Sheelah's Day

Today, the 18th, is Sheelah's Day.

Sheelah was either the wife or mother of St Patrick and, traditionally, Sheelah's Day was celebrated the day after the Feast of St Patrick. The holiday served to commemorate her life.

Freeman's Journal referenced Sheelah's Day in 1785, 1811, and 1841. Australian press from the nineteenth century recorded observances of Sheelah's Day, including the consumption of large amounts of alcohol. It also continues to be celebrated in Newfoundland, Canada after Irish immigrants arrived in the late seventeenth century. In Newfoundland the holiday may also be connected to the legend of the Irish princess Sheila Na Geira.

Sheelah's Day is making something of a comeback in Ireland now because some scholars suggested a connection between the holiday and the Sheela na gig, a fertility figure found in mediaeval architecture throughout Europe. Consequently, it's become bound together with celebrations of Ostara and the Spring Equinox, which also celebrate fertility and the arrival of Spring.

A Sheela Na Gig is a carving of a woman with exposed and/or exaggerated genitalia. By far the most popular and widely held belief about the origin of sheelas is that they are a survival of pagan, usually Celtic beliefs which have been incorporated into the newcomer Christian church. There are a number of explanations given for how these figures came to be there, such as disobedient artists/sculptors paying lip service to the old gods or local populations insisting that their old goddess is included into the new church. The inclusion of a pagan idol from an older temple might have been seen as a way to nullify its pagan power. Interestingly the pagan origin for the figures is the one most often referred to in church literature. So what evidence is there for these figures being pagan in origin? Given the widely held nature of this belief there is surprisingly little evidence to support it. It seems mainly to stem from the modern view that 'How could anything this vulgar be Christian?'

But maybe that's a hangover from the rather puritan attitude of some church goers.