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Blog
An early start to the celebrations
Posted Thursday, 26 January 2012 / Written by The Twig
By any standards we've had a very mild winter. Our trees and flowers are reacting to only light frosts and an almost complete lack of snow by flowering much earlier that they normally do. There are signs of an early Spring all around us with snowdrops, cherry blossom and daffodils all making appearances well before the end of January. Unusual as it may seem, such early blossoming is far from unprecedented and indeed for many years people have celebrated the first signs of Spring around this time. The 2000 year old Imbolc Fire Festival in Huddersfield is a great example of an ancient pagan Spring festival brought back to life for modern times. An procession of torches, fire sculptures and fireworks all feature in the proceedings as well as a theatrical battle between the Green Man of Spring and Jack Frost of Winter (with the crowd hoping that the Green Man will be victorious, making way for the new green shoots of Spring). If you fancy welcoming Spring in with a pagan twist, the festival runs from noon to midnight on 4th February and starts at Marsden station.
