Is 'Mothers' Night' Truly Anglo-Saxon?
Or does this celebration have entirely different origins?
We have been led to believe that the mysterious ‘Mothers’ Night’ was a pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon observance that took place on Christmas Eve. The only historical evidence we have of this celebration comes from a treatise called ‘The Reckoning of Time’ written by the Venerable Bede in 725 AD in which he discusses the Anglo-Saxon calendar. Bede was not only a monk but also a scholar and lived his whole life in the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Yarrow in Northumbria.
Northumbria began its conversion to Christianity in 627 AD when its pagan king, Edwin, married the daughter of the Christian king of Kent. The arranged marriage was a contributing factor to Edwin getting baptised by the Bishop of York. Now that we know Christianity had been present in Northumbria for at least one hundred years prior to Bede’s treatise, let us look at what Bede has to say about the heathen Anglo-Saxon observance of the ‘Night of the Mothers’ and its possible questionable accuracy.
The Anglo Saxon heathens “...began the year on the 8th calends of January (25th of December) when we celebrate the birth of the Lord that very night, which we hold so sacred, they used to call by the heathen word Modranecht, that is, ‘mothers night’, because (we suspect) of the ceremonies they enacted all that night.”
In this short passage we see Bede is talking about ‘Mothers’ Night’ in the past tense. He was not out and about interviewing pagans about their current spiritual practices because the majority of people were Christian and no pagan celebrations were openly permitted. In Bede’s lifetime ‘Mothers’ Night' would have just been a folk memory, perhaps going back two generations with the old ways still being present in people’s minds. Living a monastic life, it is more than probable that Bede heard of pre-Christian celebrations from other monks in the monastery. His motive for writing the treatise was to record the Anglo-Saxon calendar and not to document pagan traditions for prosperity which is another reason for the lack of detail about what took place on Mothers’ Night.
Bede unknowingly superimposes the Roman Catholic calendar onto the pre- Christian Anglo-Saxon way of marking time when he mentions the new year. Pre-Christian Germanic peoples did not count in years, they counted in winters and they had no concept of a new year as we see it. They observed their ‘new year’ at ‘Winterfylleth’ on the winter full moon around the month of October.
‘Odin established the same law in his land that had been in force in Asaland…On winter day (first day of winter) there should be a blot for a good year, and in the middle of winter for a good crop; and the the third blot should be on summer day, a Victory-blot.’ (Ynglinga Saga, chapter 8, circa 1225 AD).
Bede is saying that the Anglo-Saxon heathens’ new year began on the same night as Christmas Eve which means that the timing of Mothers’ Night is definitely not Germanic. In all of the continental Germanic and Scandinavian sources on pre-Christian calendars, there is no mention of fixed solar dates because the Germanic peoples followed a luni-solar calendar, meaning their celebrations took place on full moons. Also in Bede’s lifetime, Christmas and New Year were both on the same day because at that time various Christian countries were adopting different dates for the new year, so you can imagine that this led to a period of confusion with multiple new year days being celebrated at different times all across Europe.
Another factor that points to Mothers’ Night not being Anglo-Saxon is that in all of the old Germanic and Scandinavian texts, celebrations took place across three nights (e.g Yule and Winternights). Even today the German word for Christmas is ‘Weihnachten’ meaning ‘Sacred Grove Nights’. Mothers’ Night, however, is just one night. So if Mothers’ Night had Germanic roots then why didn’t the Anglo-Saxons abide by them in this case? Also the timing is off with other Germanic ritual celebrations for female spirits, such as Disablot, which took place during the time of Winternights and was performed in private homesteads in honour of the female ancestors.
