Creating a Seasonal Calendar
Celebrating the seasons of the year
Happy New Year everyone.
One of the practices I love doing which helps to keep me in tune with myself and the seasons is celebrating a seasonal calendar.
In this blog post, we are going to explore one such calendar you might want to adopt as well as strategies for creating your own calendar related to your particular local area.
You may have come across the term “the wheel of the year”. This refers to the set of 8 celebrations followed by modern NeoPagans. Although based on historical practices from a mix of cultures, the calendar itself is a modern one created by Gerald Gardner and Ross Nicholls in the 1960’s. However, you don’t have to be a Pagan to follow it. Anyone can adopt this calendar of celebrations if they wish.
The Wheel of the Year has a celebration approximately once every 6 weeks and includes the equinoxes and solstices, as well as the four Celtic festivals of Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain.
Why Celebrate a seasonal calendar?
Keep in sync with Nature - I have found that by taking these regular times to celebrate and focus on what’s happening in nature every 6 weeks, I feel much more aware of what’s going on in nature.
Pause and Reflect - Having a deliberate time to stop, pause, and reflect every six weeks on how life is going is a very valuable practice for helping you focus and move forward. You can look back on the last six weeks and forward to the next six weeks to work out where you want to go.
Adopt a more cyclical view of time - a regular set of celebrations you go through every year helps to condition your mind to see time in a more cyclical rather than linear view - things do not progress ever forward, they go in cycles. Having this view helps us to be more aligned to nature in how we live our lives.
Imbolc (February 1st - 2nd)
This was traditionally the start of the Celtic springtime. The name may come from the fact that it was the time when the Ewe’s were pregnant with lambs and they were about to be born. It is also the time of the Christian festival of Candlemas celebrating the returning light with many candles.
In the UK at this time we see the first flowers of spring coming out - snowdrops and crocuses. This is also the time when the buds on the elder trees burst and their leaves start to come out. It is all about the hope of spring coming.
You could celebrate by making candles, doing a spring clean (February was the time for the Roman festival of purification), or focusing on domestic tasks as it’s a time for focusing on the home. I really like making a cottage pie at this time with the meat or lentil mixture representing the seeds and what’s under the ground and the potato on top representing the snow layer on the ground.
Spring Equinox/ Ostara (19th - 21st March)
This is a time of balance when day and night are roughly equal lengths. The extra light means chickens are able to produce more eggs now (hence the association of easter eggs). NeoPagans call this Ostara after the old Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre (which is where we get the name Easter from).
If you have a garden, now is the time to plant the first potatoes, or to prepare seeds. You can include some of the more traditional easter things here - easter eggs, dyeing eggs, hot cross buns etc.
It’s a time of new life - birds are preparing their nests, the buds are fattening on the trees ready to burst out in April, and some early blossoms are out such as the blackthorn.
Beltane/ May Day (May 1st)
This is the traditional start of the Celtic summer-time. The cows would be going out to their pastures and nature was in full swing. Most trees have their leaves now, there are many trees and flowers in blossom and it feels like life has woken up properly. There are insects everywhere and many birds have had their chicks too or are migrating back from warmer climates to start having them.
It’s a great time to get outside as it’s usually warmer now. It’s also a time to focus on fertility in your celebrations.
Summer Solstice/ Litha (20th - 22nd June)
This is the longest day of the year and we can represent this time as the apex of Nature’s power. It is a day to really celebrate, spend a lot of time outside, and enjoy the warmth and sunshine. It’s a great time for camping.
Strawberries, honey, and elderflowers are abundant at this time.
Lammas (August 1st)
This was the start of Autumn for the Celtic peoples and a harvest of first fruits for the Anglo-Saxons. The first grains have ripened in the fields and a lot of abundance is about to start. It’s a great time for picking berries or making some bread. You may notice the first leaves starting to turn on a few trees.
It’s usually very warm here and there are also often storms in the UK around this time. The first Sunday in August is called “bilberry Sunday” and so I often go to a local moorland to collect bilberries at this time.
