One of the most useful inventions for me is the computer. I use the computer regularly for two essentials. One to track household essentials, and two for my calendar of events, appointments and special days. Recently up popped on my calendar a “holiday”—Lammas! Wait what is this? I don’t know of this holiday. August 1st Lammas Day?
This day was once called Lammas or Loaf Mass Day because the new grain was ground and baked into a special thank offering. The bread of the harvest was brought to God who blessed both the bread and His children. There is no doubt but that Christian worship – the liturgical year, sprang from an agrarian life. Traditionally, Lammas marked the end of the growing season. Lammas is now recognized as a Christian holy day.
It is not long before the summer work comes to a turning point. There is a change from the hope of the seeding to the completion of the harvest. August 1 has been held as harvest day in many lands for centuries. I spent many summers working on my uncle’s farm in Sartell, Minnesota. My help was especially needed during the harvest season. The oats needed to be cut, shocked, loaded, threshed and stored for my uncle as well as his neighbors.
Many of the holidays, Christian festivals and holy days we celebrate today, both secularly and religiously, are probably directly descended from pagan times. Most likely this holiday descends from cakes used sacrificially in pagan times. The life of people during the middle ages was dictated by the changes in the season. The different seasons and months of the year were celebrated with religious feasts and festivals.
The perfect example of this transfer from pagan to Christian is found in a study of the Scotch Highland Quarter Cakes. These were special cakes baked in a prescribed manner and used in pagan rites to celebrate the beginnings of the four seasons. They were all called bannocks, which is an oatcake cut as round as a dinner plate and baked on a hot griddle.
Bannocks were an essential part of everyday life, and especially to any Highland festivities particularly in the celebration of the Quarter Days. Originally this cake was made with nine knobs on it. These knobs were gift offerings to the fox or the eagle or the hooded crow who might harm field and flock. The cake was washed over with a thin batter of whipped egg, milk, cream and a little oatmeal. In time the knobs disappeared. A cross and a circle marked the opposite sides of the cake, and both were symbols of Christ’s death and resurrection. The heathen cake was baked of the newly-harvested grain in thanksgiving for God’s generosity and care.
As the pagans sacrificed the fruits of the soil to the sun god, the newly baptized brought their bread to be blessed at the Loaf Mass. “Holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God, graciously deign, to bless this bread with Thy spiritual benediction that all who eat it may have health of body and soul and that they may be protected against all sickness and against all the snares of the enemy.” Cooking for Christ: A Kitchen Prayer Book, Florence Berger – January 1, 1949.
My wife and I always knew that the first part of August was a wonderful time for a celebration, a festival or wedding, but it wasn’t until just now that I found out why.
We had chosen August 3 as our wedding day (in a country church on the prairie of North Dakota) against the advice of everyone. My family claimed it would be too hot on the prairie of North Dakota. My sister claimed the gowns in a fall wedding were more becoming. My brother swore he wouldn’t get all dressed up in the dead heat of summer. But August 3, it was.
The parents of my wife-to-be were farmers on the prairie of North Dakota who did not want to stop harvesting. Although in the heat of a Midwestern summer it might be difficult to discern, the festival of Lammas marked the end of summer and the beginning of fall. The days now grow visibly shorter.
Now, after 40-plus years, I learned that the first part of August was always an uncommonly good time for a wedding. It was during that time the farmer could look things over. The planting and cultivating and worrying were over. He had no more to do—except to harvest. If the profits looked good, daughters could take a husband. If they looked slim, her father would make her wait another year. It is a hard blow for me to learn so much depended on the outcome of a harvest yield, we were unconsciously following a very ordinary tradition. So a little pop up on my calendar brought to me a rich understanding of our faith.
So much is dependent on the values, traditions and faith handed down through the ages. But the moral: don’t delve too deep in history. It may blight your motives and intentions.
Happy Lammas Day!
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Deacon Peter Mueller of St. John’s Catholic Church in Grand Marais.
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