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I looked on my religious (Anglican) calendar today and saw it is Lammas Day, the Feast of First Fruits. Previously I had known of Lammas only in connection with Wicca, but apparently it is claimed by more than one tradition. It is the first harvest festival of the autumn, I guess, and is traditionally celebrated by baking loaves of bread. So I think I'll go make some! ( The word lammas is evidently a corruption of the Anglo Saxon "loaf mass," since people in the Middle Ages would bring a loaf of bread to church. It would be blessed by the priest, and then the people would take it home and break it into pieces, spreading it in the corners of their barns for protection of the grain stored there. I think I'll just eat mine!)

That's interesting Murf! Thanks for sharing it. Now I want to go bake me some zucchini bread; but I'm not going to have time today; and it's been too hot here to bake anything.

witchy wrote:That's interesting Murf, I didn't know it had to do with Wicca, thanks.

It's one of the three harvest festivals in the pagan "wheel of the year," the other two being Mabon and Samhain. I don't know which came first--the pagan celebration or the church one. Probably it was one of those indigenous cultural things the church "Christianized."

I do not have a long-standing knowledge about this stuff, just started researching it three or four years ago. I remember hearing about a movie called Dancing at Lughnasa, which was the first time I had heard that word (never saw the film). I believe Lughnasa is another name for Lammas Day, maybe the Irish name.

Anyway, it is a festival of the grain harvest, which apparently is the first crop to come in during the agricultural year. Since people's grain had to be saved over from year to year, probably they were getting pretty short on grain by August 1. That's the reason the first loaf of bread baked on Lammas Day was such a big deal, the "first fruits" of the grain harvest. I didn't actually know it had to do at all with Christianity until I saw it on my calendar today.

I still have to bake my bread. I'm going to be lazy and let the bread machine do it! I bought a box of Italian herb bread mix, so I'll use that.

Another bit of trivia about Lammas I forgot to mention: Shakespeare refers to it in Romeo & Juliet. When the nurse is asked in the first act how old Juliet is, she answers that Juliet will be fourteen "on Lammas Eve." This means she was born before the first harvest. Symbolically, it foreshadows that she will not live to ripen or experience the fulfillment of "harvest."

I didn't know if you were talking about the animal or Lorenzo?

I've always wanted a llama, but once one spit on my wife, and that pretty well shot that idea down. And Lorenzo was married to Kathleen Kinmont for whom, as Jimmy Carter would say.....I have lusted for her in my heart!

Don't mess with the llama!

To be honest Murf, I thought at first that this thread was about Llamas.

It's all good!