My family did a ritualistic burning over Spring Break
It was weird
When most people think of coming home for spring break and seeing their families, they probably think of home-cooked meals, going shopping with their mom, maybe hiking with their Dad and snuggling with their dog.
I think of all of that and about burning significant artifacts in my backyard as part of a ritualistic cleansing ceremony.
Okay, I’m being a little dramatic. Basically, my family moved over spring break and while packing up our old house, my mom found these weird dioramas of Ohlone villages that my sister and I had been forced to make during elementary school.
She didn’t want to just throw them away, but clearly we had no use for them, so we decided on a burning ceremony, which then evolved into burning of everything that symbolized anything shitty over the past year or so.
One of the dioramas mid-burn.
We decided to do the burning at our old house, which was very symbolic in of itself. We pulled out a giant shallow dish to use in place of a fire pit, gathered up a lighter and some sparklers and got to work. First to go was my diorama. I placed it in the dish and lit it on fire.
Immediately, it started smoking and letting off one of the worst smells in the world thanks to the copious amounts of Crayon wax, molding clay, and fake plastic trees that it was made of. My sister and I started chanting “burn the witch!” for no clear reason, but it certainly added to the drama of the event.
Chanting
Next to go was my sister’s diorama, and then the crowning jewel – Sophie’s SAT prep workbook.
Big shoutout to AJ Tutoring in Menlo Park!
I threw in a couple Econ notes, and we called it a day. My dad wanted us to join hands and dance around the fire, but my mom thought that was “Satanic” and “taking it just a little too far, Lou.”
So, we doused the fire in water, gathered up the remains of our sparklers and got ready to leave.
Only then did we realize that there were people in our old house re-doing the hardwood floors who had witnessed the whole thing.