During the summer, whilst on a visit to my parents in Wiltshire, I visited West Kennet Long Barrow. It is a chambered tomb dating from round about 3600 B.C.E. At the eastern end there is a set of stone chambers which open out towards the east. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, during its time of use, the light of the rising sun would have shone directly into the back of the tomb. Elsewhere in the British Isles, such as Orkney, similar tombs face the rising sun at the beginning of February. It is possible that these were significant times of the year for our ancestors. Certainly at Stonehenge the main orientation of the monument is towards the rising of the sun at mid-winter.
One of the great gifts to us from the pre-Christian people of ancient Europe is a set of festivals which mark the turning of the seasons. There are eight of these in total: Mid-Winter and Mid Summer, the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes as well as at the beginning of February, May, August and November. Although no one particular religion celebrated all of these days, they were all marked at least somewhere in pre-Christian Europe. It was left to the universal nature of Christianity to bring all eight festivals under one religious roof, so that now you will find Christian festivals overlying all of these days, beginning with Christmas, Candlemas, Lady Day, May Day, Saint John’s Day, Lammas Day, Michaelmas and finally All Saints and All Souls.
Although these festivals were primarily used by Christians to commemorate the story of Christ in different ways, in recent years they have returned to their perhaps original use. The modern Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) is among many contemporary pagan groups to use the “eight seasonal celebrations to help us attune to the natural cycle, and help us to structure our lives through the year, and to develop a sense of community with all living beings.”
I love the festivals of Harvest, Easter and Christmas. At these times the outside comes inside, by way of decorations garnered from the natural world. I have one very vivid small child’s memory of going out to collect holly in the forest with my father. Everywhere was washed out brown fern and grey bark, with cold almost white skies. These celebrations and others are still special to me because they remember in me that child’s joy in the natural world.
It seems to me, whether we are Christian, Pagan or of no religion at all, these eight festivals help us to pay attention to and mark the changing year.
Who knows what the builders of the tombs and stone circles thought or believed? What we can know is that they were keenly aware of the seasons and how both land and sky changed throughout the year. For them it was important enough to mark these events in stone; using the first great technology. In so doing, they have left us with a gift that we should not ignore. They were a listening people who heard a speaking earth. Perhaps like them we can use the festivals of our year to learn to listen again. Who knows what, or whom we might hear?
