Tag: harvest

Mabon: It’s All Downhill from Here

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

The least known of the eight seasonal Celtic festivals is Mabon, this earth holiday celebrated at the autumnal equinox.  If Lammas (August first) is first Harvest, Mabon is second harvest, at least where the Celts lived in the British Isles and the northern part  the giant peninsula that is Western Europe. Apples. Pumpkins (not in Europe!). Root vegetables. The days grow short, the temperatures fall.

The equinoxes are what mathematicians call inflection points, as compared to Litha (the summer solstice) and Yul, which are peak and trough, mountain and valley. We climb the mountain after Yu, head back toward the valley of delight at midsummer.. Unlike many mountains, the length of days is on an accelerated path at the beginning, slowing down at the inflection point and climb more slowly toward the midsummer peak.  The reverse comes with the decline into winter.

We notice peaks and valleys in the wheel of the year, but often neglect the turning points in our own lives until long after the fact.  Mabon and Ostara (the vernal equinox) remind us to be more attuned to the changes in the seasons that mirror the changes in our lives.

The interval from Litha or Lammas to Mabon is the beginning of aging in the seasons, including the Corn God or the Sun God.  It is a time of anticipation of both death and birth.  The children are grown, perhaps we are retired or planning to retire. It is a good time to take stock of our own aging process, to notice the changes in our bodies, our interests, our daily activities.  We can try to slow the aging process so that these later days of autumn leaves and fires in the fireplace can be enjoyed in different and more leisurely ways. 

My aging friends and I can assure you that travel is fun and inspiring but also is not a full- time occupation. If you haven’t taken care of your health until now, that can too easily become a full- time activity!  But if your health and memory are good, and your income is adequate to your needs, it is a good time to give back to the earth and human communities that have nurtured us. Volunteering, mentoring, teaching, coaching, helping rescue animals, organic gardening, are among the many options. So is part-time work in something completely different. Many of my friends have turned to writing fiction.  Always a nonfiction writer, in retirement I have written nine more books to join the nine I wrote when I was working. Currently I am writing my autobiography,  not in hopes of publication, just for family and friends.

There are two poets with contrasting views of the aging stage of life.  Dylan Thomas        : Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.”  Or Robert Browning, “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.  With Browning, I vote for the goodness of aging.  My role model for engage aging is Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer, humanitarian, disease eradicator, Habitat for Humanity worker, Sunday School teacher, and fiction writer until his death at age 100. Who is yours?

First Harvest, Celtic Style

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Got some Irish, Scottish, Welsh in your ancestry? Or maybe some of the original Brits (Celtic) in your English ancestry, or Gallic that came to he islands with the Norman conquest? Celttc culture once covered a huge part of the European continent only to be run off to Britain those annoying Romans. Some of these holidays were baptized and melded into Christianity, especially . Easter with Ostara (the spring equinox, with bonfires at dawn), as well as Sammain/Hallowe’en (All Saints’ Day), Yul and Christmas(and midnight mass).. Others live on in other customs, like Groundhog Day (Imbolc) and the fertility festival of Beltain (May Day, the maypole as a mating ritual).. Lithia, the summer solstice was celebrated with midday bonfires, a midsummer holiday that is most closely kin to July 4th in this country.

But one lonesome little Celtic holiday seems to have disappeared from memory. This sweet little holiday on the first day of August is Lammas or Lughnasad, the celebration of first Harvest. I sit at the table with my friends eating fresh corn and tomatoes from the farmers’ market just two days before the holiday. As the Druids disappeared and the Celts turned to Christianity, Lammas was celebrated by bringing the first fruits of the harvest to church for a blessing, a custom carried on in this country into colonial times. I myself have led a blessing of the vegetables service, which is must less disaster-prone than a blessing of the animals and also provided fresh vegetables to our local food bank.

So add an upbeat holiday to your calendar the first of August and celebrate the abundance of harvest and the rich taste of fresh fruits and vegetables!