Pagan/Wicca Holy Days Calendar – Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (2024)

FAQs

What are the 8 pagan holidays? ›

Almost all Pagans celebrate a cycle of eight festivals, which are spaced every six or seven weeks through the year and divide the wheel into eight segments. Four of the festivals have Celtic origins and are known by their Celtic names, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain.

Yule is a 12 day long celebration that starts on the eve of the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and ends with the new calendar year. This celebration was one of the most important of the year in ancient times, celebrated by Pagans across Europe.

Wicca is a nature-based, pagan belief system founded in the mid-20th century. Wiccans worship Nature, often personified as Mother Earth and Father Sky. As polytheists, they can use many different titles for their deities.

In the Nordic countries, the Sun (Sunday) and the Moon (Monday) also became the first two days of the week, and the Roman gods became four of the Nordic gods with similarities: Mars became Tyr (Tuesday), Mercury became Odin (Wednesday), Jupiter became Thor (Thursday) and Venus became Frigg (Friday).

The Wheel of the Year consists of eight Sabbats or seasonal festivals that mark the changing seasons. These include Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas/Lughnasadh, and Mabon. Each Sabbat has its own unique significance and rituals associated with it.

Contemporary pagan ritual is typically geared towards "facilitating altered states of awareness or shifting mind-sets". In order to induce such altered states of consciousness, pagans utilize such elements as drumming, visualization, chanting, singing, dancing, and meditation.

Why are birthdays a pagan holiday? ›

Well, history suggests that birthday celebrations were organized by the pagans. They believed that evil spirits got their chance to possess a soul when it went through a major change, like when it turned a year older, and the celebrations were a ritual to ward off these spirits.

When Christianity became generally accepted in the towns and cities of the empire, paganus was used to refer to a villager who continued to worship the old gods. Christians used the term for anyone not of their faith or of the Jewish faith. The word in Old English for such a person was what is now heathen.

Description: Samhain is one of the four "greater Sabbats" and considered by some to be the Wiccan New Year. A time to celebrate the lives of those who have passed on, welcome those born during the past year into the community, and reflecting on past relationships, events and other significant changes in life.

Many people also get a legal marriage for practical reasons like tax and property inheritance. Some Pagans are polyamorous, others are monogamous. Unfortunately there is currently no legal recognition for polyamorous relationships. There is no stigma attached to divorce among Pagans.

Definition. The Wheel of the Year is a symbol of the eight Sabbats (religious festivals) of Neo-Paganism and the Wicca movement which includes four solar festivals - Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Fall Equinox - and four seasonal festivals - celebrating or marking a significant seasonal change.

In fact, the Christian celebration of Christmas was invented by Romans as a way to co-opt and tame the raucous pagan holiday of Saturnalia, which was itself essentially a celebration of the days getting longer after the winter solstice.

Samhain is observed from sunset on October 31st to sunset on November 1st. It is the celebration that is the origin of Halloween. Samhain was first observed by Celtic Pagans. Samhain marked the Celtic New Year, the end of summer, and the end of the harvest season.

Pagans believe that nature is sacred and that the natural cycles of birth, growth and death observed in the world around us carry profoundly spiritual meanings. Human beings are seen as part of nature, along with other animals, trees, stones, plants and everything else that is of this earth.