This is my annual updated version a holiday variously known as the feast of Saitn Bridget, Imbolc, Oimelc (both Celtic words related to lambing), and Groundhog Day. I mentioned that the first of February was the only holiday devoted to housecleaning in an email to my daughter. Aha, she said that explains the backstory for the movie Groundhog Day. It’s like house cleaning. You clean, it gets dirty, you clean it again, it gets dirty again… A good story line for a movie! At least my repetition, unlike the movie, is only once a year.
Imbolc, Oimelc, or Groundhog Day, they all anticipate spring. It is one of the lesser-known cross-quarter holidays on the Wheel of the Year. In addition to Groundhog Day it survived as the feast of the purification of the virgin (Mary) after the birth of her son 40 days earlier. It is also the day devoted to Saint Bridget or Brigid. Bridget is the Triune Goddess in her maiden phase, converted to a Christian saint. The corn maiden from the previous harvest is brought out in her honor as a virgin once again, ready to encounter the Sun King reborn at Yul in a mating ritual of spring.
The purification part of this holiday was known in pre-feminist times as spring house cleaning. In ancient time among the Celts, Imbolc cleaning consisted of removing the Yule greenery from the home and burning it, cleaning up fields and home, and in Ireland, burning old Bridget wheels and making new ones. By Imbolc, most of us have taken down the tree and put away the decorations from Christmas, but if you haven’t, you can use Imbolc as the excuse for delaying it till now. After Imbolc, you are at risk of being labeled a lazy pagan if you don’t deal of the winter holiday residue.
Imbolc is approaching the end of an indoor time. It’s cold and still pretty dark, but it is the waxing period of light and warmth following the winter solstice. It represents a final stage of wintry inwardness before the crocuses and daffodils invite us to look outward again. Housebound, we must find our spiritual practice within that space. It is the late stage of the hibernating season as we prepare for the cycle of life to begin again.
Spiritual practice has enjoyed something of a resurgence in recent decades. A spiritual practice is anything that is centering, mindful, focusing, and connects you to the sacred in a very inclusive sense. Practicing patience with difficult people is a spiritual practice. Listening attentively is a spiritual practice. Eating mindfully is a spiritual practice. Meditation and prayer are traditional spiritual practices in many religions. But there is also a form of spiritual practice that invests the ordinary activities of daily life with significance in the way carry them out.
The essence of spring housecleaning as spiritual practice blends several Christian and Buddhist ideas. One is humility; no task is too menial that we are above it, as in Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. The second is mindfulness, to be engaged in the moment, to calm the monkey mind, to focus all our attention on the window being washed or the floor being swept. The third is letting go of attachment to possessions as an encumbrance on our spiritual life, passing them on to another use or another user. The spiritual practice of spring housecleaning can incorporate all three.
Housecleaning means two different things. One is the emphasis on clean, as in wash windows, polish furniture, remove cobwebs, paint, scrub floors, clean woodwork, dust the books. That’s both the humble and the mindful part. In the words of one contemporary Buddhist writer, “after enlightenment, the laundry.” The other kind of housecleaning is to declutter, simplify, recycle, let go of possessions no longer needed, like the greens from Yul in the Celtic tradition. That’s the letting go part.
For many years my Lenten practice, for the forty days that begin sometime after Imbolc and stretch to the floating holiday of Easter, was to wash a window every day. Then I moved to a smaller house, which taxed my ingenuity to find forty windows. I included car windows, TV and computer screens, mirrors. Friends helpfully offered their windows, but I did not wish to discourage their own spiritual practice. There is something very satisfying, very symbolic in letting the light of the returning spring shine through a clean window, but it means more when it’s my window.
A friend described a similar cleaning ritual, only she does it all on New Year’s Day. She takes each of her many books down one at a time off the shelf, dusts it (and the shelf), and decides whether it stays or goes. If books are a rich and meaningful part of your life, revisiting these old friends and deciding what role they still may play in your life and which ones should be shared with others is definitely a spiritual practice. This particular ritual embodies both humility (dusting). mindfulness (concentrated attention on the books and the memories and teachings they hold) and letting go (books to be passed on). This year I used my cocooning season, December 26th to February 1st, to declutter bookshelves, which led to one empty bookcase and about 80 book donations, plus a major cleansing of my Kindle.
