Tag: history

Easter and Earth Day

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments


This year Easter and Earth Day are as close as they ever come, so I am writing on the day in between. They are followed by the ancient pagan holiday of Beltane or Beltain (Celtic), which was a major fertility festival in Northern Europe as the trees leafed out and it was planting time. Sine sources sa tThat humans coupled naked in the fields to show the plants and animals what there were supposed to be doing. That custom did not survive to our generation, but the Maypole as a courting dance is a reminder of that past. Also the Biblical command to be fruitful and multiply, a commandment we may have taken too seriously.?
Easter is a moveable feast governed by both sun and moon, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Its customs come from Roman, Celtic, and Nordic traditions, with the eggs and rabbits being Norse in origin, lilies Roman.. While Christians celebrate this holiday with the risen Christ (some literally, others figuratively, it is no small coincidence that it also sees the return of plant life in the northern hemisphere.
When I was in seminary, I was taking a directed readings in weekly sessions with advisor, who was (like many of the professors) a Methodist. He was curious about Unitarianism. When we met in Holy Week he asked “Why do Unitarians celebrate Ester>” I couldn’t resist a wisecrack. “Why, I asked, do Christians name their most important holiday of the year for the Goddess of the dawn). (Eos, Astarte, and Oestra are other forms of her name).
Ester blends nicely into Earth Day as we celebrate the resurrection of the natural world with a renewed commitment to be better stewards of creation. It probably need more than a day, but it is worth asking ourselves some of the basic questions of our responsibilities for the earth by asking ourselves at least once a week (Monday is good) the following questions (one of my answers in parentheses):

  1. What have I learned recently that makes me more concerned about h future of earth’s inhabitants? The menace of micro-particles of plastic in our food and our bodies, animals a well as human)
  2. How can I change my habits to reduce this threat to plant and/or animal life? (avoid using plastics to the extent possible, with the additional reason that they are made with fossil fuels. All my bowls for leftovers and cooking are now glass or some other non-plastic substance. I bring reusable bags to the grocery store. )
  3. How can I work with communities? (Encourage groups that eat together to use paper or glass instead of plastic and be prepared to wash dishes. Ask schools and other larger groups to consider more environmentally friendly products and local governments to bring about this change, especially shifting from plastic to paper containers at sporting events Use biodegradable trash bags for your household waste.)
  4. Ask what businesses and governments can do to reduce the tremendous volume of plastic waste or seek out opportunities to recycle more kinds of plastic. [Invest in firms that produce and/or promote degradable plastics or alternatives to plastic in many uses. Tax fossil fuels to discourage the use of that dwindling resource for products where there as more earth-

So, having eaten the chocolate marshmallow eggs and the Easter ham, and planted vegetables and flowers and shrubs (at least if you live in my part of the world), it’s time to reciprocate. What gift of change and action will you bring to Mother Earth in the days ahead in gratitude for all the nurturing we receive from her?

Saint Patrick Meets Ostara: The Living of the Green

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It is no accident that Saint Patrick’s Day falls in the same week as the vernal equinox, the holiday called Ostara by the ancient Celts. Ireland is the Emerald Isle with, as Johnny Cash reminded us, its 40 shades of green. Ostara had other names, Oestre, Astarte, and, of course, Easter, yet another celebration of revival, renewal, and resurrection. (I once was asked by a seminary professor why Unitarian Universalists celebrate Easter. I replied with my own question. Why do Christians name their most important holiday after the goddess of the dawn?

Some of the customs of the equinox holiday have migrated to the moveable feast of Easter, celebrated in the Western world on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring Equinox. They are supplemented by ancient Roman and Scandinavian equinox customs involving eggs and rabbits, agents of fertility.

What comes to mind about Saint Patrick, besides green beer and shamrocks? You probably know that he was born around 400 CE in Britain to a Romanized Christian family. Captured by Celtic pirates, he was hauled off to Ireland and worked as a shepherd. He escaped, returned to Britain, studied for priesthood, and was ordained. He chose to return to return to Ireland as a Christian missionary..

