Katherine May -- Lammas Loaf -" I added the mouse last-minute because apparently it’s traditional. The harvest began, now to stop the mice from eating the crops "
The play called Dancing at Lughnasa eventually became a motion picture of the same name starring Meryl Streep. It was about the five unmarried Mundy sisters (lovely name) in the summer of 1936, and the setting is rural Ireland where the Feast of Lughnasa is still celebrated by some. It is a harvest festival falling roughly between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox. The 1998 film is something of a love story and I don't recall having the foggiest notion that it had anything to do with the harvest.
Today is the celebration of Lughnasa, or Lughnasadh and as with so many of what were first Pagan festivals in Ireland there is now a Christian overlay. With Lughnasa these include visits to holy wells and the Reek Sunday pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick, which attracts tens of thousands of pilgrims each year. A member of one of my congregations made the climb years ago in the midst of Wiccans and devout Christians.
This is also Lammas, the Christian Loaf Mass Day. Ann Lewin explains a key practice of the Christian feast of Lammas (Loaf Mass Day) and its importance in the Christian Calendar.:
August begins with Lammas Day, Loaf Mass Day, the day in the Book of Common Prayer calendar when a loaf baked with flour from newly harvested corn (wheat) would be brought into church and blessed. It's one of the oldest points of contact between the agricultural world and the Church.
I am married to someone who has baked the communion bread for her congregations for decades, so this notion of Loaf Mass Sunday is a lovely one.
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