So, as the daffodils and crocuses pop their leaves through the ground, as the groundhog in Punxatawny ponders his forecast, we can prepare to emerge from the hibernating season by renewing the spaces we inhabit. Like the bluebirds, whose house I have to clean very soon because they refuse to return to a used nest, let us be about the humble tasks of maintaining our habitats. Spring housecleaning only comes once a year!
Tag: holidays
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Day of Service
This year, ironically, the start of the second reign of Donald Trump coincides with both the national college football championship and Martin Luther King Day. I’m betting that more people will watch the football game than the inauguration. But the real contrast is between how we observe the other two events, Inauguration Day and the Day of Service, that many of us observe in honor of MLK. Many communities will have organized service projects that will, alas, overlap the noon inauguration. For me, that’s an easy choice..
But I like to honor the day of service my way. So I chose this week, the week of his actual birthday (January 15th), because I don’t believe in forcing actual dates of a holiday into the nearest Monday. And instead of a day, I will do something each day from Monday through Friday.
Today I am speaking to the county legislative delegation about making the state’s local governments more accountable and transparent rather than evading or ignoring the legal procedures they are required to follow. Advocacy is one form of service.On Tuesday I plan to take my blind friend and neighbor to the grocery store and the recycling center. Care giving is another form of service. I will also try to recruit a college student to help her with transportation. Care giving is another form of service.
On Wednesday, I am making my share of dinner for about 25 residents of a local homeless shelter, It is a monthly service organized by my congregation. Helping the less fortunate is also a form of service.
On Thursday I get paid, so it is a good time to go to my favorite charity website and give some money for Gaza and California. Money can be a vehicle for service. I am also attending a Zoom meting with updates on what is happening in the state legislature that we might want to discuss with our legislators. Advocacy again.
On Friday I will tend to my duties for the two organizations through which I channel much of my service, The League of Women Voters and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Service is more effective and more satisfying when done within organized caring communities. I serve the fellowship as Social Action chair and the League as program chair. Both communities are dedicated to making the world a better place in many ways. Serving in leadership roles sustains the organizations through which we can engage in service more effectively.a
The point of this recitation is not to tell you what a good person I am, but to be mindful of what I do and why I do it. It is also meant to illustrate the variety of things that I choose to do, while others among you may have totally different but equally valuable ways or serving the larger community. I hope that this day will make me more intentional about carrying through this commitment the other eleven months of the year.
Celebrate your day of service in ways that reflect your unique challenges, opportunities, skills and interests.
Happy New Year
This is, of course, not everyone’s New Year. The Chinese New Year is in February, the Jewish and Celtic new years are in the fall. On the old calendar, April First was New Year’s Day, at least in what is present day France. There is a new school year every fall for those who are students or teachers. The nine month academic year at Clemson University, where I taught for 50 years, began on August 15th, so one August 14th I had a New Year’s Eve party.. For each of us we can observe a personal new year on the day after our birthday. Since I was born on June 30th, every July 1st is truly the first day of the rest of my life but also of my life-year.
Western culture’s choice of a New Year falls at the start of the month named for the Roman God of doorways (Janus). He has two faces, one facing in, one facing out, of forward and backward if you prefer. It is a time of starting over. An odd assortment of events and celebrations marks this late point in the solstice season—football, New York ball drop, parties, resolutions, fireworks, and in the south, eating fatback, collard greens and black-eyed peas. I did that once. Not my favorite menu, but supposedly they will bring abundance and wealth in the year to come.
Here is a poem for this holiday
The morning light comes sooner now
We wake in hope to a new year.
Janus the two-faced God
Invites us to look back
But also forward, a fresh start.
We try, succeed, or fail
And try again.
These turning points in the heavens
Remind us to be mindful,
To pay attention to our lives
To savor joy, to grieve enough,
To let the dead past bury I dead.
And rise this New Year’s morning
To embrace life again.
Boxing Day and Economic Justice
Boxing Day is a largely but not exclusively British tradition of gift-giving to the poor after Christmas Day. Some sources trace it to the medieval obligation of the lord of the manor to provide certain necessities each year to his peasants and serfs. It was not charity but duty, including cloth, flour, and other necessities of life. Another tradition is to empty the tip jar at commercial establishments and divide the money among the firm’s workers. In both cases, it was not charity but earned cash or goods, much like the Christmas bonuses that many firms share today.
