An Easter festival hall is decorated with evergreenery, spring flowers, and on one side, a huge golden disk representing the sun. On the opposite wall is an equally brilliant silvery moon. Medieval Easter is as variable as the sun and the phases of the moon. It is a moveable feast in terms of quality and in time. It is solemn yet jolly, pious yet irreverent, restrained, yet full of frolic. Easter commemorates the most profound religious mysteries and the simplest human urge toward light and warmth.

Easter almost never occurs on the same day twice. In fact, medieval Easter is not a day, but an astonishing 120 day cycle of feasts and fasts. Easter Sunday is simply the central day. Easter begins nine weeks before Easter Sunday on the holiday called Septuagesima. Easter ends eight weeks after Easter Sunday on Trinity Day. Easter Sunday is moveable in the calendar. Sometimes it is as early as March 22 or as late as Aril 23. Timing of Easter Sunday depends on the full moon of the spring equinox. Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after. Everything else in the seventeen week Easter cycle is calculated forward or backward from that full moon day.

The sun is equally important at Easter. The holiday is named after the pagan Goddess of the Dawn and of Spring. Eostre. Easter rejoices in the sun?s rising in the sky, bringing light and day. Easter especially revels in the ascending spring sun?s warm triumph over the cold death of winter. Naturally the Christian meanings of Easter fit perfectly. The Son?s rising to Heaven brings the light of understanding and promises the day of salvation. His shining victory is over dark death.

Remarkable events in the 120 day Easter cycle take place in the churches. In homes and castles on each of these days particular foods and ceremonies are customary. But, when Eleanor of Aquitaine came to England to be its Queen and an eager, learned courtier tried to explain all 120 days of local Easter customs at once, she stamped her foot and said, ?Tell me what is particularly Easterly.? The answer: pace egging, morris dances and mystery plays.

Easter foods and ciders are served, including roast lamb, apple fritters, and tansy cake.

Eriu was the De Danaan goddess who gave her name to Ireland.

When the Milesians invaded Ireland, she and sisters Banba and Fotla were each petitioned by Amairgin, the Milesian poet to help the Sons of Mil.

He promised each goddess that her name would be the name given to the Island, but it is Eriu's name that is now used.

In the Irish tree alphabet, the letter S is represented by salle, the white willow which is the original willow to North West Europe.

In the Gaulish calendrical tablet, the Coligny Calendar, the month of February-March was called Ogronios, or 'the time of ice'.

The spring equinox is called Alban Eiler, or The Light of the Earth among the reformed orders of druidry.

It marks the mid-point between the sun's least and strongest appearance at Midwinter and Midsummer, respectively.

Now the sun is welcomed with glad heart, for its lancing rays awaken the seemingly dead earth to new life and signals the ending of the long, cold winter.

In this Scots Gaelic chant to welcome the sun, the female gender is retained, for the feminine sun is common to the earliest beliefs of North West Europe.

Welcome to you, sun of the season's turning.
In your circuit of the high heavens;
Strong are your steps on the unfurled heights,
Glad Mother are you to the constellations.

You sink down into the ocean of want,
Without defeat and without scathe;
You rise up on the peaceful wave
Like a queen in her maidenhood's flower.

Geasa or prohibitions were entwined with the destiny and lifestyle of many prominant Celtic figures; these could not be broken without threatening their life.

Some kings and heroes were often crippled by such geasa, as was King Conaire whose nine geasa included not being able to go deosil round his own palace of Tara, nor leave it for more than nine nights.

The bonds of the geasa, though restrictive in many ways seem to have maintained important boundaries between worldly and otherworldly realms.

In the Irish Tree Alphabet, the letter N is represented by nuin or ash.