Brigid's figure is famously entangled with that of Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of Ireland, and scholars have long debated how far the Christian saint inherited the goddess's attributes, the perpetual fire tended by nineteen nuns at Kildare, the ties to livestock, healing wells and the coming of spring. Her feast, 1 February, coincides with Imbolc, the old festival marking the start of spring and the lambing and lactation of ewes, and the woven Brigid's cross of rushes remains a living folk custom in Ireland. The relationship between goddess and saint is not one of simple identity, and the evidence is much argued; but the two together have kept the name Brigid continuously present in Irish religious life from pre-Christian times to the present day.
In 2023 the Irish government instituted Imbolc, Saint Brigid's Day, as a new official public holiday, the first Irish bank holiday named for a woman and the country's first new bank holiday in decades, a decision widely reported as recognising both the Christian saint's day and the older seasonal festival together. Kildare today hosts both church-run commemorations centred on the saint and separate, distinct gatherings organised by groups honouring the goddess in a modern Pagan or Druidic idiom, so that Brigid's February festival now draws simultaneously on Christian devotional practice, civic recognition and contemporary Pagan revival, each tradition understanding the same date and the same name in its own terms.