February Packed Full of Festivals Both Ancient & Modern—an Unholy Cultural Mix North and South of Equator

FEBRUARY PACKED FULL OF FESTIVALS BOTH ANCIENT & MODERN-AN UNHOLY CULTURAL MIX NORTH AND SOUTH OF EQUATOR

SURFACING LIKE GROUNDHOGS 2/2 to SEE SUNSHINE CAST our [WRITERLY] SHADOW, WE COWARDLY SCRIBES DIVE BACK into our WO/MAN CAVE for SIX MORE WEEKS of WINTER

Leaping into Leap Year, February has Extra Day but Clocks Don’t Spring Forward until March 10th U.S./March 28th Britain—Meanwhile Carnival Just Keeps on Celebrating…

Perhaps we should listen more attentively to the poor maligned [overworked & underground] iconic Groundhog, instead of leaping into Spring at first sign of a snowdrop or a Carnival carnation. But with pre-Celtic [Irish] Là Fhèile Brìghde, Feast Day of Bride/Brigid/Brigantia; Xtian Candlemas February 2nd comes craziness in Western world: New Orleans Carnival; Venice, Italian Carnevale, Rio de Janeiro Carnaval & all hell-literally-breaks loose, lasting till Full Snow Moon (Algonquin Groundhog moon) 2/24.

This year, mercifully, the American Groundhog may have been able to escape the usual attention in U.S. cities in the North, because not only is politics drowning out his appearance-as early voters go to polls, but both hemispheres—South and North of the Equator are making the most of extended Carnival.

In the Italian city of Venice, 2024 festival [pix above] stretches from February 3rd-23rd, thru Valentine’s day in an unprecedented 700th year anniversary celebration of the death [1324] of its native son, world navigator Marco Polo. His discovery of the Orient by sea, (living in Mongol emperor Kublai Khan’s summer residence at Shangdu); and the Middle East (Constantinople/present Istanbul) by land (along the ‘Silk Road‘, below) brought riches and new knowledge to his home port. His own account of his travels as a 17-year-old —Il Milioni— [alongside his father & uncle] opened new vistas for 14thC Europeans, who had never before tasted spices, experienced gunpowder, porcelain, or the revelation of paper money—or crocodiles!

New Orleans, Louisiana [NOLA aka the ‘Big Easy’] is best known for its Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) feasting & unrestrained revelry in U.S.Carnival capital during week before Xtian calendar’s 40-day Lenten fast, when house banquets overspill into street parties & parades go on all night long.

As Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day, lotsa purple Creole bagels & lottery tickets -along with multiple Brit./U.S.pancakes-will be consumed this year on Feb.Lucky 13th!

Word is that the pageantry of daily festivities in the lagoons of Venice, home city of Marco Polo—masquerade parades, daily costume contests & chic evening masqued balls—which begin on the eve of Valentine’s Day—will continue through Lent [traditionally a time of Roman Catholic stricture, fasting & prayer], only to end at Easter, last weekend in March! We shall see.

If Venice Carnevale—traditionally a demure, elegant sophisticated round of masqued balls, private evening parties & gondola-led water processions from Doge’s Palace*, St.Mark’s Sq. along the Grand Canal to the Bridge of Sighs—lets it hair down, it may even rival the wild & unruly 24-hour madness characteristic of Rio’s festival which is famed for lasting all day-all night for over a month. Venetian Bull Festival was traditionally a parade where a real Bull, pigs & poultry were slaughtered annually; then cooked & given as gifts to the poor in the lagoon during Carneval.

Venice may have its Festival of the Bull [2nd top l.] where gifts of food are handed from a gondola gang to other water-borne Gran Canale vessels, culminating in bull-slaughter—masqued bull—no longer real carnage! But Rio’s mile-long Sambadrome parade [above mid l. & rt.] captures over a million entranced spectators along a route where rainbow-bedecked floats interact with masqued attendees in the seats.

