The Egg-Symbol of New Life

Though the April festival of rebirth at the end of Lent is now established in Scotland as Easter, for nature-worshipping Celts it came a month later at the beginning of May with Beltane. Ne’er cast a cloot till May is oot, say canny Scots, meaning that cold winter can still come hurtling back when farther south it is already well into warm summer. A longer spring, shorter summer, and therefore later growing cycle made the festive times different in nature-worshipping Scotland. But Christianity, when it became established, took the southerners springtime as the festival of rebirth and not the Scots Beltane.