Thursday, September 23, 2010

Happy Harvest!

Or Mabon, or Herfest or whatever you want to call it.  I go with Harvest, Mabon is too unfamiliar and i'm not keen on words like Herfest or Herstory - they aren't not gonna stop the oppression ok?  It's the autumn equinox anyway.

Harvest is the death of the year where we celebrate the abundance of food that's around and go oh fuck winter's coming soon.  I dislike the cold.  As well as being the death of the year, harvest time is when the god symbolically dies with the harvest (another reason I dislike Herfest - Ostara is in Spring, that's the goddess festival, not everything needs to be centred around femaleness, or even gendered but that's a differnet argument).  In Greek tradition Demeter (goddess of the harvest amongst other things), lost her daughter Persephone to the underworld for 6 months, and she's so depressed about it she stops tending the earth, leading to the 6 months of winter that we experience.  Persephone comes back in Spring, Demeter is happy again and the plants start growing again.  I think pomegranates are important somewhere.  I should get one.

Anyway, I've been decorating a scarf with some (material) foliage and (iron on) apples and I intend to be eating all sorts of good stuff and making merry today.  Goats cheese, fruit, stew, local veg, decent meat, crackers, nuts..nom.

Hope you all have a good day!

1 comment:

Rachel said...

Happy Harvest! (Slightly belated, I'm afraid.) I usually can't remember the names for festivals and just wish people a happy Autumn Equinox. I hadn't heard the term Herfest before but I have a feeling I agree with you about it :).

I was in a small town outside of New York on the evening of the 22nd. There was a gigantic, orange harvest moon and a beautiful lightning storm that passed straight overhead without cooling the air at all. I had an autumnal cocktail as a small impromtu celebration. Hope yours was a good one!