Masquerading as birds-on-stilts, rt. these peculiar hawk-billed creatures are part of Venetian Bull Festival where traditionally a real Bull, pigs & poultry were slaughtered annually; then cooked & given as gifts to the poor in the lagoon during Carneval.

*Doge Vitale II Michiel, 12thC Duke of Venice, in 1122 led a Venetian fleet of 100 vessels & 15,000 men to the Holy Land under flag of St.Peter, with Papal blessing from Rome; Doge=Latin, Dux, Duke.

New Moon February 10th Heralds Oriental Year of Dragon Who Reigns until January 29th, 2025: Lucky for Monkeys, Roosters, Pigs

We’ve all experienced the caravan [current slang for a mobile home]. But few of us are aware of the word’s etymology, or its 12th-15thCC origin; we think of French caravane or Medieval Latin caravana; words picked up during the Crusades, via Arabic qairawan from Persian karwan= ‘a group of desert merchant travelers’. But its true derivation is probably Sanskrit karabhah=’camel’.

Legendary Marco Polo‘s travels in the Orient & Near East rise once again in our vocabulary, because-w/his father & uncle- he travelled the Silk Road from the Eastern Mediterranean>China & Mongolia by camel

15thC map, l. of Marco Polo’s Caravan along Silk Road by camel; courtesy Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

It seems, therefore, timely and relevant to mention in this Oriental Year of the Wood Dragon, beginning Saturday, Feb. 10th New Moon, that, while the Oriental Zodiac described here contains 12 animals who ran in the mythical Jade Emperor’s Great Race, there wasn’t a camel among them!

The illustrious Dragon competed, but, as he was kind & benevolent by nature, he helped others -like Rabbit- by blowing a gust of wind to carry him over water, thus allowing Rabbit to finish ahead of him.

10 years ago I blogged about my then 7-yr old granddaughter’s story of how Dragon evolved in her ‘How Jagin got his Name’. Her paper masque, rt., with her 1st draft & final edited story here. She’s a Fire Dog!

Dragon finished 5th in the Great Race after 1. Rat, 2. Ox, 3. Tiger, 4. Rabbit.

Snake came 6th; then 7. Horse, 8. Goat, 9. Monkey, 10. Rooster, 11. Dog & 12.Boar/Pig.

This year of the Dragon, 2024, is fortunate for Monkeys, Roosters and Pigs-all behind him at the finish line. His motto: Strength is a gift to be lent, not a power to be wielded.

Because the Moon’s first ‘new’ lunar cycle this month is slow [8 days after Candlemas/Groundhog], and as we still—even in 21st Century—calculate by the ancient lunar calendar, Xtian Palm Sunday will fall on March 24th, and Easter will be celebrated #late this year: i.e. on the last day in March. And although Fat (Pancake) Tuesday [Mardi Gras] is Lucky 13th [New Orleans, above 2nd top], Venice Fat Thursday Giovedi grasso & Rhineland German Weiberfastnacht occur a week earlier this year, on Feb.8th.

A Thought Before we Muse-Captive Underling Scribes Dive Back Down our Rabbit-aka-Dragon Hole…

Does having an extra ‘Leap’ day in February account for this? I hear you ask. No. Because one calendar is [4-year leap] solar; and the other is [18.6yr Metonic] lunar cycle. ❤

And we should remember that the Ancients believed that even the old Crone of Winter-the Cailleach– appeared in February, journeying to the Magical Isle, in whose woods lay the miraculous Well of Youth. At the first glimmer of dawn, she drinks the water bubbling in a crevice of rock, and is transformed into Bride, the fair maid whose white wand turns the bare Earth green again. So—Enjoy. ❤ p.s. I’m a Fire Tiger. @siderealview ©2024MarianC.Youngblood

