Paganism: A New Vision of Family

Samhain has passed, Thanksgiving is looming and it’s a season for drawing close to family. When a sizeable chunk of the Pagan community has some degree of difficulty interacting with their biological family, this time of year can be challenging.  Some of us are estranged from our families due to religious differences, some because there isn’t any acceptance of our sexual orientation or lifestyle by our biological families, and some for other reasons, good reasons such as abuse.

For those of us who do have strained relationships with our biological families, this can be a difficult time of year. On Thanksgiving and Christmas almost everything is closed, almost everyone goes away and if you have no one to celebrate with it feels like an imposed punishment in utter isolation.

I was raised with the idea that biological family is everything. They come first, regardless of whether they are good people, whether they love you, whether they accept you or whether they harm and/or abuse you. It was a struggle for me to come to grips with this idea of family, when my biological family grew apart and communication became increasingly difficult. As a child, my entire extended family lived on the same street. Today my closest relative lives a few counties away, and we see each other a few times a year.  Nieces and nephews are growing up, becoming their own people, with their own values and priorities. What was a compact, if somewhat dysfunctional family, has now not only spread across the world, but also taken many different paths in their lifestyle decisions. We are no longer all quiet Baptists living in farmland-turned-suburbia with similar interests and motivations.

Among the many lessons I have learned since embracing Paganism is that family is not a fixed concept. It’s not a ready-made box set with pre-determined roles: here a father, here a mother, and there the biological children of the two. Family is made up of people who love you and are willing to invest bits of themselves in you, and vice-versa. Biology has nothing to do with it, neither does sexual orientation. I’ve had the chance to meet many kinds of Pagan families and most of them break the traditional mold. Even with Pagans who have good relationships with their biological families, they’ve often expanded their concept of family.

I’ve seen blended families from various ethnic backgrounds, families made up of entirely one gender, polyamorous families in various configurations, families made up of adults with no biological or romantic ties, and the list goes on. Family is made up of people who respect and love each other, and who want to be in a family relationship with each other. That is key, because biological family members don’t always want that even when love and respect are present. There are people I am related to biologically that have absolutely no desire to engage in a family relationship with me. They come to my neck of the woods without bothering to call, stop by or let me know they are here. That used to bother me.

Most monotheistic religions command you to love your family regardless, although there are exemptions for religious differences, and if there is estrangement then it’s seen as a personal defect. In Paganism, particularly in my tradition, there is an expectation that you give people the respect they are due. This extends to your family, both immediate and extended. If your uncle mercilessly bullied you as a child, you’re not expected to accord him great respect in Paganism. If your sister doesn’t want anything to do with you, there is no expectation that you chase after her to heal the rift. If your biological family rejects you, Pagans don’t automatically assume something is wrong with you. A lot of us have been there, and we understand.

Pagans have a talent for envisioning new forms of families. Whether we reinvent traditional forms of family or create entirely new familial configurations, we are intent on creating stronger bonds and more meaningful relationships in our lives than our society has given us. I myself have done that, have adopted people into familial relationships that I’m not related to by biology or marriage. In fact, though I’m having lunch with my sister on Thanksgiving, I’m considering my “family gathering” to be an after-Thanksgiving party that weekend at a friend’s house.

I’m a big fan of Lucy Maud Montgomery, though it’s been awhile since I slipped into her books. Her characters often refer to close friends as kindred spirits and one of the phrases in her books is “the race that knows Joseph.” It’s a reference to the pharoahs of Egypt forgetting Joseph and the old friendship of the Jewish people, and it sets the atmosphere for the story of Exodus. I’ve always like the turn of phrase and the way Montgomery uses it to distinguish people who are kindred spirits, people who are family without necessarily being biologically related. I think this is a good way of expressing the Pagan idea of family, that we are people who have remembered what others have forgotten, and that is not lore but the responsibility of community, and of reciprocal acceptance and love.

I know critics will say that “blood binds” and that the families we create are based on whims, and as easily dissolved. The truth is though, that when you choose to engage in a familial relationship, then you work together through thick and thin. You make sacrifices for each other, and you work it out. People who choose to be family often have stronger bonds, because there is no obligation imposed by society and they have to work harder at it.

Pagans, who generally have a positive view of homosexuality and polyamory, may not be seen as “family-friendly” by some parts of mainstream society, but I think the truth is we’re reinventing and reinvigorating the entire concept of family. I think it’s true that families are the building blocks of communities and society itself, but I think that where you see community and society failing is because of the failure of traditional man+woman=children biological family models being presented as the only right way to engage in family relationships. I think it’s possible that the way Pagans envision family might be the saving force that reinvigorates, heals and moves our society forward into this new century.