PHOTOS - Eight Celtic holidays photo gallery
There are eight sacred days in Ireland, the times when the old Celtic world stopped to celebrate. Christianity adapted many of their feast days to match. The first one is upcoming on February 1st .
St Brigid’s Day
The years’s first sacred holiday, the feast day of Saint Brigid, is celebrated on February 1st, which marks the beginning of Spring. The Bogha Bríde or Brigid’s Day Cross is the symbol of the day. Traditionally, reeds or straw are collected from the fields and crafted into a cross. St Brigid is Ireland’s most celebrated female saint and was the Abbess of one of the first convents in Ireland.
READ MORE- Irish women should follow St. Brigid, not just St. Patrick
St. Patrick’s Day- Spring Equinox
Around the globe Irish people and those of Irish decent celebrate St. Patricks Day on March 17, which is one of Ireland’s biggest holidays. The special holiday is devoted to the patron saint of Ireland. The religious day is marked by a special mass for the feast and traditionally everyone wears green. This is considered the middle of the Spring season and is also referred to as the Spring Equinox.
READ MORE- World's wackiest St. Patrick's Day celebrations
PHOTOS - Eight Celtic holidays photo gallery
May Day - Bealtaine
May Day, the 1st of May in Ireland is a Holy Day which marks the start of the summer season. Centuries ago, bonfires were lit to welcome the arrival of summer. In Ireland, dependant on what day the holday falls, the feast is marked by a public holiday. In towns around the country May fair days are held where farmers and traders all gather in towns to sell their wares.
READ MORE- West's Awake: The joys of a May day
Midsummer- Summer solstice
The summer solstice is marked in parts of Ireland by bonfires on the side of the road. It is usually celebrated on June 23rd, the longest day of the year. In rural Ireland communities gather and for their local bonfire and celebrate the longest day of the year with song and dance.
READ MORE- Druids celebrating Solstice feel negative energy on the Hill of Tara
Lughnasa
In ancient times this sacred day marked the beginning of harvest on August 1st. It honored the Celtic God of Lugh. In Gaelic folklore it was a time for handfastings or trial marriages that would last a year and a day could be renewed. Many celebrate the holiday today with re-unions, bonfires and dancing.
READ MORE- Celebrate Lughnasa with blueberry pie
Autumnal Equinox
Similar to the St. Patrick ’s Day festival it celebrates when night and day are of equal duration and usually falls in the middle of Autumn, around September 21. The symbol of the scared day is the cornucopia as all the harvest is collected and the stocks for winter is hoped to be plentiful.
Samhain
This day falls between two days Oíche Shamhna (October 31st) and Lá na Marbh (November 1st). Oíche Shamhna is Halloween and Lá na Marbh, is the Day of the Dead, or All Souls Day, when those who have passed away are remembered. It marks the beginning of the “darker half” of the year as the winter approaches.
READ MORE- Top ten Irish traditions for Halloween
Winter Solstice
The winter solstice celebrates the shortest day of the year and dependant on the calendar occurs between December 21-23. Annually hundreds of people gather in Newsgrange, Co. Meath, Ireland to watch the sunrise and magically illuminate the ancient burial site.
READ MORE - Historic importance of the lunar eclipse and winter solstice at Newgrange
2 Comments
-
-
Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.lorettamurphy | Jan 01, 2013, 10:24 AM EST
St.Brigid is the patroness of our order of the LAOH, Division #18, Daughters of Erin, Girardville, Pennsylvania, and we always honor her with a mass as close to her feast day on February 1st as we can arrange it. There are those of us who also continue to honor the Goddess Brigid, for long before Christianity, she was in Ireland. When I had my first daughter, she was named for Brigid the Saint as well as the Goddess - her birthday is near the end of January. Brigid - saint or goddess or both - remains an extremely powerful influence over many of our lives. Her abbey in Kildare is one of the most sacred places in the world and a most visit for anyone who continues to feel a strong connection to their Celtic spirituality. Walking the earth where she once stood is a once in a life time experience. She is beyond the boundaries of religion and was considered by many to be more powerful and more holy than St. Patrick for she was a true daughter of Ireland. Patrick, on the other hand, was for all intense purposes, an immigrant. We women would do well to remember that women in ancient Ireland had a great deal of power and equality even before the Brehon Laws. Women are the givers of life and Celtic mythology, legend, and found artifacts clearly support the age old power of the "fairer" sex.
Seanmor | Dec 26, 2012, 06:19 AM EST
St. Brigit, the saint whose feast day we celebrate on the 1st ofFeb. has many churches named in her honor in this country, including the one in Lexington, Mass, about three hundred yards from the Minutemen Memorial, and the one in Tomkin's Square Park (NYC's lower Eastside), which Cardinal Egan tried very hard to demolish about seven years ago.