"By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer."
Helen Hunt Jackson
A September Thanksgiving
by Evelyn Rysdyk
As we enter September and the time of the harvest, it always triggers a feeling in me that the pattern of our cultural Fall rituals is somehow out of sequence.
By the Autumnal equinox, the harvest time is in full swing. It is the time of great bounty. Apples, pumpkins and grain are ripe and being brought in from the fields. Fittingly, my paternal ancestors in Europe held thanksgiving festivals for a bountiful harvest at this time. There would have been lively celebrations with family and friends all enjoying feasts with meat, drinks and cakes.
While Canadian Thanksgiving falls a few weeks after the equinox, in contrast our American Thanksgiving isn't held until late November! The cornucopia spilling with fruits and nuts seems more at place on a late September table than one so far into Autumn.
American Thanksgiving has an nearly mythological story at its heart. We were taught in grade school about the Pilgrims. These members of the English Separatist Church, a Puritan sect, originally fled their home in England and sailed to the Netherlands to escape religious persecution. There, they enjoyed more religious tolerance, but they eventually became disenchanted with the Dutch way of life, thinking it "ungodly." Seeking a better life, the Separatists negotiated with a London stock company to finance a pilgrimage to America.
These "pilgrims" landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts on December 11, 1620. Their first winter was devastating. At the beginning of the following fall, they had lost nearly half of those who had sailed on the Mayflower. But the harvest of 1621 was a bountiful one. The remaining colonists decided to celebrate with a feast.
The event most likely occurred around September 29 (Michaelmas Day) the time for English Harvest Home rituals in the seventeenth century. It is believed that the Pilgrims would not have made it through the year without the help of the natives. The settlers asked Squanto and the leader of the Wampanoags, Massasoit, to bring their immediate family and to dine with them. The feast lasted three days - not just one day as our present Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims and Indians ate outdoors at large tables and competed together in tests of skill and strength. (That spirit of friendly camaraderie was soon lost, as by the late 1670s, a governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts declared a thanksgiving to celebrate the victories in "war with the Heathen Natives of this land.")
There were harvest/thanksgiving rituals on these shores before the Pilgrims set foot on North America. Along Maine's Kennebec River, English settlers led by Captain George Popham joined Abanaki Indians on August 9,1607 for a harvest feast and prayer meeting. In truth, he "joined" them as Native Americans were already celebrating thanksgiving/harvest feasts prior to contact with European people. For example, way before their Pilgrim table mates arrived, the Wampanoag allies of the Pilgrims held six thanksgiving festivals every year.
Over the time since this country was founded, American Thanksgiving has been celebrated from June to December and wasn't fixed into its place on the fourth Thursday in November until 1942. That date certainly makes it pretty late for a harvest festival.
For that matter, many of our seasonal decorations seem out of place, as well. Take the scarecrow for example, isn't he meant for chasing the birds from the growing grain? In Medieval Britain scarecrows were originally live children. Known as bird scarers or bird shooers, these children who were most often boys, patrolled wheat fields carrying bags of stones. If crows or starlings landed in the fields they would chase them off by waving their arms and throwing the stones.
When the Great Plague killed almost half the people in Britain in the middle of the fourteenth century, landowners couldn't find enough children to protect their crops. It was at that time that the custom of creating scarecrows figures was born. Farmers stuffed sacks with straw, carved faces in turnips or gourds, and made figures that stood against or on poles in their fields. On a spookier note, Medieval Italian farmers would place animal skulls on poles in the belief that the skulls would scare away birds and protect crops from diseases.
As European farmers immigrated to the United States, they brought their scarecrow traditions with them. German farmers who immigrated to parts of Pennsylvania built human looking scarecrows called a bootzamon or bogeyman. His body was a wooden cross and his head was a broom or mop top or a cloth bundle stuffed with straw. In an imitation of the farmer himself, the field bogeyman wore old overalls, a long-sleeved shirt or coat and a worn woolen or straw hat. Sometimes a second scarecrow was built to keep the bootzamon company. A bootzafrau or bogeywife, dressed in a long dress or coat and wearing a sunbonnet on her head, was placed on the opposite end of the field and they would guard the crops together.
"Autumn is marching on: even the scarecrows are wearing dead leaves."
Otsuyu Nakagawa
Perhaps we keep him into late Autumn as a remnant of the straw figures that were part of pagan harvest rituals. (Please see the Footsteps of the Ancestors section in this issue of Spirit Living.) Maybe he haunts our yards in late October/November because we've forgotten to burn him in September to insure the fertility of next year's crop!
The more recent development of scarecrow festivals seems to be a modern way to reinvent the Harvest Queen/John Barleycorn rituals and place them back into the context of harvest time. Perhaps we are trying to unconsciously satisfy our need to have things in their "right place." At these festivals, there are parades and entertainment, as well as a bounty of food and drink. (Sounds like a harvest ritual to me!)
"As autumn returns to earth's northern hemisphere,
and day and night are briefly,
but perfectly,
balanced at the equinox,
may we remember anew how fragile life is ----
human life, surely,
but also the lives of all other creatures,
trees and plants,
waters and winds.
May we make wise choices in how and what we harvest,
may earth's weather turn kinder,
may there be enough food for all creatures,
may the diminishing light in our daytime skies
be met by an increasing compassion and tolerance
in our hearts."
Kathleen Jenks, Autumn Lore
Perhaps, we need to create two times of ritual thanksgiving. One in September, around the equinox can be set aside to celebrate the fruits of the harvest. We can celebrate during the still warm days with feasts and scarecrow festivals and apple picking.
Later on, after we celebrate the ancestors at Halloween time by consciously and emotionally tucking them into their graves for another year, we can have a thanksgiving feast which cherishes the living friends and family we have around us.
- Evelyn
(Check out the Family Fun/Spirited Kids section of this issue for information on building a sturdy scarecrow and celebrating the harvest!)
© 2008 Evelyn C. Rysdyk
Evelyn C. Rysdyk, author of Modern Shamanic Living is a nationally recognized presenter. Included in the book Traveling Between the Worlds she is among the world’s most influential writers and teachers of shamanism.
Originally trained in core shamanism, she has integrated practices taught to her by elders from North and South America, Central Asia, Nepal and Siberia. She is also a Medicine for the Earth Teacher--teaching ways that transfigured human energy can heal our planet.
With her partner C. Allie Knowlton, MSW, LCSW, DCSW she presents
eco-spiritually focused training programs--which include advanced shamanism and shamanic healing---across the USA and Canada. In addition, as a founding member of True North, a unique, integrated medical center in Falmouth, Maine--she collaborates with physicians, nurses, a psychiatrist, a naturopath and several other complementary healthcare practitioners to provide a new model of health care that includes the spirit.
www.spiritpassages.org
www.spiritliving.org
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