31/01/2026
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This was always one of my favourite stories my mum used to tell me of the yearly battle between Jack frost and Greenman aka The Imbolc Battle for the Turning Year.
In the deep hush at winter’s edge, when frost still silvered the fields but daylight lingered just a little longer, Jack Frost held dominion.
He was sharp-boned and bright-eyed, crowned with rime and silence. Wherever his fingers traced, water hardened, sap slowed, and breath hung pale in the air. He was not cruel, but exacting—a keeper of endings, a guardian of stillness. Under his watch, the world rested and endured.
Yet beneath the frozen soil, something stirred.
Roots whispered in the dark. Seeds dreamed of warmth they could not yet name. In hedgerows and hollow trees, in the deep loam and ancient bark, the Green Man began to wake.
On the eve of Imbolc, as hearth fires were lit and candles burned in Brigid’s honour, Jack Frost felt the first loosening of his grip. Snow softened. Icicles wept. Beneath the ice, a quiet green pulse moved through the land like a remembered song.
At dawn, they met.
Jack Frost stood tall in the pale light, his breath sharp as glass, his cloak stitched from snow and silence.
Opposite him rose the Green Man, formed of bark and moss, ivy twined in his beard, eyes glowing with sap and promise.
“You wake too soon,” said Jack Frost. “The world is not ready.”
“The world is never ready,” replied the Green Man. “It only longs.”
Their battle was not fought with blows, but with balance.
Jack Frost sent nights of biting cold, reminding the land of hunger, hardship, and the necessity of rest.
The Green Man answered with snowdrops piercing the frozen ground, with lambs stirring unseen, and with the quiet courage of beginnings not yet visible.
Frost glazed the rivers once more.
Green answered with thaw beneath the surface.
For days they held one another in tension—winter refusing to release, spring refusing to be silenced. And then, slowly and almost imperceptibly, Jack Frost stepped back.
Not defeated.
Never destroyed.
He bowed his head, knowing his work was nearly done.
“I will return,” he said.
“You always do,” the Green Man replied. “And I will wait.”
Jack Frost withdrew to the far edges of the land, lingering in early mornings and shaded hollows. The Green Man did not yet claim full dominion—this was not the time for abundance, only for promise.
And so Imbolc was sealed.
Not as a victory, but as a threshold.
Winter loosened its grip.
Spring drew its first breath.
And the wheel turned on, as it always has—held in balance by frost and green alike.
