“Spring cleaning is everything!” said Yvette Wyatt, who’s a witch, a conjure woman, lifelong Detroiter, and owner of Motown Witch. The Michigan Chronicle reached out to her via email about how Vodun and Hoodoo believers celebrate the new season. Spring ‘started’ on March 20 at 5:24 p.m., according to The Farmer’s Almanac.
And Wyatt means cleaning not only one’s outside environment but also one’s insides.
“Everything gets washed, and unused and broken things get thrown away,” Wyatt said. “My grandmother would also clean us out internally by giving us castor oil. I tend to still do this by juicing and eating fresh salad during this time.”
Vodun and Hoodoo join other earth-based or goddess-based faith practices, such as Wiccans and Druids, in marking Spring as the beginning of the new year. Spring is considered the restart of the natural—and, by extension, the spiritual–cycle, from the flowers and trees, blossoming, green grass regrowing, farmers planting seeds, and animals mating and having offspring.
Some Christian denominations adapted aspects of the blooming season into the holiday of Easter, such as Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny. Some Biblical scholars have said that according to the details of the Nativity story—specifically the mention of lambs—meant that Jesus was born in the spring and not in the winter.
According to Brittanica.com, civilizations that used calendars marked March 25 as New Year’s Day. The Roman king Numa Pompilius is commonly believed to have switched the day to January 1 during his reign around 715-673 BCE in honor of the Roman god Janus, who was the god of new beginnings. Other scholars think January 1 became the official New Year’s Day in 153 BCE. Julius Caesar’s calendar, known as the Julian calendar, kept the first day of January as the start of the new year.
However, when the Roman Empire fell, and Christianity became a world power, they brought back March 25, along with December 25, as the new New Year’s Day. When Pope Gregory VIII tweaked the calendar to correct for leap years and to mark Easter in 1582 officially, he designated January 1 as the beginning of the new year. The American colonies celebrated New Year’s Day on March 25 until the country adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
Considering that this was also the antebellum period, enslaved Africans and African Americans probably adapted their New Year’s Day, clinging to whichever day, be it March 25 or January 1, Wyatt observed. She said her mother did her cleaning ritual on January 1, and her grandmother did her cleaning ritual in the spring.
Wyatt stated that the way Black folks clean, especially Southern and Southern-descended folks like many Detroiters, is based on African traditional religions like Vodun and Hoodoo. One such activity is throwing out the old broom and mop and getting a new one for the new year.
Scholars trace the ritual of spring cleaning back to three cultures: The Jewish tradition, as stated in the Torah, of preparing for Passover by thoroughly tidying the home; The Persian ritual of ‘khane takani,’ a 3,000-year-old tradition of sweeping, dusting, and removing clutter to prevent bad luck in the new year; and the South and Southeast Asian holiday of Songkran, a purification festival in which people completely wash down their homes as well as rinse each other with water. They also perform a sacred rite of pouring water over statues of Buddha to ensure blessings and good luck in the new year.
Though academics haven’t written much about the housecleaning rituals of different African nations, African American historians have reclaimed the history of enslaved Black people and how they maintained their homes from pioneering sociologist W.E.B. DuBois and his negative portrayal of how Black people kept their dwellings in the antebellum South. Scholar Tyler D. Parry states in Black Perspectives that the broom became one of the primary tools.
“Maintaining a clean environment provided order to a life often chaotic, and enslaved people used the surrounding [natural] materials to manufacture their brooms,” such as broom sage or tall weeds found in fields, he said. Enslaved Black people used everyday brooms to sweep the dirt floors in their cabins and to keep their yards tidy. Special brooms were made for the culture-famous wedding rite of “jumping the broom.”
Other rituals that Black folks do that are rooted in African traditional religions are, according to Wyatt, pouring libations, or pouring some liquor for the “homies not here”; ancestral veneration, like setting a plate at the table for a deceased family member and maintaining the gravesite; and covering one’s head when doing spiritual work.
The unfortunate thing about this, Wyatt said, is the stereotypes some Black people have about the faith practices themselves.
“People fear what they don’t understand. So, Vodun and Hoodoo are viewed as evil and devil worship, although there are no ‘devils’ in African traditional religions. African traditional religions are about connecting with nature, venerating your ancestors, and being an upstanding person.”
For those who want to reclaim the spring rituals of African-based religions—besides throwing out the old broom and mop and getting new ones–Wyatt recommends:
- Deep cleaning your house, including washing the walls, the windows, and the window treatments, as well as throwing out unused and broken items.
- Detoxing your body, such as doing a juice fast, water fast, or raw food fast.
- If possible, honor your ancestors by cleaning the debris from their graves.
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