Mabon: September 21st-24th
Hey guys, I'm back! I just spent a long vacation visiting my parents and my college is about to start up again, so I figured I'd post this before I get busy with schoolwork and forget. Oh, and I'm also supposed to be moving (again) so there's the packing of all my stuff, and...yeah.
First and foremost,as I said earlier I am totally addicted to Pinterest, and I have made a pin board for all of the Wiccan Sabbats! I also made one for other witchy things like gardens, kitchens, and just plain witchy stuff. (If you don't know what pinterest is, basically it's a big cork board full of pictures that link to webpages and stuff. So there's recipes, fashion stuff, DIY projects, photography, and pretty much everything imaginable on there) So here's my pinboard for the upcoming Sabbat! There's stuff like recipes for Mulled wine and apple butter as well as infographics about the holiday.
Link to my Mabon board on Pinterest!
I'm constantly adding stuff I find to my boards, so check back before the holidays for new pins!
With that said, I am so pumped for autumn this year. In the first place, Mother nature has been having a perpetual heat stroke of late, so I'm dying just for a breezy fall day. Secondly I love the turning of the leaves because it is just the prettiest thing ever. I guess I have that in common with Tenchi Muyo's Grandpa. Also I'm excited to see what Halloween is like at the new neighborhood, but I'll save that for Samhain. I suspect the leaves will turn extra early this year because of all the droughts we've been experiencing.
Anyways, now some info about Mabon. Mabon is the second harvest festival on the Wheel of the Year, preceded by Lughnasadh/Lammas and followed by Samhain. It has many names: Mabon, Autumn Equinox, Harvest Home, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair or Alban Elfed. It is the harvest of fruits, vegetables, and whatever grains are leftover from Lughnasadh. Personally, when I found out about the Wheel of the Year it made so much more sense to me than the "modern" calendar. Firstly, it makes sense to celebrate the new year at Samhain or Halloween, when the plants have died back and the earth is going into a slumber, instead of having New Years randomly stuck into the middle of winter, where there is no visible change in the earth. Secondly, it makes sense to celebrate the harvest WHEN THE CROPS ARE HARVESTED, not in November when everything is long dead and there's snow on the ground and fresh food (in olden times) was no longer available.
Doesn't it make sense in early fall to have the "thanks giving" and harvest celebrations when the earth has yielded up her abundance? I think it makes way more sense than the modern day "thanksgiving" tradition, which is such a farce really because Pilgrims and Native Americans did not magically get along like all those Precious Moments greeting cards would have you believe. In fact I dislike modern Thanksgiving day because it glosses over a period of of cultural oppression and imperialism. If anyone actually paid attention in history class, I'm sure they find the "legend of Thanksgiving day" a bit ignorant. And actually, turkey was not served at "The first Thanksgiving", just FYI. But I digress.
It never made sense to me as a kid as I trudged to Grandma's apartment through five feet of snow in 10 degree weather that we were celebrating Pilgrims and Native Americans having as harvest feast in the middle of cold, snowy November. I mean, they're pictured as being outside at that dinner, and it's basically fall, right? Leaves are falling from the trees, there's no snow, corn is just being harvested, etc. Which puts it around the time Mabon is supposed to be, the end of September. But instead it's supposedly November. But November is WINTER, and in the east coast colonial area it was assuredly covered with snow at that point in time. No one in their right mind would hold a feast outside in that weather. --Wearing dresses and no coats. And white stockings. Ridiculous. Plus the crops would have been long harvested and stored away, so they wouldn't be fresh. Also, being the first winter the Pilgrims spent there, and they being not all too amazing at farming considering they had to start completely from scratch after they got there, building houses and tilling and plowing, they wouldn't have had time to plant much of anything and grow it to fruition. Honestly the first Thanksgiving was pretty lean on the tables. People did starve to death that winter. The Native Americans took pity and shared some of their food, yes. Because otherwise their new British neighbors were all going to freeze and starve. Yet people picture it as these cultured British folks sharing food with the "savage" natives and teaching them manners and whatnot over turkey. Ugh. When I see all these mockups of Natives and Pilgrims sitting outside in what looks like autumn, being bestest friends like something out of a Disney movie when of course they didn't even know each other's languages, it looks silly.
But hey, I don't mean to sound grouchy. It's just I feel like modern society keeps confusing its own holidays people don't remember what the roots are for the traditions, especially when each holiday is an amalgam of like ten bazillion different traditions from places all over the world (mostly Europe and it's neighboring islands though). And when people think of Thanksgiving as "displaced in time" as I like to call it (because we celebrate it in winter when it really should be an autumnal thing) it's just a giant pet peeve of mine. Oh my god, I think, don't you understand there were always harvest celebrations all over the world way before the Pilgrims almost starved to death on a little frozen rock near Plymouth and had to rely on help of the natives?
My point is, the harvest festivals of the Wheel of the Year make so much more sense than modern holidays. The real harvest is middle of August to end of October, with Mabon as the climax for crops. And this is not about Pilgrims and Native Americans, but rather about thanksgiving to the bounty of the earth and for family and friends, celebrating the fruits of your labor that went into growing the crops. And thanking your deity too, if you want. It's about knowing winter is just around the bend, so this is the time to make merry while you can. It's also the time for you to preserve food, for those with gardens--canning, making jams and jellies and pies and freezing things and such. It's a celebration of survival, people. And though dormant, it does still exist in its "unpilgrimy" form in our cultural memory--just why do you think before we see Halloween decorations, people load their porches with pumpkins and gourds and those bundles of tall grass and "Indian" corn and have the welcoming fall flags up? Really THAT is the time we should be celebrating our Thanksgiving, not the start of winter. Sense, people. This whole modern society disconnect with the land thing is screwing up our heads, man. It's not right. We need to get back to the Old Ways, and I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about attuning one's body to the cycle of the earth. It's refreshing and helps us get in touch without roots. It stops us from taking our world for granted.
