This is a heavy topic, but an important one for anyone who is alive and must one day die.

Around my birthday, I have a strong tendency to reflect on my own mortality, and I think a small reminder that we have a limited number of birthdays to celebrate can be a healthy exercise to keep your life in order.

This episode does not dwell on the hereafter or what comes next, but instead on the practical: how we should live today, what we can do to prepare for death, and how we really would like to leave this world and the ones we love.

If you follow a solar or lunar calendar, you know that our Gregorian calendar starts the new year at a fairly random point -- after the winter solstice, but well before the spring equinox. And when looking at the typical calendar, January 1st also marks the sharp end of an approximately 3-month-long series of social festivities.

Most people regard the new year as a time for rebirth and renewal and setting "resolutions," though historically, that time of renewing ourselves was typically reserved for the spring.

So what is a modern pagan person to do? Do we acknowledge the new year? Do we ignore it completely? In this episode, I explore some of my own thoughts on how we can overlay the typical calendar with our own periods of reflection and focus to better follow the natural ebbs and flows of energy throughout the year.

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I LOVE Santa. He's my favorite Christmas character and is certainly the star of the show for nearly everyone around the world. And while others have pointed out the many hidden and thinly-veiled pagan aspects of Christmas and Yule, Santa is by far the most pagan deity to hit the mainstream. Yet I have heard very few people remark on the clear hero-cult worship that millions of children practice in December every year.

In this episode, my husband speaks as the resident cult expert and I pontificate on what it really means to be a member of the pagan Santa cult.

Though Christmas has passed, I hope you find this episode cheerful and festive!