So I jsut got done helping to put on an Ancestor’s Feast dining experience and ritual at church. It was both fun, weird, and interesting.
The fun part was messing around with decor, cooking, recipes… really all of it. I didn’t even mind the clean up. Later I have to take the money from Mr. Skull tip jar to buy stuff for the food bank, and even that is kind of fun… trying to make the donated money buy as much food as possible to help out those in need.
The weird part was trying to write a ritual by committee for mass consumption when I haven’t ever written a ritual before!
Each section had a person in charge of it — for instance Kym had the choir covered, Steve had the dance part, Peter had the opening and closing… Mary really helped me pull the overall thing together and she and I bridged the gaps.
The interesting part was no knowing how it was going to fly… with 30 people attending and it being a mostly even split between the pagans/non-pagans — I think it went quite well for a first run. We’ll try it again next year and see how it goes.
Here’s how the altar looked — or as much of it as I could squeeze into the frame. All the attendees brought mementos or photos of the ancetor(s) they were honoring at the feast:
Here’s the two pollera dresses I brought to represent my paternal grandmother. My aunt sent them for my daughter, and I wore similar when I was her age. I wore the gold necklace that is part of the pollera ensemble rather than putting that on the altar. It’s almost 100 years old and I didn’t want to lose it!
Child’s version of a fancy pollera de luz:
Child’s version of a pollera montuna:
Here’s the center of the steps with more of the wishes to Ancestor’s with candles:
My kid, fooling around:
