A
harvest festival is an annual celebration which occurs around the time of the main
harvestIn agriculture, the harvest is the processes of gathering mature crops from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. The harvest marks the end of the growing season, or the growing cycle for a particular crop, and this is the...
of a given region. Given the differences in climate and crops around the world, harvest festivals can be found at various times throughout the world. Harvests festivals typically feature feasting, both family and public, with foods that are drawn from crops that come to maturity around the time of the festival. Ample food and freedom from the necessity to work in the fields are two central features of harvest festivals: eating, merriment, contests, music and romance are common features of harvest festivals around the world. In Asia, the Chinese
Moon FestivalThe Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, Zhongqiu Festival, or in Chinese, Zhongqiujie , is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese people and Vietnamese people , dating back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China's Shang Dynasty...
(中秋節) is one of the most widely-spread harvest festivals in the world. In India,
PongalThai Pongal is a harvest festival equivalent to a thanksgiving event celebrated by Tamils across the world. Pongal coincides with the festival Makara Sankranthi celebrated in various parts of India...
in January,
HoliHoli, also called the Festival of Colors, is a popular Hindu spring festival observed in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Srilanka, and countries with large Hindu diaspora populations, such as Suriname, Guyana, South Africa, Trinidad, the UK, USA, Mauritius, and Fiji...
in February-March and
OnamOnam is the biggest festival in the South Indian state of Kerala. It falls during the Malayali month of Chingam and marks the homecoming of the legendary King Mahabali. Carnival of Onam lasts for ten days and is linked to many elements of Kerala's culture and tradition...
in August-September are a few famous harvest festivals. In North America, Canada and the US each have their own Thanksgiving celebrations in October-November. Numerous religious holidays, such as
SukkotSukkot is a Jewish holiday celebrated on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei...
, have their roots in harvest festivals.
In
BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
, thanks have been given for successful harvests since pagan times. The celebrations on this day usually include singing
hymnA hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek , "a song of praise"...
s, praying, and decorating churches with baskets of
fruitThe term fruit has different meanings dependent on context, and the term is not synonymous in food preparation and biology. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants disseminate seeds, and the presence of seeds indicates that a structure is most likely a fruit, though not all seeds come from...
and
foodFood is any substance, usually composed of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal, including humans, for nutrition or pleasure. Items considered food may be sourced from plants, animals or other categories such as fungus or fermented products like alcohol...
in the festival known as
Harvest Festival, Harvest Home or Harvest Thanksgiving.
In British churches, chapels and
schoolA school , is an institution designed to allow and encourage students to learn, under the supervision of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
s and in Canadian churches, people bring in food from the garden, the allotment or farm. The food is often distributed among the poor and senior citizens of the local
communityIn biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment.In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of...
, or used to raise funds for the church, or charity.
In the USA, many churches also bring in food from the garden or farm in order to celebrate the harvest. The festival is set for a specific day and has become a national holiday known as
ThanksgivingThanksgiving may refer to:*Thanksgiving , the holiday on the fourth Thursday in November.*Thanksgiving , the holiday on the second Monday in October.*Thanksgiving...
. In both Canada and the USA it has also become a national secular holiday with religious origins, but in Britain it remains a solely Church festival giving thanks to God for the harvest.
The Harvest Festival in Britain
Harvest is from the Anglo-Saxon word
harvest, "Autumn". It then came to refer to the season for reaping and gathering grain and other grown products. The
full moonFull moon is a lunar phase that occurs when the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. More precisely, a full moon occurs when the geocentric apparent longitudes of the Sun and Moon differ by 180 degrees; the Moon is then in opposition with the Sun...
nearest the autumnal equinox is called the
Harvest MoonThe harvest moon is the moon at or about the period of fullness that is nearest to the autumnal equinox. The Harvest moon is often mistaken for the modern day Hunter's moon.-History:...
. So in ancient traditions Harvest Festivals were traditionally held on or near the Sunday of the Harvest Moon.
Customs and traditions
An early Harvest Festival used to be celebrated at the beginning of the Harvest season on 1 August and was called
LammasIn some English-speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere, August 1 is Lammas Day , the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year. On this day it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop. In many parts of England, tenants were bound to present freshly harvested wheat...
, meaning 'loaf Mass'. Farmers made loaves of bread from the fresh wheat crop. These were given to the local church as the
Communion breadThe Eucharist, also called Holy Communion, Sacrament of the Table, the Blessed Sacrament, or The Lord's Supper and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance, generally considered to be a commemoration of the Last Supper, the final meal that Jesus Christ shared with his disciples before his...
during a special service thanking God for the harvest.
By the sixteenth century a number of customs seem to have been firmly established around the gathering of the final harvest. They include the reapers accompanying a fully-laden cart; a tradition of shouting "Hooky, hooky"; and one of the foremost reapers dressing extravagantly, acting as 'lord' of the harvest and asking for money from the onlookers. A play by
Thomas NasheThomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Life and career:...
,
Summer's Last Will and Testament, (first published in London in 1600 but believed from internal evidence to have been first performed in October 1592 at Croydon) contains a scene which demonstrates several of these features. There is a character personifying harvest who comes on stage attended by men dressed as reapers; he refers to himself as their "master" and ends the scene by begging the audience for a "largesse". The scene is clearly inspired by contemporary harvest celebrations, and singing and drinking feature largely. The stage instruction reads:
"Enter Haruest with a sythe on his neck, & all his reapers with siccles, and a great black bowle with a posset in it borne before him: they come in singing."
The song which follows may be an actual harvest song, or a creation of the author's intended to represent a typical harvest song of the time:
Merry, merry, merry, cheary, cheary, cheary,
Trowle the black bowle to me ;
Hey derry, derry, with a poupe and a lerry,
Ile trowle it againe to thee:
Hooky, hooky, we haue shorne,
And we haue bound,
And we haue brought Haruest
Home to towne.
