A Mōdraniht illustration (Image found on Google)
Now I know how to call Christmas Eve next year - yeap, I'm still in that festive mood! Allow me to explain it: Mōdraniht (Old English "Night of the Mothers" or "Mothers'-night") was an event held at what is now Christmas Eve by the Anglo-Saxon Pagans where a sacrifice may have been made. The event is attested by the medieval English historian Bede in his 8th-century Latin work De temporum ratione. Scholars have proposed connections between the Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht and events attested among other Germanic peoples (specifically those involving the dísir, collective female beings, and Yule) and the Germanic Matres and Matrones, female beings attested by way of altar and votive inscriptions, nearly always appearing in trios.
~Ally
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