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Easter fires
On Holy Saturday and Easter night, large bonfires are lit in northern Europe to drive out winter, with older claims of warding off witches.
About Easter fires
Easter fires, called Osterfeuer in Germany, are lit on the evening of Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday across northern Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The Church sanctifies a new fire at the Easter vigil, and the village fires are often connected to it. Local belief held that the fires drove away winter, protected the fields and kept witches away; ash from them might be spread on crops. Folklorists in the nineteenth century linked them to a spring goddess, Eostre, but the evidence for that is slim, and the idea is better known from Jacob Grimm's speculation than from direct sources. Some towns now regulate or ban the fires for environmental reasons.
Entries tied to it
Written by the EveryJaadu desk with AI assistance. Background: "Easter fire" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family, and are described as belief and practice. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Bonfire: S Marshall, CC BY 3.0, source
- Ēostre: Johannes Gehrts (1855–1921), Public domain, source