Both traditions exist side-by-side. In fact, it is now observed more as a shopping day than a giving day, although both can be combined. The notion that the profits of the firm should be shared with the workers who made it possible is less and less popular in our winner-take-all free market society, but the Christmas bonus is a remnant. In the 19th century, the practice of emptying the church alms box on Boxing Day (also known as the Feast of Saint Steven) and Victorian influences shifted the emphasis to post Christmas charity as the coldest days of winter were just beginning.
Both of these kinds of giving and receiving are issue of economic justice, the only holiday for which that is the primary focus. What do we owe to those who earn low wages doing essential work, or to those unable to support themselves? A poem for Boxing Day
A Holiday for Justice
One day a year we follow feudal Lords
In earned and festal sharing of the wealth
Created by many, but possessed by few.
It is not a time of charity
But limited admission that
Abundance is the work of many hands.
In modern times, earned sharing seems to be
A voluntary act of charity
Begrudged when it is often fairly earned.
What do I woe? To whom is payment due?
Our what do others deserve but not receive?
Justice is not charity. May we
All receive more than we deserve,
And in gratitude, pass it forward.
Welcome Yule
A popular expression among some Christians is “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Yes, there is a connection, but The season is the reason why the choice was made to celebrate the unknown date of his birth at this particular time of year. Before Jesus, there was Saturnalia, and Diwali, and Hanukkah. The common thread is the holiday that falls this Saturday, December 21st, the winter solstice, known since ancient times as the festival of Yul or Yule. It celebrates the shortest day and the longest night of the year as the northern hemisphere turns away from the sun..
In Celtic and other traditions, the story goes something like this. The Sun God is born at Yul and grows to manhood. His companion through this travel in the Triune Goddess, maiden Bridgid, Mother Danu, and the crone, who has various names. He courts the maiden in spring, and she becomes pregnant with the sun god. At summer solstice the sun is a the peak of his powers and the goddess she is radiant with a child in her womb. The Sun God begins to decline and dies at the winter solstice even as a new sun god is born. The crone is renewed as the maiden, and the cycle begins again. Or at least, that’s ‘the mythical story that underlies the holidays that enable us to reconnect with he rhythms of the turning year.
Here is a solstice poem:
This ancient holiday
Marks ending and beginning
The seed is still beneath the earth
Preparing to emerge from its cocoon
At Imbolc or beyond.
Yule calls us to take rest in darkness
To hibernate, reflect, and be prepared
To bloom once more.
Let us not hasten through
These cold short days
Spring will come soon enough.
There is no spring without winter
To prepare us or rebirth.
All Saints Day
We, the living, are keepers of the memories
of those who came before
We all had parents, teachers, siblings, friends
Who are no longer present
But will live on as long
as we remember them.
We share the memories of good people
Who made a diffeer3nce in our common life
Great men and women whose prophetic voices
Called all back into covenant
With earth and fellow humans
and all living things..
Remembrance is our yearly payment
on the debt we owe
to those who blazed the path
on which we tread.
.
Saint Patrick and the Vernal Equinox
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.
A Torrent of Holidays
I always like to write about holidays. (A gentle reminder of my book Economics Takes A Holiday!) February began with a couple of starter presidential primaries and Groundhog Day on the 2nd (historically celebrated by spring housecleaning), paused for Superbowl Sunday, then cruised on through Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday, Valentine’s Day on the 14th, and Presidents’ Day on the 19th. Easter and President’s Day are moveable feasts, especially Easter which falls March 31st, which moved Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday back into mid-February. President’s Day always falls between the 15th and the 21st of February, whichever is a Monday. It is also not the ever the birthday of either of the two presidents it was created to honor, Washington and Lincoln.
This confluence of holidays calls for exceptionally rapid costume changes of emotional attitude. The Superbowl was just two days before Mardi gras, Valentine’s Day coincided with Ash Wednesday, and before we knew it, there was Presidents Day. A quick change of pace from a fast-paced, loud, noisy football game watched by millions to a religious holiday marking a season of repentance and reflection interspersed with a celebration of romantic love and ending on a sharp reminder that we are in a very intense and perhaps even ominous presidential election year. From crocuses to Dust Thou art and to dust you shall return to Super Tuesday presidential primaries in just one short 29-day month.
