is most important to you? What Pagan values would you like to see more widely embraced?
Let’s not be afraid of using the word “values.” Let’s not be afraid of claiming our beliefs. We have much to offer the greater community in this time of crisis. Our values can help guide not just ourselves but those around us as we navigate this season.
We’ve looked at where we are—Winter began, and this is who we are and what our present position is. Now we can begin to chart our course through this season of crisis based on the maps we’ve inherited and our current knowledge. Let’s move forward into the season of Winter together.
36. William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning (New York: Broadway Books, 1997).
37. Sheldon Marcus, Father Coughlin (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1972).
38. Charles Tull, Father Coughlin and the New Deal (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1965).
39. Steven J. Ross, Hitler in Los Angeles (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017).
40. Jonathan Miles, The Dangerous Otto Katz (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010).