Language, Candlemas and Imbolc
(Nimue)
A while ago I came to the conclusion that I didn’t feel comfortable using Irish names for Pagan festivals. I’m not Irish, I’m not in Ireland and I’m not practicing specifically Irish Paganism. Switching over to Welsh names raises all the same issues of not being Welsh, or in Wales. The Welsh tales have more influence on me and my landscape does feature in those stories, but even so it doesn’t feel right.
When I first came to Druidry, quite some years ago, the general feeling seemed to be that we should use ‘Celtic’ names for things. Over time I’ve seen a shift more towards the idea that if we aren’t engged with specific tradtions, we shouldn’t borrow their language. Modern Welsh and Irish are not what the ancient Celts spoke, and the very notion of ‘Celti’ is deeply flawed anyway.
I’m an English speaking Druid living in England. Back when there were Druids in the world, they would have been here too. Successions of invaidors mean we don’t have much of that left in the cultural mix.
I’ve been thinking about, and reading about festivals as the Anglo Saxons named them and celebrated them. We don’t really know how the Pagan Anglo Saxons did things, but between what we know of other Scandinavian peoples, and what we know of Christian Anglo Saxons, we do at least know that they honoured a similar wheel of the year to the current Druid version. This isn’t a wild conclusion as they were in the same landscape, affected by the same agricultural patterns.
At the start of February, Christian Anglo Saxons had a festival called Candlemas, which involved parading with and blessing candles. It turns out that the ‘mas’ bit doesn’t necessarily mean mass in the Catholic sense, but might well come from an older word that just means festival. This is how we get Loafmas – Lammas. Pick your word and stick ‘mas’ after it and off we go. So the peo[le I see online doing their birthdays as their name plus mas are getting it right!
I like Candlemas as a name. I know about as much of what people truly did in history for this festival as I do about Imbolc – which is to say not enough. I might try lighting a candle and seeing where that takes me. I’m going to be experimenting with festival language this year and will see how that goes. How we name things matter, as does our choice of language. My English is very Angle Saxon, it is not possible for me to be a ‘celtic’ Druid but perhaps I can do something that works better for me and doesn’t feel like I’m taking what isn’t mine.
It’s not even like ‘druid’ is the word that…. druids…. would have called themselves.