Like many such missionaries, Patrick adapted the Christian story to the local environment—a rural, earth-centered culture, He used the shamrock or three -leafed clover to explain the concept of the trinity. He planted churches and monasteries all over Ireland. It is appropriate that his day is celebrated during the season of preparing for spring planting. Like so many other holidays including Yule), the celebration of Ireland’s patron saint was part of the bridge from the old Celtic nature-based religion to what the Irish called the New Faith.

Initially the New Faith was welcomed to Ireland as an addition, rather than a competitor, but eventually it became its own wayward version of Roman Christianity. Today there is a revival of the Celtic version of Christianity not only in the two strongholds of Celtic culture, Ireland and Scotland, but also in North America. That culture and that way of being Christian was earth-centered, non-exclusive, and egalitarian, with a particularly strong affirmation of women as full participants in the larger community. Women in early Ireland had the right to choose their spouses, divorce if they wished, get an education, own property, and enter many of the professions. Many of those rights were not available to women in this country until the late 19th century. (A nod to another annual observance in March, Women’s History Month.)

Even after Roman Christianity forced the Irish to end their practice of co-houses of nuns and monks who were free to marry, have children, and raise them in the faith, there was still always a Celtic underground that survives today in some of the ancient holy places, especially the Scottish island of Iona. There is much wisdom in dedicating this pair of holidays to the re-planting of that vision in our own hearts and mind, As as we begin the season of fertilizing and planting, we can celebrate our oneness with the natural world that nurtures and sustains us.

Note: I am indebted to historian Peter Tremayne’s fascinating set of historicall novels about Sister Fidelma for background on the customs of the Irish in the 5th and 6th centuries CE.

Ready for the Counter-Revolution?

~ purplesage41 ~ 4 Comments


Today is  the end of a month with three famous revolutions—American, Cuban, and French.  Did they make things better? Sometimes, for some people, at a very high cost. We are the heirs and progenitors of many revolutions.  The digital revolution. The industrial revolution. The printing press, which revolutionized 16th century Europe. The Green revolution, which was at the time believed the answer to world hunger but wasn’t. The Protestant Reformation, at least the left wing of it, which threw out lots of bathwater and several babies in the process.

 Actual armed battles were the chosen format for many of these revolts. One of my heroines is Boudica, Queen of the Iceni in Britain, The Iceni and their allies, led by Boudica, revolted against Rome in 60 AD and even won some major battles before finally being defeated by a more disciplined Roman army.  The Iceni and their Celtic relatives practiced democracy, unlike the Romans, which is good for peacetime but not so much in the military,

England’s Civil War began by beheading King Charles I and led 12 years later to restoring the monarchy. Twenty-eight years later, the Glorious Revolution ousted The Old Pretender, ran off the Young Pretender. and created animosity between Scotland (homeland of England’s Stuart kings) and England that persists to this day.   The bloody and endless French Revolution. The American revolution. The US Civil War (civil wars are also revolutions). The Spanish Civil War. The many revolutions against colonial domination in Asia, Africa, and South America.

In the 18th century, Americans tried to create a workable government to manage the public affairs of 13 very diverse colonies once they were free from the oppression of British rule.  That utopian vision is always the delusion of revolutionaries, the faith that keeps them going through Valley Forge and other calamities.  But no one ever anticipates a counter-revolution.

 The Roman Catholic Church officially launched a counter Reformation. The American Civil War was definitely a counterrevolution to protect the privileges of the while male hierarchy of the Southern slave states. France had so many counter-revolutions I can never keep track.

