Hello, and welcome to another installment in the Brigid History and Mythology Blog! As the days grow longer and the nights start to warm just a little, we turn our attention to Spring, and with it the reawakening of nature. For this post, we'll be exploring Ostara, the ancient celebration of the onset of Spring.

Ostara: Spring Equinox

Up until the advent of modern agriculture, humans across the world were dependent on the cycle of the seasons. Nowadays, globalism and advanced technology mean that you can find practically anything at the supermarket regardless of season. This bounty would have floored anyone living more than a couple of centuries ago. Imagine how it would look to an early farming family, working their soil with hand tools made of stone and wood.

As we saw in our post about Imbolc, winter has been a difficult time for much of the northern hemisphere for thousands of years. Once autumn had come to a close and the harvest festivals like Lughnasad and Samhain had been celebrated, people would settle in for the dark winter nights and simply try to hold on until warmer days. Yuletide festivals would help them through the bitter cold, but planting season would still be far off.

For the ancient Irish, Imbolc was the beginning of Spring, even though the ground was still too cold to plant crops and lambing season would still be months away. It was the subtle appearance of growth that made them think of early February that way: sheep would be pregnant, early flowers would start blooming, and hardy plants would begin putting their leaves out.

For the official meteorological beginning of spring, however, they would have to wait it out until the Spring Equinox. It was on this day, falling between March 19th and March 21st, falls in between the Winter Solstice and the Summer Solstice. Today we refer to this day as Ostara, an Anglo-Saxon word that comes from the Germanic goddess of Spring, Eostre.

Spring Equinox by any other name...

Despite a rather extensive search, I came away unclear about what the early Irish would have referred to the Spring Equinox as. Strictly speaking, in Irish, this would have been Alban Eilir, which means literally "the Equinox of Spring." Modern groups like the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids sometimes use this term interchangeably with Ostara.

Regardless of what they would have called it, the ancient Irish would have celebrated the Equinox. To this day, Ireland is a rural, agrarian country, where the outskirts of cities give way to cattle pastures and rolling hills instead of suburbs. Throughout history, agrarian cultures have been closely tied to the changing of the season, with each Equinox, Solstice, and midpoint being celebrated as festival holidays.

Seasonal Affects on the Body

Thanks to the supermarket, seasons today may seem like nothing but changes in the weather. However, the changing seasons still have many effects on the body, such as impacts to the immune system and mood changes, often referred to as Seasonal Affective Disorder. All of these seem to be driven by a deficit in vitamin D, which the body produces on its own when it gets enough sunlight.

In winter, with shorter days and a lot less sunlight, the body sometimes cannot produce enough vitamin D on its own to meet its daily requirement. One way to get around this is to take vitamin D supplements, or eat foods rich in vitamin D, such as fish, egg yolks, and mushrooms. Since sunlight is the body's natural catalyst, though, getting enough outside time is also crucial.

Getting Back Outside

Now that Spring is on the way, getting enough time outside gets a lot easier, meaning you can soak up the sun as the days get longer. The weeks following Ostara are a perfect time to clean up your garden and to start sprouting seedlings. As long as the last frost seems to be done, many plants will be ready to go into the ground by then as well.

Here at Brigid, we're celebrating the coming of Spring by getting our own land ready for the season. The birds have begun to sing the dawn chorus already, the hummingbirds are fighting over the feeders, and our local squirrels have emerged from their slumber to start digging everything up all over again. It's always a pleasure to watch the season change, just like it always does.