IMBOLC

This week up in Pennsylvania, The Groundhog saw his shadow. Surrounded by silly men in top hats, a crowd of cold revelers, TV cameras and reporters, Puxatawny Phil did his thing. On a sunny day, which of course showed his shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of winter. My ESOL students at the college, and my afterschool kids, were all quite curious about this event. I simply explained the current happenings, downloaded some pages from an educational site for the youngsters, gave the adults vocabulary words having to do with Groundhog Day.

What I didn't go into with either group is the tradition, stretching back into the pagan past, of the true festival of February 2nd, Imbolc. Imbolc is one of the major holy days of the Celtic calendar, a day to celebrate the end of the true deep winter and look forward to the coming of spring. At this time, no matter the possible weeks of dark days and bad weather, we see the first signs that spring will indeed return: milk returning to the udders of farm animals (the meaning of the word "Imbolc" is given variously as "in the belly" or "in the bag"), new lambs in the fold, sowing seeds inside to be moved outside to the ground when it is no longer frozen.

The day was sacred to the goddess Brigid, also spelled Bride, Brighid, Brid and others. She was a goddess of many things, among them fire, healing, fertility and poetry. Here the winter aspect of the goddess, The Crone, is transformed into the spring aspect, The Maiden.

Our tradition of spring cleaning began back in those times, at Imbolc people cleaned their houses of the winter's dirt, took down and burned any leftover Solstice greenery in a sacred fire, put out offerings of bread and milk to the goddess that she would help their hopes for the coming year, the coming season of planting and harvesting, the birth of new animals, be fulfilled.

The Christian church took the day over as it infiltrated the Celtic lands, and it became Candlemas, or the feast of The Purification of the Virgin Mary. In the Pagan tradition of Imbolc, fires and candles were lighted everywhere, calling back the light, the sun, warmth for the fields. At Candlemas candles were lighted in the churches. All of which simply follows the fact that the days now are growing longer, quite obviously, and that we can all see the light of hope for spring and summer at the end of the tunnel of winter.

We don’t live in such a way that any of this is important any more – we don’t need to hoard food and milk, firewood and hay, through the winter in order to survive. Our houses, our cars, our schools are heated, the supermarket shelves are full of everything we need. But for the creatures of the earth, this is still a day of awakening, hibernating creatures (like groundhogs) start to awaken and sniff the air. The bears, skunks, snakes, groundhogs, wander out and see if the earth yet has anything to offer to break their long winter’s fast. In many places there is as yet little sign of earthlife, so they go back to sleep for a few more weeks. Nonetheless, the wheel is turning, and those who pay attention can feel it. Spring will soon be in the air.  And so, we have The Groundhog coming out to check around.  This particular tradition comes to us directly from Scotland, where it is bears who come out to sniff the air.