The overall effect is that one season blurs into another – which isn’t fun at all!

When it comes to Yukata – I didn’t know there was a religious sensibility to them, I thought they were just light, cotton, practical-unless-the-obi-is-too-tight, pretty clothing! I’d be interested to hear.

As for the seasonal celebrations well, the earth is your heritage as much as it is any other human’s so – enjoy! You may not believe that there are specifically autumn spirits but you know that autumn is a splash of beauty and colour and that for someone living off the land it is a break in the heat just as it’s time to bring in the harvests and preserve food in preparation for the potentially dangerous cold of winter – that is the basis underlying all autumn celebrations, whatever the kami of focus, and I’m sure you can respect and even join in celebrating that!

The religions of the book are more difficult being, in principle, exclusive of any god or belief but theirs. I try to be respectful and treat it as something interesting or special to those I care for. I ask questions and let them tell me what it is they believe – it can help to get to know your friends more. Of course you have to be careful, people can get upset if they don’t know the answers!

I find it very hard, though, in those same situations if the respect is not mutual at least slightly. It’s very difficult to be in a room where people are openly following their own beliefs but you are considered, at best, “weird” and at worse someone who will (and should) go to hell and whose presence is barely being tolerated (and yet if you’d refused the invitation to go it would be just as bad!) While thankfully non-belief is no longer officially punished by torture and/or death, saying you are not Christian (let alone intimating you might be something which could possibly have “witchy” undertones lol) is still something which creates fear in the eyes of more people than you’d think. Two thousand years preaching hellfire against anyone that doesn’t follow your beliefs has its effect I guess.

In a way, I think being completely secular in the West must be a little easier than having a spiritual life and wanting to be able to express it and celebrate it but needing to do so in, at the least, semi seclusion. After all, if you have no beliefs you’re surely not lost to the possibility of conversion, right? lol