The Witch's Holidays
Witch's celebrate eight holidays in a year. The holidays are known as Sabbats, and are celebrated to represent birth, death and rebirth. A lot of these sabbats fall around the dats of nationaly celebrated holidays, such as Easter, Christmas, Valentine's Day and Hallowe'en, so they aren't too hard to keep track of, once you get the hang of it.
The Sabbats are recognised in two parts, major and lesser (or something like that). The major Sabbats are known as Fire Festivals, and represent a quarter turn of the Wheel of the Year, or the passing of one full season. These Sabbats are:
- Yule - Winter Solist - Yuletide
- Ostara - Spring Equinox - EasterRitual
- Litha - Summer Solist
- Mabon - Fall Equinox
The lesser Sabbats are known as cross-quarters.
- Imbolc - Candlemas
- Beltane - Mayday
- Lammas - Lughnasadh
- Samhain - Martinmas - Hallowe'en - Shadowfest -
Each of the Sabbats represents a turn of the Wheel of the Year. They represent birth, death and rebirth. Below is a description of each of the Sabbats.
Yuletide
Yuletide is celebrated on December 21st through 31st. As you may have realised, this is the same time that Christmas is celebrated amoung the rest of the world. The reason for this is, or so I have been told, becasue you can never really trust history, is that the Christians couldn't decide when Christ had been born. They knew that it had been on the 25th, but what month it had been they couldn't decide. So they decided to hold it in December, because Pagans have a holiday at this time. This is why Christmas was at one time outlawed, and also why we have so many "tree" traditions at this time. The mistletoe, the Christmas Tree, the traditional fire that Santa burns his butt on when he falls down the chimney, all Pagan.
Imbolic
Ostara
Beltane
Litha
Lughnasadh
Mabon
Samhain