Calendars, holidays, their relationship, and importance.

In the past, I have written about Heathen holidays, and I tried to not be offensive.  It didn't get me or my message very far.  Heathenry has just three major holidays.  That's it.  The rest is secondary, some of which are recent additions.  And then we have one that is an out and out celebration of a Christian saint.  Let me start at a new point.

All of Northern Europe worshipped in some way and form the Aesir.  But there was not in any way or form a 'pan Northern European religious' practice.  Nothing was the same; similarities here, a difference there.  Let's look at people and calendars.

Scandinavians and Icelanders I will refer to as 'Norse.'  The group I will refer to as Anglo-Saxon is comprised of Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Angles, the early Franks, and Lombards.  Both groups had these three major holidays.

For the Norse - The Ynglinga Saga, chapter eight (Winter Nights, Yule, and Sigrblot).  In the Heimskringla, the Saga of Hakon the Good, section fifteen.

For the Anglo-Saxons - A few excerpts from Tacitus's Germania and excerpts from Bede's De Temporum Ratione.  

What makes this challenging is that Elder Heathenry (Heathenry before Christianization) did not use a solar calendar.  They used a lunar calendar.

The Norse celebrated the first day of winter on a full moon that appears usually mid to late October.  It is called Winter Nights or Disablot.  The Anglo-Saxons did the same but referred to it as Winter Moon.

The Norse and the Anglo-Saxons celebrated Yule during mid to late January, depending on when the full moon occurred.  It was a three-day celebration with the focus on good crops for the coming year.  The Anglo-Saxons give us Mother's Night.  It was the first day of their Yule and it was held on the full moon.  In both cases, Yule is a three-day celebration, crop focused, and half-way between the first day of winter and the first day of summer.

 Sigrblot is the Norse celebration of the first day of summer.  It's done mid to late April, depending on the full moon.  The Anglo-Saxons celebrated the first day of summer with a full day feast and called it Oster/Ostar/Eostre.

These are the three major celebrations from Elder Heathenry, and at no time was a holiday celebration wrapped around a solstice or equinox.  The answer for this is simple - Elder Heathenry used lunar calendars.  Solstices and equinoxes form the bulwark of solar calendars, the Roman/Julian and the Popish/Gregorian, which is used today.  It was not until Christianization that solar calendars were  introduced to the northern peoples.

There are holidays that should be celebrated, like Haustblot/Blood Month in November and Alfablot in December.  The point is the calendar origins and then wisely celebrating them.  The one alluded to above that should not be celebrated by Heathens/Pagans is Walpurgisnacht.

Walpurga was the niece of Boniface and she had the same proclivities as her uncle.  For her work, the Church gleefully made her a saint.  Her feast day is the 'eve of May' ... or April 30th.

These topics and more are the subjects of my new book.  Hopefully, it will be published before this year is finished.  This post is but a bare thumbnail concerning these subjects. 


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