Beltane is the Wiccan and Pagan Sabbat celebrating the height of spring and the approach of summer, kept around 1 May, at the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice; it stands opposite Samhain on the Wheel of the Year, the two marking the light and dark halves of the year. Its themes are fertility, passion and the flourishing of life at its most vigorous. In the common Wiccan myth-cycle it celebrates the union of the Goddess and the God, and the festival is joyful and openly sensual in tone.
Its name and central customs come from the Gaelic Bealtaine, a genuine medieval Irish and Scottish festival of the start of summer at which, the early sources record, great bonfires were kindled and cattle driven between or past them for protection and blessing before being taken to the summer pastures. The modern Sabbat keeps the fire, and adds customs drawn from wider European May traditions, above all the maypole, the gathering of flowers and greenery, and the crowning of a May Queen; these are not specifically Celtic in origin but were absorbed into the neopagan festival as it took shape in the twentieth century. Practitioners today light Beltane fires, dance, and celebrate out of doors, keeping a festival that joins a real Gaelic fire-festival to the broader folk observance of May.