Roodmas

Roodmas (from Old English 'rod' pr. 'rood', rood, cross, and 'mas', mass) is an archaic English word meaning "Mass of the Cross". This festivity is associated with the Pagan festival of Beltane, the same holiday as May Day. It took place at midnight on May 1, during a time in which it was common to celebrate some masses at 24:00,in an attempt by the Christian church to diminish the influence of Paganism. During the Middle Age and Renaissance it was said that witches and warlocks celebrated a reunion called Great Sabbath on this night to honour the Devil and impugn the validity of Christian sacraments. In fact, celebration of this holiday in it's true form was punishable by torture and death at the hands of the Church, whose goal it was to abolish native spirituality; or paganism. While many people were accused of celebrating Satanism that day, people of pagan beliefs do not believe in the Christian Devil and do not practice any form of Satanism. It is most likely that accused people were Pagans who refused to accept dogmatic Christianity to the satisfaction of authorities, continuing the celebration of their ceremonies, which were often misconstrued as Satanic or otherwise (evil) rites.

To pagans and neo-pagans alike this holiday is one in which the union of male and female is celebrated. The lifegiving factor of the act of coupling was and is acknowledged as a part of the cycle of life, and therefore honored as would be any other doctrine of another religious belief. The people who celebrated Roodmas did so to bring fertility to their crops and to their own bodies in by something called (sympathetic magic);which is ,basically, celebrating a representation of what one hopes to manifest in one's life. The commonly celebrated (maypole) dances are associated with this holiday in that they propose to celebrate the joining of male and female, which weaves, as the maypole ribbons weave, a pattern of life.

In fiction this festivity is mentioned several times by H. P. Lovecraft in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (among others), though often misspelled to imitate the arbitrary orthography of the 17th and 18th Centuries. In his fiction and other related authors, the occasion is considered, together with All Hallow's Eve (Halloween) the most favourable days to invoke the stronger powers of spirituality. It is also mentioned by Anthony Horowitz in Raven's Gate, the first of the Power of Five series although horribly misconstrued. The television show The X-Files uses Roodmas as a plot device in the season four episode Sanguinarium.