Samhain, Imbolg, Beltaine, And Luughnasa

Festivals have been and continue to be of great importance amongst the vast array of cultures worldwide. Festivals bestow opportunities for community members to celebrate ancient traditional values and beliefs. For the Celtic community, Samhain, Imbolg, Beltaine, and Lughnasa are the four main festivals celebrated annually since their inception and each festival contains different form of significance for the Celtic community. The origins of Samhain, Imbolg, Beltaine, and Lughnasa provide an original view into the festival’s significance through their customs, names and locations. Additionally, the changes that occur throughout the four festivals’ progress to the present day, labels how some festivals have diminished in significance from its original start while others continue to be significant in a different form in modern day celebrations.

Much of the festivals’ events and traditions are traced back to

On one hand, Beltane’s name originates from the Celtic community’s worship of the sun deity, Bel, to which the Beltane fires were dedicated in exchange for purification of evil (BBC). However, the Dictionary of the Scots Language states that through the Church, Beltane “identified with the old pagan fire festival with the Christian feast of the Invention of the Cross”, which incorporates a Christianized aspect of the Celtic Festival. The festival celebrates the beginning of summer and includes various traditional customs that incorporates the purification of people and cattle. For the Druids, the sun was of great importance and continued to maintain a place in the festivals. McNeil (1959:55) indicates that “the sun was the seat and center of the divinity, and fire, because of its affinity with the sun, was their mystic medium of worship”, thus the purification from illness or supernatural spirits that roamed the night took place around a Beltane