Summer’s History
July-August-September: The Summer Season of the Ancient Celtic Calendar
Early Celtic peoples from the Irish and Angles to the Saxons and other Germanic tribes, divided the year into two seasons that incorporated spring and summer, autumn and winter. They calculated their months according to the cycles of the moon. It wasn’t until the supremacy of the Roman Empire that the calendar year was ordered into four seasons themselves divided into 12 fixed solar months. The names of the months varied in each area, and were usually named after social and economic endeavors; for instance, July was named Haymonth because it was the time for farmers to collect hay from their fields.
Both ancient Celtic peoples and neo-Celts view the year in terms of the eternal negotiation between good and evil. For them, this age old struggle is enacted in the elemental and mystical connection between Earth and sky and the cyclic nature this relationship as witnessed in the extended “dark” times of winter compared to the long bright days of summer. In the northern hemisphere of Europe and Scandinavia the world was weighed down by freezing cold, dark and dangerous and long winters. Then, after the summer solstice, the great Anglo-Saxon god Woden in his form as the sun emerges victorious bringing the fullness of his radiant light, warmth, growth, prosperity, newborn creatures and the liberation of body, mind and spirit. Although early Celtic peoples such as Anglo-Saxons believed in the primacy of their female deities rather than male, we can still understand why the sun was and is still so important to ancient and current indigenous peoples across the planet; 
why they perceive the sun to be the source of light and life itself and thus worthy of being identified wholly with creation and the sustaining of all life. In point of fact, without that beautiful burning star in our sky, our sun; without all the star-suns in the multiverse there would be no creation, no existence at all. Most important of all was Nerthus, Earth Mother, who is responsible for the fertility of the earth and all that lives and grows on it. And so, after a long frozen winter, in summer we behold the whole world giving birth to life that was conceived in the beautiful spring passionplay of Woden and his lovely earth consort Nerthus. She is the goddess who presides over all forms of love and friendship and watched over women in childbirth as a sacred midwife.
The summer season included the months of July, August and September. The German Saxons named July Vianmanoth or peat month because this was the time that they collected and stored peat, a carbonized moss that grew in marshes that when dried burned very well in winter hearth fires. August was named Aranmanoth and this referred to the ears of corn that were ripe in this month and ready for picking. In the early time
s, during the second half of the yearly cycle all major fertility festivals were held to celebrate the victory of life over death and fertility over impotence. September was called Haervistmanoth or harvest month when crops and especially the grains like wheat were harvested and gotten ready to store up for the coming winter months. And of course the great goddess Nerthus with all her seasonal gifts was celebrated as the Harvest Queen at the most important harvest festivals where young girls were crowned with wreaths and women cooked and served bounteous feasts.
Then there was and is the Litha, the summer solstice rites and celebrations that signified for all Celtic peoples even today one of the holiest of times. This sacred festival takes place on the summer solstice and is a cel
ebration of the life and joys of summer and the honoring of the sun. Litha recognizes the longest day of the year when the sun reaches his highest point in the sky. It is a day when the sun is ritually honored with huge ceremonial fires lit on high hills. Celtic symbols, the runes Sigel for the sun and Tir for the sky and sun symbols such as the Wheel of Life would be placed at festival sites and also decorate dwellings and sacred places. Oftentimes, Sun Wheels were constructed and then set alight and rolled down the hill from the place of celebration as a symbolic representation of the sun’s great sky journey over the year.