Unlike the Christmas holidays, each one called for a different kind of emotional response. Valentine’s Day is lighthearted and sentimental, hearts and chocolates and flowers and cards. Presidents’ Day invites us to be patriotic and closes the banks and the Post Office, and in many places, the schools. There is also the invitation to shop at the Presidents’ Day sales, spending some of that green stuff with their pictures on the front. Mardi Gras is the final celebratory fling (the carnival, literally meaning farewell to meat) before Ash Wednesday. This holiday calls observant Christians to the austere penitential six weeks of Lent. Even those of us whose faith traditions didn’t make a big deal out of Lent often feel compelled to join our high church comrades in giving something up for Lent. Nothing like a holiday the celebrates self-denial. By Tuesday we will be in for a good rest with no significant holidays till Saint Patrick’s Day four weeks later. Whew!
All these holidays have a common element, however, and that element is hope. Valentine’s Day which was originally a Roman holiday. The name of the month, February, refers to the fever of love. The earth is preparing to be fertile and humans are willing to go along with it by celebrating romantic love, even if it is only by watching reruns of Bridgerton on Netflix. Renewal of plant and animal life as we all start to emerge from winter’s hibernation is a source of hope. As the weather warms, we can spend more time outdoors—walking, gardening, coffee on the patio. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is banished until November.
Presidential elections sometimes run on hope, sometimes on fear, most often (this year included) on a mixture of the two. In a polarized nation, both the hopes and the fears are more intense. Theologian Joanna Macy reminds us that hope is useless unless it is active hope, a spur to invest our efforts in seeking out those candidates who best embody our vision of how our state, local, and federal governments should carry out that visionary hope. We can also hope for the future of our planet by engaging in sustainable lifestyles and inquiring of candidates what they propose to do about growth management and air and water pollution and global warming.
Finally, Mardi Gras and Lent are about letting go, turning one’s back on self-indulgence after one last fling and instead make an effort at cultivating the spirit. (In medieval times, it was also a way to stretch the food supply in the final months before spring crops began to come in.) It is long enough to change, short enough to see the light of Easter at the end of the Lenten tunnel. Just a manageable chunk of time to sustain the hope that by Easter, the holiday of renewal and rebirth, we will be reborn as better, wiser, more patient and less greedy and gluttonous than we were six weeks ago. That’s a tall order, but we have to start somewhere.
AS we zip through these back-to-back holidays, let us celebrate hope. Especially the hope that we have transformed into the practice of active hopefulness as we work toward bringing our hopes to fruition. In summer, this season of hope is followed by the season of joy, in autumn the season of wisdom, and in winter a season of rest and recovery. May the hopeful and challenging rhythms of the earth resonate in your body, mind, and soul this spring holiday season.
A Joyful Yule!
Given my name (Mother Holle of the Celtic pagan tradition, midway between the maiden and the crone among the three Goddesses, and to whom the holly is sacred) I cannot fail to honor this holiday. Two famous Christmas carols celebrate this holiday, Deck the Halls, with no mention of Jesus) and The Holly and the Ivy, which added some nativity language as an afterthought. It is one of many New Years at this time (although the official Celtic New Year was Samhain, November 1st). It joins the ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia and the 12 days of Christmas from Christmas Day to Three Kings on January 6th for a prolonged celebration of the lengthening of days, with warmer days eventually tagging in after. T be human, or even Mallal, is to be attuned to the seasons, to be both geocentric, and with an eye on the source of warmth and light that sustain us and all life, to be heliocentric as well.
Yule and Christmas alike have celebrations of feasting and dancing, music and greenery, family gatherings and community events. It is a time to express gratitude for the returning sun with generosity, offerings of food and other gifts to those in need. But there are two shadows that deserve to be acknowledged and honored. One is the shadow, the darkness, in which roots and bulbs lie under the frosty ground gestating in preparation for the coming season or awakening and rebirth. In the meantime, we humans tend to our own roots as we hunker down and try to stay warm. Think of all the carols that celebrate that inwardness. Let It Snow! White Christmas. Blue Christmas. Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. I’ll Be Home for Christmas….