The shout of "hooky, hooky" appears to be one traditionally associated with the harvest celebration. The last verse is repeated in full after the character Harvest remarks to the audience "Is your throat cleare to helpe us sing
hooky, hooky?" and a stage direction adds, "Heere they all sing after him". Also, in 1555 in Archbishop Parker's translation of Psalm 126 occur the lines:
"He home returnes: wyth hocky cry,
With sheaues full lade abundantly."
In some parts of England "Hoakey" or "Hawkie" (the word is spelled variously) became the accepted name of the actual festival itself:
"Hoacky is brought Home with hallowing
Boys with plum-cake The Cart following".
Another widespread tradition was the distribution of a special cake to the celebrating farmworkers. A prose work of 1613 refers to the practice as predating the Reformation. Describing the character of a typical farmer, it says:
"Rocke Munday..Christmas Eve, the hoky, or seed cake, these he yeerely keepes, yet holds them no reliques of popery."
Early English settlers took the idea of harvest thanksgiving to North America. The most famous one is the harvest
ThanksgivingThanksgiving may refer to:*Thanksgiving , the holiday on the fourth Thursday in November.*Thanksgiving , the holiday on the second Monday in October.*Thanksgiving...
held by the
PilgrimsPilgrims , or Pilgrim Fathers , is a name commonly applied to early settlers of the Plymouth Colony in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. Their leadership came from a religious congregation who had fled a volatile political environment in the East Midlands of England for the relative calm &...
in 1621.
Nowadays the festival is held at the end of harvest, which varies in different parts of Britain. Sometimes neighbouring churches will set the Harvest Festival on different Sundays so that people can attend each other's thanksgivings.
Until the 20th century most farmers celebrated the end of the harvest with a big meal called a harvest supper, to which all who had helped in the harvest were invited. It was sometimes known as a "Mell-supper", after the last patch of corn or wheat standing in the fields which was known as the "Mell" or "Neck". Cutting it signified the end of the work of harvest and the beginning of the feast. There seems to have been a feeling that it was bad luck to be the person to cut the last stand of corn. The farmer and his workers would race against the harvesters on other farms to be first to complete the harvest, shouting to announce they had finished. In some counties the last stand of corn would be cut by the workers throwing their sickles at it until it was all down, in others the reapers would take it in turns to be blindfolded and sweep a scythe to and fro until all of the Mell was cut down.
Some churches and villages still have a Harvest Supper. The modern British tradition of celebrating Harvest Festival in churches began in 1843, when the Reverend
Robert HawkerRobert Stephen Hawker , often known as Stephen Hawker, was an Anglican clergyman, poet, antiquarian of Cornwall, and reputed eccentric...
invited parishioners to a special thanksgiving service at his church at
MorwenstowMorwenstow is the most northerly parish in Cornwall, UK. It is made up of several hamlets including Shop, Woodford, Gooseham, Eastcott, Woolley, Youlestone and Milton....
in
CornwallCornwall is a county of England in the United Kingdom, forming the tip of the south-western peninsula of Great Britain. It is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Taken with the...
.
VictorianThe Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. The reign was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements...
hymns such as "We plough the fields and scatter", "Come ye thankful people, come" and "All things bright and beautiful" but also Dutch and German harvest hymns in translation helped popularise his idea of harvest festival and spread the annual custom of decorating churches with home-grown produce for the Harvest Festival service.
As British people have come to rely less heavily on home-grown produce, there has been a shift in emphasis in many Harvest Festival celebrations. Increasingly, churches have linked Harvest with an awareness of and concern for people in the developing world for whom growing crops of sufficient quality and quantity remains a struggle. Development and Relief organisations often produce resources for use in churches at harvest time which promote their own concerns for those in need across the globe.
In the early days, there were ceremonies and rituals at the beginning as well as at the end of the harvest.
Encyclopædia Britannica, mark these festivities trace their origin to “the animistic belief in the corn [grain] spirit or corn mother.” In some regions the farmers believed that a spirit resided in the last sheaf of grain to be harvested. To chase out the spirit, they beat the grain to the ground. Elsewhere they wove some blades of the cereal into a “corn dolly” that they kept safe for “luck” until seed-sowing the following year. Then they plowed the ears of grain back into the soil in hopes that this would bless the new crop.
- Church bells could be heard on each day of the harvest.
- A corn dolly
Corn dollies are a form of straw work made as part of harvest customs of Europe before mechanisation.Before Christianisation, in traditional pagan European culture it was believed that the spirit of the "corn" lived amongst the crop, and that the harvest made it effectively homeless. J.G...
was made from the last sheaf of corn harvested. The corn dolly often had a place of honour at the banquet table, and was kept until the following spring.
- In Cornwall, the ceremony of Crying The Neck
Crying The Neck is a harvest festival tradition practised in the West Country of England, in particular Cornwall and Devon. Although mostly discontinued the tradition is still practised by members of the Old Cornwall Society every year....
was practiced. Today it is still re-enacted annually by The Old Cornwall SocietyThe Federation of Old Cornwall Societies was formed in 1924, with the objective of collecting and maintaining "all those ancient things that make the spirit of Cornwall — its traditions, its old words and ways, and what remains to it of its Celtic language and nationality"...
.
- The horse, bringing the last cart load, was decorated with garlands of flowers and colourful ribbons.
- A magnificent Harvest feast was held at the farmer's house and games played to celebrate the end of the harvest.
- Harvest is celebrated by many people but in Christianity, it is widely looked at in schools, and focused on in church.
- Harvest is mainly associated with fruit and vegetables, for which we give thanks. This is the whole point of the Harvest Festival.