Ancient Rites of Olde England
Article by Elsie Procter
The original religion or beliefs of the Ancient Britons were probably rooted in Druidism and witchcraft (Wicca), lumped together under the name of Paganisim, which simply means "not a follower of Christianity". It is amazing that today we still practice some of the rites from those early times.
Appropriately, let's start with the merrie month of May. May Day was traditionally the first day of the month, but has now become the first Monday of the month, and now a Bank Holiday. May is name after MAIA, mother of Mercury, whose father was Zeus, King of the Gods of Ancient Rome. Maia was the Goddess of Fertility, and on the first of May, festivities were held and sacrifices made, to the goddess to ensure that the growing crops would receive her protection against bad weather, fire, etc. A Queen of the May was chosen to preside over the festivities, which included dancing round the maypole, feasting, and drunken revelry -- I wonder if this is where the word "mayhem" comes from?
Another Ancient Brit festival was Easter -- Another Goddess of Fertility (& Spring), this time called EOSTRE -- and again pagan. Easter was also connected to Moon worship, and today the date of Easter is still governed by the phases of the moon i.e. the first fuull moon after the vernal (Spring) equinox. This festival, celebrating the coming of Spring, had, as its symbol, an egg. Hence the easter egg of today. Rabbits, well known for their sexual prowess, were sacrificed and the resulting blood etc. ploughed into the fields as fertiliser. We no longer carry out such rites, of course, but we still remember them with our chocolate eggs and bunnies.
CHRISTMAS as we know it was the 'yuletide' of Ancient Britons. We still have a tradition of bringing in the yule-log. The yule-log cake is another reminder of this ancient rite. Burning the log was intended to ward off the evil spirits who lurked in the winter-dark corners of the living accommodation of those days.
The Ancientt Brits used holly for decoration, mistletoe as a fertility symbol, and ivy, which was supposed to ward off drunkenness -- an obvious and necessary companion to the mistletoe. (I wonder if it worked?)
Then along came the Christians hoping to reform all this and convert everyone to Christianity. They had an uphill task as the Ancient Britons were very reluctant to give up their drinking, dancing, and fertilising....and who can blame them? History does not record his name, but some bright spark came up with the idea of combining the old with the new.
(This may have been the Emperor constantine, the first Roman Emp' to be converted to Christianity -- and also reluctant to give up his drinking, etc. Though the Old Testament also records many cases of the Jews flirting with pagan cuustoms. -- Ed) The actual date and year of the birth of Jesus is very uncertain, so the early Christian leaders decided that the 25th December because that date coincided with, surprise, surprise, the Yuletide festival of the old religions (and the Roman Saturnalia festival of drinking, etc -- Ed). Thus the people were gradually converted to Christianity and their leaders, presumeably, turned a blind eye to the rest and hoped it would die out eventually.Easter was another such amalgamation. This Ancient Brit festival was turned into Easter. The death of Christ replaced the old Brits' appeasement to the winter golds, and the Resurrection replaced the festivities of Eostre, Goddess of Spring. That those early Christian leaders never fully managed the conversion is seen today in the way we still carry out some of those traditions, like easter eggs, kissing under the mistletoe, etc. Andy anyone who thinks we don't have drunken revelries and fertility rites today obviously haven't been in the local pubs on these occasions. Cheers!!
Bent' writer, Kevin Griffin, also tells me that the reason they have crosses on hot X buns is because they used to think it was the devil that made their bread rise and the crosses were meant to ward off evil.
Copyright The Bentilean 1999
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