WildCats, Wolves Call Ancient Caledonia Home

WILDCATS, WOLVES CALL ANCIENT CALEDONIA HOME

First Wednesday March Hares—aka Insecure Scribes & Weather-Wordsmiths—Emerge from STORMY Subterranean Hideaway

Today Good Hare Day

Uplands are unique spaces for nature, climate & people but they are in crisis. Years of harmful land management practices has pushed nature to the fringes of these wild spaces across Scotland. If we are to tackle the climate and nature emergency, Scots govt. take action at scale and pace to protect these landscapes and species which call them home— RSPB Jas. Silvey

Mountain Hare Chas.Frederick Tunnicliffe 1937

Hares March in First Year of Protection by Scots Government

Today marks the one-year anniversary of protected status for one of Scotland’s most elusive but ancient animals—the mountain hare.

Protection was brought in for the species because of RSPB concerns of declining population and that illegal culls were seriously impacting the species’ conservation status. These concerns were expressed over many years that annual, unregulated culls carried out across many intensively-managed grouse moors were having a devastating impact on the hare population.

RSPB used different data to come to same conclusion: that mountain hares had declined, most apparent from late 1990s in areas of the hill country predominantly managed for grouse shooting.

This evidence was used by Scottish Government to report to the EU that conservation status of mountain hares was “unfavourable” and was the catalyst for protection introduced March 2021.

Future Wolf Bear Beaver Highland Coos/Aurochs’ Mixed Reception

Experimental projects in Cumbria, and the Lake District in vicinity of Roman Hard Knott Pass fort show signs of beaver settling in nicely. A west-coast entrepreneur tries convincing hard-line foraging farmers that heilan’ coos are not so much cattle as genetically extinct Aurochs with gentler grazing habits.

No agency south or north of the Border has introduced actual wolf cubs, though talk continues.

Many look to Highland Fault line 30-year old new growth at Glenfeshie by original charity Trees for Life as an example of what volunteer and donated workforce can do long term in Invernessshire. Caledonian Canal catchment drains off forest understorey waterways, beloved of beaver—and oysters. Scots Pine, aspen, birch and hawthorn foster lichen and berries attracting pine marten and red squirrel.

Early Spring Highlights Grouse Moor Activity

Easter is considered ‘late’ this year 2022, tradition holds never until after Feast Day of Bride maiden of Spring.

Calendar calculation ‘old style’ holds to ancient rhyme centred around February 2nd Candlemas in both pre-Xtian and Roman Orthodox Catholic church—if new moon occurs AFTER that date. New moon 2/1/2022 [February 1st], aka too early for traditional count; so wait until new moon March, aka 3/1.

Calendar switches—on schedule—re-arranging run-up to Easter in apparently flawless fluid fashion: Fat Tuesday #MardiGras Pancake stuff-yourself day before deprivation fasting of Lent, Ash Wednesday, personal 40-days in solitary.

Pride of Leopards Three Castles & Cast-Iron Cat Colonnade

Northeast Scotland has traditionally been dominated by Aberdeen with North Sea ocean connections. It built ships for the Baltic run.

Victorian Union Street—linked by iconic cat-bedecked Union Bridge, above—bankcrupted the City.

Its architectural grand plan constructed white Rubislaw granite buildings to flank upper (Music Hall Doric/Ionic columns) and lower Union Street (Jamieson & Carry, Boots & Woolworth’s Emporium, above lower left). Bridge Street descends behind trams to Joint Station, lower level, and The Green.

This elevated superstorey ran over LNER & LMS Railway lines, over former Den Burn—now Union Terrace Gardens, top far rt. perspective toward H.M. Theatre and Wallace Statue—with tunnel access from the harbour. Stretching from ultra-conservative granite Queen’s Road/Albyn Place, Union Street’s mile-long double-decker ‘overpass’ leads its tentacles underground to joint granite foundations (Uptown Baths, Crown St.P.O., Langstane; Tivoli Theatre, the Green, Belmont Street and the Aberdeen Art Gallery. Terminus: Castlegait, Town House, Tolbooth, and Lodge Walk—police HQ—to St.Nicholas).

