Mention that February first is the first day of spring it will often cause a debate as it it can be hard to imagine spring is here when often the weather proves otherwise. It is only when you look a little closer you can see  there are sure signs that the winter is over, the first shoots of daffodils, snowdrops and other plants like honeysuckle are starting to show  in the hedgerows and woodlands and the rooks are starting to gather in the high trees where they nest every year. The early lambs will start to appear and the day is starting to get a bit longer.
actually the day length has increased quite a bit, on the first of February the day is an hour and a half longer than it was at midwinter and is increasing by four minutes a day. You will often hear people say “There’s a great stretch in the evenings” as a sort of welcome which celebrates the longer daylight.
In ancient times, when winters must have seemed to last forever the festivals were timed to remind people that things were improving and it was time to plant crops and ensure that breeding stock were looked after as the new young arrived and the first day of spring would have held great importance in an agrarian economy.

Traditionally in Ireland the first of February was know as Imbolc or Imbolg and also called Saint Brigid’s Day (Irish: Lá Fhéile Bríde )  Historically it is marked by the weaving of a simple cross from rushes and the cross is kept in the house until the following spring when it is ploughed in to the ground when the first crops are sown to bring a successful harvest. St Brigid is the female patron of Ireland and although not as familiar as St Patrick she has a great historical importance.

From 2023, there has been a new annual public holiday in early February to mark St Brigid’s Day. The public holiday is the first Monday in February, except where St Brigid’s day (1 February) happens to fall on a Friday, in which case that Friday 1 February will be a public holiday. This is in recognition of the efforts of the general public and Ireland’s frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and in remembrance of people who lost their lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2025 it will be the 3rd of February giving a three day weekend. It is worth a mention that the next bank holiday will be St Patricks Day and that bank holiday is on Monday 17th March so you can take a three day break over this weekend too.

There is another popular date in February which is very well known but no one really knows what its origins are.
St Valentines day used to involve sending an unsigned card to someone who you liked and great fun was had figuring out who had sent them. Things have changed over the years and Valentines day done properly now involves a night away with a nice meal and a good bottle of wine and probaly chocolates too..
So just to catch you up with the story St Valentine was a Roman priest and physician who was martyred during the persecution of Christians by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus in about AD 270. According to legend, St. Valentine signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and healed from blindness. Another common legend states that he defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from being conscripted to serve in war. The Roman Empire had lots of ways to stop a troublesome Christian from creating problems, most of them fatal.
Numerous churches around the world claim to be in possession of his relics. These include his skull on display in a glass reliquary at the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, a shoulder blade housed at the Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Prague (after having been discovered in the church’s basement in 2002), a vessel tinged with his blood in addition to sundry other artifacts at the Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin. He was patron saint of Affianced couples, fainting, beekeepers, happy marriages, love, plague and epilepsy.
So this would put Saint Valentine in along with the many saints of the Christian Church if it were not for suggestions that St Valentines Day had roots in the ancient festival of Lupercalia, which took place in mid February and celebrated the arrival of spring with raucous celebrations and fertility rites. At the end of the fifth century Pope Belasius forbade the celebration of Lupercalia and instead set a day to celebrate the martyr Saint Valentine.
This adds Lupericalia to the list of pagan festivals that have had all the fun taken out of them by replacing them with a Christian Saints Day.

If you would like to do something special for Valentines weekend why not book one of our smaller cottages and have a quiet weekend in Connemara. View Small Cottages Here