Nativity of the Mother of God

This icon of the Nativity of the Mother of God (see the baby in the cradle in the center of the bottom row of the icon) was painted in Lebanon in 1702.

This icon of the Nativity of the Mother of God (see the baby in the cradle in the center of the bottom row of the icon) was painted in Lebanon in 1702.

A feast in honor of Mary’s birth seems to have been held in Syria and Palestine in the sixth century. This celebration was accepted and adopted by the Roman Church at the end of the seventh century. It spread very slowly through the rest of Europe but by the twelfth century, it was observed throughout both Western and Eastern Europe as one of the major feasts of Mary. It remained a holyday of obligation among Roman Catholics until 1918.

In many places of central and eastern Europe the Feast of Mary’s Nativity is traditionally connected with ancient thanksgiving customs and celebrations. The day itself marks the end of the summer in popular reckoning; September 8 marks the beginning of “after-summer” and the start of the fall planting season. A blessing of the harvest and of the seed grains for the winter crops is performed in many churches.

In central and northern Europe, according to ancient belief, September 8 is also the day on which the swallows leave for the sunny skies of the South.

In the Alps the “down-driving” (Abtrieb) begins on September 8. Cattle and sheep leave their summer pastures on the high mountain slopes where they have roamed for months, and descend in long caravans to the valleys to take up their winter quarters in the warm stables. The animals at the front of the procession wear elaborate decorations of flowers and ribbons; the rest carry branches of evergreen between their horns and little bells around their necks. The shepherds and other caretakers accompany the procession, dressed in all their finery and decorated with Alpine flowers, yodeling, and cracking whips to provoke a multiple echo from the surrounding mountain cliffs. Arriving at the bottom of the valley in the evening, they find the whole village or town awaiting them in a festive mood. Ample fodder is served to the cattle in the stables, and a banquet unites the family and farm hands in each house. In some sections of Austria all the milk obtained on Drive-Down Day is given to the poor in honor of our Lady, together with the meat, bread, and pastries left over from the feast in the evening.

If, however, the farmer who owns the cattle or one of the Sennen has died during the summer, the “downdriving” is performed without decorations and in silence. Each animal then wears a mourning wreath of purple or black crepe.

In the wine-growing sections of France, September 8 is the day of the grape harvest festival. The owners of vineyards bring their best grapes to church to have them blessed, and afterward tie some of them to the hands of the statue of the Virgin. The Feast of Mary’s Nativity is called “Our Lady of the Grape Harvest” in those sections, and a festive meal is held at which the first grapes of the new harvest are consumed.

Lammas Day, the beginning of autumn

Lammas bread loaves, fresh from the oven on my kitchen counter.

Lammas bread loaves, fresh from the oven on my kitchen counter.

August 1 is Lammas Day (Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mas, “loaf-mass”), the festival of the wheat harvest, and was considered the first day of autumn in the traditional calendar of the pre-modern West (much as Labor Day is the beginning of autumn in the culture of the modern United States). On this day it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop, which began to be harvested at Lammastide. The loaf was blessed, and in Anglo-Saxon England it might be employed afterwards to work magic; a book of Anglo-Saxon charms directed that the Lammas Bread be broken into four bits, which were to be placed at the four corners of the barn, to protect the garnered grain. In many parts of England, tenants were bound to present freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on or before the first day of August. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is referred to regularly, it is called “the feast of first fruits”. (In Eastern Europe, the first honey of the season was brought to church to be blessed on August 1.)

As the wheat must have run low in the days before Lammas, and the new harvest began a season of plenty, of hard work and company in the fields, reaping in teams, [7] there was a spirit of celebratory play. In the medieval agricultural year, Lammas also marked the end of the hay harvest that had begun after Midsummer. At the end of hay-making a sheep would be loosed in the meadow among the mowers, for him to keep who could catch it.

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1.3.19) it is observed of Juliet, “Come Lammas Eve at night shall she [Juliet] be fourteen.” Since Juliet was born Lammas eve, she came before the harvest festival, which is significant since her life ended before she could reap what she had sown and enjoy the bounty of the harvest, in this case full consummation and enjoyment of her love with Romeo.