WHY THE DIFFERENT DATES?

by Earrach of Pittsburgh

Ok, so you've noticed. Our grove almost always does our Samhain rite around the 6th of November, instead of at Halloween. Our event dates hardly ever coincide with the commonly accepted dates for Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasa or Samhain. Why is ADF's calendar different from everybody else's?**

The Origins of the ADF Feast-Date System for the Crossquarterdays

First, there is a formal ADF tradition involved. Back in the early days of ADF, the organization's founder, Isaac Bonewits , had decided that a "reformed" Neopagan Druidism should conform closely to the findings of modern archeologists and other competent scholars, to figure-in as much "authenticity" into our Druidism as possible. Robert Larson, an associate of Isaac's had written for the RDNA a lengthy argument for a system of "corrections" to the citing of the dates of the crossquarters and Isaac had found it quite convincing. It involved a reassessment of the structure of the Celtic calendar, using the only true piece of hard evidence for a Celtic calendar: the Coligny Calendar, recalibrated to conform with certain data from the date system apparent from the pre-Celtic stone circles of Western Europe. Larson's method was carefully constructed and well worth the study of all serious students of the Wheel of the Year. In my opinion it was a legitimate effort to come up with a meaningful date system while ironing-out many of the inconsistencies of the prevailing "Surviving Dates" system which everybody else so blindly follows. It was a good effort, but complex enough to still miss the point and remain disconnected from the Natural Year, and thereby, perhaps, the original intentions of the Ancients.
- Does it sound like I have a system of my own up my sleeve? Um, yep....…

The conventional set of crossquarter dates,
those with which most of us are familiar, I will call here the...

"SURVIVING DATES" SYSTEM of CROSSQUARTER DATES:
(a.k.a the Modern Tradition "MT")

These dates are not really the result of any system of calculation, they are simply what has survived through two thousand years of uncorrected, corrected and miscorrected calendar drift. The previous “eve’s” and the following “day’s” are connected by an old (but possibly erroneous) tradition based on Caesar’s assertion that the Gauls (ie Celts) started their days “at night.” When we consider the convoluted history of the Western calendar over the last two thousand years, we can be virtually certain these dates no longer reflect the original relationship of the feasts to the “natural” seasonal calendar.

The NEW set of dates I am suggesting as the "corrected" or Temporal System are close to the values derived by the Larson (ADF) system yet calculated differently. The Temporal System defines the crossquarters by marking the moment in time precisely halfway between each adjacent solstice and equinox. Those dates fall approximately on:

"TEMPORAL" (TS) SYSTEM of CROSSQUARTER DATES:
Precisely halfway in time between each solstice and equinox.

The proximity of a Leap Year can shift those dates by a little more than 1/2 a day. Notice that the feast dates in question are just the crossquarters; there should be no debate over the correct dates for the solstices and equinoxes themselves (the "quarterdays"); they, unlike the crossquarters, mark actual physical events in the Earth's orbit. So, contrary to popular suspicions, the annual calendar dates for the solstices and equinoxes are by no means "arbitrarily" selected as if they're somehow subject to the capriciousness of the high priests of the scientific establishment. No, the year to year variance in the date and time of the equinoxes and solstices is actually due to our wonderfully efficient Gregorian Calendar correcting itself. Bobbing around the natural year's fixing points like a puppy pacing from one extreme to the other on a very short leash, the corrections are achieved through the application of an extra day every four years or so ("leap years") and the occasional extra day thrown-in on certain century-turning years. Suffice it to say that the Year is real; the Calendar is a useful but illusionary invention.

Nonetheless, virtually all the general dates listed for the occurrences of the solstices and equinoxes in popular Neopagan books, as well as many of the more scholarly "Celtic Studies" books who mention them, are incorrect. Among the culprits are most of the otherwise "respected" names: Starhawk, Cunningham, Buckland, Farrar, even (gasp!)our beloved Cailtin Matthews. I've yet to find one author who gets all four general solstice and equinox dates right and most don't even get one date right. Well, hey, it's only the Sacred Calendar... (grrr....).

So, if the crossquarter date problem is caught up in its ill-defined relationship to the natural calendar, rendering the choice to being somewhat arbitrary in nature, how shall we decide upon which day, say, Beltane should fall?

In Search of "Original Intentions"

The calendar of old crossquarter feast dates, as-it-survives, reflects the end product of over two thousand years of un-corrected, mis-corrected and accidental adjustments to the various calendar systems current through its history. Although there is some evidence for the citing of Christian feasts on certain dates to supplant older pagan observances, the evidence is by no means complete for the whole calendar. In his landmark book, The Stations of the Sun; a History of the Ritual Year in England (Oxford, 1996), Ronald Hutton points this out, systematically demolishing virtually all of the assumptions at the core of modern paganism's calendar (thereby be warned: Hutton's book is very good but perhaps too bitter a pill for most modern pagans to swallow).

If the original reasons and themes for the feasts have been lost along with their dates and the remaining fragments have been forced together in these later days to form meanings probably largely foreign to their original meanings, what then should we do with what's left to us? What can be done with little more than a flickering glimpse of an astronomically quartered year, further subdivided roughly into eighths by the crossquarters? What about using it to construct something new that makes sense? Good sense? -and be honest about it at the same time? This is the challenge to responsible Third-Wave Neopagan institutions like ADF: to act in accord with the ancient wisdom implicit in the reliable artifacts and lore that survive and use it to create something of value to the present day.

