The holidays of the Wheel of the Year take their names from Pre-Christian Celtic and Pre-Christian Germanic religious festivals. However, a great deal of liberty has usually been taken with the forms and meanings of these festivals, due to the influence of turn of the century romanticism as well as the elements introduced by Wicca.
The similarities between these holidays generally end at the shared names, as Wicca makes no effort to reconstruct these ancient practices. Wiccans observe the festivals of the Wheel of the Year together in a form of universalism not corroborated by any historical continuity.
There is no place in Europe where all eight festivals have been observed as a set, and the complete eightfold Wheel of the Year was unknown prior to modern Wicca. In early forms of Wicca only the cross-quarter days were observed.
However in 1958 the members of Bricket Wood Coven added the solstices and equinoxes to their original calendar, as they desired more frequent celebrations. Their High Priest, Gerald Gardner, was away visiting the Isle of Man at the time, but he did not object when he returned, since they were now more in line with the Neo-druidism of Ross Nichols, a friend of Gardner’s and founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.
