09/02/2026
St Brigid has Left the Building!
Over the last decade or so, St Brigid has been quietly replaced.
One day she was a historically awkward, yet stubbornly specific figure - a woman embedded in early medieval Irish society, religion and power - and the next she had become a goddess of creativity, healing and vaguely defined “energy”.
So rather than spend my St Brigid’s day scrolling through endless (mainly AI) posts about how Brigid the goddess of Irish mythology was somehow transformed into the Christian saint; my daughter and I headed into Kildare Town to check out the Brigids Day Festivities.
Despite the website’s description of the event as one that - “honours St. Brigid, Ireland’s only female patron saint and her lasting legacy as a symbol of compassion, inspiration, and equality” - and having been a year or so ago - I knew it wasn’t going to be the Catholic Holy-Day "celebrations" I remember from my youth.
However, I went to the ‘Brigid - Spirit of Kildare’ event expecting… if not reverence to the saint, then at least recognition of the woman; who came to be called Brigid.
After all, this was St Brigid’s Day and this was her place. A town that built its identity, around a woman who - whatever else one believes about her - once mattered enough to leave an institutional mark on the Irish landscape.
What I found instead was Brigid everywhere and nowhere.
Her image was illuminated on buildings in soft-focus celtic-style illustrations. Her name was invoked in opening ceremonies and closing blessings. Brigids Crosses became pyrotechnic theatre as her sacred flame twirled in the hands of the fire-dancers. All accompanied by the kind of ethno-celtic muzak you would expect to hear piped into a Wellness Spa anywhere in the world.
And yet the Brigid who belongs to Kildare - the founder, the abbess, the woman whose memory is inseparable from this landscape, was conspicuous by her absence.
The institution she founded, the cathedral itself (rebuilt in the 13th Century on site of the original monastic foundation of the 5th Century) is possibly the oldest site of continuous worship in Ireland. Yet it functioned merely as a scenic backdrop rather than a focal point of the celebration.
That honour was instead given to a small out-house in the grounds of the cathedral - dating to no earlier than the 13th Century AD and rebuilt in the 1980’s - which has since been “rebranded” as (the goddess) Brigid’s Fire Temple.
Brigid’s own choice of faith was largely treated as an inconvenience or an afterthought, politely ignored rather than represented as part of her legacy. In effect, Brigid had been detached from the very place that gives her meaning. Turned into a generic/homogenised goddess that can be celebrated anywhere and so belongs nowhere...
That, to my mind, is the clearest sign that something has gone wrong.
I write this not as a defence of institutional Christianity. Nor is it simply a matter of taste or even pride in my home County. What was on display in Kildare Town is part of a wider shift: A social media led, corporate makeover of our cultural heritage by the wellness industry… being sold as “Authentic Irish spirituality”.
Whether we admit it or not, the modern Goddess Brigid operates within a spiritual marketplace. Where beliefs are modular. Traditions are curated. Symbols are chosen for resonance, aesthetic appeal and emotional payoff… but what is the cost to the real woman Brigid
The Brigid who represented something genuinely challenging: a woman who refused marriage, exercised authority, controlled resources, and founded an institution that shaped Irish history. That kind of power is uncomfortable because it happened within constraint - within Christianity, within patriarchy, within history.
To insist that Brigid’s power comes from her divinity, is to repeat a deeply familiar logic: that women can only be powerful through divine intervention. Medieval hagiographers explained Brigid’s authority by subordinating it to God and making her a saint. The modern Goddess Brigid explains it by denying her humanity altogether.
At least the saint, although sanctified, remained a real woman (for nearly 1500 years anyway) who chose a difficult path and succeeded. The goddess cannot choose. She has no stakes, no risks, no agency. She is a symbol, not a subject.
If Brigid’s significance can only be explained by divinity, then her humanity becomes irrelevant.
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As I left Kildare that evening, the lights were still glowing, the music still drifting across the market square, the sacred flame still burned symbolically. People were smiling, hugging, speaking about renewal and connection.
But I couldn’t escape the feeling that something had been profoundly missed. Not a goddess. Not even a saint. But a woman.
A woman whose memory was strong enough to have survived centuries of institutional control, folkloric adaptation, and cultural change. Yet fragile enough to be erased by a bank holiday of good intentions and bad history.
Don't get me wrong we had a great day and well done to all who helped put it together - the fire display was spectacular and there was loads to see and do. But I get the feeling if the real Brigid were to be there, she wouldn’t have recognised herself... and worse, she wouldn’t have had a place in the parade.
And that, more than anything else, tells us what St Brigid’s Day has become.
Image: 'St Brigid was here' by Simon Tuite (original mural by Mister Copy)
Text: by Simon Tuite
