February 1 is the first day of spring according to the Celtic calendar. The sun may not be very warm, but Celtic spring celebrates the coming of more light – and the coming of the snowdrops. When I lived in Ireland in the final years of my monastic life, I marveled at the carpets of snowdrops blooming everywhere in February.

Snowdrops and Candlemas Bells

Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus gave the name galanthus or “milk flower” to the genus and named the first species “snowy.” The tiny white flowers heralding spring spread easily, thanks to the ants who dote on the sweet coating on the seeds and carry them off. Wherever they drop some in their travels, the seeds germinate readily. I find this little snowdrop poem by Anna Bunston de Bary charming:

Closest to the sod
There can be seen
A thought of God
In white and green.

Some call the snowdrop “Candlemas Bells” or “Mary’s Tapers,” since February 2 is the Feast of the Presentation, when Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem, and the prophet Simeon called him a “light to the Gentiles.” Candlemas is this fortieth day after the birth of Jesus and the traditional conclusion of the Christmas season. I created a special Candle Blessing for this day. And David Denny of the Presentation wrote a lovely description of this feast as his monastic name day.

Brigid, Cows, and Baby Lambs

In the Celtic tradition, spring brings the festival of imbolc, meaning “lactation of the ewes,” from the Gaelic word oimelc or “ewes’ milk.” Today ewe’s milk is a rare health food, but it used to be vital nourishment at this lean time of year when little was left in the larder, most cows went dry, and new lambs were born. Baby lambs covered the pastures around my hermitage in Ireland. As they played with one another, jumping up and down, they looked like fields of popping corn!

The first day of Celtic Spring is also the feast day of St. Brigid, one of the Irish “Holy Trinity of Saints,” along with Patrick and Columba. (My hermitage was named Columba.) Snowdrops are Brigid’s flowers, and I loved picking bouquets of them.

Celtic peoples call Brigid “Mary of the Gael” because they say she was not only midwife to Mary at the birth of Jesus but also his wet nurse. (Celtic “time” is fluid, like the Celtic knotwork in old illuminated manuscripts.) So legend has it that Brigid’s cow – not her breasts! — always had milk when she needed it. Poems, prayers, and songs for Brigid often focus on cows like this one:

The fellowship of Brigid of cows be yours,
in nibbling, chewing, and munching,
The peace of Brigid be yours in the grazing cows….
The care of Brigid fair on ben, on glen, on plain,
Brigid to keep them, to watch them, to tend them,
on ben, on glen, on plain….
Come, thou Brigid, handmaid calm,
Hasten the butter on the cream,
Seest thou impatient Peter yonder,
Waiting the buttered bannock white and yellow…
Seest thou Paul and John and Jesus,
Waiting the gracious butter yonder.

Bannock is a simple biscuit I used to make over winter fires in the woods of Nova Scotia – even in the rain! – when I felt confined by the cold and suffered from “cabin fever.” And yes, I slathered my bannock with butter. Winter was a lean time at Nova Nada.

Groundhog Day

Another familiar tradition is associated with Candlemas on February 2. According to old European beliefs, hibernating animals wake up on Candlemas Day and come out to see if it’s still winter. If the weather is sunny, they see their shadows and go back to sleep for forty more days. If it’s cloudy, they aren’t frightened by their shadows and stay above ground. The bear was the weather forecaster in France and England, while Germany had its badger. German immigrants to Pennsylvania brought this legend to America in the 1800s. Since they found no badgers in their new home but plenty of groundhogs, they adopted this new species to fit their folklore. Here’s a poem for Groundhog Day:

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain,
Go, Winter, come not again.

A Blessing for Throats

On February 3, we celebrate the feast of St. Blaise, a 4^th-century Armenian physician. Also known as one of the “Fourteen Holy Helpers” (I don’t know the other thirteen!), Blaise was venerated as a great miracle worker. In his day, the art of healing was frequently combined with priestly ministry. After Blaise became a bishop, he saved a young boy choking on a fish bone with a blessing. Later, when Blaise was in prison awaiting execution, the boy’s grateful mother brought two candles to dispel the gloom of his cell. He was beheaded in 316 and soon became the patron saint of throats. On this day in the Catholic tradition, we cross two lighted candles beneath our chins and bless our throats with a prayer: “By the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every malady of the throat, and from every possible mishap.” An older tradition says that Blaise was the teacher of Merlin the Magician, healer and spiritual father to King Arthur.

Brigid and “Good Cheer”

An older tradition also venerated Brigid as a Celtic goddess. I know her best as the abbess of a 6^th-century Irish monastery in Kildare or Kil Dara, “church in the oaks,” probably a site sacred to the Druids. Brigid founded a “double monastery” of both men and women, and she governed both. The lay community which surrounded her monastery became known as the McBrides, since Bride is another name for Brigid. Her nuns tended a perpetual fire, and only women were allowed near it. Some say the flames were kept alight for a thousand years after her death until extinguished by English persecutors. The fire has recently been rekindled by the Sisters of St. Brigid in Kildare.

On the eve of St. Brigid’s Day, Celtic peoples honor the saint’s memory by weaving crosses from rushes or straw. They burn the crosses they made the previous year and hang the new ones, believing the crosses bestow Brigid’s blessings on their households and protect them from fire.

Brigid is also known for her hospitality and her love of “good cheer.” How can we not love a saint who envisioned heaven as a festive celebration with a “great lake of beer”? Here’s a blessing from St. Brigid to enhance your own celebration of Celtic Spring:

I would like to have the people of heaven in my own house,
with vats of good cheer laid out for them….
I would like the people of heaven to come from every corner of heaven.
I would like them to be cheerful in their drinking.
I would like to have Jesus sitting there with them.
I would like to have a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching heaven’s family drinking it for all eternity.

British writer G.K. Chesterton, known for his wit and wisdom as well as his eating and drinking, echoes St.  Brigid in his own description of heaven: “Comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travels; but rather, our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, which through God shall endure forever. And all roads point at last to the Ultimate Inn, where we shall meet, and when we drink again, it shall be from the great flagons in the Tavern at the end of the world.”

Listen here to our Fire and Light podcast, “Ordinary Plenty: Celtic Spirituality.”