Don’t say ‘Mabon’.

Thank you for trying to take an interest in paganism and give me a ‘happy holidays’ for the Equinox.

But see, there was this guy who seriously harmed many pagans back in the day who decided to ignore history and actual folklore and ‘invent’ a new term for the Autumnal Equinox. This guy hurt my former teachers directly, and he broke the single biggest rule we all have – don’t “out” one another.

We generally dismiss and dislike this guy sooooo much for being an absolute asshole and threat to the people he claimed to be working to help (pagans), we’re not even willing to put up with his bullshit scholarship.

‘Mabon’ is not a thing. Okay? It’s the name of a Welsh godform, the ‘son of the mother’, so it already carries vaguely Christian tie-in associations which generally pagans today avoid. And it’s not even his festival day, or historically connected with the Mabon (from whom we get the term Mabinogion, or ‘cycle of the son [of the Mother Goddess]).

So… I get it… you’re just trying to be helpful. And now you need to realize that you’re taking a term from an outcast who hurt people all to sell shoddy scholarship in books back in the 80’s who has never apologized or owned up to his culpability in actually destroying the real lives of many people he outed publicly in his books.

We don’t like the term Mabon, those of us who know our history and aren’t just in this for the yuks. So if you wish us Happy Mabon and we snarl for a moment or look very upset…. that’s why. (It also means that generally, you should consider the person who responded that way to at least be marginally rooted in proper decency and trustworthiness, so there *is* that.)

Wish us instead a Happy Fall Equinox. The balancing of the Day and Night in a measurable fashion is more than enough reason for us to party on our own — we don’t need to invent another reason for pseudo-historical gravitas claims. We’re good.

Just…. no Mabon.

Nyet.

-Gardnerian C. Or D. I forget what letter we’re at now.