At the spring equinox day and night are equal – and from now on the light grows. It is the tipping point of the year, a feast of new beginnings, of sowing and setting out.
When It Falls
The spring equinox falls around 20 March – this calendar computes the exact moment to the minute. On this day the sun stands directly over the equator; everywhere on earth day and night are almost equal.
Where the Name Ostara Comes From
The name goes back to Bede alone (De temporum ratione 15): the Anglo-Saxon month Éosturmonath was named, he says, after a goddess Éostre to whom sacrifice was made in it. From this Jacob Grimm reconstructed a Germanic goddess *Ostara in 1835. The evidence is thin – Bede is the only source, and whether the goddess really existed is disputed.
Evidence & Myth-Check
A possible archaeological clue lies in the Rhineland: the Matronae Austriahenae, some 150 votive stones from Morken-Harff near Cologne (c. 150–250 AD), whose name some link to „Éostre / dawn / east" – a regional connection, but also uncertain. Plainly false, by contrast, is the popular equation Easter = Ishtar: it is a pure 19th-century invention. Linguistically „Easter/Ostara" is tied to „east" and the dawn – the place where the light rises.
Celebrating Today
The point of balance invites new beginnings: open the windows, clear out the old, plant something, sow seeds. Mark the equal day and night; a small fire or a candle at dawn honours the rising light.
A verse for the feast
the light and the night,
on the scales
the year hangs poised.
Scatter the seed,
open the gate:
what you sow
you will reap.
And now you: write your own short verse for this feast – four or five lines are enough, it need not rhyme. Recite it next time by the fire or at the sumbel. That is the finest honour one can pay a feast.
Sources
Bede, De temporum ratione 15 (Éostre – sole source, disputed); Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie 1835 (*Ostara); Matronae Austriahenae, Morken-Harff (Rhineland). Equinox astronomically after Meeus.