The Quarter Days as Christian feasts observed in the Celtic Catholic Church
Often people become confused when they discover that our Calendar contains four days which many consider "pagan": Samhain, Imbolc, Beltain, and Lugnasa. They want to know why we are keeping these pagan festivities. "Doesn't that make you heathen?" they want to know.
The four Quarter Days, as they are called, are not a pagan celebration in any meaningful way. Or perhaps they are, but only in the same sense that birthdays, death commemorations, harvest festivals, etc. could be said to be pagan. Pagans do them. But that does not make them pagan. It simply means that they express real human needs and longings.
The ancient Celtic calendar was divided into four seasons:
Samhain / Winter (November - January)
Imbolc / Spring (February - April)
Beltain / Summer (May - July)
Lughnasa / Autumn (August - October)
The first day (or rather the day and its eve) of each season is
called by the name of the season. These words are really the
exact equivalent of the English words. We use them still mainly
because they are so quaint to our ears, and so evocative. In
modern Irish, November, May, and August are still called by the
old names. (December is called Nollaig, which means Christmas.)
These are quite simply the four natural seasons. The old pagans would have celebrated them in the context of their pagan gods. Christians celebrate the same things in the context of God. The human spirit needs to ask God's help and give meaning to the year. This is what they did, and this is what we do. Although some of the ceremonies may be the same or similar (in some places they still dance over the bonfire at Beltain, e.g.) the context in which they are performed is entirely different. They still serve the same purpose of ordering the year in the sight of God, but the theology about that God is not the same. Consider Ireland: cold, wet, grey, especially in winter. When summer comes, it is time to celebrate. You would want to celebrate whether you are pagan or Christian. Consider the human condition: uncertain, at the mercy of the elements, really inadequate to face much of what happens. You would want to ask God's help whether you are pagan or Christian. Consider the human experience of time: everything happens in that flow, and yet we do not understand it for a moment, and even more so since Einstein. You would want to place it in God's hands whether you are pagan or Christian. And so we sain (mark with a cross) the seasons of our lives and our hopes and fears, by celebrating the days and times which mark the turning of the year. We sain the year and declare it to be God's possession. We take back title from the enemy of our souls, who too often tries to convince us (and all too often succeeds) that time is his instrument, serving his purposes. "Oh," he says, "You are getting old, too much time has passed and not enough time remains. Despair is the only answer." We place the year, and each season thereof, together with all the activities which take place therein, into the hands of God.
We celebrate each of the four Quarter Days with a long litany of prayer in which we systematically offer to God just about every conceivable human concern. We can have a party for each day. We also do certain fun ceremonies to make the changing seasons and God's grace more real to us. We celebrate New Year's day on the night of October 31. We bless animals on Beltain. We exchange bread on Lughnasa. We light candles on Imbolc. Some of these actions do indeed extend back to pagan times. But they are not pagan. They are just human. They are not religion-specific, any more than celebrating a birthday is. They can be done in a pagan context, with prayers to a false god. They can also be done in a Christian context, with prayers to God more fully understood than the pagans were able to.
