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Harvest Festival
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Message 1.Â
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Monday, 3rd October 2011
Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the USA but their seasons are different from ours.
The local Cof E parish church advertised Harvest Festival for yesterday. I. did not go. There are no longer any people in the village who are either CofE church goers or Farm workers.
I notice that nobody here has mentioned the Festival even once?
We will soon be getting blithering remarks about a foolish marketing festival in late December, and eyt i should like to give thanks for my own Harvest.
It's been good. what about yours!?
PS I would get drunk too on my own cider a good many people in the vicinity with me, who enjoy my brews!
October in your Garden? A FOOL'S PARADISE.
Harvest Festival and thanksgiving please! -
Message 2
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Monday, 3rd October 2011
(thanksgiving dates in the northern hemisphere) et al. -
Message 3
Posted by 7magpies (U8108459) on Monday, 3rd October 2011
Not quite sure what response you're looking for here. Harvest Festivals in the UK vary in date - our village one is at the end of October. They're generally set up and run by the church, on a date to suit the local climate and habits.
Religious "Harvest Festivals" don't go back more than about 150 years. Before that, the harvest was celebrated in various secular ways - Harvest Home or Harvest Supper was sometimes held at a farm, with food and drink provided by the farmer to his workers in celebration of the harvest they'd been gathering.
Maybe allotment holders should set up their own harvest suppers, with home-grown produce? -
Message 4
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Tuesday, 4th October 2011
Thank you for your courteous reply Magpies. I attended Harvest fests when I was in my 20s. I don't know whether they are held, de rigeur, ie of necessity, by local church groups.
Where I live there is a CofE church where the only real harvest is the harvest of the grim reaper, there are so many old people and so few young ones.
I wonder whether Catholic celebrations are similar, or Muslim ones, surely held at the same time! I am slightly ashamed to say that I don't know.
Tractors have been passing here for about ten days with huge crops of maize for cattle winter feed, and I wonder how they celebrate, but, as you wisely remark, how allotment holders celebrate too?
I would not blame them for celebrating the end of the seasonal work with Beer down at the pub!
Have some of my vintage cider brew!
Extraordinary how different it all is in Canada, and USA.
Canada starts their own Thanksgiving on the second Tuesday of October.
The comparison of Harvest festivals and thanksgiving may be odious to those who are acquainted with both!
Thanksgiving should be an institution in the UK, and probably is in other European countries, given deep family meaning, as it is in America. -
Message 5
Posted by 7magpies (U8108459) on Tuesday, 4th October 2011
I'm happy that Thanksgiving isn't a national institution in the UK. For one thing, the harvest times vary around the country, depending on the climate and also on what staple crops are grown.
Also, for those of us not of a religious persuasion, the issue of giving thanks is a bit problematic. I can go along with the idea of being appreciative of our good fortune, and the hard work (our own and others') that goes into producing our food, but not of thanking any external power. To make it a national thing, all this would have to be standardised - and which god would be thanked? People would never agree.
Instead, we have various harvest festivals held by churches, but also one-off events like National Apple Day, and local events like the Gooseberry Pie Fair held in a village near here, or "Fishstock" celebrating the fishing industry in Brixham. Folk music still has a repertoire of songs celebrating both the food harvest and the grain and apple harvests that give us beer and cider. I like the variation and local quirkiness of it all.
I know of small town in southern France that has a big fair to celebrate the chestnut harvest, and there are songs and rituals to do with the grape harvests in some regions there. I suspect that other European countries have local and regional events linked to particular harvests, rather than any national days or public holidays. Isn't there some tomato event in Spain where they all hurl tomatoes at each other?
I'm not sure about Muslims, as their customs are rooted in cultures where the harvests are probably not so seasonal, and their UK communities are largely urban. I'd be surprised if they had anything much in the way of harvest festivals, but I could be wrong.
Interesting topic, anyway! -
Message 6
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Tuesday, 4th October 2011
Well thank you Pies I really had not thought of it like that at all!
So it is lots of individual fests, rather than one end of season fest.
Has it always been so, or does an urban population not have the same interest
in Harvests as a rural one?
Consumerism takes over at a certain point, I guess; sheer mercantilism and money.
