Saint Brigid's Day and Celebrating Spring
Hi friends,
I hope you’re hanging in there. I’m fine. Immersed in the usual routine of writing and parenting and early morning walks and otherwise staying home as much as possible. Seasonal depression + pandemic has me hitting something of an emotional wall lately, but some of the people I know and love very much have started getting their covid vaccines, and that makes it feels like there’s a light at the end of this very, very long tunnel.
In my online presence, I feel like I straddle a divide between Christians and self-professed witchy types. The people I follow on Instagram tend to fall into one of these two camps. I love being able to observe them, to see their similarities and differences (and there are more similarities than you might think). One of the things I find most interesting is being able to see their interactions with saints. There are a handful of saints that seem to get an equal amount of affection and regard from both Christians and more pagan types: Joan of Arc, Michael the Archangel, Mother Mary.
And Brigid.
Tomorrow is Saint Brigid’s feast day. This is a tall claim because so many saints are so very strange, but I do believe that she’s one of the strangest. Irish hagiography tells us that she was a 5th-century nun and that she founded the monastery of Kildare. Most of the early biographies agree that Brigid’s mother was a slave and her father was a chieftain.The biographies are pretty fantastical too, though. They tell us that evidence of her holiness was present even when she was a child, and it was present in astonishing ways. Brigid’s mother was sold to a druid when she became pregnant, but when the druid tried to feed the child Brigid, Brigid vomited because the druid was so impure. Instead, she was fed by a white cow with red ears. Many of the miracles attributed to her are impressive even for a saint, often involving things like the multiplication of food and control of the weather. She turned water into beer, her prayers stilled the wind and the rain, and when she put her staff in the ground, streams came forth.
What I find most interesting, though, is that we’re not sure Brigid of Kildare even existed. What we are sure about is that Brigid was also the name of a goddess in pre-Christian Ireland, and that Brigid the goddess and Brigid the saint might as well be the same person. February 1st is Saint Brigid’s feast day, but February 1st is also the traditional Gaelic festival of Imbolc. It heralded the coming of spring and was associated with, you guessed it, the goddess Brigid. The monastery which Saint Brigid founded at Kildare was also the site of a pagan shrine to the goddess Brigid (the Irish Cill Dara means “church of the oak”). In icons of Saint Brigid, she is often seen holding a bowl of flame and a cross made of rushes, both symbols of the goddess Brigid before they were symbols of the saint. Saint Brigid is not the only Christianization of a god or goddess, but she does seem to me to be the most obvious. Truly, the line separating the saint and goddess is so thin as to be almost invisible.
It’s no secret that I love these liminal folk saints and the ways in which Christianity and folk religion come together and borrow from each other. I see many similarities between Christianity and more pagan beliefs, in the way we’re all trying to make meaning and find a rhythm on which to hang our lives. The liturgical year and the seasonal festivals of solstices and equinoxes are not so very different. I call myself a Christian because I believe that Christianity is a religion more true than any other—I wouldn’t be here otherwise. That being said, I like the ways in which Christianity pulled from pre-Christian religion, and I like the ways in which certain saints’ feast days mark the seasons too (John the Baptist and the summer solstice, Saint Thomas and the winter solstice, Michaelmas, Lady Day, etc). I spent some of my life being very pulled to nature-based, pagan religions because I wanted to mark the changing of seasons, never noticing that Christianity does the same thing, in its own way.
Christianity doesn’t call February 1st Imbolc, but with the feast of Saint Brigid, it essentially celebrates it as such, and I like it when Christianity leans into these earthy sentiments. The readings from the Book of Common Prayer for Saint Brigid’s feast day are well-suited for celebrating the first touch of spring. Psalm 138, a psalm of praise and hope and safety—“though the Lord be high, He cares for the lowly.” The passage from 1 Corinthians about how God calls the weak to shame the strong and the foolish to shame the wise, a reminder to consider how we can be God’s light in the world in our own small ways. And the verses from Matthew that include this gem: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” Saint Brigid, goddess Brigid, spring, light. It’s all right here, all essentially the same.
As with all the folk saints, there are a very good many ways to celebrate Brigid’s feast day. Christianity has borrowed a good many of the folk-ish customs surrounding Imbolc. You can make a St. Brigid’s Cross and hang it above your entryway to protect your home against fire. You can make a Brigid doll, or Brídeóg, since Saint Brigid is associated with fertility and is the patron saint of babies, among a great many other things. On the Eve of Saint Brigid’s Day you can leave outside Brigid’s mantle, or the brat Bhríde, a piece of cloth which will be blessed by Saint Brigid as she travels through the land. The mantles are supposed to bring good luck in fertility and childbirth, a very springtime blessing. You can make Saint Brigid’s Bread and churn your own butter to go with it, since Brigid is associated with cows and is also the patron saint of dairy maids. As for myself, NYC is supposed to get a foot of snow on Saint Brigid’s Day and springtime feels very far away, but I’ll try to get into the spirit of the day all the same. At the very least, I’m looking forward to scrolling through instagram and seeing all the Catholics and witchy folks I follow making Brigid crosses and heralding spring.