tall trees, warm fires

Fortunately my upbringing (despite the Exclusive Brethren trying to make it severely uncool) had a number of intimations of things to come:

• my parents always had a Christmas tree; this was forbidden by the Brethren killjoys, on the grounds of it being Pagan, so my mum told me not to tell anyone at the meeting. I said "What's Pagan?" and my mum told me it was where in ancient times, people would go up to the top of hills and light bonfires to make sure the sun came back after the shortest day. I thought that sounded really great.
• there's this bit in the Acts of the Apostles where the silversmiths get annoyed with Paul and start shouting "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" - I liked the sound of her too.
• one day I asked my dad if animals had souls; he said they did, even though doctrine says not.

All of which reminds me of a rather nice Pagan chant:

Tall trees, warm fires
Strong winds, deep waters
I feel it in my body
I feel it in my soul

And another thing, there were legends about Aleister Crowley among the Peebs - deliciously scary tales for a dark winter's night....