Whether we choose to call it Lughnasa, after the Celtic tradition, or in its Christian-appropriated form Lammas, the mid-point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox marks the beginning of the harvest season. And that is how we should celebrate it: the first harvest and as a 'season' not a specific day.
In later times we have come to fix things to the day, for reasons of taxes as much as anything else, and also because of our fixation with chronological time, clock time, watching, working, waiting time. But harvests pay no heed to clocks, and seasons fluctuate with weather and climate and the rotation of the earth and solar flares and who knows what else? Not I. I know that my first fruits last year were much earlier. But then, last year was a strange year.
If you need a fixed day, the quarter day of Lammas is the 1st of August. If you have grain or fruit to harvest it will be whenever you begin to do so. Note that this is the beginning of the harvest, first fruits, not its culmination. Harvesting is a season of its own. Perhaps that's why the Chinese have five seasons rather than our four. We usually translate their intervening 'extra' as "late summer" or "Indian summer" but perhaps Harvest-time would be – for those of us in the northern hemisphere at least – a better turn of phrase.
Of course, when you harvest depends upon what you harvest as much as it does upon where you grow, and if you have no literal harvest of your own, why not head out into your nearest semi-wild spot and see what is ripe for picking.
I took my first ripe blackberries from the garden hedges this week. They were few – a mere handful to celebrate with, and some accidental unripe cutting – but there is a crop awaiting ripening. If the birds don't take them first. Then again, I won't eat them all, there's enough to share.
Harvest is all about the gathering in, but we should not lose sight of the origins of this activity when the gathering was a communal activity and the crop would likewise be shared. Harvesting cannot be accomplished in a single day, and arguably it cannot be accomplished alone. So if you go brambling or have grain to cut, seek whatever help is at hand, make it a joyous occasion. Celebrate each day's gathering…and leave a little in the field as a thank you to our earth mother and those others she shelters.
If you are ritually minded: bake bread and then with friends, family or neighbours or strangers 'break bread'. Scatter some for the birds…turn their table into an altar to hold your offerings to Gaia and her other children. If you are not a baker, then buy your bread, as local as you can (or can afford) and bless it with the acknowledgement of all who brought it to your table from seed to plate, and share.
Rituals aside, take some time for your own harvest. Think back on the last twelve months and look to your own 'first fruits'. What have you achieved? What is beginning to come to fruition? Silence the gremlins for a quiet celebration of who you have become, the steps you have taken, the progress made. First fruits, remember. Your full harvest may wait upon another turn or two of seasons, but don't wait until then to celebrate. Look to what has transpired, manifested, improved, delivered, been created or born. Taste the sweetness of the newest corn. Be proud. Go on, I dare you!
Say it out loud, if only to yourself: this much I have worked at and done; this much have I achieved. Choose your own measures. If your progress is one step forward, call it a bread's worth of barley and celebrate that. No-one says you have to supply the whole bakery.
Gather in all your early ripening ears and berries. And savour them.
Among my fruits of these last twelve months, the sweetest is a friendship newly found, most savoured is my return to poetry, and the leavening is of movement disciplines and study, which still need closer tending. The thing about a harvest is that it simply gathers in what is ready, and allows what still needs time to ripen, all of that time. But if we look only at what is still not done, then we will miss the gathering of what is already ready for the tasting.
The cycle of ploughing and seeding and growing and tending and harvest follows a pattern, and yes it is aligned with the cycle of the year, but only loosely so. Don't tie your growth and harvests to calendars and clock-time. Rather use the traditional celebrations to honour what is ripening, however small that may seem, for this year is just one year. Last and next were and will be different. But at the same time: do go out (or inwards) and look closely among your personal hedgerows for the first ripe fruits of your labours. Pick them, share them, eat them, savour their sweetness.
I have a shop-bought Lammas loaf: a many-seeded thing which as much as anything else is a gratitude for small steps towards a more open and more connected future. And yes, the birds will get their share.
~ / ~
I wish you an abundance of the season.
