Winter Festivals

Eponalia was celebrated on 18 December in the calendar of Roman feast days as the festival of the Gaulish goddess EPONA. 

There is an inscription from Gaul which counts back  from ‘New Year Calends’, seeming to suggest a sequence through the Midwinter period:

‘XV Kalendas Ianuarius Eponae’ 

~*~

Darkness falls 

on the ivy leaf

Yulelight glistens 

on the holly bough

As red fire stirs 

in the kindling.

We count three days

to the longest night

Three more till the glimmer

of a longer day

Then seven to the eve

of New Year Calends

These days we count

from the Feast of Epona

First festival

of the Year’s turning.