Alexander Marshall Mackenzie’s granite 1884 Aberdeen Art Gallery, the main visual arts exhibition space in the city, beckons with a multi-coloured granite colonnade (Kemnay pink, Peterhead red) in foyer leading to its upper galleries.

17thC Provost Skene’s House & 21stC Marischal Square Street Art

In ‘granite city’ Aberdeen grandiose preparations near completion on 2022 107million-pound pedestrian park-oriented centre Marischal Square, where Scots sculptor Andy Scott (Falkirk ‘Kelpies’) will feature his steel-shard Leopard sculpture, ‘Poised’ within a glass dome enclosure on pedestrian Broad Street.

Focus of the street-wide atrium, Scott’s two-ton steel 42-foot high big cat artwork perches atop a plinth inside a ‘conservatory’ style greenhouse geared to capture light in multi fragment panes of glass.

Former 14-storey city council offices-demolished 2014-make way for white [Chinese import] granite facades of new glass-enclosed Broad St.-Marischal Square. Old Marischal College, home to @UofAbCollections became new council offices; a view of their previous ugly 1970s building brightened by closed George Street, pedestrian Belmont Street; a walk up Schoolhill to Art Gallery.

Broad St. may have lost its granite ‘cassie setts’ during development but commercial and entertainment retail properties—hotels, restaurants, a casino and art venues are available for sale and rental in 21stC attempt to balance the books. Among new residents in the complex are the DC Thompson Group, publisher of Aberdeen Press & Journal.

Marischal College, Archibald Simpson’s 1836-1844 world’s second-largest granite building* didn’t bankcrupt anyone. It holds University of Aberdeen’s fine archaeological collections from Moray, Buchan and Cairngorms. Interior leads to illuminated ceiling of Mitchell Tower. All granite.

* First in Europe-world’s largest granite buildiing is El Real Monasterio de El Escorial, Madrid.

Leopard Poised to Pounce May Know Secret Password

Leopard emblem of ‘silver city with golden sands’ has its origin in early mediaeval heraldic design, pictured top middle right, as the city’s coat-of-arms: two cats sinister/dexter support Auld Alliance slogan Bon Accord dating from 1561-68 Mary Queen of Scots’ progresses to her royal Aberdonian Moray and Buchan palaces.

The city’s long-standing stalwart of Northeast life, Leopard Magazine has published locally since it was established in 1974. Owned and published by Lindy Cheyne and Ian Hamilton for last 12 years, it has been taken under wing of University of Aberdeen. Early Leopard archives are held by the University. This writer and colleague Ann Tweedy were early contributors to historic files.

Andy Scott has created pieces for other cities including New York, Chicago and Sydney. Commissioned by Muse Developers and Aviva Investors’ board of directors to come up with a piece of public artwork for the site, he favoured the city’s preoccupation with the local cat. He spent hours chatting to Kelly’s remaining Cats on Union Bridge before plunging into steel.

Following Andy’s lead in wry humour, we [insecure scribes, emerge with Muse in tow from PersonCave preparing to pit ourselves against a spring NaNoWriMo writing workshop] might add a fictitious note: especially apt in Pictish NE Scotland (not a Gael in sight; everyone spiks the Doric derivative of a P-Celtic language, shuns the Gaelic (Gàidhlig, pronounced ‘gaa-lik’ in Highland west). ‘Unpronouncable gibberish’ to quote one extinct Aberdonian. So homegrown gaelic/garlic pun…

Andy’s Cat perches on its plinth in rarefied art environment designed to dominate its little people below. Calling it ‘Poised’ triggered the East Coast Pictish heathen in me: I saw ‘Poised’ as a foreign creature, already possessing its own spirit. It became Gael. ‘poisaed’ pron. “pussy”.

