Kat Nadi-Duma moved to Provo in their early twenties to give support to a young woman they were dating who was a student at BYU. With encouragement from their partner, they joined the LDS church after having been raised Irish Catholic by a grandmother. The influence of paganism in Irish Catholicism was a natural bridge between Christianity and their more universal sense of god once they left Mormonism. The family describes themselves as mixed faith, practicing various forms of paganism—Irish, Welsh, Nordic, Hellenocentric— as well as a largely skeptical daughter who’s studying Shinto.

“We all cherry pick from each other,” Kat says. “But all of these faiths hold Yule very sacred. We are a very religious family. But whether you call it religious or spiritual depends on which one of the kids you ask. For me it often depends on the day. I know why we’re doing the ceremonies the way that we do, and why we organize the night the way we do, but also we do it because it’s something we do as a family. It’s a tradition, something we look forward to.”

Wade, Kat’s partner says, “For me it’s mostly about connection with nature, about how we are part of nature. I would say it’s more spiritual as far as a day-to-day acceptance of where you fall in the universe than it is religious. There’s nothing I can do that raises me above nature in any way. You don’t have to work at it, you’re part of it, and all you have to do is be that part and accept that you’re part of it or above it, but exactly the same.”

Kat refers to themself as a dharma pagan. “I’m a Buddhist reverend—I do all the things. But the concept of pantheism, the Spinoza-style pantheism, fits with the dharma. In the dharma this is all an illusion. We don’t know what reality is because we don’t experience it; not a phenomenological reality. We can’t. We can perceive, but no one is going to perceive the world, the things in our environment, the same way that I do. It’s almost magical, and by magical I mean awe-inspiring—something is happening that we don’t access. Like, I can’t point to it, but it’s right there. We’re exchanging things on a quantum level—with this, and that, the dog, and each other. We know that it’s real, but we can’t see it.” 

In the tactile experience, Kat says, nothing ever touches. “There’s always a half-way, and our brain is filling in the difference. That’s where my faith lies; that’s where my religion is. Do I understand it? Fuck no. But at the same time I could talk about it for days”.

“Mind is so amazing!  And consciousness—we can’t even describe what that is. We cannot put consciousness on a slide. We cannot know the inside of someone else’s mind; it is a different universe.

I do believe that there is a consciousness that we don’t access. We know about mycelium, the way it travels under the ground, and that it has electrical activity that is incredibly similar to neurological chemical activity. So there is a mind in mycelium by the way that we understand a mind. But then when we incorporate that with how we understand our biosphere—in the way we know consciousness—there is a real possibility that our earth has consciousness. 

We know physics are real, and then there’s the dual light experiment. We don’t understand the nature of light. Is it a particle or is it a wave? We have learned that depending on whether or not we observe it changes its nature. If we set up the experiment and we leave, the light behaves as a wave. But if we stay in the room, the light behaves as a particle. That means there’s no matter, and it means that it’s moving with a gravitational force that we don’t experience because it’s on a different cosmic layer of gravity. Steven Hawkings talks about gravity as a rubber sheet, and that the earth sits on the sheet like a heavy marble. So, if this is gravity as we experience it, and earth is that heavy marble, then light that’s moving as a wave is not beholden to gravity because it doesn’t have material. But the second we observe it, light becomes a particle, and that does have material. So there’s something happening on a quantum level.”

Light, Kat says, changes under observation from a wave that has no matter into particulate matter. “If we think of brainwaves from the standpoint of neurons and whatnot that we see in mycelium, well what’s to say that that consciousness isn’t something we can communicate with, or, in fact, transmute into?”

Through our consciousness, Kat says, we create the particles themselves.

“When we talk about the Buddhist concept, the cosmic idea of the bardo. It’s the layer between the layers. When you’re looking at a filmstrip, and whatever the fuck those black lines are, that’s the bardo. We don’t know how big it is, how material it is, but we do know from a Buddhist understanding that we pass through it between our incarnations. So what are we passing through? I don’t know, but it’s going to be cool.” 

Kat says that’s where their magical practice lies, with the idea that a person can manipulate the world through conscious thought. “I don’t know that I believe in any of that shit where I’ve got to manifest it and bring magic to me, but I do know that when I interact and communicate with my dogs, there’s real communication there. When I go stand barefoot in the woods, there’s communication there.

“We have an altar that we interact with—the deity figures, Pan and Gia, their offering cups, and lots of natural things. We’ve always encouraged our kids to put their own shit up.”

On the shelf, Kat displays ocean sand, honey collected by their family, salt from the Salt Flats, and a jar of water from the river where their great grandma, a midwife, did deliveries. “We have soil from Wade’s father’s grave, and a pomegranate that we dried out for our daughter’s wedding.” 