We citizens of the United States are in the throes of an attempted counter-revolution, long in the planning, detailed in its vision for post-democracy in America, and banking on this year’s election to bring it about, whether peacefully or with violence. It is a vision of what its proponents thought life used to be like when men (white ones) were men and women know their place and so did the lower classes, especially African Americans and native Americans. These counter-revolutionaries believe that an earlier America was a society in which we were only responsible for ourselves (we=men), women lived lives a modified version of he Handmaid’s Tale, teaching a dubious version of Christianity was mandatory in public schools, equality of opportunity and respect were lacking, and violence was the answer to everything. Rule by a privileged minority at the expense of a resentful majority.

And yet…there are increasing signs that democracy, like the phoenix, can rise from the ashes—maybe even put out the flames! We are all called neither to unwarranted optimism or to deep despair, but to active, engaged hope to keep our fragile democracy alive for the generations yet to come. Like the Minutemen of the original American Revolution, you are not called to violence but to support, act, and vote for democracy to survive.  As my fellow economist Eugene Steuerle says, “We get the government we deserve.”

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Saint Patrick and the Vernal Equinox

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In ancient times, especially among the Celts, there were eight holidays—four sky holidays (the equinoxes and solstices) and four earth holidays. These holidays were occasions of singing and dancing and music and feasting and bonfires. They helped to signal humans to align their body rhythms of sleeping and waking, working and resting, to longer or shorter days and warmer or cooler weather.

One of those holidays we celebrate this week.  It was known to the Celts as Ostara, named for the goddess of the dawn. In the more inhabited parts of the Northern hemisphere, it marked the official start of the season of spring. Equinox means that the sun is at the equator, headed north in spring, south in fall, and our days and nights are of equal length.  Actually, right here in upstate South Carolina, that happened on the 14th of March, with sunrise at 7:40 am and sunset at 7:40 pm. The official equinox falls on the 19th.

As the Christian faith spread out to lands largely populated by pagans of various kinds, church leaders soon found that people might be open to the New Faith but still were attached to their eight holiday celebrations.  The easiest response was to ‘baptize” some of the traditional holidays by giving them a Christian interpretation.  This accommodation was most obvious in celebrating the birth of Jesus (since there is no known official date of birth) at the time of Yul or the winter solstice.  Birth of the Sun, birth of the Son. A new beginning.  The customs were easily combined, although there are still some very pagan hymns in many Christian hymnals, notably The Holly and the Ivy and Deck the Halls. Another holiday, an earth holiday that for Celtic pagans marked the anticipation of winter, was Samhain, which became Halloween or All Hallows Eve.  For Christians, as the vegetation was dying and many of the farm animals were headed for slaughter, it was also a time to honor our dead.

A third holiday that attracted the attention of Christian missionaries was Ostara, the spring equinox.  A new beginning and rebirth offered an ideal time to celebrate the risen savior.   Many of the customs of Easter, which is a movable feast based on the full moon in relation to the equinox, are borrowed from the Celts and the Norse pagans, including eggs and rabbits and new clothes.  But Ostara remained, even though Easter acquired the pagan name for its own festival.

Ostara was a popular holiday as flowers began to bloom and the days grew noticeably longer.  The answer to the missionary’s prayer la in Saint Patrick, the young Welsh priest who brought Christianity to Ireland. Patrick was not overly concerned about their celebrating earth festivals with dancing and singing.  Many Celts were open to the New Faith but unwilling to divest themselves of their ancestral customs and celebrations.  The unique compromise? In choosing feast days to celebrate the major Catholic saints, there was rarely any defined birthday or death date to designate the celebration of the saint on a particular day.  What better choice of day for the Emerald Isle to celebrate Saint Patrick than the vernal equinox? The wearin’ of the green, the shamrock that he used to teach the Trinity, the green beer and singing and dancing and Irish blessings mark this very Irish holiday everywhere as a charming marriage of Catholic faith and its uniquely Irish interpretation.

Patrick, in the fifth and sixth centuries, was flexible.  He could marry Catholic doctrine to Irish/Celtic customs with no difficulty.  So you don’t have to be Catholic or pagan or even  Irish to seize the occasion and celebrate the arrival of spring. As the Irish say, may the wind always be at your back, and the road rise to meet you on your travels.