That’s not a rude American pun; that’s Brit for pussycat, Am. kitty. Gettit? Purr-purr. ‘In like a lion’ is code password. ©2022MarianYoungblood

In Rough Seas We Need A Little Help From Our Friends

WHEN TIMES GET TOUGH, WRITERS GET TOUGHER
Monthly Tough-it-Out Corner for Insecure Writers

I like to think that we (Insecure) writers have a little extra ball of energy we hold in reserve for exactly that moment when the rest of our world is collapsing or about to do so.

Graces three—embodied joy, beauty and mirth—as well as social ease

Now seems a good time to remind ourselves that, however insecure we may feel about the work we continually produce—the writing we LOVE—if we continue to brave it out through any storm, the rough seas will eventually bring calm.

And we may live through it!

ENTER GRACE—Or in Aegaean terms, THREE GRACES, daughters of ZEUS and EURYNOME

In Hellenist mythology Three Goddesses called the Graces represented grace, charm and beauty. Other qualities associated with them—
Aglaia represented elegance, brightness and splendor.
Thalia embodied youth, beauty and good cheer.
Euphrosyne encouraged mirth and joyfulness.

The KHARITES were conceived in Greek mythology as goddesses who brought festive joy and enhanced mortals’ love of life though their refinement and gentleness. Gracefulness and beauty in social intercourse are attributed to them. They are usually seen in the service or attendance of other divinities, as real joy exists only in circles where the individual gives up his own self and makes it his main object to afford pleasure to others.

“The less beauty is ambitious to rule, the greater is its victory”

The Three Graces, from an Ionian fresco, A.D.1stC

Qualities embodied in the Kharites. Graces, are that the less homage beauty or grace demands, the more freely is it given.

Interestingly, these same traits were imported en masse into the Christian ethic and named Hope, Faith and Charity—from Gk.KHARITES—Catholicism in particular emphasizing ‘charity’.

I mention these lovely beauties at this time as, in the midst of world events where ladies’ sovreignty is paramount, it may be our GRACE which will see us through the storm.

Moving Beyond the Masque to Face Reality
Also, coincidentally in traditional Roman Catholic calendar—still calculated by the Moon—we have only just emerged from the Fire Festival of Fat Tuesday—Mardi Gras—Festern’s E’en. We are now entering a time of human restriction—in Church timing 40 days of Lent—where our resources and resourcefulness will be called on.

We IWSG-ers know how to pull in our belts, don’t we? If our Cap’n.Alex can do it, so can we.

Therefore, Angels of Grace, Beauty, Patience, bless you—we are calling for just a little help from our friends. Thank you for being here.
©2017 Marian Youngblood

Oster Toaster—Our Weather Woes Won’t Disappear

MONTHLY INSECURE WRITERS CATCH-UP CORNER or
Even Scatty Writers Plan Ahead

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”
Douglas Adams

Stepping out of the Pool—Plan Ahead

With a whole *two month* chunk already bitten out of my twelve month schedule, planning ahead doesn’t always do the trick for me. But in a group of writers, where advice and help are freely given and nobody (hopefully) takes offense—our Insecure Writers Support Group I was thinking of specifically—there seems no place to cower in fear. We’re all encouraged to step up to the plate and at least try. With the third month of my year already begun, I’d better think of something.

Insecure Writers stick to the Grand Plan
Insecure Writers Support Group now has its own website, thanks to our Ninja Cap’n Alex who is always ahead of the game—comes of being constantly immersed in “future speak” and (successful) Space trilogies, ahem.

Stepping out of the Pool— into the Next Phase—Plan Ahead

While 2016 may bring major change to us all—February has already broken historical temperature records worldwide—it’s sometimes comforting to believe we might all already be on a trajectory which could end on one of Alex’s famed remote star systems.
First we have the cyclical calendar anomaly—leap year adding a mandatory day to February or we’d all land back in the Middle Ages.

