What’s that you say, it’s not winter yet?

Sure, it is! Today, Dec 1st, is when meteorological winter starts for us in the northern hemisphere and summer begins in the southern hemisphere. It is the day that is considered the first day of the new season by meteorologists. For most people in the northern hemisphere, winter will start on Dec 22 this year, the date of the winter solstice, when the sun is at its lowest in the sky and we have the fewest hours of daylight and the longest night. But wait… if the sun is at its lowest that day, and the days start lengthening from there, shouldn’t that really be MID-winter? Well, as matter of fact, that’s exactly what it is in Ireland, where winter started at the beginning of November. Are you confused yet? I sure was!

As I’ve mentioned (and mentioned again lol), we are going to Ireland in May. I was excited when we moved our departure date up a bit because there was a chance I might get to attend a Bealtaine (Beltane) fire festival while there. Bealtaine is when summer starts and was an ancient festival that involved lighting huge fires on top of hills. In recent years, the festivals have been resurrected. Assuming that the Bealtaine Fire Festival would take place on Bealtaine, I tried to figure out the date of Bealtaine to know what the date would be for the festival, but it wasn’t so easy to figure out! I found myself wandering in a maze of cross-quarter days, holidays, civil observances of holidays, equinoxes, and festivals; I became more and more confused.

Hopefully, this post will help clear things up a bit.

(Note: I’m afraid I should have put a NerdNote warning on this entire post. Proceed with that knowledge! Don’t fear, though; I realized I was getting carried away so I drastically edited this post and will make separate posts on each of the seasonal festival days. )

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What is a Season?

For our purposes, seasons can be defined in at least three ways.

1. Astronomical Seasons– based on the earth’s position as it rotates around the sun.
2. Meteorological Seasons—based on annual temperature cycles and calendar months.
   • Climatologists and environmentalists are having discussions about an improved climatology model for the seasons, as climate change causes seasonal creep- altering the length and temperatures of the seasons.
3. Customary/Calendar Seasons – We pick dates or events and say, “This is when summer starts, and this is when it ends.” Different customs can lead to different season dates. For instance, here in the US, we tend to think of summer beginning on Memorial Day weekend and ending on Labor Day. The modern Irish seasonal calendar is that sort of thing. It starts with the astronomical seasons and simplifies it for our modern lifestyle, moving the dates to the first of the month.

Let’s use this nifty chart I made to look at the calendars that caused all my confusion:

Each multi-colored ring of the circle is a different seasonal calendar that represents the seasonal changes. Each color is a different season, and the month ring is our date reference to approximate the date of the season changes.

The outer ring is the Meteorological calendar, the middle colored ring is the astronomical calendar, and the center ring and black & white circle represent the Celtic calendar.

In the upper right quadrant is the start of winter- in blue-and we can see that according to the outside ring- the meteorological calendar – winter starts today! According to the inside ring, the Celtic calendar, winter started about a month ago, and the astronomical calendar pushes it into the future, three weeks from now, at the winter solstice, when the Celtic calendar is at midwinter.

Comparing these in table form, we can see how each calendar defines the beginning of the seasons:

Here in the US, it’s easy enough. We know that we change the seasons on the solstices and equinoxes, and those always occur sometime during the same 4-day period each year. We just have to look those up on an astronomical calendar. The meteorologists and Ireland make it even easier by changing seasons on the first of the month. No astronomical calendar needed!

The Meteorological calendar, although very straightforward now-three months per season-may need to change in the years to come, as the average temperatures have been shifting and changing the apparent length of each season. Climatologists project continued changes in seasonal cycles, as demonstrated in this chart presented in a paper published in 2021, “Changing Lengths of the Four Seasons by Global Warming.” They say that if changes continue at their current rate, a longer summer and shorter winter will become the new normal by the end of this century. But that’s for another post sometime!

The Celtic/Gaelic part of this is where I got all turned around. Since it was a Celtic festival I was researching, that was problematic. The Celts were marking seasonal changes on the cross-quarter dates, in between the solstices and equinoxes. To complicate matters even more, some folks believe that the ancient Celts did not celebrate the seasonal festivals on the calculated cross-quarter dates but rather on the dark moon or full moon nearest them! That system is also commonly seen now.

You can see how difficult it can be to know when a festival day is occurring! We can look at different calendars and find different dates, as I did. But at least now, understanding what the different calendars are, we know why.

Let’s get to the actual dates of the seasonal festivals and season changes in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man!

