Holytides of Hammerhof

Take a look at the various Asatru organizations and groupings out there on the web there is a likelihood they will have a link to Heathen Holidays. You can also do a Google search and find a lot of links about heathen holidays and Wikipedia has a complete breakdown of Heathen holidays and days of remembrance.  From source to source you will see some similarities and some differences. In Some cases, the names are different, in others the dates. These holidays are different between Heathen sects as well. Anglo-Saxon Heathens and Theodish Heathens have different holidays by name and date. Essentially there is no standardization in the Heathen holiday schedule.

Heathen holidays ten to fall all over the place. On the solstice, a full moon, a new moon, a date recorded by some scholar monk in the way back days… It is pretty much open to interpretation by whatever person, or a group wants to do. I’m betting some of you are doubting me on this. I have seen list of Heathen holidays ranging from 3 to 10 or more. All of them siting the lore and how they came to their hypothesis. The reason is that there is no uniformity in Heathenry.

Most Heathens heat the idea of standardizing Heathenry in any way. This is despite the fact that I have books by several Heathen organizations, groups, and individuals who are calling for standardization and writing books with their version of the standards! Some of these folks have a very orthodox way of standardizing Heathenry. In other words, they want to keep it straight, white, and male centric. That sounds like something I don’t want.

Just about every heathen (and their group) has attempted to develop their own holidays and schedule. They have picked and chosen from various sources and created a system that works for them. Over the years I have developed the Holytide plan that we have used in Hammerhof. A lot has changed over the past 4almost 40 years, but we learned a lot.

Our holytides are divided into major and minor and are somewhat based upon a wheel of the year model. The year is divided in half, summer and winter, with the major tides at four points of the compass. Our major tides are Yule, Ostara, Midsummer, and Winterfylleð. Our minor tides are Blōstmfrēols and Hærfest. In the past we had more seasonal tides, but we have adjusted our holidays to fit our changing needs.

I am going to go on the fact that the major tides are well known enough to not explain here. Winterfylleð may be the only one that is foreign to some, this is more commonly known as Winter Nights. Blōstmfrēols is a floral festival something like May Day. It was a Romano-British holiday that seemed to resonate with the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons who made it their own. There is some evidence that the holytide existed in mainland Germania as well, but there is more evidence of Roman influence. Hærfest is just what it appears to be a harvest festival, celebrating a good harvest and the God Frea (O.N. Freyr).

We came to these holytides from years of research and development. In reconstructing an ancient religion such as Heathenry is it can be a daunting and difficult task. Today, these are the holytide we hold each year.