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Home Page > Roots > The eight sacred Celtic holidays of the year - from St. Brigid's Day to the winter solstice - PHOTOS

The eight sacred Celtic holidays of the year - from St. Brigid's Day to the winter solstice - PHOTOS

When the ancient Druid customs and Christianity mesh

MOLLY MULDOON,

IrishCentral Deputy Editor

Published Monday, December 24, 2012, 4:47 AM

Updated Monday, December 24, 2012, 4:47 AM

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A ray of light beams into the burial tomb in Newgrange , County Meath.

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.

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.

PHOTOS - Eight Celtic holidays photo gallery

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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.

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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.

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