Here Comes the Sun (little darlin')
Celebrating Imbolc and Bridid, "the goddess whom poets adored"
Abby Road, the famous album by the Beatles, was released five days after my 4th birthday, on 26 September 1969, and along with a few other albums (Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman, Simon and Garfunkle’s Greatest Hits) was quite literally the soundtrack of my childhood.
Also in September of 1969, I had a nine-month-old baby brother, so I guess it makes sense that when I heard the words “here comes the sun,” what I heard was “here comes the son.” It wasn’t until I was an adult that I finally realized this song is not about a little brother encroaching on a world that had previously centered entirely around me, but was in fact about the lengthening of days after a “long cold lonely winter” and the coming of spring.
And it wasn’t until yesterday, when I began compiling a “sun music” play list for the Imbolc potluck I’m hosting tonight, that I realized it is, in fact, an Imbolc song!
Imbolc is a Celtic pagan holiday celebrated on 1 February to mark the coming of spring. Of course, spring doesn’t “officially” begin in the global North until the vernal1 equinox on 19 March 2024, which does feel a ways off, doesn’t it? But today is the midpoint, between the winter solstice and the equinox, and today we celebrate the coming of the sun.
Though my own heritage is Celtic, I’ve only known about Imbolc for a few years. I’ve always liked the idea of celebrating it, but have never actually done it. I think I felt like I needed to do lots of research and really know all about the history and rituals before I could invite people to my home to light some candles and call it an Imbolc party.
To which I say poppycock!
Gathering people, extending hospitality, creating community—by definition these things can’t be predicated on perfection. Community is messy and imperfect and that’s half the fun. You don’t need to have a perfectly clean house or the right dinnerware or even be finished painting your walls which have been covered in test swatches for months (ahem) to host a potluck.
It turns out you can, as I have just done, invite folks over to celebrate Imbolc and then do some research 🤓.
Imbolc is, like many pagan holidays, a fire festival, and I’m all about fire these days (fire, food, friends and fun are my words for 2024!), so we’ll be lighting lots of candles tonight.
Imbolc is also, I have just learned, the feast day of the pre-Christian Irish goddess Brigid, who “is associated with wisdom, poetry, healing, protection, smithing and domesticated animals. Cormac's Glossary, written in the 9th century by Christian monks, says that Brigid was "the goddess whom poets adored" … [and] describes her as a "goddess of poets" and "woman of wisdom" or sage, who is also famous for her "protecting care". It says that Brigit has two sisters: Brigit the physician or "woman of healing", and Brigit the smith.”2
I like this triune goddess: artist, healer, maker. What more do we need, other than each other?
And cream puffs! Did I mention I’m making cream puffs for the potluck tonight? (I’ve been experimenting with choux pastry this week, which sounds very fancy but is actually super easy. Let me know if you’d like more baking content, as I am on a tear these days! At any rate, I’ll post photos in my next newsletter.) The rest of the potluck is a baked potato bar with lots of toppings, and a store-bought rotisserie chicken. And someone is bringing curry. Nom nom!
Happy Imbolc!
P.S. Look what came in the mail yesterday! Dr. Devon Price’s newest book, Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power. While it’s hardly about a sunny topic, the cover is the most delightful sunshiny yellow (the color I’m planning to pain my living room ceiling in fact!), and while I’ve only just started it, I do anticipate this is an ultimately hopeful book. I’ll write a review soon!
P.S. Postcards have now gone out to all paying subscribers who gave me their snail mail addresses. Thank you!
These are all the opposite in the Southern hemisphere—what we in the global North celebrate as the vernal equinox is, in the South, the autumnal equinox, and the winter solstice in the North is the summer solstice in the South.
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid