There is evidence of a link between our ancestors' pagan solstice rituals and our Christian festivals, writes Dick Ahlstrom
The shortest day of the year is upon us - the winter solstice takes place next Wednesday. While the solstice is strongly associated with dawn, as people await the sunrise at the Newgrange passage grave, the actual moment when the sun reaches its most southerly point doesn't come until after sunset - at 6.35pm.
The arrival of the solstices was always a momentous occasion in Irish and international folklore, says archivist-collector at University College Dublin's Delargy Centre for Irish Folklore, Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh.
There is also an interplay between the original pagan rituals associated with the winter solstice and the society that built Newgrange and the Christian festivals of Christmas and St John's Eve (the day before the feast day of St John the Baptist), he says.
There is "plenty of evidence" of a link. "It is hardly an accident that the two solstices are associated with two so powerful figures as Christ and John the Baptist," says Mac Cárthaigh.
There is a slight mismatch with the dates but this doesn't mean the link isn't there: "There is clearly something arbitrary about the date choices but it was no coincidence."
The original festivals gave structure to the year and marked out pivotal dates associated with the movement of the sun. Mac Cárthaigh described folk references collected in Co Limerick describing how people watched where the sun set as it moved further south every day after mid-summer.
"The old people were recorded saying the shadows lengthened by a cock-step every day afterwards," says Mac Cárthaigh. "Essentially we are talking about a rural society here. Time recording is a vital thing. What is important is country people were very conscious of the passage of time within their own landscape."
The arrival of the Celtic culture meant that yearly time-keeping adjusted to the Celtic calendar and its associated "quarter days", and this is still the determinant for when the seasons change for many people here.
Spring arrives on February 1st, summer on May 1st, autumn on August 1st and winter on November 1st, according to this calendar. These quarter days became important festival days along with the solstices and equinoxes. "What is most striking about it is all the festivals are concerned with agriculture and farming," says Mac Cárthaigh.
When Christianity arrived in Ireland these important dates were overlain by the Christian calendar and remain important: February 1st is St Bridget's day and November 1st is All Saints' Day, for example.
No other festivals had the impact of the solstices, however. "Even to the present day Christmas in the Irish tradition is the biggest festival of the year," he says. There has traditionally been a "huge amount of preparation" for the day and much folklore surrounding the feast and how it should be conducted.
Even the animals became involved and were formally informed about the arrival of Christmas. "They were told that Christ was born, they were officially included," he explains.
Many of our Christmas "traditions" are relatively new additions to this festival as celebrated here. "All of the trappings you see around Christmas are recent," Mac Cárthaigh says. Christmas trees are from Germany, exchanging cards is Victorian as are puddings and certain other foods."
The timing of the religious festivals harks back to an earlier time, however. "If you look at Christmas you must also look at St John's Eve, June 23rd, bonfire night in the west," Mac Cárthaigh says. "It is associated with John the Baptist but the festival is much older than that."
It is also a festival celebrated elsewhere in Europe. It sits opposite Christmas on the calendar close to the summer solstice. Traditionally there were large bonfires and the ashes from these were spread on crops as a way to boost yields, he explains.
"Clearly the winter and summer solstices have been overtaken by Christian festivals," he says, but the lighting of bonfires and the spreading of ashes is pre-Christian.