Autumn Equinox/ Mabon (21st - 24th September)
Everything is abundant now - it’s a real-time of plenty with the harvest in full swing. The trees are starting to lose their leaves, most fruit is now ready along with many nuts. It is a time of thanksgiving for all that we have.
It’s a time to make wine, picking nuts (nutting day is 14th Sept), and pull up carrots (though the traditional day for that is Michaelmas on 29th Sept). Many apples are in abundance now so apple picking in an orchard is a great activity as is making anything apple related.
Halloween/ Samhain (October 31st)
This is the start of the Celtic Winter season. Everything is slowing down, animals are getting ready the hibernate, trees are losing their final leaves, and everything is withdrawing inward. It’s also a time when a lot of things are dying so it’s a time for us to focus on slowing down, letting go, and remembering our ancestors.
You can adopt some of the Halloween celebrations and decorations, make things like mulled cider or pumpkin soup, and make an altar to remember your ancestors or engage in some genealogy research.
Winter Solstice/ Yule (20th - 22nd Dec)
This is the shortest day, “nature’s pause”. It is a time of quiet, of darkness and withdrawal, and calm. It is also seen as a “rebirth” of the sun. Each day the sun usually rises in a slightly different place but for 3 days around the solstice it rises in the same place each day, appearing to “stand still”. After the solstice we will start to get slightly more light each day and so it is almost like the sun has been reborn.
We can decorate with evergreens to remind us that life carries on amidst so much that has died. And we can decorate with lights to remind us that the light times will come again. It is also the perfect time to practice some cosy Hygge.
We will explore these further in future blogs.
There are also other celebrations you could do to get in touch with nature, for example the Japanese celebrate Spring with a Cherry Blossom festival where they have picnics under the cherry blossoms, and the Harvest Moon festival where they write poetry and gaze at the moon to celebrate the harvest.
Creating your own seasonal calendar
I am based in the UK and the wheel of the year was created based on the UK climate, but it’s important to create a calendar relevant to your particular local area. The Solstices and Equinoxes are going to be the same everywhere (just swop the dates if you are in the southern hemisphere) but any other dates can be molded around what is happening in nature.
Here are some things to think about when creating your own calendar of seasonal festivals…
Buy an almanac and see what natural events are going on
Think about the events in your religion as they are often going to be seasonal
When does your favourite tree or flower bloom or get it’s leaves?
What are the main seasons in your area and when do you notice they start locally.
Are there important astronomical events you’d like to celebrate, perhaps a meteor shower, or a particular constellation rising being visible for the first time, or a moon phase?
Are there important events in the life of a key species locally e.g. when do the salmon swim up your river? when do the deer rut? when are the frogs spawning? and so on.
How to Celebrate
There are several things you can do to celebrate the particular festival…
Spend time in Nature - go for a walk, see what’s happening at this time, maybe collect some seasonal items to add to a nature altar at home.
Decorate - decorate your home, perhaps with seasonal objects such as leaves or flowers, and choose colours that reflect what’s going on outdoors.
Make a feast of seasonal foods - what’s in season in your area at the time - look up some recipes to make with it. For example, I particularly like doing strawberries and cream plus elderflower cordial in June, Blueberries and New Potatoes as part of an August feast, and I like making a pumpkin soup in October.
Make a craft. There are traditional crafts associated with many festivals such as corn dollies for harvest time, yule log’s for Yule, a Brighid’s cross for Imbolc or a maypole for Beltane.
Reflect and Look Forward - reflect on what’s happened since the last festival and anything you’ve learned. Make plans for the next period of time until the following festival.
Take ideas from Folklore - if you look at your local folklore you will probably find particular instances of things related to seasonal transitions in your area and you could adopt those too.
Conclusion
I hope that in 2025 you will make this a year to start celebrating seasonal festivals so that you can feel more in harmony with the cycles of nature and will have a regular chance to pause and reflect. You don’t have to follow the Wheel of the Year calendar to do it - make a calendar that fits for you and your local area.