Celebrating Lammas

Happy Lammastide to all today. It’s August 1, the least-remembered pagan holiday. It celebrates the beginning of the end of summer; the name comes from “Loaf Mass,” which is kind of funny, because it’s a lot older than the Catholic mass. But they tried to christianize it a bit by celebrating the baking of the first loaves of bread with the new crop of wheat.

Its old name is Lughnasa, for the Celtic sun god Lugh. It’s one of the four holidays that comes between equinoxes and solstices. The others are Imbolc (which we call Groundhog’s Day or Candlemas, a holiday for prognosticating an early spring), Beltane (also known as May Day, celebrating the first of the warm weather), and Samhain (we call it Hallowe’en these days). If you notice, all these old holidays are associated with warm weather—expecting it, celebrating its arrival, cautiously noting it is slipping away, and then marking the end of the warmth.

Just being warm meant a lot to folks in the old days, that’s pretty clear. But of course warm weather also meant it was the growing season, which meant there was plenty of food, another big deal for folks in years past. It’s a big deal for us again, since we are growing our own food at the Enright Ridge CSA, so I think it’s nice to celebrate these holidays. (Though I would celebrate them anyway.)

There’s more about Lammas in a post last year that you can read here, but for today, if it doesn’t get too hot, bake some bread (though we’re not growing wheat quite yet) to celebrate.

It’s also the full moon tonight, and I think it’s always auspicious when a full moon falls on one of these four holidays (last year there was a full moon on Halloween). If you’ve had enough of the sun for awhile, get out and enjoy basking in the light of the full moon tonight, eat that bread, and celebrate Lammas.