By Thomas Hegarty
This week on RTE’s Livelive, radio host Joe Duffy hinted that Ireland might have a new, annual Public Holiday on 1st February.
For Catholics, the 1st February is Saint Brigid’s day and many of our readers will have fond memories of making Saint Brigid’s crosses at school or at home to celebrate the Saint and her feast day.
However, things are rapidly getting appropriated here in Ireland as the government continue on their road towards re-paganising our country.
It is no accident that the once sacred 1st February has now been earmarked for a new, annual Public Holiday.
You may not be aware that a group called HerStory has been actively lobbying and campaigning for a national bank holiday on the 1st of February for what they call “Brigid’s Day”. Note the absence of SAINT in their campaign.
According to the HerStory website, HerStory think that "it's time to rewrite history” and have a public holiday on Saint Brigid’s day to celebrate the unrelated pagan goddess who happens to be also called Brigid.
The Green Party and others such as Imelda May Herstory public holiday campaign.
HerStory is a feminist movement, who under a different brand were hyper active during the Abortion and Same Sex marriage referendums in Ireland. There are no financial statements on their website so we do not know how they are funded but their collaborators include The National Women's Council of Ireland, Oxford University, The Irish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the goddess club to name but a few.
Herstory describes itself as
"a legacy project and a permanent digital educational resource that will give the public awe-inspiring female role models for generations to come. ... with the Marriage Equality Referendum and the Referendum to Repeal the 8th Amendment - both extraordinary victories of compassion".
During the same sex marriage and abortion referendums, Herstory promoted the narrative that the objectively proven historical figure of Saint Brigid was the same as the mythical fictional goddess of pagan times, evidently unaware that two opposing facts cannot both be true at the same time.
On Saint Brigid's Day 2020, RTE partnered with Herstory to promote this narrative and to project illuminations of Brigid the pagan goddess onto an external church wall linked to the Magdalene laundries.
On the RTE news article covering St Brigid’s Day, RTE wrote;
“As well as the start of Spring, the 1 February also marks Imbolg, one of the older Celtic (RTE avoiding the word PAGAN) quarter days.”
Image Source: RTE
Whilst pagans believe in a mythical goddess called Brigid, there is simply no link whatsoever with the very real and very Christian figure of Saint Brigid. They share the same name only.
Given the recent attack on Christian Faith by RTE with their “God is a rapist” broadcast, the tax funded state media decided to run with a traditional Saint Brigid's day news segment in 2021 and abandoned the HerStory narrative of paganism and goddesses.
However, be under no illusion, pagans in Ireland have their eyes set firmly on appropriating Saint Brigid’s Day and RTE, the government and performing arts personalities will not rest until they Repeal the SAINT out of Saint Brigid’s Day.
FRIENDS OF THE PARISH ... FAMILY-FAITH-COUNTRY 🇮🇪 | Editor, Friends of the Parish | Substack
