Autumn celebrations in Britain have nearly become as significant as Christmas. From the beginning of September, supermarket shelves are dominated with Halloween costumes and plastic pumpkin baskets for collecting sweets. It often feels like we race from one season to the next without taking a moment to appreciate the slower months, when nature is dying back, the nights are growing darker, and the woods are filled with falling leaves.
I find that I enjoy autumn and spring the most out of all the seasons, except when I get a snowy day. It’s exciting to step out one morning after a long winter and discover that spring has arrived, with a bright, sunny morning and the first hint of warmth in the air. Autumn, on the other hand, signifies the end of the year, it brings a certain slowness as the nights grow darker. I love walking through woods ablaze with shades of orange, red, and yellow, watching the geese fly overheard on their way to warmer countries, and even experience the chilly morning mists that come with autumn days.
Historically, autumn has been one of the most important times of year for people, marking the preparation for winter, which includes the gathering of the harvest in August and September. There are many celebrations that we still mark in autumn, despite how removed we have become from the natural world, and they all have deep roots in the culture and traditions of our ancestors, highlighting their strong connection to nature.
Harvest Festivals
The word "harvest" originates from the Old English word "hoerfest", meaning autumn, and refers to the gathering of food from the fields. When I was a child attending a rural primary school, we had a Harvest Assembly each year where everyone brought in food. A lot of it was tins and packets, but many parents also supplied fruit and bread. I remember baking braided bread with my mum to place on the harvest table. We would sing traditional harvest hymns and generally thank god for the bounty gathered from nature.
The tradition of celebrating the end of harvest was also known as Harvest Home, which typically occurred with the last gathering of the crops in September, the return home of fishing boats before winter storms blew in, or the herding of livestock in from the fields, around October. Harvest Home often included dancing, music, and feasting, which would bring the community together to celebrate a successful harvest.
In Britain various harvest traditions existed. In Cornwall they still have a ceremony known as "Crying the Neck", which involves holding up the last sheaf of cut corn and shouting "A neck! A neck! A neck!" In other traditions, the final sheaf of corn would be made into a corn dolly. The corn dolly was believed to hold the trapped spirit of the corn, which would then be ploughed into the earth in spring.
Even though we may no longer have such a close connection to the land, there are still lots of celebrations that take place around harvest time at agriculture museums, country parks, and large country estates. These include events such as Apple days, Corn Dolly workshops and Harvest festivals. It’s still possible to celebrate and acknowledge the importance of nature in the later months of the year. After all, the pumpkins we buy at supermarkets have to be grown somewhere, they don’t just spring to life on the shelves.
Pumpkins or Turnips, the origins of Halloween
Witches, pumpkin carving, ghost stories, and trick-or-treating, these are all things that we associate with Halloween, but how did it all begin?
Halloween, also known in the Christian calendar as All Hallows' Eve, is celebrated on 31st October, the day before All Saints' day on 1st November. Historically, in Western Christianity, this was a time when people would honour the dead. The date may have been chosen because it replaced the older Celtic festival of Samhain. Samhain is one of the four ancient Gaelic or Celtic celebrations that often make up what became known in the mid-twentieth century as the Wheel of the Year. The other festivals in this cycle are Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasa. Each festival signifies an important moment in the year when nature undergoes change, and we adapt alongside it. Samhain is the time when the harvest had been gathered, and people were preparing to face the darker half of the year, as nature began to decline with the approach of winter. Similar to later Christian festivals, it was a time to honour the dead, when the veil between the living and the departed was at it’s thinnest, allowing spirits to walk the earth.
Both Samhain and All Hallow’s Eve have lead to our present day celebrations of Halloween, and there are lots of traditions that we still celebrate:
Apple dookin’ or bobbing: Apple bobbing, known as dookin’ in Scotland, dates back to Roman times and perhaps even earlier. The Roman’s merged many of the Celtic traditions into their own, and apples were used as part of divination and romance at celebrations. Unmarried people would try to bite into apples floating in water, the belief was, that the first to succeed would be the next to marry. Additionally, peeled apple skins were tossed over the shoulder, and the shape they took when they fell would show the initial of their future spouse.
The apple is an ancient symbol of fertility, abundance, and plenty. In Roman mythology, Pomona was the goddess of gardens, fruit trees, and orchards, which included the apple tree. In Norse mythology, the golden apples of immortality were tended by the fertility goddess Idunn; the Norse gods relied on these apples to keep them young. The mythical Arthurian island of Avalon translates as the "Apple Isle," the origin of the name coming from old Welsh and Breton.
Pumpkin carving: This tradition is another that comes from the ancient festival of Samhain. Before Europeans emigrated to American and discovered pumpkins, then turnips would be carved into lanterns with frightening shapes and faces to scare off evil spirits. Today, this is probably one of the most popular traditions of Halloween, the countryside is full of pumpkin patches where families can pick a pumpkin.
Recently, I went along to a pumpkin patch with my niece and nephew. Although it was a wet and misty day, the weather added to the atmosphere of Halloween. It was a great experience; children got to see pumpkins in their natural setting—a muddy field. There was hay bales to climb on and a spooky trail around a large pond, where moorhens paddled and heron’s lurked in the centre of the misty island. I was also excited to find a culinary selection of pumpkins, and ended up buying Crown Prince and Harlequin varieties, which I later turned into soup, roast pumpkin, and pumpkin pie.
Guising: Guising is a Scottish and Irish tradition, but it’s roots date back once again to the festival of Samhain. At this time people would dress up as spirits and ghosts and go door to door performing songs or poetry in exchange for food offerings. The tradition of dressing up may have originated from a desire to impersonate the dead, allowing people to protect themselves and blend in during a time when spirits were believed to roam the earth.
The tradition of guising has now evolved into our modern day trick-or-treating. Children dress up in Halloween costumes and go from door to door telling jokes in exchange for sweets, before chocolate and sweets became widely available, children would ask for apples and nuts instead.
Bonfire night and the beginning of winter
Remember, remember! The fifth of November, The Gunpowder treason and plot;
Bonfires are commonly associated with Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night, celebrated in Britain to commemorate the historic event in which Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the House of Lords in 1605 during the reign of King James I (or James VI in Scotland). However, the tradition of bonfires has been around for far longer than the 1600s.
Revisiting the festival of Samhain, we see that, much like Beltane, which occurs in May, bonfires were a common part of the celebrations. Many beliefs have used fire as part of rituals, it reminds us of the spring and summer sun during the cold and dark of winter. Ash, fire, and smoke were also seen as having cleansing powers, banishing evil or inviting in the new year. When the old fire died out, people took brands or smoldering turfs to light their hearth fire, symbolising new beginnings.
November was also the time of a less well-known festival called Blodmonath, an Anglo-Saxon festival that translates as Blood Month. It was the first festival of winter and a time when cattle would be sacrificed to the gods, and the meat would most likely be cured and stored for the winter months.
Nature is not forgiving, and before the days of central heating, fridges, and the supermarket, humanity relied on the harvest from the fields, the sea, or from their livestock, that would keep them alive through the winter. Autumn is a great time to reconnect with nature and remember where our food comes from, and how important the change of the seasons is to the earth.
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