Reflections “Scary, scary, Halloween! Am I the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?” so go the opening lines of one of my children’s favorite picture books. As a crone, I am more interested in the hallowedness of this season than its fear factor. Halloween derives from the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain (SOW-in), “summer’s end.” For […]
Reflections Equinox is a time of abundance and hope: harvest in one hemisphere and planting in the other. For a brief time, day and night are equal. But how quickly the balance tips. In the northern hemisphere harvest must be gathered in before the frost; in a trice autumn will pull us deep into the […]
Reflections Happy Lammas! August 1 marks the mid-point of the summer and the beginning of the harvest season. For the ancient Celts the holiday, called Lughnasa (loo-nə-sə), after the Celtic god, Lugh (loo) who dedicated the day to his mother Tailtiu (til-too), was the most festive celebration of the year. Fairs were held on hilltops–round […]
Get ready to celebrate! In 2016, the summer solstice falls on June 20th, which is also the date of the full June moon, traditionally called the Mead Moon in northern Europe. Since mead is an intoxicating beverage made from honey and June is the traditional month for weddings, the two ideas were wedded into the […]
Merry May! Reflections It’s May Day and magic is afoot. Known as Beltane in the ancient Celtic calendar, May 1, marks the beginning of summer and stands opposite October 31, Samhain (sow-en), the beginning of winter. The holiday is named after the Celtic sun god, Belenos, who was thought to pull the sun across the […]
For a brief moment twice a year at the spring and fall equinox the sun shines equally over the northern and southern hemispheres. In March we in the north embrace the return of spring as the earth thaws and planting begins, yet our supermarket produce bins sport apples, squashes, and other delights of the fall […]
As the days grow longer, hibernating nature begins to stir. Indoors, long green stalks grow from narcissus bulbs and unfold into delicate white stars bursting with heady perfume. In the gray world outside, sparrows flit from bird feeder to hedge where a red cardinal, nature’s valentine, hunkers. Soon the ground hog will emerge and give […]
Here in Boston, Massachusetts, the December sun, on its low path across the sky, slips past in a mere nine hours leaving us with fifteen hours of darkness. I am greedy for the light. I long for it to fill me and lift me into the brighter world of joy that the holiday carols promise. […]
The equinox is a “still point of the turning world” (Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening 67). It is a pause between the effulgent explosion of growth fueled by the long days of summer and the empty fields and long nights of autumn. It is a time to gather in the harvest, all that […]
by Melody Lee, co-creator August 1, the ancient Celtic festival of Lughnasa is the cross quarter day between the summer solstice and fall equinox. It is a celebration of the first fruits of the harvest, a time to eat the first meal of the new crop year. Máire MacNeill in The Festival of Lughnasa notes […]
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