Seasonal Festivals

The four Celtic/seasonal/lunar/fire festivals, aka cross-quarter days, (wow, that’s a lot of names!) may be unfamiliar, so here’s the season associated with each. This will hopefully help us make sense of the many different dates on which they will be celebrated in 2024 and the start of the seasons in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man.

• Imbolc: Marks the beginning of spring
  • St. Brigid’s Day/Imbolc (public holiday): Thu, Feb 1, 2024
    • official beginning of Spring
  • St. Brigid’s Day/Imbolc (bank holiday): Mon, Feb 5, 2024
    • observed on the first Monday in February, unless Feb 1st falls on Fri.
  • Imbolc (Celtic): Fri, Feb 9, 2024
    • the time of a dark moon with the Sun in the constellation Aquarius
  • Imbolc (Cross-Quarter): Sun, Feb 4, 2024
    • the halfway point in the number of days between the winter solstice and spring equinox.

• Lá Bealtaine (Beltane Day): Marks the beginning of summer. Shares its name with the month.
  • May Day/Beltane/Bealtaine (May Day Holiday): May 1, 2024
  • May Day/Beltane/Bealtaine (May Day Bank Holiday): Mon, May 6, 2024
    • observed on the first Monday in May, unless May 1^st falls on Fri.
  • Bealtaine (Celtic): April 23, 2024
    • occurs at the time of a full moon with the Sun in the constellation Taurus.
  • Bealtaine (Cross-Quarter): May 4, 2024
    • the halfway point in the number of days between the Spring equinox and summer solstice

• Lúnasa / Lughnasa: Marks the beginning of Autumn, harvest season. Also, the name of the month
  • Lá Saoire i mí Lúnasa -public August Holiday: Thu, Aug 1, 2024
  • Lá Saoire i mí Lúnasa -public August Bank Holiday: Mon, Aug 5, 2024
    • observed on the first Monday in August, unless August 1^st falls on Fri.
  • Lughnasa (Celtic): Mon, Aug 19, 2024
    • occurs at the time of a full moon with the Sun in the constellation Leo.
  • Lughnasa (Cross-Quarter): Wed, Aug 7, 2024
    • the halfway point in the number of days between the summer solstice and autumnal equinox

• Samhain: Marks the beginning of winter, shares the name of the month of November.
  • Samhain (public October Holiday): Nov 1, 2024
  • Lá Saoire i Mí Dheireadh Fómhair or Lá Saoire Oíche Shamhna 
    • public October Bank Holiday: Oct 28, 2024
      • observed on the last Monday in October
  • Samhain(Celtic): Nov 1, 2024 (starts Oct 31 at sundown)
    • the time of a dark moon with the Sun in the constellation Scorpio
  • Samhain(Cross-Quarter): Nov 6, 2024
    • the halfway point in the number of days between the between autumnal equinox and winter solstice

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To bring all this full circle, back to what started me down this rabbit hole, it turns out that the big Bealtaine Fire Festival will be held on the Hill of Uisneach in Westmeath County. The Hill of Uisneach is considered by many to be “the sacred center of Ireland” (at least, that’s what they say on their website!) But the festival will not be on any of the dates associated with Bealtaine! It will be held much later on May 11, 2024. Well, that would have been a very cool way to spend my birthday, but we will have already started our tour and are expecting to be exploring the Northern Ireland coast that day and end the day in Donegal.

Ah well, but the thought sure sent me on quite a journey!

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I readily admit that the NerdNote warning should have gone to the top of this post to encompass the whole thing! (You should have seen it before I pruned it!) But the designation is relative to the subject being discussed and this post presents a simplified view of the seasons and calendars, if you can believe that!

If you are interested in a deeper dive into the seasons and astronomical phenomena, and other space-related topics, check out the European collaborative FP7 ESPaCE Program’s “A Tour in the Solar System”

Software Developer, Peter J. Meyer has created a cool (free!) calculator to find the dates of the Celtic Festivals and Cross-Quarter dates in any year. That is where I got the dates for this blog post. Check it out at the link. He has other cool calculators and apps there as well.

I need to make a personal note to a couple of people who asked that I go into the fire festivals and traditional ways of celebrating the seasonal festivals, as well as their connections to Christian days of observance. I apologize. I had to prune that info! It was too much for one post. I plan to make individual posts as part of a Seasons & Celebrations series for each one closer to the date it occurs and will include that information in smaller bites!