Hypothetically, if the majority of Anglo-Saxons were still pagan in 725 AD and were following the Germanic luni-solar calendar then we could presume that there must have been a full moon coinciding with Christmas that year, but the way Bede describes the timing of Mothers’ Night makes it sound like it took place every year on Christmas Eve. This is not correct because it would mean that Christians and pagans were both following the Julian Calendar, which we know that the pre-Christian Germanic peoples did not. I decided to investigate whether in the year he wrote ‘The Reckoning of Time’ that there was a full moon on Christmas Eve so I went onto ‘Stellarium’, a free planetarium software and travelled back to the year 725 AD. Stellarium takes into account the eleven day shift between the Gregorian and the Julian Calendars so I did not have to tweak any settings. According to ‘Stellarium’ there was a full moon on the 24th/25th of December in 725 AD. But then I thought to myself, the fact that Christmas is at the end of the year what if Bede finished his treatise way before then and was referring to the previous Christmas Eve of 724 AD. The moon phase that coincided with that Christmas was a new moon of just three days old. If the sky was clear that night then our ancestors would have seen a sliver of light in the sky. This phase of the lunar cycle was when the Romans began their new month with the first sighting of the moon (the Kalends). This is before they switched to a solar calendar. Is it possible that there was a pre-Christian new moon celebration each year around December time? An exemption to the full moon rule? The timing of Mothers’ Night on the new moon is a possibility worth considering but not as part of the pre-Christian Germanic calendar.
Some believe that Mothers’ Night was held on the Winter Solstice which would explain why Bede says that it was celebrated at the same time as Christmas because Christmas during the time of Bede took place around the solstice. The exact time of the Winter Solstice was not known back then, even the Romans struggled, but they would have visibly seen the gradual time shifts of the sunrise and sunset several days after the solstice around the 25th of December. Again, since the solstice is a solar date and not a lunar one points to it not being Germanic. The Romans did, however, celebrate many festivals around the time of the Winter Solstice. December was a very busy month for them including festivals such as Eponalia (18th), Divalia/Angeronalia (21st), Dies Natalis Invicti (25th), the Brumalia (on the solstice), Opalia (19th), Saturnalia (17th-23rd) and Larentalia (23rd).
Nothing grows out of a vacuum, so if Mothers’ Night is not Germanic we need to be looking elsewhere. The only other possibility of the origins of Modranecht is the ‘Roman Cult of the Mothers’ that was widespread throughout Gaul and the Germanic world. The worship of the Matres would have arrived in Britain with the occupying Roman soldiers. So perhaps my new moon and the kalends hypothesis has some validity. The word ‘Mothers' is also a whopping great big clue that the celebration was part of the Matronae Cult. The scholarly works of Philip A. Shaw (Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World) and Alex G. Garman (The Cult of the Matronae in the Roman Rhineland) go into greater detail about the ‘Cult of the Mothers’ or you can check out my post about the goddess Eostre where I touch upon this subject.
The Anglo-Saxon calendar is not simply Germanic, but has a hodge-podge of Roman British and ‘Celtic’ Matronae elements as well. This calendar was very unique to a land which had seen many migrations and invasions leading to the syncretisation of many beliefs and spiritual practices. The evidence is compelling enough to point to Mothers’ Night belonging to the Roman Matronae Cult that arrived in Britain along with the Austriahenae Stones and a possible goddess named Eostre, who again is only attested by Bede. The Romans occupied Britain for four hundred years; more than enough time to syncretise and influence the beliefs of the people living there and to still have their rituals being practiced by the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons many generations later.
What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts. It is quite the mystery and not easy when there is only one source to go by, so I hope that I have made some sense!
No matter whether you celebrate the Winter Solstice/Christmas or not, have a lovely end of year, rest and recalibrate and I will be back in 2025.
Brightest blessings,
Elissa :)
Here are some of my Substack posts that you may find relevant for this time of year.
The Origins of Christmas & Yule (Part 1)
The Origins of Christmas & Yule (Part 2)
How & When our Ancestors Celebrated Yule
As always Elissa, you have enlightened me once again, I haven't heard of Mother's night before, it's always very interesting to discover more traditions of the olde ways, and that only happens when your quality content comes to light 😊. Since being off social media (6 months now), I am in fact becoming more focused with reading books again, something that came so easily to me as a child, and never hesitating to read the same books over and over again, yet it's been a struggle since the rise of the internet, something many folks experience these days I'm sure lol. I have been wanting to read about the Anglo Saxons, and am now part way through a book called King Alfred the Great, the man who made England by Justin Pollard, are you familiar with the book? I am really enjoy it so far x
I find this theory really interesting. One of my favorite books as a child was a YA historical fiction set in a Roman British village facing Saxon raids, called "Between the Forest and the Hills." It prompted some fascination with the period and at the time I was disappointed to discover we know so little. But perhaps, as you suggest, we can actually glean a little from generalized statements about pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon practices.