Celebrating the First Harvest: Patheos Pagan Writers on Lammas

Last updated on: July 31, 2020 at 3:03 pm by Pagan Voices

Celebrating the First Harvest: Patheos Pagan Writers on Lammas 2020-07-31T15:03:33-04:00 Pagan Voices

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Lammas (or Lughnassa) is the first great harvest festival of the year. It’s generally celebrated sometime between July 31 and August 2 (dates on this sabbat vary) and depending on where you live, is either the start of Fall or the height of Summer. No matter how you celebrate (or what you call the holiday) we hope you have a blessed one. (And to our readers in the Southern Hemisphere, Happy Imbolc!)

“The Harvest Moon” by Samuel Palmer. From WikiMedia

Morgan Daimler (Irish-American Witchcraft) We celebrate Lúnasa as Brón Trogain, a holiday were we honor Macha and the beginning of the harvest. It’s the time when the raspberries in our yard are ripe, and so for my family its all about getting out under the summer sun, weaving among a thicket of thorns, and picking warm berries. The ones that don’t get eaten as we work are offered to the Gods and the aos sí, and if any are left we eat them with our meal. Its a great way not only to celebrate the holiday but to be tactilely reminded of our connection to the world around us.

Catharine Buck Clarenbach (Nature’s Path) Lammas may be my favorite of the holidays I celebrate, though Samhain is right up there. Lammas confronts us with the reality that the flower that has stood straight and bloomed in the sun by the riverside wilts and dies. The holiday confronts us with the wheat grown green in the sun is cut down golden and glorious, threshed and ground, The corn pulled back and shucked, the Corn Man killed for the people so they might live.

The Goddess, loving and mourning, the sickle in her hand.

In my tradition, Lammas is celebrated with the God carrying his own body in a bread effigy–“This, my body, is for you.” The gifts of the earth and the gifts of human effort brought together in sacred union.
Gwion Raven (The Witches Next Door) Lammas is about celebrating the harvest. Lammas festivals and rites tend to focus on our personal abundance, and perhaps the shared abundance of our communities. I know that I’ve planned many Lammas rituals with just these thoughts in mind and I am grateful that I’m part of an abundant, thriving, decades old local Pagan community and have access to many other like-minded communities too. I’m all for reveling in abundance. Abundance is great. I like abundance a lot.

“Buckwheat Harvest” by Jean-François Millet. From WikiMedia

Megan Manson (Pagan Tama) There’s not really any true equivalent to Lammas in Shinto, but this is still a Sabbat with a lot of significance to me. Why? Because my husband and I were wed and handfasted around Lammas, so this time of year brings back such special memories for me. It takes the edge off some of the bitter-sweetness of Lammas – the time of sacrifice, the end of summer’s warmth and the point at which the Wheel of the Year rolls slowly towards colder, darker times. But despite some of the sadness of leaving summer’s warmth behind, I still look forward to all the gifts of the autumn and winter Sabbats – the deliciousness of Mabon, the drama of Samhain, and the excitement of Yule.

Heron Michelle (Witch on Fire) Lammas is also about sacrifice. The Sacrificial King voluntarily gives his life to feed his people. The vegetable life in my garden give of themselves to sustain my family, and for that I am eternally grateful. However, despite any delusion that I might be on the top of the food chain, when I go out to the garden in the liminal of dusk, not only have I given of my sweat and tears, I inevitably leave a blood sacrifice to the horde of vampirous mosquitoes. If they don’t get me, the rose bushes will. They will have their due, no matter what skeeter beater potions and lotions I douse myself with. There is no way around it; nature feeds on itself.

Jason Mankey (Raise the Horns) Despite what you may have read, I don’t hate Lammas, but it’s a difficult holiday for me. It’s the height of summer, and yet all I can think of are the promises of fall yet to come. By this time of year I find myself madly missing fresh apples, football, clouds, and a whole host of other things. There are tomatoes in my garden and my sunflowers are now eight to seven feet tall so I see the abundance of Lammas before me, but I also want to get it over with so I can get to the even better stuff.

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