Childhood Traditions and the Fae

Happy Solstice, all! Hope it is treating you well, and Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there!

I actually wrote the text for this blog a few weeks ago, but I felt my last post needed a bit of space before I posted something new. So here goes:

My fiancé and I have been talking about starting a family for a long time. Due to the pandemic this plan and many plans within our household have been postponed. This has allowed me more than ample time to think about the household traditions I want to share with our future child. My current job is working with children, and between this and our inter-faith hearth I have been thinking long and hard about what is best when raising a child who is given a mixed spiritual education in hopes that they can make an informed decision about their faith when they are older. It is important to me that my fiancé and I can both share with our child our favourite holidays and traditions from growing up as well as the traditions that we each subscribe to as adults. 

The quagmire I find myself in largely has to do with mainstream influences that my child will experience at school. Working with children I realized fairly quickly there was one such tradition that I had to put my foot down about. This tradition is a fairly modern one, and that is Elf on the Shelf. I immediately am uncomfortable with giving my child the belief that it is okay for them be surveilled and extorted, but the problem has even deeper roots. Inviting an unknown being into your home… that is not something that a child should be encouraged to do in fun. And particularly an elf. And I read Christmas elves as more like fae than the Alfar. (Although what exactly distinguishes the two is a huge thing to unpack.) 

I realized that the childhood traditions that make me uncomfortable aren't necessarily very Christian in nature, but rather they deal with the fae in a way that is not very safe. This to me is likely the result of how much mainstream society has forgotten about other beings and the tendency to portray fae as cute, friendly, and harmless. Another tradition that makes me super squirmy is the tooth fairy. When did it become okay to let children sell body parts to the fae?! Now, I think between myself and my fiancé it should be easy enough to keep Elf on the Shelf out of our house. The tooth fairy however, is more insidious. My future child will go to school and learn that his or her friends get money for teeth from this devious being. Eventually, and I mean first tooth, we are going to have to sit down for a family meeting in which I say to my child that I will pay them to not sell their teeth to the fae. Am I taking the fun out of childhood? I hope not. But also, I want to instill proper skills for life and that includes interactions with other beings. I don't want my child to be afraid of the Fae, but a certain level of caution and wit is prudent. 

And here is where it gets complicated, because my favourite childhood traditions growing up was on St Patrick's Day, when a leprechaun would come in the night and turn the milk green. And wow, there are a lot of layers to this. On the surface level I want to share this tradition with my child. However, St Patrick's Day is complicated from a heathen perspective, because well… the snakes. On the level of dealing with other beings this is also complicated. In this case the leprechaun is not being invited into your home, they just like to play tricks. (And honestly, with our housewight, our future child will be used to other beings playing tricks.) It seems that this dealing with an other being is much more harmless than the others I have listed, but perhaps I am a bit biased. 

As usual, I don't claim to have all the answers, or even necessarily any of them. I do think it is important that whatever my fiancé and I decide to hold as traditions both of us agree to and we make abundantly clear that they are our hearth traditions and ours alone. Each family has their own traditions, and they help to shape their story. I know my child is going to have Christmas and Jól and sometimes it will be unclear where one ends and the other begins. I know that Santa Claus can probably not be avoided but may require careful explanation, so as not to fall into the same trap that I attributed to Elf on the Shelf. (Although it is the commercialism of Santa Claus that I find troubling. We may have to strip this tradition back to its pre-Coca Cola roots.) I know my child will have Easter and Sigrblót and occasionally they might fall on the same weekend. Hearth traditions can be messy, especially in interfaith households. 

I also know that my child will have an abundance of secular hearth traditions to celebrate as well. My goal is always to give my child varied experiences and crucial life skills. But hearth traditions also should have an element of fun. It is about balance. I feel so blessed to have such a loving and supportive fiancé. I know we will be a good team to navigate this complicated labyrinth of traditions. And I expect my child will be exposed to even more traditions at school and we will encourage them to learn about these as well, because in the end it is about what ethics we instill in our children, not what traditions they decide to keep for themselves into adulthood. 

Photo Source:

Tyr. American Gods, Season 3.