To me, the ancient wisdom implicit in their calendar lore directs us to divide up the year as I feel they would have, had they our modern calendrical and astronomical resources. The Old Ones would have loved to be able to know so preciesly where the quarters of the Year fell. No doubt they would have subdivided the seasonal quarters evenly in-half, as I am suggesting. In choosing to do so because of the general dearth of other substantial natural generative factors for crossquarter dates, they also would preserve, in these otherwise arbitrary dates, a direct-connection to the natural but “fixed” dates of the solstices and equinoxes.

"Whole-Time over two... "

Again, the system I'm suggesting is simply to define the "moment" of crossquarter as the moment in time precisely halfway between each adjacent solstice and equinox, thereby taking each natural quarter of the year and subdividing it precisely in half.

This though brings us face to face with what I have always considered to be a Great Druidic Secret: the "quarters" of the natural year, the sections of the Earth's orbit between adjacent equinoxes and solstices, are not of equal length! Quartering the year is not a matter of simply dividing the length of the year into four equal parts (365.242d/4). Nope; prepare yourself for a surprise...

The current values for the lengths of the seasons are:

The last time there was any parity among the seasons was the year 1246 CE when Spring and Summer were the same length as well as Autumn and Winter having a different but equal length. Did you know any of those values?

*Is it really unreasonable to expect a "Druid" to know
how many days there are in each season?

Well...?

The reason for the differing lengths of the seasons has to do with the earth's speed increasing annually as we get closer to the Sun at the beginning of January, and later, our slowing down around the beginning of July at our furthest from the Sun. The variance in our distance from the Sun actually has no effect on our seasonal temperature changes; that has an altogether different cause: the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the sunlight falling on its surface. Heck; we're actually about a million miles further away from the sun in July than we are in December! Seasonal temperatures have a very different origin. It all has to do with the high square-footage of shadows on the ground in the winter and the lack thereof in the summer. Every square foot of ground that doesn't get warmed by the Sun's light adds up (or down, for that matter).

*Is it really unreasonable to expect a "Druid" to understand
the causes of the seasons implicitly?

Well?

Other Possibilities

There are several other possibilities for ancient methods of fixing dates for the crossquarter observances, some plausible and some less so.

The DECLINATION System (DS)
The altitude above the horizon (relative to the celestial equator) of the Sun at noon ranges from lowest on the Yule Solstice (-23.5˚) to highest on the June Solstice (+23.5 degrees;) and is halfway in-between those (0 degrees) on the equinoxes . When the Sun's altitude is 11.72 degrees; (23.5 degrees/2), relative to the Celestial Equator (0 degrees), one might guess that half the time has transpired between an adjacent solstice and equinox. It's correct within a day or two: close but not exact. This is very close to the mode of derivation for the ADF/Larson system described earlier.

The HORIZON Systems (HS)
If followed along the eastern (rising) horizon or western (setting) horizon with some reliable sighting system such as a stone circle or series of standing poles, the crossquarter could be guessed by marking the Sun's progress to the halfway point between the horizon marker for a solstice and that of an adjacent equinox marker. This gives similar yet significantly different results from those of the Declination system using this system.

SYNODIC (Lunar) Systems
Various holy-day fixing systems based on the first sacred phase (new, full; whichever) of the moon, particularly those next-occurring after a solstice or equinox. Compare the vitality of such traditions in the Middle East in the Islamic or Judaic lunar calendars. Throughout human history, calendar keepers have found that the Moon is a harsh mistress - as nice as it would be for the solar, seasonal, cycles to find some correlation with the Moon, it just ain't there; just every 18.6 years, a vague restarting of the moon's phase-cycles relative to her position against the background stars. We can be sure that most cultures have tried to use the moon for calendar-keeping but we can be just as sure that they failed to find a reasonable way to keep it correlated with the seasons.

The HARD EVIDENCE
Let me take this opportunity to point out that the only "hard" evidence for the fixing of ancient calendars in Western Europe comes to us from the science of Archaeoastronomy, not from Celtic Studies. There is ample physical evidence in the archeology of Stonehenge, New Grange, Maes Howe and other sites that these early inhabitants were virtually obsessed with the Solstices and Equinoxes a thousand to two thousand years before the peoples now known as the Celts first arose in central Europe. All other evidence for the calendar customs of their descendants pales in comparison and is, sadly, completely anecdotal in nature. There is a peculiarly wrongheaded attitude to be found in Celtic Studies that the Celts had no astronomical connections in their calendar and that if any were to be found they probably were lunar. This only holds true when examining the corpus of late Celtic folklore, virtually all written down in medieval times yet freely passed off in modern Celtic Scholarship as reliable views back into the Iron Age and beyond.
Ah yes, but that's a rant for another day!

Earrach, © 1997/2001.

NOTES: ** When I first wrote this essay in the late 90's, many groves were still trying to hold their crossquarter feast observances on or close to the "official" dates published by ADF (in the Grove Organizer's Handbook and elsewhere). Those dates were calculated based on the old Larson-RDNA/ADF method alluded-to above. This has fallen into disuse and only ADF old-timers even remember it. Even if some of their members still might want to "do-it-on-the-day" most groves now have given over to consensus and hold their events on the nearest convenient Saturday or such. Even Sassafras, long a hold-out of "Druidic-Correctness", now only is fussy about doing the solstices and equinoxes on or adjacent to the "actual-day", and lets the public dates for their crossquarter rites slide to the nearest appropriate weekend. -E.