Naturalist's Almanac

The ancient Celts, who were more closely attuned to the natural year than we are, celebrated four annual festivals. These festivals fell at times we now think of as February 1, May 1, August 1, and November 1. Each festival launched a new phase of the agricultural year. Having celebrated the beginning of the growing season around May 1, they were ready to celebrate the beginning of the harvest by August 1.

They called their early August festival Lughnasa in honor of a god named Lugh. Lughnasa rituals involved a hilltop gathering of the whole community and a feast centered on the newly ripened crop. The hilltop had to do with looking down on the landscape that provided the community with its food, and the main food at the original Lughnasa feasts was the local grain.

Interestingly, two of the Celts' four seasonal celebrations made it by way of England all the way to America. February 1's Imbolc became the English Candlemas and then our Groundhog Day, and November 1's Samhain became the English All Hallow's Eve and then our American Halloween. But Beltane, which became the English May Day, was pre-empted by the Socialists, who declared May 1 an international labor day. And Lughnasa, which became the English Lammas, got lost somewhere between our American Fourth of July and early September Labor Day.

To keep our modern American selves in touch with the seasonal rhythms that the Celtic festivals honored, maybe we should reclaim at least the main themes of Lughnasa. Early August is a great time to climb a local hill or mountain and look down on where we live. An annual appreciation of our local landscape seems like a worthwhile way to spend an early August day.

For the food component of a modern Lughnasa, why not stop at a local farm stand on your way home from your hike and buy enough newly ripened sweet corn for a corn feast? When you think about it, it seems even more important to remember the beginning of the harvest — ancestrally, the feast after the long hunger of waiting for the new crop to ripen — than to remember the end of it, which modern Americans need no help with because of our own Thanksgiving celebration in late November.

MORE INFORMATION

Crossquarter Lammas
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/crossquarterlam.html

Not many scientists write about the Celtic cross-quarter days, but this one does. As the former director of the Hansen Planetarium in Utah, he knows his astronomy — and also his weather, his natural history, and other cultures’ practices with respect to the solar year. He writes a newspaper column called “Looking Around” from which this very readable essay is adapted.

Lughnasadh - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lughnasadh

The Wikipedia article on Lughnasa is brief compared to its articles on the other cross-quarter days, but it does offer background information and links to related Wikipedia articles.