Celebrating a good harvest is not necessarily anything to do with a "greater power"
surely? -
Message 7
Posted by Thesassenach (U14884672) on Wednesday, 5th October 2011
My wife and I celebrate the harvest. We have a big harvest feast for Lúnasa, which is the 1st August, and is a public holiday in Ireland, and invite family and friends, making the best of what we have, or can find. We do the same thing at the Autumn equinox, when more hedgerow fruits are available. For us, this marks the beginning and the end of the harvest season.
There is no tradition of harvest celebration in Irish Catholicism, perhaps because the majority of farmers here are dairy farmers. I thought that the American thanksgiving was more about the fact that the first european colonialists were given food for the winter by the original inhabitants, who their descendants later committed genocide on. I wouldn't particularly like to celebrate that. -
Message 8
Posted by 7magpies (U8108459) on Wednesday, 5th October 2011
That's interesting, Sassenach, and confirms my half-baked theory that people's response to harvest is probably quite localised, depending on the types of crops/farming that take place in their area. There are places where the main crops are grains, and others with soft fruits, or orchard fruits, or root crops, or hay/fodder crops. And as you say, some areas with less seasonality, where they depend more on, say, dairying or fishing. I suppose the making of hay and silage for the cattle is a sort of harvest, but it's less easy to get excited about.
But we all depend on there being a regular harvest of food for us, even if it's brought itn. I suppose when we're eating South African apples and Caribbean bananas, the idea of the harvest can be a bit distant, but there's still a lot of farming going on all aound us, not to mention the small-scale but significant harvests of smallholdings, allotments, gardens and wild areas such as woodlands.
I like your idea of an autumn equinox food party. Maybe it's one that allotments and gardeners could copy? It's usually about then that we seem to have gluts of garden produce. There's no reason to let the churchgoers have all the fun.
And yes, I think the US Thanksgiving has a political element, giving thanks not only for the food but for the setting up of the new colony. This isn't something that has a parallel on this side of the Pond. -
Message 9
Posted by Thesassenach (U14884672) on Wednesday, 5th October 2011
One good thing that is becoming more popular in Ireland is regional feasts, featuring regional produce. We went to one in County Clare at the weekend, and had a three course hot buffet featuring only ingredients from the county. The focus is on promoting small scale local producers (veg, cheese, meat, fish) and local chefs. 50 euros for that, and we could eat as much as we like. There are two more going on locally over the next couple of weeks. What a great way to get people talking, and wean them off a culture based on what's promoted by the supermarkets! I discovered a local cheesemaker who was more than happy to take all my excess (organic) grass clippings in exchange for cheese!
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Message 10
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
You two are giving me ideas!
I had not thought of celebrating the Druidic festivals, the equinox, as a harvest festival, but that is the best time. You mean half way between Sept21/Dec21st ie nov 5th Not Guy Fawkes night, perish the thought, but a festival of the season.
Lunasa! -
Message 11
Posted by Thesassenach (U14884672) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
Autumn equinox is September 20-22, it varies slightly each year, but is usually the 21st. 12 hours of daylight, 12 of darkness. Many of the public holidays in Ireland correspond to old festivals. We get a bank holiday for Samhain (hallowe'en) as well :D
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Message 12
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
But is not mid autumn Nov 5th, the time when absolutely everything is got in from the fields and quite a lot ready to eat too.
I have not seen that definition of US Thanksgiving but it must be a historical note.
Perhaps Cross mas did not seem appropriate any more in a new world, many having escaped the religious persecution of the old. Send Jesus back to Jerusalem mate kind of attitude! -
Message 13
Posted by 7magpies (U8108459) on Friday, 7th October 2011
I think one reason that 5 Nov has caught on as Bonfire Night is that it was customary to have fires around this time, or possibly on Hallowe'en (which is when they have them in some parts of Ireland, rather than Guy Fawkes' Night).
It's really the end of the autumn and the harvest, and the time when farmers and gardeners need to have a good old clearout of rubbish. It also (in modern times) comes shortly after the putting-back of the clocks, so we're suddenly a lot more aware of the dark evenings and the approach of winter. Fires are reassuring and help us to combat the fear of cold and darkness.
But most of the harvest is pretty well over by then, and the first frosts may have arrived. -
Message 14
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Friday, 7th October 2011
I don't know what it is about mankind who want to disguise natural seasonal events by fictitious and/or religious ceremonies.
The French laugh like drains about "Guy Fawkes". They take things a little further, and why Nov 5th?
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