Hello, and welcome again to the Brigid Trading Company History and Mythology Blog! Now that the Yule season and New Year's Eve have come and gone, it's time to start looking forward to what's ahead. For us, it's the season's first big snow on the way to the Pacific Northwest next week, as the polar vortex slips up and begins sending arctic air down to the lower latitudes. We don't know if our ancestors were into sledding, but rest assured that we'll be bombing some hills once the storm arrives.
Speaking of anticipation, it's no secret that having something to look forward to is a key part of making it through winter. While the days may be growing longer, they're still short, cold, and often dreary, all factors which can make the winter months feel intolerable. For those of us who have long histories of Seasonal Affective Disorder, the coming of winter can be downright dreadful. However, we've found over the years that letting the dreariness into your life is optional if you know how to stay active, cozy, and engaged.
For the last few years, terms like hygge and koselig have cropped up in pop culture, especially filtering through social media trends like cottagecore. At their heart, both are Scandinavian winter philosophies, built to help people endure the long Nordic winters. For the Danish hygge, this means turning your home into a warm, candle-lit oasis; for the Norwegian koselig, it's approaching winter like it's one big trip to the ski lodge. Both usually end the ideal day with reading a book in front of a roaring fire, and both offer valuable lessons on how to keep your spirits up during the long winter months.
Midwinter is yet another term that comes to us through ancient Germanic customs, much like Yuletide and the modern trappings of Christmas. It commonly refers to the heart of winter, the cold month-long stretch between the middles of January and February, directly between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. In these cold winter months, much of Europe was a hard place to live: freezing, snowbound, and barren of crops and herds.
For the Anglo-Saxons, a group of German tribes who invaded the British Isles in the 5th century AD and eventually solidified their conquests into England, Midwinter began on December 25th. On their calendar, the Winter Solstice fell on that date. Later, with the coming of Christianity, the Anglo-Saxon Solstice slowly changed into what we now know as Christmas. Just like most ancient people whose lives were aligned with the seasons, it was a festival season for them, bringing the whole community together.
The ancient Celts were no different from their neighbors across Europe, and for them, Midwinter was no small thing. On Imbolc, the night before February 1st, the Celts of the British Isles would prepare their homes for the coming of Brigid, goddess of spring, who came to visit them and partake in their offerings of oats and reeds. In thanks, Brigid would bless the celebrants' households with a bountiful new year.
Brigid is a goddess who wears many hats, as they say: not content with being the goddess of spring, she is also the goddess of the dawn, poetry, crafting and metalsmithing, animal husbandry, and, most important of all to her role in Imbolc, of the new year's lambs. Lambing season was of crucial importance to the ancient Irish; it still is today, as Ireland remains an overwhelmingly rural and agricultural country. As of 2023, Imbolc is an official holiday according to the Irish government.
The word "Imbolc" itself seems to descend from the phrase "in the belly," referring to pregnant ewes ready to give birth to their lambs. It was a make-or-break season for the herding lifestyle, where a poor showing among your ewes could spell catastrophe for your fortunes for the year. Because of this, Imbolc was one of the most important days of the Celtic calendar, and making sure that Brigid was on your side was essential to survival.
As many features of pre-Christian Celtic myth have, Brigid and Imbolc have survived into modern times, albeit with some changes. It's commonly accepted that the goddess Brigid is the inspiration of Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of Ireland's patron saints. Similar to her pagan forebear, she is the patron saint of newborns, midwives, dairy maids, and cattle, all of which seem to fall squarely under her ancient role as goddess of the lambing season. Ironically, the historical Saint Brigid is said to have been born in Ireland around the same time the Anglo-Saxons were invading England and introducing their own winter holidays.
Imbolc survives today as Saint Brigid's Day, a feast day for many Irish Catholics, and coincides with Candlemas, an ancient Greek celebration of the return of spring, and even Groundhog Day, yet another holiday that is based around looking forward to the end of winter. It seems that eventually getting sick of winter is common human behavior.
Today, we may not tend to bustling flocks of sheep, but here at Brigid Trading Company, this is one of our most important days. Starting a new company can feel as stressful as watching over a newborn sheep to make sure it can stand on its own, so it feels like a fortunate and optimistic time to us, especially as a handcrafted goods company named after the Irish goddess of crafting.
Once Imbolc comes around, we'll celebrate it the way we celebrate all the seasonal holidays: a hearty feast, plenty of thanks for what we have to be grateful for, and burning some candles. Keep an eye out for our Spring 2024 Collection, coming soon!
