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Our Faith >> Festivals >> Mother's Night

Mother's Night

Night of the Mothers
Art: The dísablót by August Malmström, 1829-1901; Swedish painter.

Month

December

Gods Invoked

Frige, Nerthus

Texts

 

Bede's De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time)

Historic Information

Mother’s Night (Old English Mōdraniht, Modranicht), also known as the Night of the Mothers, is the name of the Pagan English festival of the Mothers. The sole attestation, and information, of this night comes to us from the Venerable Bede in his work De temporum ratione. He quotes:

Original Latin

 

Incipiebant autem annum ab octavo Calendarum Januariarum die, ubi nunc natale Domini celebramus. Et ipsam noctem nunc nobis sacrosanctam, tunc gentili vocabulo Modranicht, id est, matrum noctem appellabant: ob causam et suspicamur ceremoniarum, quas in ea pervigiles agebant.

 

English translation

 

... began the year on the 8th calends of January [24/25 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, "mother's night", because (we suspect) of the ceremonies they enacted all that night.

While there is contradictory evidence as to the exact date of Mother’s Night, Bede dated it to be December 24th (modern-day Christmas Eve) as the date it was historically practiced. This contradiction is compounded further in the proposal that this rite may have links to the Norse rite of Dísablót (English Sacrifice of the Dísir). Both are further likely to be part of the wider Germanic cults of the Matres and Matronae (English Mothers and Matrons, respectively).

Our Order's View

Mother’s Night is one of our most holy tides. Marking the start of the English New Year, we give worship to our mothers, both alive and passed, deific and ancestral, by prayers and voice. It is a sacred time for us as Pagans, as we celebrate the love and affection our mothers give us.

 

Whether they be with us or in the other Worlds, the blessing granted to us by clan motherhood is vital as we pass into the New Year. As the season shifts, Wuldor’s grip of winter is replaced with the coming of Nerthus, our Mother Earth. The parallel of this cycle of the seasons, of death and rebirth, is fundamental to our veneration of this cycle in the world around us.

 

Multiple entities are worshiped within our Order during this time as below:

 

The Goddesses – Frige and Nerthus
As Mother of the Gods, Frige is primarily honoured in this celebration of maternal growth, being our Goddess of the Home and Childbirth. It is also a time of our Earth Mother Nerthus and the revering of the land, with Nerthus being a Goddess of Fertility and the Cycles.

 

The Wyrd Sisters - Weordende, Wyrd and Scyld
A trio of powerful feminine wights, the Sisters of Spinning Fate,are honoured for their dominion over the destinies of all – God and man alike.