Harvest Time Celebrations

September 27, 2016

• Topical

Nowadays, most of us live in urban areas, working in services or manufacture, and so we don’t have a strong connection to the land or the seasons. But this wasn’t always the case; in the past agriculture was the main source of employment and livelihood, and therefore this time of year – harvest time – was one of the busiest and most important events in the annual calendar.

Harvest is from the Old English word hærfest, meaning “Autumn”, and came to refer to the season for reaping and gathering grain and other grown products. The full moon nearest the autumnal equinox is called the Harvest Moon, so in ancient traditions Harvest Festivals tended to be held on or near the Sunday of the Harvest Moon – in this country, this is usually mid-to-late September. Initially, it was a pagan festival, stemming from the belief that spirits inhabited the corn, but as time passed the practices were adopted into Christian rituals, focusing on thanking God for providing the harvest.

An early harvest festival used to be celebrated at the beginning of the harvest season on 1 August and was called Lammas, meaning ‘loaf Mass’ – one famous reference to Lammas is in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet’s birthday is said to be Lammas Eve – perhaps this is why she was named Juliet? Typically, farmers made loaves of bread from the fresh wheat crop, and these were given to the local church as the Communion bread during a special service thanking God for the harvest.

By the sixteenth century a number of customs seem to have been firmly established around the gathering of the final harvest. They include the reapers accompanying a fully laden cart, a tradition of shouting “Hooky, hooky”, and one of the reapers dressing extravagantly, acting as ‘lord’ of the harvest and asking for money from the onlookers.

Until the 20th century most farmers celebrated the end of the harvest with a big meal called the harvest supper, to which all who had helped in gathering the harvest were invited; some churches and villages still continue this practice. The modern British tradition of celebrating Harvest Festival in churches began in 1843, when the Reverend Robert Hawker invited parishioners to a special thanksgiving service at his church in Cornwall. Hymns written in that era, such as “We plough the fields and scatter” and “All things bright and beautiful” helped popularise this idea and spread the annual custom of

decorating churches with home-grown produce for the Harvest Festival service.

Nowadays, as we rely less on homegrown produce, and our lives do not depend on the arbitrariness of avoiding bad weather or crop failure in the same way, the emphasis in this country at harvest time is on raising awareness and concern for people in the developing world for whom getting enough food remains a constant struggle. This time of year may not seem particularly significant for us any more, but for many people around the world, it is still just as vital as ever.

Would you like to tell us about your Harvest time celebrations? Feel free to get in contact with us at Kings Tutors.