Some modern holidays align with the Celtic earth based calendar. New Years isn’t one of them. Easter takes place on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, Christmas and Winter Solstice are celebrated within days of each other. But on the Celtic calendar the new year began last October on Samhain, what we know as Halloween.

For the early Irish the new day began at sundown with the coming night. So the new year began with with the approach of the longest night. As new life begins in the darkness of the earth and womb, so the new year began with the seasonal journey into darkness.

And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found world.
              John O’Donohue

May the world you find be filled with light, life and glorious color.