The other shadow is the sun, as earth absorbs more of its raise and the temperature rises, threatening agriculture, coastal areas, and other changes that make life on earth less sustainable for future generations and for all life, not just androcentric (also known as humans!). Christmas has become, over the years, a celebration of conspicuous consumption, in ways that are not good for sustainability. A few years ago, my oldest daughter pressured me to make more of my gifts “consumables and experiences” as a way of not cluttering our lives and our space with more things to be used, discarded, or just clutter up our lives. It has been a challenge. Fewer gifts by drawing names among my three daughters, three sons-in-law, and four granddaughters. (And as of this year, one grandson-in-law.) I consider books consumable—once read, most of them can be passed on. Edibles. Subscriptions. Activities in lieu of gifts—movies, dining out, mini golf (it is, after all, South Carolina). Cookie baking for the girls, the gift of minor home repairs from sons-in-law.
However you choose to make this holiday meaningful for yourself, your loved ones, your communities and the earth, may you have a Blessed Yule/Christmas/Saturnalia (if there are any ancient Romans life!), using this time of dormancy for reflection and renewal as we prepare for the longer days that lie ahead.
Summer Solstice
Monday marks the summer solstice,the longest day of the year. In Celtic mythology, the sun God is at the peak of his powers, the mother Goddess is pregnant with his child who will be born at the winter solstice. In Australia, New Zealand, and a chunk of South America, it is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. There they huddle before a warm fire, and celebrate the opposite solstice in December at the beach.
The four sky holidays (equinoxes ans solstices) are celebrated with bonfires–spring at dawn, summer and midday,autumn at dusk, winter at midnight. If those times of day remind you of Easter sunrise services and midnight mass, you have penetrated the Celtic roots of some of our non-biblical religious customs. Many of the quaint practices of Easter–rabbits, eggs, lilies, new clothes–are vestiges of pre-Christian religious customs celebrating the arrival of spring.
The ancient Celts, according to tradition, observed eight evenly spaced nature holidays. Solstices and equinoxes were dictated by the rotation of the earth around the sun, while the four cross-quarter holidays were earth-centered. The Celtic New year (Samhain) was on November 1st, surviving as Halloween and All Saints Day and the Mexican Day of he Dead (November 2nd). Like the Jews, whose New Year is observed in the fall, the Celts began their days at desk and went through the darkness of both night and winter into the light of renewal, revival, and rebirth.Samhain was the time of the final harvest and bringing the animals back from pasture for the winter.
Anticipation of spring with the birth of lambs gave the February 1st the name of Imbolc, or ewe’s milk. We observe it as Groundhog Day on February 2nd. This ancient holiday was a time to clean house n anticipation of spring. (Last chance to take down the tree and put away the Christmas decorations!) .
Beltane was a fertility festival celebrated on May 1st. May Day was originally a flower-centered festival, gathering wildflowers and planting crops, not an international labor holiday. Lammas or Lughnasad, August 1st, celebrated the first harvest. It comes much sooner in warmer climates in the northern hemisphere, but these holidays originated in Northern Europe. Colonial New Englanders continued the ancient Celtic custom of bringing the first fruits of the harvest to church to be blessed and shared at Lammas. (I prefer a blessing of the vegetables to a blessing of the animals. Vegetables are much better behaved in church.)
We modern humans are largely disconnected from these rhythms of earth and sky, insulated by air-conditioning and food from the grocery store that can be frozen or refrigerated. WE can eat blueberries and watermelon year-round even if it means shipping them long distance from Chile or other pints far south. Change of clothing is one of our few requirements as the seasons change and we swap coats and sweaters for t-shirts and bathing suits. And yet, the pull of the rhythm of the seasons is still strong. The urge to plant is evident int he spring, even if we are more often planting for beauty than for sustenance. Recreation moves outdoors in the warm summer months, while long winter nights are a time to huddle in front of the fireplace, with short daytime forays for snow sports in colder climates. We can try to insulate ourselves from nature,but we are in fact a part of nature,and our bodies and hearts pulsate to its changes. We are also dependent on nature for all the resources that sustain us–food, water, electricity, fossil fuels, metals and minerals, plants and animals.
Each season brings different gifts of both beauty and sustenance, challenge and opportunity. If a single word unites these eight ancient holidays into a common thread, it should be gratitude. Gratitude for rain and sun, soil and water, food and fuel,beauty and wonder. Eight chances to county our blessings and honor Mother Earth and Father Sky. A joyous summer solstice to all my readers!
PurpleSage41 