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Celtic tree calendar · Celtic tree month 1

Birch

Birch · Beith

Birch (Beith), month 1 of the modern 'Celtic tree calendar', 24 December – 20 January.

The birch, first of the trees in the Ogham alphabet, is a pioneer that colonises bare ground. In Graves' scheme it opens the year after the winter solstice and stands for beginnings, renewal and purification; birch twigs were used in folk custom to 'beat out' the old year.

The thirteen tree months come from Robert Graves' The White Goddess (1948), not from ancient sources. The tree associations of the Ogham letters do go back to medieval Irish scholars, but there is no evidence for an ancient Celtic tree calendar.

Personality

pioneering · ambitious · resilient · fresh · determined · self-reliant

In the modern 'Celtic tree calendar', a person born in the Birch month (24 December – 20 January) is described as a pioneer: ambitious, resilient and ready to begin again. The scheme is a twentieth-century creation, devised by Robert Graves in The White Goddess (1948) and elaborated by later Pagan writers, not an ancient Druid calendar; the birch is the first letter of the medieval Ogham alphabet, Beith, and opens Graves' year after the winter solstice.

Modern tree-calendar books draw the Birch personality from the tree itself, a hardy pioneer that colonises bare ground. Birch people are said to be driven, tenacious and full of quiet initiative, able to make a fresh start after hardship and to lead by example. Their challenges are described as stubbornness, a cool or reserved manner and impatience with those who do not share their drive.

In love Birch people are portrayed as loyal and steady once committed, if slow to open up; in work, as founders, organisers and people who prepare the ground for others. The birch's folk association with purification, its twigs used to 'beat out' the old year, adds the theme of clearing away the past.

Sources and further reading