>We can't say which was the most sacred. We can only guess<
Very, true.
Yet I believe that where objective reasoning finishes, subjective feeling begins.
My subjective view is that high summer with its long hot nights and abundance of resources was the season to make babies, feast, fight and play. In effect the time to partake of life. Busy, happy, healthy people have no real need for religion.
But midwinter would have been a time for reflection, with thoughts of those who have passed on, a marginal time, where the past present and future all marry together. This would have been a time when 'the soul' would need the sustenance and succor community and religion.
As a Scot, I know that the world associates the Scottish Hogmanay (New Year) with riotous and drunken revelry, a time of wanton excess, however, the reality is that most Scots quite dread that time of year, as it is a dark time full of pathos and melancholy ......... that's probably why most of us get pissed from Hogmanay to Burns Night ..... keep the party going.... blot out the literal and metaphorical darkness.
I feel this would have been true for many past generations who have inhabited the north and west!
