It's easy being green

[sam]

The Jack-in-the-Green festival in Hastings. Click to enlarge pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Shortly after posting this the following info was forwarded

Did you know that apparently we've got it all wrong.  The popular belief that JiG/The Green Man is a pagan symbol that was sneaked into church carvings as an attempt to continue the old ways on Christian sites that were often built over meaningful pre-Christian places is a c20th fabrication.  The earliest Green Man carvings show the face with tree branches/twigs/shoots coming out of the mouth and nostrils...this is a Christian image that symbolises how the body decays after death but the soul can live on (if you've been good and said your prayer, etc).  But just as the church appropriated many pagan symbols the pagans are now appropriating Christian ones...what goes around comes around!