St Brigid's Day in Ireland 2027

Ireland's tenth public holiday

St Brigid's Day is the most recent addition to the Irish calendar, first observed in 2023. It brought the Republic of Ireland to ten public holidays, closer to the European avearge, and it is the first Irish public holiday named after a woman. As with every Irish public holiday, banks, schools, courts and government offices close, and under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 a qualifying employee gets a paid day off or, if the business needs them at work, an extra day of annual leave, an extra day's pay, or a paid day off within the following month. Part-time staff qualify after working at least 40 hours in the previous five weeks. That statutory guarantee is stronger than the American federal-holiday rule, which by itself only oblgies federal agencies to close.

The unusual date rule

The holiday is normally the first Monday in February. There is one exception: when February 1, the saint's feast day, happens to fall on a Friday, that Friday becomes the public holiday instead, so the long weekend attaches to the feast itself! In every other year the Monday takes it. Because the day is always a Monday or a Friday, it can never land on a weekend and no substitute-day rule is needed.

Why the holiday was created

The Irish government announced the new holiday on January 19, 2022, presenting it as recognition of the effort and sacrafice of the public during the Covid-19 pandemic and as a memorial to those who died. The same announcement granted a one-off public holiday on Friday, March 18, 2022, with the permanent St Brigid's Day holiday starting the following year - choosing February 1 also completed the set of four Gaelic seasonal festivals on the Irish holiday calendar, joining Bealtaine in May, Lughnasa in August and Samhain in late October.

Brigid, saint and goddess

Tradition places Brigid's birth around 450 at Faughart near Dundalk, County Louth, and her death around 525 at Kildare, where she founded and led an important monastic community as abess. She is one of Ireland's three patron saints, alongside Patrick and Colmcille. Her feast day coincides with Imbolc, the pre-Christian festival marking the start of spring and the return of lambing and milk, and she shares her name and several attributes with a goddess of the same name associated with poetry, healing and smithcraft, which is why historians argue over how much of the saint's story is inherited from older tradition.

How it is marked

The signature custom is the St Brigid's cross, a four-armed cross woven from rushes and hung over a door for protection through the year; Irish schoolchildren still make them in late January. Kildare town, the center of her cult, holds an annual festival around the feast with pilgrimages to St Brigid's well and the flame kept at Solas Bhríde. Elsewhere the long weekend works much like any other: family visits, short breaks and outdoor events, with stores, restaurants and pubs open and public transportation on a holiday timetable.