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Silly cowans.

Back around solstice I went over to a friend's house to put her air conditioner in the window. She lives on the first floor of a big, solid old place, built back in the 1890s.

The first item on the agenda was to prop open the big, heavy oaken sash. It has a tendency to crash down unexpectedly when unsupported.

Last summer someone tried to break into her house. When she got back home, she found the air conditioner on the floor and the sash slammed shut.

There was blood on the windowsill.

Ouch.

Just before last New Moon I ran into my neighbor.

“Hey, Ramadan coming up,” I said. “Are you looking forward?

She frowned.

“Too much work,” she said.

Ramadan, ugh. It's as bad as Christmas.

Like Christmas, Ramadan is an old pagan holiday dressed up in motho clothing. (In this case, a hijâb.) This year it's almost back to where it started in the first place: the moon of the Summer Solstice. A fast every day, a party every night: sounds pagan to me.

Ramadan is a hot item these days. True, there are lots more Muslims in my neighborhood now than there were a few years back. But it's not just demographic. Since 9/11, Ramadan actually makes national news. (Before that, of course, although a quarter of Earth's population—including millions of Americans—were observing the holiest time of their religious calendar, somehow the American media never found this a newsworthy event.) But in these days of unthinking Leftist Islamophilia, non-Muslims fast “in solidarity.” (A friend's husband calls this “religious tourism.”) The yards of the terminally liberal sprout Blessed Ramadan to Our Muslim Neighbors yard-signs.

Well, kumbaya to you, too.

I don't even remember what finally set me off.

One too many Starvation Army bell-ringers?

One too many Muzak Silent Nights?

One too many smiling faces wishing me something that I don't want?

Whatever it was, by the time that I got to work, I was in a state.

There was once a young witch who fell in love with a cowan, and they decided to marry.

Now, in those days people felt strongly that if you married out, you had to leave the Craft. But there you were, it was love and no price seemed too high. The date was set, the banns were read. On the chosen day, the church filled up with people and the witch and her intended stood before the altar.

But just as the priest is about to pronounce them man and wife, crash! the door flies open and a broom comes sailing in. First it knocks the old priest over the head, then it chases the boy out of the building, and next thing you know, there it is again, back for more. Everyone was terrified, and they all got out of there as fast as they could.

So they picked another date, and the banns were read for a second time. The church fills up with even more people, come to see the fun, and the service begins. But this time, just before they start, they lock the door.

A friend's daughter has a plan.

She's heard that Catholics used to collect money for pagan babies. She finds this very amusing.

So, she figures, she'll show up at church one day, surrounded by her brothers and sisters.

“Hi,” she'll say, “We're the pagan babies. We're here for the money.”

 I

Craig's mom was up from Texas to see the new house. She'd heard about the pagan guy that lived with her son, but you could tell that, being a good Episcopalian woman, she was working hard to reserve judgment.

One afternoon, while I was off at work, the doorbell rings. Naturally, she says: "I'll get it."

She opens the door. The man standing there is holding the dripping, severed head of a deer.

"Hi," he says, "Is Steve at home?"