Mother's Night

I have already written a bit about Yule which was, more or less a month or season in the Icelandic calender. There were some mid-winter sacrifices made to some female deities called the 'disarblot'. There is little information about what or who the 'disir' are but the Venerable Bede wrote a small chapter on the months of the Angles in his book De Temporum Ratione, it is a book about time and calendars.

In Chapter 15, he wrote that November was 'Blod-monath' and December, as well as January, was 'Guili' (the g is pronounced as a 'y'). He also mentioned that the night of Christmas, December 25th, was called Modranicht, or 'Mother's Night', Bede suspected it was called this due to some ceremonies on that night. It was also the beginning of the new year. It is a shame he did not say more about these winter celebrations. We can only speculate what went on.