The History of Harvest Festivals

Harvest time has traditionally brought familes and communities together to share in the bounty. Biba Kayewich

The hills have bronzed under summer’s heat and ripened with autumn’s advent; the leaves set the hills ablaze with crimson, gold, and yellow; and a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables fill the root cellars, a many-hued abundance. The apple trees stand heavy-laden with ruby gems. Amid their leaves, we glimpse the clear, intense blue of fall skies. It’s the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,” to use the words of English Romantic poet John Keats.

And it’s the season for harvest festivals.

The History of Harvest Festivals

The roots of harvest festivals reach into the bedrock of history. Gathering the main cereal crop—typically corn, wheat, or rice—has always occasioned celebration. Many cultures personified their staple crop as a “mother” figure and held religious ceremonies of thanksgiving to the divine for the bountiful crop. This sometimes took the form of offering the first fruits, grains, or meats to the gods. The Romans feasted in honor of the goddess Ceres. During the spring harvest, the Egyptians celebrated a festival in honor of Min. The Celts enjoyed the celebration of Lughnasa in honor of the god Lugh. Some festivals included musical and sporting events, too. The cessation of work in the fields coupled with abundant food from the harvest made this an obvious time for feasting.

In times and places that were predominantly Christian, many harvest festivals continued but were transformed to align with the Christian faith. As explained in “English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century” by George C. Homans, the English farming year was punctuated by key agricultural dates that paralleled the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar. Lammas Day marked the end of hay harvesting time and the beginning of the corn harvest. It was also the feast of St. Peter Vincula. Harvest season continued until Michaelmas, the feast day of St. Michael the Archangel, on Sept. 29. This was considered the end of the farming year, and the livestock of the village would at this point be loose in the fallow fields. Winter crops would be sown again in October.

Lammas Day was traditionally celebrated with baked bread left on church altars and corn dolls decorating feasting tables. Michaelmas Day boasted its own boisterousness: A goose stuffed with apples was served, a special cake was distributed to farm workers, and a corn dolly was placed on the feasting table. Some people still celebrate Michaelmas today. “The farming cycle ran, year after year, century after century, and to it the holiday and ceremonial cycle of the people became intimately bound,” Homans wrote.

Harvest Festivals Today

Harvest festivals continue to be observed around the world. In Mendoza, Argentina, the archbishop of the area sprinkles the first crop of grapes with holy water at the beginning of a month-long celebration. It’s accompanied by parades, concerts, fireworks, and the choosing of a harvest queen.

In Jerusalem, people participate in Sukkot, a harvest festival that alludes to the time when Israelites sojourned in the desert. Families build temporary huts called “sukkah,” where they eat and sometimes sleep for the span of a week. Each day, they shake date palm, willow, and myrtle branches in all directions as an act of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth.

The Italians of Magione enjoy a two-day festival in November for the olive harvest that coincides with the feast of St. Clement. A priest blesses the olive oil, and the community serves up a medieval-style feast in a 12th-century castle.

Of course, the harvest festival most familiar to Americans is Thanksgiving. Our modern-day celebrations are modeled on the 1621 harvest feast between English colonists in Plymouth and the native Wampanoag people. We all know about the spread of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pies, and the like, which seem to epitomize the mood of fall and celebration.

The Connections Among Harvest, Worship, and Culture

As these examples show, the connection between religion and agriculture remains strong in most parts of the world. Much of a group’s identity and culture springs from this dynamic interplay between farming and worship.

Philosopher Josef Pieper argues in his book “Leisure the Basis of Culture” that “one of the foundations of Western culture is leisure,” the times when we rest from work to devote ourselves to higher things, such as the celebration of what we’ve received.

Pieper continues: “But if celebration is the core of leisure, then leisure can only be made possible and justifiable on the same basis as the celebration of a festival. That basis is divine worship. ... The meaning of celebration, we have said, is man’s affirmation of the universe and his experiencing the world in an aspect other than its everyday one. Now we cannot conceive a more intense affirmation of the world than ‘praise of God.’” According to Pieper, culture derives from the impulse to celebrate the world and its maker, exactly the spirit behind harvest festivals.

The intertwining of agriculture, culture, and cult is further demonstrated by the words’ etymological links. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “culture” derives from the Latin “cultura,” meaning “cultivation, tillage, care bestowed on plants.” That comes from the French “culture,” meaning “action of cultivating land, plants, etc., husbandry” and also “worship or cult of someone or something.”

In his book “Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture,” Anthony Esolen highlights the significance of this etymological commonality: “The role of religion in human life is not little. It is essential: without it, there is no culture at all, because culture is a cultivation of the things that a people considers most sacred.”

When a group expresses gratitude for agricultural plenty, they form a cult of worship to the divine power that made it possible. This celebratory or “leisurely” spirit finds expression in cultural acts. An example is that the art form of drama emerged from the religious rituals of Greek choral processions honoring the god Dionysus. Farming, prayer, and art bear an intimate and ancient relationship with one another. They grow from and weave in and out of each other like the tendrils of a vine, heavy with plush, purple grapes that shimmer in the sun, ready for harvest.