The Queen’s Chronicles: LAMMAS BLESSINGS OF BREAD

August 2 is the exact halfway point of summer. The Summer Cross-Quarter Day was celebrated by the Saxons as Hlaf Mass, “Feast of Bread,” and by the Celts as Lughnasadh, Commemoration of Lugh. Lugh was the grain god, son of Mother Earth. Every August he was sacrificed with the reaping of the corn only to be born again in the new shoots of spring exactly as the Egyptian, Osiris, had
been. At the moment of death, according to Egyptian scriptures, a person is also a kernel of grain, “which falls into the earth in order to draw from her bosom a new life.”

Loaf Mass and Lugh Mass evolved into Lammas, the Druid corn feast, one of the four cornerstone festivals around which their year revolved. When the Church adopted, co-opted, Lammas, it was referred to as Lamb's Mass in commemoration of St. Peter in Chains, and the practice of the offering of the first fruits on the altar remained exactly the same.

Traditional celebrations of the first corn were observed on August 1 or 2 in many cultures. Named for Juno Augusta of Rome, August was particularly sacred to the Goddess Who Gives All Life and Feeds It, Too. It was considered for this reason an especially propitious time to be born. To this day, when a Scot says that someone was born in
August, it is a compliment in praise of skilled accomplishment, with absolutely no bearing on the person's actual birthday.

The Midsummer Cross-Quarter Day is the only one of the four, which is not still actively celebrated in our contemporary culture. Midsummer is celebrated in Europe, but there it refers to June 21, the first day of summer and not the middle at all. Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” actually takes place on the Summer Solstice.

The only living vestige of Lammas in the United Stated is a rural holiday called Second Planting. But unless you read the Farmer's Almanac or belong to the Grange or 4H Clubs, you would have no reason to hear about it. It is celebrated exactly as Midsummer has always been celebrated. The first grain is harvested, threshed, milled, baked into bread and cake, and then shared in community. After a night of feasting and dancing, work starts again at first light planting the second crop of summer wheat, which will the mature by the fall harvest.

How can we, separated from the agricultural process by city and century, appreciate the atmosphere of the season which surrounds us, but which we cannot see? What is the Goddess of Good Grain to us of the boulangerie? The patisserie? We who buy our grain in bags, in boxes, premixed, pre-measured, prepackaged, prepared; sown, grown, harvested, hulled, milled, by someone else, somewhere else. How can we identify with the earth values taught by Terra Mater during this time of year from where we are held captive in the synthetic heart of the pop tart culture which claims us?

Well, we can behave, as they say, as if we were born in August. We can, in fact, become august — wise and generous and gloriously noble, each in our own chosen paths. We can hone our skills as the tenders of Mother Earth. We can hoe our row. We can carry our load. We can break bread together. We can feed the hungry.

We reap what we sow.

With best blessings of bountiful bread,

xxQMD

For a more detailed explanation, refer to my book, Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles and Celebrations. It is available on my website, www.donnahenes.net