My Complicated Relationship with Religious Holidays

Another Easter passed this year, filled with whimsical springtime traditions in our little family that doesn’t attend church. We made cinnamon rolls, hid eggs, and indulged in too much sugar with the backdrop of a gorgeous spring day.

Spring is my favorite time of year. There is so much beauty in the bursting blooms and grassy hills around our home. The days are longer and warmer, and I cannot get enough of the neon green in the budding trees, and all of the nooks bursting with wildflowers from the late winter rain. It’s a season of awakening and renewal — in nature and, ideally, in spirit.

But then comes Easter Day—a day meant to celebrate resurrection and rebirth—Christ’s resurrection, which was once the center of my spiritual life. This disconnect between the season and my religious beliefs leaves something quietly aching, not just on Easter but on every Christian holiday. I usually ignore the feeling that our celebration is missing something more profound. 

On Monday morning, I watched the news from the epicenter of Vatican City that Pope Francis had passed, and something clicked—I’m a deeply spiritual person who still longs to mark sacred time and honor rebirth. Still, I no longer have a community or place of worship that reflects my beliefs.

It wasn’t always this way. I was once a devout Christian young woman who prayed, confessed, served, and shaped my inner and outer life around God. But over time, cracks formed — not in God, but in His people. Organized religion, in my experience, was full of contradictions. While many spoke of emulating Christ, their actions often told another story — judgment, hypocrisy, betrayal, and silence in the face of suffering. It was deeply human, yes, but cloaked in holiness that made it harder to bear.

I can accept human flaws. I couldn’t take the sanctimony — the unwillingness to name the truth beneath the reverence. So, I chose to walk away, not from God, but from the church. I was in my late twenties when I decided that if I were going to “sin,” I would do it honestly, without dragging God’s name into it.

So this past weekend, as always, it felt like a strange juxtaposition: marking sacred time in the most secular way possible—with bunnies and baskets, eggs and sugar. It’s sweet, but it’s not whole. Holidays never feel complete—they’re tinged with the absence of something I used to find in community, tradition, and belief.

It’s powerful to belong to a collective of like-minded people. Religion offers many vital things: belonging, purpose, ritual, moral guidance, and a shared identity. These are powerful, and in a world as fragmented as ours, deeply needed. For decades now, I’ve been on a spiritual sojourn to find those things without subscribing to a religion that no longer fits. I’ve sat in temples, churches, healing circles. I’ve journeyed with plant medicine, with silence, with sacred texts and ancient songs. I’ve looked outward and deeply inward.

And I’ve come to this: God is within us all.

At one point on my journey of rediscovery and remembering, a family member expressed concern that I was veering too close to the occult. I could understand the fear — after all, I was questioning everything: What is devotion? What is service? What is holy? But her concern wasn’t rooted in curiosity. It came from fear — fear that there is only one acceptable path to God, one checklist of behaviors, one set of truths handed down by those who claimed to speak for the Divine.

I explained to her that I hadn’t left God. I had simply outgrown the tiny box we like to keep Him in. I started pushing on the walls of that box, and they moved. The floor gave way. The ceiling opened. Even the windows let in more light. The more I expanded, the more I realized how much space there was to be who I truly am, without the fear, the judgment, the contortions to appear righteous for others’ approval.

I began showing up for the divine spark in me, not in arrogance, but in humility. Not to serve an ego, but to serve a truer, freer version of myself — one rooted in love, not fear.

Around the holidays, I feel most connected to those who don’t know precisely what they believe, but know it’s not the kind that casts fire and brimstone in every direction. The more I seek a Christ-like life, the more I see how organized religion borrowed from pagan wisdom — its symbols, sacred dates, and intuitive reverence for nature. What was once a system of deep connection to the Earth and each other was repackaged into rules and fear, cutting us off from the divine within.

Our intuition was deemed dangerous. Our healing arts are labeled demonic. Our connection to spirit rerouted through men with power and pulpits, who held salvation in one hand and control in the other. The sacred became sinful. The natural became suspect.

I want to belong. I want something that gives this life meaning. But that longing is complicated by the human side of religion — the rules, the gatekeeping, the betrayal. The judgment, especially when wrapped in scripture, cuts the deepest. Because when that judgment is handed down in God’s name, it feels like God Himself is condemning you, even though it was never Him at all.

So what do we do when we still crave the sacredness of a holiday — the meaning, the awe, the pause — but can no longer align with the religion it came from?

I’ve spent a lot of time walking through the meadows and forests of God’s earthly cathedral, and it was only in those open spaces, with only the connection to my divine voice within, that I was finally able to let go. On a tree branch, I left my righteousness. In a bubbling spring, I left my judgment, especially of myself. In the ocean's depths, I released the weight of shame and the myth of separation. I stopped seeing myself as cut off from God because of sin, and started recognizing how those very burdens had kept me from the divine within me all along.

If I am made in the image of the Divine, my calling is to tend to this small, luminous piece of God that I am — to honor all of me, flaws and gifts alike, and let them guide me home to a great, big, honest life of holy communion.