Musings, ramblings and thought provoking articles from our team of talented writers - all views expressed are their own!
Happy New Year! November 1st is the first day of the ancient Celtic year. Like January 1st, it’s the day after the big party. Around Ireland, neighbors are quietly cleaning up after the bonfires and fireworks of Halloween. Parents are taking down decorations and encouraging their children to pace themselves as they devour their candy. […]
Since the time of the Celts, glass has been used in Irish jewelry. Our earliest surviving artwork is beautiful, intricate stone carvings. The same swirling designs are in both early and modern Irish jewelry. Ireland quickly embraced crystal when it was developed. And we became one of the world’s most popular producers of crystal glassware, […]
As you carve the pumpkins, hang the fake spider webs and stock up on candy for trick or treaters, you probably are not thinking about romance. But the Celts of old were. Halloween’s roots are in Samhain, the pre-Christian Celtic New Year. People believed that a veil separated this world from the spirit world, where […]
The wet and cold are settling in. September’s mix of rain and surprise sunny days is over. Farmers have gathered their last harvest, and by now everyone has their turf in for winter. Fires are lit at night, filling the air with the smell of burning turf. Young people eager for Halloween are stashing away […]
September is back to school season in Ireland, like much of the rest of the world. Children are donning their fresh new school uniforms and setting off every morning to learn English, Irish, history, geography, religion and maths. As the days get shorter, the nights are drawing in. The weather is wetter and less predictable. One […]
Are you having your own summer of love? Maybe as you’ve been enjoying romantic picnics, lounging on a beach together or just barbequing with friends, you’ve started to imagine your future together stretching out over many years, decades…a lifetime. If you’ve decided that she’s the one, and you want to propose, it is natural to […]
Does creativity require a bit of solitude? Consider the stereotype of writers toiling away in an attic somewhere. Virginia Woolf said women need a room of our own, and long before man caves men were retreating to workshops to create all sorts of wood crafts. Our Irish ancestors had this figured out. In fact, they […]
Year round, Ireland is lauded as the land with forty shades of green. But in May, our favorite shade of green gets the center stage. This is the emerald isle, and emeralds are the birthstone for May. It’s quite fitting really. May is often a gloriously green month in Ireland. Yes, it’s wet, but spring […]
Wedding rings are a very traditional symbol of the commitment of marriage. Wearing a ring tells everyone you meet that you have made a decision to spend your life with your beloved. It’s such a universally recognized symbol that some single women wear a gold band on occasions when they want to be left alone […]
Sure, that book about various ‘love languages’ didn’t mean actual spoken and written languages. That type of love language is about the many ways we express affection. But language does something to us. And an Irish accent leaves an awful lot of people around the world weak in the knees. The stereotype is that French […]
