Festivals of the agragian calendar
We hardly ever realize anymore that many of the old festivals celebrated today used to be agrarian time-keepers. Before the industrialization of our societies, when we relied on the sun for light and food, these celebrations served as reminders of the beginning and culmination of the seasons of natural awakening, growth, harvest, and death. Their timing as well as their meaning were most often tied to the major astronomical events that determine the climate on Earth.
These festivals may have become unrecognizable because they were thoroughly assimilated into a religion (e.g., Fall Death Festivals), or to other cultural aspects (e.g. May Day), or because of the commercialization that has engulfed them (e.g, Halloween).
Winter festivals
Winter Festivals are usually celebrated around the Winter Solstice.
- First Light, Hanukkah and Christmas are light festivals.
- Lent marks the end of winter and its typical fast may have been a way of stretching the last of the stored away food.
- Perhaps Carnival was a way of quickly finishing food that was going bad in storage.
Spring festivals
Spring Festivals celebrate the resurrection of nature, fertility, renewal, and the planting of crops. They often celebrate a New Year's Day.
- The Celtic festival Imbolc marks the beginning of Spring.
- Groundhog Day in the United States revolves around a groundhog call Phil, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
- Easter celebrates the Resurrection: Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are symbolic of fertility.
- On the second day of Pesach or Passover, the Jewish people start "the counting of the Omer": they count 49 days to the festival of Shavuot, which was originally a harvest festival.
- On Walpurgisnacht German children gather branches.
- 1 May or May Day is a general name for many Spring Festivals.
- The origin of April Fool's may lie in the pranks the weather plays on us mortals.
- During the Chinese New Year's Festival time is set aside for a good spring cleaning.
- India celebrates a plethora of New Year's Festivals in Spring.
- The northern Indian festivals of Holi and Dhuleti, of spring and of color, are popular all over India.
Summer festivals celebrate the beginning of the harvest season.
- The Celtic festival Beltaine or Beltane, the maypole stands central, and the livestock is blessed for a fertile year.
- The Celtic Lughnasad or Lammas celebrates the first grain harvest with the baking of bread.
- The middle of summer is globally known as an inauspicious time, as in the so-called "dog days of summer" and the Chinese Ghost Month.
Fall festivals celebrate the last harvest and/or death.
- Samhain is the Celtic festival that marks the beginning of Winter
- Diwali in India is a popular fall festival that is also a festival of lights
- Babye Leto: Russian harvest festival (also means “Indian Summer”)
- Halloween and All Hallows' focus on the dead and are historically connected.
- The Day of the Dead in Mexico welcomes the dead.
