the stench of scorched flesh...

drifts through the air..

for tonight is the Burning Of The Witches.

Today, they don't burn actual witches ie actual real people at least not officially ad not legally. Hopefully not at all, it's just an effigy. It's an old end of winter/coming of summer ritual that dates back to Pagan times when people burnt bonfires to scare away evil spirits and say goodbye and hearty fuck you for a least a couple of months to winter.

Then the Christians came along and had to twist it to their liking, so they thought, hmmm, what's evil.. I know? Witches, they're women and they're into Satan and they're currently our representation of (insert hated Empire)/(queen/queen consort/King's mistress)/Catholics/Protestants etc... and we burn them. So they went with that.

People still do it and it's a bit of a lark and excuse to stay out all night with bonfires,very popular with the young people. I personally am not impressed. I've always been kind of on the witches side. To be honest, I never believed any of those people really cursed anyone, and really, even if they did, I bet they had a good reason, and of course most of the victims were women, pagans, poor and destitute, weird and outsiders, sure some of them were actually kind of assholes, but burning? really, and hanging as well, for the crime of being old and unpopular and maybe a bit of a crook but not that bad of one. Not good medieval/post medieval reformation era/later if you're in America people!

So I'm here, in my room, not partaking.

And another thing! You have a festival that marks the end of winter/beginning of spring on the last day of April! I mean shit how long to we have to wait for the start of spring? You've got the equinox, then you got Easter then you have May.. I mean, you're just tempting fate. Let's just have an equinox festival and be done with it, everything after that can be called something else, say it's for the berries or something but you keep up with this shit you'll have frozen ground til June. Don't want that.