The Celtic Festivals:

Today there are taken to be eight main festivals in the Celtic Year, starting with Samhain regarded as the start of the year, then Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltain, Litha, Lammas and Mabon. The origins of some of these festivals are still in dispute, as historians will point out that there is no evidence for the celebration of some from Celtic times, and such evidence there is is often very local to each area. Still today these festivals have become very well established and offer many turning points in the year to reflect on internal and external growth and how the energies of life work through the year. Recognising these makes it easier to schedule tasks, aims and objectives because we can work with the energies of the time rather than against them. In truth though, much of our natural behaviour reflects these energies anyway, but understanding them helps us to deal with the inability to sit still on an early summer's day and our inability to get motivated to go out on a dull winter's one!