PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

On Imbolc, it was snow-raining and the middle of flu season. I intended to have a gathering at my metaphysical store, but there were so many last minute cancellations that I decided to skip it. I went home and lit a candle from a wick that was lit from Brighid’s shrine at Kildare, and I quietly contemplated and looked to Light`s return.

I believe that Imbolc is kind of a strange holiday for most Canadian Pagans. More often than not, the groundhog tells us we’re going to get six more weeks of winter. According to the lore, it’s the time when the snow starts to melt, the bees start to appear, crocuses and daffodils start emerging from the snow, the animals start bringing forth young and the ewes and the cows start giving milk. Even in the southern portions of our big piece of land, such as the Okanagan Valley where I live, the climate is similar to Oregon State, and so things are still covered in snow and if we’re lucky, we might be seeing a hint of mud. Weather starts to turn from snow to rain and is quite frankly, a nasty cold, often foggy drizzle, similar to a time I once saw described in a Stephen King story as “Strawberry Spring.” Every once in a while we get a Chinook (a warming wind coming down from the mountains) but you can’t rely on it, and even the first pussy willows are usually a week or two away. None of these signs of the thawing really start happening until around the beginning of March, halfway between Imbolc and the Vernal Equinox, and farther north it’s even worse; from Prince George north (the geographical centre of BC, but not of its population,) or especially in Northern Ontario (which is at a similar latitude) you don’t get flowers until April or maybe even May. So how do you celebrate Imbolc when so many signs associated with it simply are not present?