Southern city guarded by angels—Rio de Janeiro hosts 2016 Olympic Games

Then there is the four-year culmination of super-athletes preparing for Olympic Games in Hispanic Heaven—Rio de Janeiro. You thought the Super Bowl was huge, set for the first time in the brand new Levi stadium, south of San Francisco. Brazil will pull out all the stops for August. They’ve already had a mammoth Carnival—their Fat Tuesday equivalent of Mardi Gras. This year they’re speaking of its continuing right through Easter—the German Oster of my title.

Meantime loads of attention will be focused next week—particularly in sea-level-rising Indonesia—where they will have an uninterrupted total solar eclipse March 9th, that will effectively black out the entire Pacific Ocean—for a moment of cosmic time—four minutes totality at zenith. Sadly it reaches mainland U.S. at dusk, and therefore we miss it. But writers in Alaska will be fortunate to see it as partial.
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Only by cosmic accident do we hear that Alaska is importing snow for its famous dog-sled Iditarod race

The Irish Input
Amid all these cosmic happenings, does it seem a little tame of me to mention the second annual Dublin Writers’ Conference June 24-26, 2016? Judging by last year’s sell-out crowd—it has some kind of Irish spell it casts on us pen-wielders, because when we get together, all kinds of literary explosions are possible. My rationale for bringing up the June date now is that many U.S. IWSGer travelers make plans for Europe months ahead of time when airline deals can still be made. Just sayin’.

St Patrick’s Day, March 17th, will be here in two weeks to remind us!

Dublin was home to James Joyce and still holds the treasured Book of Kells at Trinity College.

Meantime the plethora of Space movies which began with Ridley Scott’s The Martian, continues in remakes—don’t you adore Superman vs. Batman?—and as yet unreleased alien adventures even Mr Spock might show emotion for.

March came in like a Lion in my part of the world. Weather patterns influenced by a strong El Niño produced the hottest February since historical records began.

Climate will no doubt be the focus for 2016, if we can all think simple earth thoughts in between our rages and/or love affair with our Muse. Whichever takes root in our consciousness, I suspect we IWSGers will still find a bolt hole here—along with a phalanx of other Insecure companions.

May we survive the Ides of March, the heat of Equinox and the onset of an early spring with typical writerly calm. It is, after all, our metier, our trade, and it should remind us that, even if/when our world changes beyond recognition, our Muse, our inner writerly urge will still be there to pick up the pieces…

…And put them down on the next available sheet of paper 😉 No wonder writers alone understand writers. How boring we can seem to the rest of humanity.

All the more reason to keep it coming.
©2016 Marian Youngblood

Fire Festivals & Persistence of Pasche

Carnival in Rio before Lent

‘First come Candlemas
Syne the New Meen
The niest Tiseday efter that
Is Festern’s E’en.
That Meen oot
An’ anither at its hicht
The niest Sunday efter that
Is aye Pasche richt.’
Ancient Scots Easter calculation. Anon.

The Calendar according to the Moon was regular as clockwork. It was reliable, you could see it in the sky and you could set your life rhythms by it. The old Scots rhyme above spoken slowly will make sense even to the least son of the soil of Ultima Thule. But non-Scots may need a little help in translation.

Festern’s E’en – as Hallowe’en – was an ancient calendar fire festival celebrated, like all pre-Christian revelry, at night. And, like Hallowe’en, it still is. Only we call it by another name: Carnival.

Translated simply, it is the evening before the ‘Feast/Festival’. With a capital F, this celebration was one of the greatest fire festivals in the Celtic Year. When it became absorbed into the Christian calendar, its importance and significance to the populace was so great, that it was deemed necessary to give it a place of prominence second only to Christmas. As such it has remained. The festival that precedes Easter is throughout the world celebrated with fire and puppetry,processional and masqued balls, dance and music and food and drink.

