So I notice someone usually posts a 'what are you doing for... such and such a festival?' or a 'happy festival' thread - but I've not seen anything on Lughnasadh - do folk not 'do' it?

Happy Lughnasadah!!

Er...what's Lughnasadh?

LOL
Ermmm August 1st is the festival of the 8 fold wheel of the year called Lughnasadh or Lammas - beginning of the harvest.
Maybe its just a druid thing?

Not Heathen.

Mind you, there is an Anglo Saxon festival at this time of the year called Lammas - Loaf mass. Thanksgiving for grain harvest. And I have no doubt Heathens rejoiced well and truly when the harvest was gathered in.

I wonder nowadays how to give thanks. Yes, I live - have done for years - in a rural area and it's good to see the grain harvested. But it's not exactly like times past, when the life of the village depended on it, and everyone mucked in to see it brought in. Or that it marked a time of plenty - as stores will have all but run out prior to the harvest, and most of the village (except the rich) will have been running on empty for weeks. That made the new grain very, very special.

But what do we do now, when all we have to do to eat is walk into a supermarket and buy bread? How do we mark anything like what the grain harvest meant in the middle ages - and for millenia before then, since the time of the first farmers?

Happy Lammas!

Isn't that what the eight fold year helps us do - connect with the land in an age of disconnection from nature? Someone had to harvest the rain that we can have bread - does that mean we don't give thanks?

Ed

Happy Lughnassadh umm it's also when the celtic god Lugh has funeral games for his step mother, at least thats what I was brought up with.

Lunasa is also irish for August.

We call it Lughnasadh and we have a little celebration. Nothing like the Solstices and Equinoxes, when Mr S takes time off work. We're planning a lovely veggie roast tomorrow, flowers on the altar and T will have a little token toy. That's all really. I was hoping my brother in law and his partner were going to be here, but she couldn't get the time off work.

Lugh of the shining face - sun, darkness approaches

Not just Druidic !
Celtic!
Lugh is cool!
You can have Trial Marriages too!
A year and a day!
Pagans are very practical!
Happy Hloaf to you Heathens!

The way I see it, and celebrate it, is that no matter how I come by it I still have plenty to be thankful for at this time of year. It's still the harvest, whether I'm physically involved in it or not, and the successful harvest means that I can provide for my family in the year to come. It's especially pertinent this year, with rising costs of pretty much everything, world food shortages and so on...so I give thanks for what I have already, and hope to have in future.

I try to harvest things from my garden to celebrate - this year it's limited to herbs and flowers, seeing as I've just moved, but next year I'm planning on growing some fruits that will crop for the time of year...I make bannocks to celebrate, as they used to be made (or as near as I can get) and making my own stuff like this helps to bring it home to me just how important the crops are. I may not grow it, but I still rely on it.

Mark your bannocks with the sun cross! Honey is nice too!

Oh, I do! I've not experimented much with sweet versions, so I've yet to try honey, but I might see how it goes with caraway seeds next time I try it

I dont "do" it, because harvest to me is when I see the combines in the field and I haven't yet

But a VERY happy Lughnassadh or Lammas to those who are celebrating

Drive a combine for Lammas?

We're having a Firepit night. For us, Lammas /Lunasa is the 2nd of August.

Shame it's mizzling persistently.

We had a fire, ate bread made with British flour, and shared some beer with the Land.

They are harvesting in our area, and I'm very glad to see them doing so after a difficult couple of years for the farmers.

Rhiannon

I will bake some bread in the next few days,and I have a hanging heart in the kitchen made of twigs(wish I could say I'd made it myself)that I plaited some tuft grass and wound it round.Spent a bit of time outside,appreciated seeing the rowan berries on the trees.Wish I could get out to more rural area more often,but I mark all the festivals quietly,in my heart

PS,my other half is gluten intolerant,anyone tried to make any bread with half normal,half g.f flour?last time I made fully g.f,the loaf looked very pretty,but had the texture of a house brick

It's too early for harvest around here as well. I've always enjoyed the time of harvest though and make the effort to think about its importance. It's something I've done since long before I realised I was a Pagan, hence its timing with the actual harvest and not a particular calendar date.

However, if having a fixed point in the calendar helps those that don't live in such a rural envionment to remember to appreciate the harvest, then I'm all for it.

That's a nice observation Rhiannon - I might borrow that for when they start harvesting around here too.