Witches of Spring

Walpurgisnacht (1866), by A. Zimmermann

Pastor’s Epistle—May 2021

May Day is one of the few seasonal celebrations on our calendar which has no clear biblical or liturgical connection. It’s almost religiously irreligious.

While many Christian holidays have pagan parallels or precursors, there’s always a solid reason why the Church celebrates our holy days when and how we do. Much of the supposedly heathenish aspects of the holidays simply have to do with the time of year: autumn, winter, spring, and summer festivals are going to have similar themes the world over, regardless of culture or creed.

But May Day has no real biblical connection. It’s simply a celebration of spring, a welcoming of the warm half of the year to our hemisphere. The Celts called it Beltane (technically pronounced bell-TAHN-yuh, but commonly just bel-TAYN), when livestock would be driven to summer pastures through a pair of cleansing bonfires. The smoke helped to fumigate and delouse the poor critters after a long winter spent indoors. Spirits and fair folk were said to be afoot, as Beltane stands six months opposite Halloween.

For the Germans—surprise, surprise—things were a bit darker. Walpurgis Night, named for an Anglo-Saxon saint, was held to be when witches danced on mountaintops, the better for their conjuring. You can read all about it in Goethe’s Faust. Some speculate that in pre-Germanic times, the eve of May was set aside for rituals of fertility and sacrifice intended to appease the dead; who, being buried, were in good position to make sure that the earth put forth its fruits.

The Romans got in on the act too, with Floralia, their late-April festival dedicated to the goddess of flowers and vegetation. Again we find themes of sacrifice and licentiousness. And who could blame them, really? After the long hard dark of a European winter, who wouldn’t want to celebrate new life, new growth, and the promise of longer, warmer days? Some of this carried over into Christian Rome, of course. But rather than a pagan goddess, Romans would now crown Mary the Mother of God as the true Queen of May.

So the Irish speak of fairies, the Germans of witches, and the Romans of sacred motherhood. Meanwhile, the English, stuck in the midst of all three, would rather just dance the maypole and burn a merry fire. In all of this we celebrate the spring, the wonders of God’s good Creation, and the miraculous wheel of the year. There’s nothing unchristian about honoring Mother Nature. She is our sister, after all.

A bit later in the month we come to Pentecost, the fiftieth and final day of Easter, corresponding to the Hebrew Festival of Weeks, Shavuot. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, this marks both the wheat harvest in the land of Israel, and the giving of the Law to Moses atop Mt Sinai.

For Christians, Pentecost commemorates the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, nine days after the resurrected Christ’s Ascension into heaven. By breathing in the Spirit of Jesus, we are all made Jesus’ Body. Pentecost, then, is the mystical birth of the Church, and a prime time to celebrate the sacramental Rite of Confirmation.

In summation: watch for fairies, avoid the witches, gather flowers, love your mother, light a fire, and breathe in deeply the Holy Spirit of God’s presence mysteriously moving around, among, and through us, as we all look forward to brighter, fresher days. May we all have a blessed, happy, holy May.

In Jesus. Amen.