If you ask a South American about Carnival, ‘Carnaval’ in Portuguese, he will tell you they prepare for it all year round. In some cultures it has become almost more important than Christmas – a reversion to type, backtracking to pre-Christian times.

In Brazil, it makes complete sense to hold Carnaval precisely on its February moon date in the ancient calendar because in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires it is full-blown summer. By contrast, German Fasching, held similarly in February, is pretty chilly dancing in the noctural streets of northern Hamburg!

Terence Young's 'Thunderball' James Bond in 1965

Carnival used to be held in the Bahamas in February too, when spring is at its height and the casuarinas blow carefree along Nassau Beach. But in the summer of 1965, Chubby Broccoli and Sean Connery made a James Bond film set on Paradise Island and commissioned the Carnival Committee to stage an ‘extra’ Carnival, so they could weave festive fiery scenes into ‘Thunderball’; since then Bahamian Carnival has been a summertime festival.

London's Notting Hill Carnival

Similarly, the London Carnival of Notting Hill, begun in 1964, is held on the last weekend in August. No connection to Lent or Easter any more.

But originally, before the Gregorian calendar took over calculation and reckoning by the moon in 1582, Carnival was high festive season in that ancient stream of festivities used by Man to celebrate the return of the Light to a dark winter world.

Candlemas, as I’ve mentioned before, is the first glimpse of light waxing and adding grace to the darkest days of winter. On February 2nd – or Bride’s Day, before solar months took over as calendrical norm – the measure of light from the heavens increases to such a degree that birds begin to mate, petals on spring flowers open and the Earth softens its frozen grip.

In lunar terms, the first New Moon of the second month (Gregorian) was celebrated in every northern hemisphere culture planet-wide from prehistoric times. From Buddhist to Inuit culture the return of light to nurture the earth’s crucial growing plants was a calendar custom worth celebrating.

When Christian calendar calculators were devising Roman Church high and holy days, they took care to incorporate these ancient fire rites as an integral part of Christian culture and ‘lore’. it did not do to lose a single ‘soul’ in the transition from a pre-Christian to a Christian world.

And, as it was a long-standing tradition for local people to mark ancient quarter days – the solstices and the equinoxes – with festivals of fire, it seemed right that they should transit unaltered into the Christian calendar: marked instead with candlelight inside church buildings.

Christmas was chosen at the time of (northern) winter solstice when the ‘ignorant’ (pagan) desperately needed to celebrate the return of ‘light to the world’. Christ was called the ‘Light of the World’. The Son of the Sun.

Midsummer was fully taken up with a light celebration of its own – in northern latitudes the longest days of the year brought bountiful harvest and genuine thanksgiving by a rural population for the gifts of the earth continuously provided from midsummer through to Lammas, an August ‘cross-quarter’ day. No Church overlay was necessary; nevertheless Roman Catholicism superimposed the feast of John the Baptist on midsummer’s day and frowned heavily on pagan corn dollies and such Celtic fripperies perpetuated by an agricultural society.

The Equinoxes, however, required more serious contemplation.

Most rural (so-called ignorant) converts were aware of the movement of both sun and moon. While that may appear to us today to be rather sophisticated intellectual knowledge, it was commonplace then to note changing seasons, hours of light and dark and the phases of the moon. When equinox arrived it was – in the human mind at least – a miracle that every place on earth had exactly the same number of hours of light and dark for one earth period of 24 hours. The sun rose at 6 and set at 6 on every man, woman, child and beast on earth. The phenomenon was in itself worth celebrating. In astronomical terms, the event occurs precisely at the moment the Sun (traveling along the ecliptic) appears to cross the celestial equator, and while ancient Man may not have known that added sophistication, his life was changed by its occurrence twice in every year. In addition, he celebrated the spring (cross-quarter) festivals of Wesak, Beltane, May Day, along with any events providing an excuse for Morris and maypole dancing, The Church allowed these to continue, so long as the requisite saints were also remembered and offerings given.