The altar nourishes the inner child, and encourages wonder. Kat read books on pagan practices, but decided to go rogue with what to incorporate. “I thought, well, that doesn’t make any sense. If we believe that deities live in everything, why would I feel weird about whether or not somebody built or made the perfect version of an altar?  I don’t need to know why something is so special, but when I touch it I know that it is. We have a stick—it’s from Oregon. I don’t know what we were doing, I’m pretty sure I was stoned out of my gourd, and this stick became important in my heart. It was the “right” stick.” If you hold it like it’s a wand. I tell you, it feels great. It’s a good stick.”

They heft the bronze statue of Gia, which Kat says they found the figure on Amazon. “I find all sorts of shit in all kinds of different places. I tried having something else up, and it just wasn’t working. I saw her, and I was like, that’s it! That’s what a mother looks like. She’s just hanging out, crisscross applesauce, gives no fucks. I love it. Check out her hair. I’m all about symbols and signs, and there are pieces of different kinds of animals in there, sticks, shells. She’s covered in animals. There is a plesiosaur, an acorn. There’s a turtle here, and a whale going across there. Dolphins and an elephant. Her breast has all kinds of flowers on it, and mushrooms. Down her arms, it’s not tattooing, it’s the natural world.”

If the year were a day, Kat says,Yule is the middle of the night. Family and friends gather at eight o’clock in the evening. The house is usually open to anybody who wants to come. This year it’s closed.

“This is our grandbaby, Finn’s, first Yule. Our son, Talon, Finn’s father, is Norse pagan. There’s a naming ritual that has to be done, and he wants to do that privately, which we understand.”

Depending of the demands of life, the family tries to celebrate on the actual event—December 21st. Preparation begins weeks in advance. Kat makes gifts of mincemeat for family and friends. In past years they’ve also crocheted items, but this year they bottled kahlua.

“The last few years I’ve wanted to do something we could all make together. With the kahlua, I had all the kids come over, and I taught them how to make it. We bottled the first couple of bottles together. Then it’s about all of us, and the sense of passing it forward.”

Kat requires that individual family members write a letter to each of the others. “The only rule is that it has to be true, and it has to be kind.”cAs guests arrive letters get tucked into each other’s things until after the bonfire. The family plays games until midnight, while eating bowls of chili and drinking cider.

“When our kids were little, it was virgin cider because they didn’t drink. Now that they’re older it’s a different energy, and half a gallon of fireball goes into the pot, and everybody enjoys it. Everyone throws in their own spices, their own stuff.”

Celebrants build a bonfire. The Yule log is the first to go in, in a ritual of dedication. It’s carefully chosen a couple of weeks prior to the ritual, and affixed with magical items contributed by each of Kat’s family members.

“Before the fire, we’re doing fun things that are high energy. On the first side of the fire we gather and throw in shit in that doesn’t serve us anymore, burning it to ash. but we all share what it is that we’re burning to the ground. Then we sit around the fire, and we talk; we all share what it is that we’re burning to the ground. 

“We have the first part of the fire, which is throwing shit in that doesn’t serve us anymore. Burning it to ash; everything goes down to ash on the first side of it. Then we sit around the fire, and we talk; we have these little gratitude things, and it’s like shooting the shit around the fire, but we all share what it is that we’re burning to the ground; throwing in shit that doesn’t serve us anymore—burning it to ash. Everything goes down to ash, and everyone blows it away. Good riddance, you know? You curse that thing you just threw in the fire. Fuck off!—that thing that you just through in the fire. Sometimes it’s a bad habit, or things we’ve done that really wounded somebody. The thought is, I’m letting go of the thing that created this, that behavior. Sometimes you write it out, sometimes you make something to throw in.”

Next, participants throw salt and spices in the flames, turning it different colors, cleansing the fire in a ritual of transformation. Next, family members toss in private wishes on a piece of paper.

“You put in your things that you’re hoping to do in the coming year. It is a little bit about manifestation. You’re burning it in the fire, and it’s lifting it up in the smoke. It’s kind of like that transmutation we talk about. You’re trying to release the positive, and the purpose, and have that float out into the world, being lifted up on the smoke, and the flames, and the heat. The fire isn’t bad or good; it’s a transformative vehicle. The ritual is about transformation and change— creative fire vs. destructive fire. We participate on both sides, because that’s the balance of it; you can’t just have the one.”

Afterward, the candy comes out—the cookies, the mince, fudge, and pies. Kat’s family has a long-standing tradition of watching the movie “The Hogfather,” and reading ghost stories, and telling funny tales of family members who have passed. Celebrants exchange gifts of books, and play Yule games—some of them dating back thousands of years. Cards Against Humanity has been popular the last couple of years, Kat says.

“There’s nothing like being filthy as hell at six in the morning.”

Post-fire, Kat says, the energy is solemn. The letter reading is on the backside. “People start finding quiet time. The babies are falling asleep, and the older people are crawling into their letters and their thoughts. We read them privately in different rooms, all of us just sitting around reading, often crying.”

While the children go to sleep, the older family members stay up all night, waiting for the sunrise. Kat says it’s about meeting the dawn. 

“Yule reminds us why we like being tight as a family. Yule helps tighten it up even more. There’s been more than one year that some air has been cleared; the airing of grievances. We unite over Yule.”