THE UK is unknowingly celebrating the ancient pagan holiday of Beltane by having a barbecue with a few cans in the back garden.
Beltane, which marks the beginning of summer, was traditionally celebrated every May 1st by dancing around a bonfire and the holding of a feast, which today’s rituals are a small, pathetic echo of.
Nathan Muir of Coventry said: “It’s a nice dry bank holiday weekend so I felt a primitive calling, deep within my Celtic-nine-times-removed soul, to get the barbecue out.
“Something about kindling those flames seemed right to me. I thought I’d cook lamb on it but instead of slaughtering one myself in front of the whole village I bought it from Sainsbury’s. Don’t know why I even thought of the slaughtering thing.
“Then we had a nice meal on paper plates and I had two lagers, rather than getting violently drunk on home-brewed mead and roaring at the sky in celebration of my tribe having survived another harsh winter.
“Later on me and the boys threw a frisbee around, while in the very back of my mind a thousand blue-painted men leapt through fires and daubed themselves with ashes. It was a lovely day.”
Wife Sharon Muir said: “In the evening Nathan asked if I wanted to make savage love as a celebration of spring and to encourage crop growth in the season to come. But I’d just put a face pack on.”
