Celebrating Lammas

By Anastacia Mott Austin

The hard work of summer is over, and while the harvest isn’t quite ready yet, we can tell that it’s coming.

Pagans of yore typically held a Lammas (also known as Lughnasadh) celebration the first week of August to mark the beginning of the harvest season.

Some say its tradition dates back to early Ireland, when farmers wouldn’t dare harvest their grain before Lammas. That would mean bad luck, as the summer’s bounty would have run dry early, and bode poorly for the food stores.

If the farmer cut his first sheaves of wheat on Lammas day, his wife (because she’d be the one in the kitchen, natch) could bake the first loaf of bread, which gave "rise" to the name of the ritual, "hlaf-maesse," or loaf mass, ode to the bread.

Pagans today usually look at Lammas as a celebration of abundance, an Indian-summer feast of farewell to summer and a welcoming in of the cooler days of autumn. It is also a time of honoring the cycle of life, death and rebirth.

Because of this time of transition, foods eaten at a Lammas feast can include late summer produce as well as early fall bounty such as "green" corn and grains, usually some kind of bread is freshly baked. Rich soups and hearty dishes including summer squash are often shared as potluck.

There is almost always an altar of some kind at every pagan celebration, and a Lammas altar would include some of the bounty of the season like apples or grapes, as well as some kind of grain, corn, perhaps a representation of the ancient Celtic god Lugh. The colors would include late summer, early autumn colors of green, yellow, and rust. Since Lugh was a craftsman, you can also include crafty items on your altar.

Some pagan groups will have a circle ritual, in which the spirits of the four directions (earth, wind, fire, water) are called in and a circle is created with the physical bodies of the participants and some kind of reading, poetry or otherwise, that marks the occasion and designates the purpose of the ritual (celebrate abundance, harvest, honor the "corn mother," or "Earth Mother," etc).

Often stalks of wheat are passed around for the participants to hold, or a loaf of bread is passed and each person takes a piece and might say something before passing it to the next person.

Luckily, with today’s modern pagan groups incorporating Celtic traditions as well as Native American rituals, along with some Wiccan thrown in, the group can decide exactly what kind of Lammas ceremony they would like to have.

Usually, the purpose is simply to gather together with friends and family during the time between the summer solstice and the fall equinox in September and enjoy the changing of seasons together.