Sunday, July 29, 2012

Preparing for Lammas (aka) Lughnasa

Lammas or Lughnasa is right around the corner (August 1st in the Northern Hemisphere and February 1st in the Southern Hemisphere) and I'm getting my party ready.  Sometimes it is difficult to invite my friend's over to my house to celebrate Wiccan/Pagan holidays because they think it sounds crazy and then the question my judgment. However, inviting my friends over to celebrate the first harvest and the last rays of summer is apparently totally normal, especially if I tell them they get to take home homemade canned goods from my garden, yummy homemade breads, and we'll all be getting drunk outside by the fire.  I find that most non-pagans respect the celebration of holidays that earth-related as long as they don't see anything that could be misconstrued as heretic. As much as I want my beliefs to be honored I make it point to respect the beliefs of others as well.

Celebrating the first harvest of the season, all the vegetables will be yielding and getting ready for the fall when harvest time is in full swing.  This year I have figs, tomatoes, cucumbers and mulberries growing in my garden and I'm ready to can them all.  Well, maybe not the mulberries as they are white ones and look disgusting as a jam, but perhaps I can mix them with some raspberries or something.  I'm going to make fig jam and pickles and perhaps, IF I can stop eating all of them right off the vine, then some tomato sauce as well.

 Traditionally, Lammas celebrates the first harvest of grain- it literally means Loaf-mass, it was the day when the bread for the winter was first being baked. So tables full of breads and pies and other baked goods is most traditional.  I'm making fresh french bread from scratch to eat (and freeze) as well as some pie crusts for the upcoming season to satiate my need for tradition. Considering I could just walk to the local bakery and buy bread, for a $1.00 to $4.00 a loaf, I feel that baking it myself is honoring the realization that for hundreds of years this harvest was so crucial that it could literally mean the death of the entire family if there wasn't enough to eat. It's also a mark of the Renaissance Fair season, this was more like a festival of craftsmen a long time ago. A time for warriors to show their strength, farmers to prepare their crops, craftsmen to sell their wares, and the unmarried to embark on "hand-fasting" or "trial-marriages" until the end of the festival to see if they liked each other enough to stay for the whole year. Ha! Sounds like what me and Big Daddy are doing!

To make the french bread I will be following a recipe I found on Pinterest (yes, Pinterest and I are best friends), for the jam I will follow the directions on the package of fruit pectin, and the pie crusts and pickles are recipes that have been in my family for 3 generations.  My friend's all seem to love my pickles and pies and I think that it's because both recipes are imbued with the love of many generations of women preparing them for their families, funny how you  really can taste love. 


I think this year I will honor both Demeter (whose daughter is about to descend into Hades to be with her husband) with the food and John Barleycorn (read his story here) with BEER! Now, I'm just waiting for my friends to show up and bring the beer so we can celebrate THAT grain as well! I do love a good Hefeweizen.


Some holidays that are similar to Lammas: Shavout (Israel), Onam (India), and Lughnasa (Lughnasadh)(Ireland.)

Traditional presents: a pair of gloves (winter is coming as well as more harvesting and this was the perfect time for them)

Traditional Rituals: baking of bread, honoring the spirit of grain (whomever that may be to you- I like John Barleycorn), also the creating of a new corn doll and the burning of last year's corn doll in effigy (I don't do this because I live in NYC- the mice will devour the corn doll no matter WHEN she was made or WHO she represents and they serve no purpose in the "field" (aka my 20'x10' backyard)  because pigeons here fear nothing), also the "last sheaf" has many traditions with it, but considering that I don't actually grow and grains I don't practice any of those traditions.

Feel free to learn more about Lammas and Lughnasa here, there is a free daily class on all the sabbats, I find this site very useful and Patti Wiggington is very knowlegable- but like everything on the internet remember that it's shared info not info from an encyclopedia.

Sources:
http://www.schooloftheseasons.com/lammas.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lammas
http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/lammas/a/AllAboutLammas.htm
http://projectbritain.com/year/august.htm

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