Vernal Equinox is one of only 2 days a year that day and night are equal, for everyone. 12 hours day, 12 hours night throughout the entire globe. This year it’s March 19th 2024, but there’s a lot of celebrating surrounding that date that may or may not be related to the first day of spring.

Ostara or Eostre is/was the Saxon goddess of spring, this chick is apparently responsible for banishing winter and bringing the earth back to life. Pagan/Wiccan followers later ‘borrowed’ this goddess to pair with their spring celebration. They also have a couple stories to connect her to the fertile rabbit (either she saved a dying bird by turning it into a hare, but gave it the ability to lay eggs once a year or she punished a bird for being too proud of its lovely colorful eggs by turning it into a rabbit. Later feeling bad for sad bird, she allowed it to lay eggs once a year). Meditation and reconnecting to the earth is the most common pagan ritual associated with this holiday. Sometimes there’s a good bonfire too.

The Hare, has been viewed as a symbol of fertility recorded since medieval times 450BC. But has likely been associated with it since the beginning of their existence, for obvious reasons. Seeing spring as birth, and/or re-birth as many places on earth come alive from winter dormancy, it’s easy to understand a connection to this common symbol of fertility. Along with the fact that the Hare is generally a nocturnal species of rabbit, but does dayshift during mating season (March-ish). Most common link from rabbit to egg is a story about hiding eggs as an existing tradition, and then children spotting a rabbit running away from hidden eggs, believing the rabbit laid them.

Christians Easter was originally celebrated on the Sunday after the beginning of Jewish Passover, but later moved to the Sunday after the first full moon of the Vernal Equinox to separate Jesus’s return from the Jewish calendar. Landing it on March 31st this year. Easter follows 3 days after Good Friday representing the 3 days between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

There aren’t many theories on the connection of Easter to Purim though & I find myself wondering why…

Queen Ester is said to have saved the Jews from Haman’s plan to exterminate them in 550BC, by convincing her husband (who maybe didn’t even know she was a jew) to stop Haman. *This is one of the earliest references to a holiday on or near the vernal equinox I was able to source. Queen Ester’s heroism led to celebrating a holiday named Purim (March 23rd). Though no longer widely celebrated, it has been called one of the “jolliest” of the Jewish holidays involving costumes, feasting and alcohol.

And then there’s Holi. Holi seems to have begun simply as a Hindu celebration to welcome spring, but has a few legends attached. A popular one is Lord Krishna & Radha. Mr Krishna happened to be blue from drinking poisoned milk (different story), and was worried the woman he loved wouldn’t reciprocate his love, due to his blueness. He ended up either painting her blue, or allowing her to choose a color to paint him. Either way, it worked & she loved him back. This story, it seems, is where the festival of colors evolved (it might’ve just come about as a celebration of spring colors tho). The festival of colors takes the win in my book of ‘Best Ways to Celebrate Spring’. I mean… what could possibly be more fun than throwing powdered color bombs at each other whilst conveniently dressed in white? We could take a lot of good tips from this one, especially accepting and celebrating skin color. I move for ALL religions, non religions and practices to adopt this celebration.

One that we’ve already adopted is St. Patty’s Day. While St. Patrick’s day is specifically an Irish holiday, on March 17th most Americans will also enjoy celebrating Patrick the Saint. Mr. Patty is said to have escaped his Christian captors and return to Ireland, bringing Christianity with him. This is apparently considered lucky, so they added the shamrock, and some green everything, which completely explains green beer, especially since beer is pretty popular in Ireland. In most people’s mind,

Ireland is pretty much synonymous for green, but could green could be associated with springtime also?

One of the newest spring celebrations is ‘National Plant a Flower Day’. Celebrated March 12th. Here in Omaha Nebraska, we’d better stick to planting some forced flowering bulbs like daffodils. Especially since daffodils are the ‘official flower’ of spring. I don’t know who decides things like flowers of officialness, but narcissus seems a likely candidate.

However you celebrate (even if that is avoiding all celebrations), I hope you enjoy the everloving spring out of it