Tag: ostara

Saint Patrick Meets Ostara: The Living of the Green

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment


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.

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.