While Archangel Michael was given dominion over autumnal equinox, Easter was chosen as a fitting ‘high’ celebration to take over the vernal equinoctial light-and-dark balance.

What put a spanner in the works was that – late in the seventh century – when two contemporary Christian systems were running alongside in mutual cooperation, the internal systems within the Celtic and Roman Churches came to a clash; an impasse.

Venerable Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'

Hugely influential, powerful and wealthy King Oswiu of Northumbria had been happy to run his Christian nation along the lines of Columba’s Celtic (thirteen-month lunar) calendar issued and maintained from Iona. This Celtic doctrine conveniently recognized the King as head of religious affairs. His Anglian Queen Eanfled, a devout Roman Christian recognized not the King but the Pope as head of the Church. They might have reconciled their differences, had it not been for a calendrical anomaly which in some years had the King ordering huge feasts for Easter at exactly the moment when his Queen was still fasting in Lent. Because another such year was due to happen in AD665, with the assistance of Wilfrid, new abbot at Rippon, and recently returned from Gaul and Rome, the King called the Synod of Whitby in AD664 and led a thorough investigation into the rites and rituals of both systems. The event is described in detail by Jarrow churchman Bede (673-735) who completed his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731.

While the Synod changed lives, split families and royal houses, even intra-kingdom alliances, thereafter church festivities centred on Easter were standardized throughout the land and celebrated in accordance with Roman custom.

Easter remained the highest festival of the Christian church until the Scots Reformation when (after 1660) presbyterian austerity superimposed simplicity, reduced dogma and a return to ‘speaking to God’ directly.

For the rest of the British Isles, however, and for descendants and dependents the world over, Easter remains one of the great festivals of the Christian calendar.

Curiously, for a celebration washed, ironed and folded so neatly by successive synthesized systems – prehistoric, early-historic, pre-Christian, Celtic and Roman Christian – Easter emerges as a supreme highlight in the Church year.

Its one concession to its pagan past is that is remains to this day a date fixed according to the Moon.

And, in order not to offend other faiths which, like Anglian Eanfled, might take offence at the bulldozing approach (e.g. Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials), there is a built-in mechanism of calculation which ensures that Easter and Passover never collide and that the Christian High Festival should never occur BEFORE equinox.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans, bead capital of the world

So the little rhyme above, translated, simple enough and sympathetic to Scots ears, sums up global lead-time to Pasque, Pasche, Oster/Easter, the pagan event of maiden-goddess Eostre/Ostara, the Highest Festival in the Christian Calendar: when in the High Days before the Fast of Lent, the Roman Catholic world celebrates. From Italian Carnivale to German Fasching (Fastnacht, the eve before the Fast), prelude to French Pasque, in Portuguese Carnaval and on ‘Fat Tuesday’ of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, bead-festooned feasters and revellers make merry because tomorrow their stomachs will die.

The modern gesture to Pancake or Shrove or Fat Tuesday (Festern’s E’en) is not lost on marketers for supermarket chains who do a roaring trade in maple syrup and readymix batter. It’s the ‘stock up while the going’s good’ mentality, because the body must endure the subsequent fast of Lent for a regulation 40 days. Once more the Roman Church succeeded in condensing multiple events in Christ’s life into one festival: this fast represents the period of time He spent without food while meditating in the desert.

Nowadays, nobody questions that its immediate successor in the calendar is representational of His death and resurrection, when historically the two events happened years apart. Once again, ancient symbolism is used to gloss over detail.

‘First arrives Candlemas (Feast of Bride); Then the New Moon
The following Tuesday will be ‘Fastnacht’/Fasching or Shrove Tuesday
Allow that ‘moon’ to wax and wane
And watch till the next moon is full
The Sunday thereafter will be Easter Day.’
translation by Scots descendant, non-Anon

It worked for King Oswiu in 664. I can assure you, the calculation works still!

©2010 Marian Youngblood