When east Anglia comes alive, and the bluebells and rapeseed begin to flower, we know that spring is on its way. While the weather has been lacklustre this year, the appreciation of spring lives on as it has for thousands of years in the past. The Angles, the Saxons, the Vikings and Celts, they all had a unique appreciation for spring that lives on today. 

Beltane eve, celebrated on the 30th of April, celebrates the hope of an abundant harvest. Celebrating Belenos the Celt sun god, the festival is honoured with fire and feasts. At the beginning of the festival, cattle were let out of their winter lodgings, and guided between two fires, and when the fires extinguished, the town folk would sprinkle the ashes over themselves, their crops and their cattle, a way to ensure the prosperity of their upcoming harvests. Beltane was a day for prosperity, joy and fertility. People would leap over the Beltane fire to ensure this. 

Leading on from Beltane came May Day, traditionally on the first, but also often celebrated on the first Monday of May, May Day inspired so many long-standing traditions. The first which comes to mind, the May pole, may have originated in Germany, and been brought to Britain as a fertility ritual. The earliest may poles were living trees decorated with ivy, flowers, and vines. 

May day started the night before with Beltane, so the celebrations consisted of hungover villagers wearily dancing around a May pole. Traditions in East Anglia were not too different. Villagers would jump through balefire smoke, a bale fire being made of nine different types of wood, and the traditional Morris men dancing as the sun rose, East Anglia has a rich and deep history with spring, many places in Suffolk are still celebrating today, Kentwell hall and Ipswich in Suffolk just two of the many, the now often overlooked month, and spring carries us to summer and summer too autumn and before we know it we are back again, the bluebells and rapeseed begin to flower, and the May fires are being lit.