Holidays in Ásatrú, Heathenry and Norse Paganism

There are two groupings of holidays that we will break down: those that are generally agreed on and those that are not. We will also indicate the times that each are generally celebrated. We will use the Full Moon calendar for the most part, though we will also reference some of the “Wheel of the Year” timing as well.

Keep in mind, there are some traditions, like Theodisc Belief or Urglaawe that follow different calendars. This is just one example of a way to put one together. This is not the definitive Heathen Calendar! It’s just one you could use.

There are three holidays we mostly agree on and that you’ll see across traditions.

1. Summer Nights/Sigrblot
2. Winter Nights/Alfarblot/Disablot
3. Yule

These three holidays come to us mostly from sources like Snorri Sturlusson and the Hiemskringla.

Here are some of the Asatru Holidays we don’t all agree on, but many of us celebrate.

1. Disting (Second Full Moon of the New year)
2. Lenzen (Full Moon Cycle around Vernal Equinox)
3. Ostara (First Full Moon After Vernal Equinox)
4. May Day (May 1st)
5. Midsummer/Litha (Summer Solstice)
6. Lammas (Full moon around autumnal equinox)
7. Sunwait (starts 6 weeks before Winter Solstice.

Holy Tides and Holidays

This can be difficult for a lot of new Heathens to understand but our holidays aren’t always just one particular day. They sometimes fall within an observance period that we call a “Holy Tide.” So, for example, “Dísablót” happens during the Holy Tide of Winter Nights. Sigrblót happens during the Holy Tide of Summer Nights. Some of our Holy Tides are “kicked off” by a Blot like the Yuletide kicking off with a Blót on Mother’s Night (if you celebrate on the Solstice).

An easy way to put it all together is to think that our Holidays begin with a Full Moon and then they “count down” till that Moon disappears.

Truth is: we don’t. We don’t know for certain if any of these were actual Pagan holidays. In fact, many folklorists today take an especially skeptical eye to the claims that modern holidays all had some kind of Pagan origin–or even if many of the traditions we celebrate have Pagan origins. It used to be a popular theory that everything we did to celebrate a holiday had its origin in pre-Christian practices, but we don’t know any of that for certain.

Why does it seem like everything has to do with farming?

In a lot of our research on Heathen Holidays, we had to tap into folk-traditions that mostly revolve around agriculture.

There are two reasons for why this is.

The first is that people in the early medieval period, whether Pagan or Christian, lived in an agrarian economy.

That means that most of them had their lives timed around agricultural activities. The theory was that many of the folk-customs that early farmers had were hold-overs from the Pre-Christian period. It was also assumed that since rural areas may have converted later, and conformity was harder to enforce, some of those Pagan practices might have been expressed more in those traditions.

Like we said before, some of that is possibly true, but it can’t be proven with any genuine certainty.

The second big reason is that we do not have any references as to the story of why any holidays were celebrated at all.

That’s the truth of it. Other religions have their holidays woven into the fabric of their religion with stories. Christianity has stories for Christmas, Islam has stories for Ramadan, and Hinduism has stories for Diwali.

Just like them, Pre-Christian Heathens likely had stories about why our Holidays were celebrated, but those stories are long gone and completely forgotten. Maybe someday we’ll come up with new stories, but for now we’re left to work it out with academics like anthropologists and folklorists to figure out what’s what.

“Hey! Where is Freyfaxi, Walpurgisnacht, Feast of Jarl Haakon, Eewische Yeeger and all the other holidays that I celebrate?”

Like we said, this is just a sample calendar of some possible holidays and not a comprehensive statement of the only holidays you can legally celebrate as a Heathen. Some people come from different traditions and have their own schedule of holidays or just call some of the holidays on here by different names.

This table is only one example of a holiday calendar that people use in Heathenry. You’ll find so much variation in our religion that trying to say that any one calendar is the definitive Norse Pagan holiday calendar is inevitably going to run into exceptions.

You’ll also find links in the Holiday column that will take you to an individual resource page for that holiday to tell you more about where it comes from and ways to celebrate.

Regardless of what you find in the calendar here, you’re going to see variation in timing and practice everywhere. This variation is totally normal in every single religion all over the world. Some Christians celebrate some holidays others don’t, or celebrate the same holidays but at different times, or celebrate the same holidays at the same time but in different ways.

Religion is weird and diverse because people are weird and diverse. That isn’t something we are going to try to deny or change and it doesn’t make your religion worse or better than anyone else’s.

Some Heathens decide to do a special Blot for each holiday, but they all mostly stick to the same basic forms that we talk about in our page on Blot. For example, Winnifred Hodge Rose and Piper Perry contributed two Yule Blots that they have performed, but you’ll notice that there are common structures to each one.

While religious practice varies from place to place and person to person, we mostly stick to the same formats with our basic rituals and add in more elements around them for each holiday. One way to think of it is to imagine that Heathenry is a neighborhood full of pre-built houses. We all live in similar looking houses, but we decorate those houses differently for each holiday. I might put lights on my roof while my neighbor puts lights on the bushes she has outside.

We each do things a little differently, but we are doing those things with houses that are alike. When we think about those decorations, it’s important for each of us to remember that ultimately we are looking to delight any guests we might have in our homes.

Anglo-Saxon Heathen Holidays

Thanks to the nice people at Lārhūs Fyrnsida for allowing us to reproduce the calendar that they developed for Anglo-Saxon Heathenry.

Urglaawe

Urglaawe (The “Ancient Belief”) is a distinctive modern synthesis of Pennsylvania Dietsch folk tradition and culture with Heathenry or Germanic Paganism. The legends of the Dietsch immigrants and their distinctive dialect formed the inspiration for the modern religion and the holiday calendar. Though many who practice Asatru/Heathenry/Norse Paganism would recognize some of the traditions in Urglaawe, their unique approach and basis within this very specific cultural and linguistic context warrants a separate calendar and a different reckoning of Holidays.

A Note on “Observance Periods”

One note here is the “span of dates” that are in the right column. This sometimes indicates that a holiday could fall anytime between that period of dates. For example “Yuulzeit” is what many of us would call the “Yule Tide” lasts from the time of the winter solstice on December 21st to the beginning of the New Year. “Yuulsege” or what we might call the “Yule Celebration” takes place for them on the 24th of December within the “Yuulzeit.”

Continental Germanic Calendar

This calendar was prepared by Hrabnas, a devotee of Continental Germanic Heathenry.

How do you celebrate Norse Pagan Holidays in the Southern Hemisphere? We have a calendar for that too.

Ásatrú is a worldwide faith, but most of the seasonality to the holidays all are very “Euro-centric” so people in the Southern Hemisphere often end up having totally different experiences for Yule than we do in the Northern Hemisphere. Worry not, though. We’ve figured out how to flip it so that the seasons fit a little better for our friends in the South! We will keep this one updated too. Each holiday, just like those in the North, has all the same resources for it so you can check out every single article on every holiday for all the information we have.