Heritage Irish Traditions
A chara,
This gentle old Irish winter home blessing, loved by little children can be carried out on the day you begin to make your Christmas cake, or perhaps coming up to Thanksgiving, or on any normal quiet Sunday in early winter. I always love to see our children’s happiness through fun and meaningful Irish heritage traditions.
Something sweet to note at this time of year while I mention children. In case you know anyone looking for a baby name right now, it is an old tradition that boys born around this time of year were often christened Michael or Micheál, meaning “Gift from God”. My own grandad Michael, who was named following this tradition, was the inspiration for these letters. It was him that often hunted and killed blackbird for lunch with his older brother when he was my children’s age, because he was hungry. Our family just celebrated his 90th birthday last weekend. My mother who passed this home blessing on to me is called Michelle after her dad and was also born around this time of the year.
I am told this was a very old pagan tradition that had church influence over time, so I will include both blessings and you can take what you want and leave the rest.
Christianity replaced old traditions at this time of the year with Michaelmas and scheduled it to fall on November the 8th. In reality, as the days get shorter and shorter and the harvests were completed, family preparations would naturally start to include storing food for winter around this time and so preparing your home blessing along with your Christmas cake at a time that suits you, connects us to our heritage beautifully. Does this old blessing work? Well we have always managed to keep good luck around and this little blessing is done a few times a year and is one of my favorites. But answering that is up to you.
How to Carry Out the Winter Home Blessing
This winter home blessing has been used in my family for years. My aunt told me about the stairs part and a local healer I know told me about the attic door. It is a cleansing and protection winter ritual to bring protection to the family, be warding off danger, fire and hunger. If you are interested, you can see it below.
Take a little bottle of sacred well water and sprinkle some on the front entrance to your property, the cars, the back entrance, the front door and then on the threshold of all internal doors, on all windows and in every corner of every room, including any sheds or barns. Also sprinkle it on the bottom, middle and top of the stairs and attic door to ward off accidents. Finally, sprinkle some on all the family members starting with the youngest and then on all the animals or pets. Or, if you prefer, you can take a bottle of blessed well water (most sacred wells in Ireland were blessed by the church) and instead of loosely sprinkling each area, throw the water while making the sign of the cross on each.
When I did this over the years, my kids when they were younger would follow me around like little ducklings to make sure I hadn’t missed a corner and want their turn to sprinkle the water. We would chat as we carried out the blessing and I would always tell them that there could never be any ghosts or monsters in our house as it was always blessed with sacred well water, which they were delighted about. To be fair, they never had any bad nightmares or were afraid of the lights being out so long as the hall light was on, and the bedroom door left ajar. Blessing the stairs also reinforced the idea of never running on the stairs and always using the banister to hold on to. I love this tradition and will be using it to softly remind the kids about fire and accident safety in the home coming up to Christmas, as well as to connect them with their heritage and create a peaceful ambiance in the home.
I hope you enjoy this one.
Beir bua agus beannacht,
Róisín Hynes