WHEN nd y r they celebrated? Yule, Ostara, Midsummer Solstice, Mabon, Beltane?

Question

In 2 or 3 sentences ( 2 sentences /festival, substance)
Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Yule is celebrated on December 21 - 22 and it's a celebration of Winter Solstice. The usual practice is to light a fire and burn a yule log "to call the sun back", to help it on the lowest point of it's journey. Using of greenery that remains green throughout the winter (pine tree, holly, ivy) has also the symbolic of rebirth.

Imbolc, or Breed (brigid's) day is celebrated on February 1. It's about nature awakening from the winter sleep. Usual practices are cleaning around the place and planting seeds.

Ostara on March 20th is of course a fertility festival, when the seeds have sprouted and are growing and the animals are mating. The symbols include egg and rabbits, for their known power of fertility.

Beltane is one of the great fire festivals, and marks the beginning of the light half of the year to the Celtic peoples. It can be celebrated on May 1st. or when the sun reaches 15° of Taurus. Samhain, six months later, is the second great fire festival.
In very early times, it was very difficult to kindle the fire with just flint, so people thought it was bad luck for the hearth fire to go out, except on May Eve when it was deliberately extinguished. A new fire was laid ready in the hearth for lighting from a firebrand taken from the Bel-fire on May Day. On May Day, the Bel-fires were lit on the hilltops to celebrate the sun warming the land. Summer had arrived, the season of fertility. With this in mind, men and women jumped the Bel-fire for luck in finding a mate, and married women jumped over it in order to become pregnant. Cattle were driven between the Bel-fires to ensure a good milk supply and a healthy herd.

Litha is the celebration of Summer Solstice on June 21st. Mother Earth is pregnant with the harvest and the strength of the Sun God has reached the height of his power. A common symbol is the sun wheel: a circle with two or four crossed vine branches, interwoven together, to represent the sun and the power of life.The swastika, although commonly thought to be a nazi symbol, has much older origin in pagan worship and is also a sun symbol.

Lammas, or Lughnasadh, on August 1st, is the festival of harvest. It is a celebration of thanking the mother nature for giving us all the bounty, the food, the life.

Mabon, or "harvest-home", celebrated on the autumn exuinox or around september 23th, is most probably the original Thanksgiving having been celebrated in Anglo-Celtic times as a feast of giving thanks for a good harvest. It represented the time when all the preserving and canning was completed and thanks was given for the bountiful harvest. Jars of jams, jellies, relishes and pickles sat neatly on her storage shelves in the basement ready for us to taste their delights throughout the long winter months.

Samhain, (or as it's called nowadays, helloween), celebrated on Oct 31st, is the beginning of pagan winter, when the earth enters the dark part of the year.
It means "summers end" and marks the ending of the Pagan sacred year. It marks the cycle of death and rebirth at the time when the trees and animals, as well as, we human ones are making our final preparations for winter's coming. The Sabbat of Samhain is opposite Beltane on the wheel of the year and is also the last fire festival of the year. The ritual of masking yourself originates from the belief, that this is the night when the veil of the other world thins down and the spirits enter this world - therefore you have to be masked to chase them away or for protection, that they think you're one of them and don't harm you.