Category Archives: Lammas

Print Culture, or Your August Book of Days

This month, we’re giving you a little glimpse into the Convivio Bookworks printshop––the heart of Convivio Bookworks. The presses, the movable type: letterpress and books are the core aspects of our business, and we’re celebrating them in this month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar. For in the wheel of the year, come late summer, one of August’s traditional celebrations is the Bartlemas Wayzgoose. It comes each August 24th with St. Bartholomew’s Day: a bittersweet day, reminding us of summer’s waning, for it is a celebration influenced entirely by the sun. Come Bartlemas each August, printers in England would begin bringing lanterns back into the printshop, as the sun alone no longer provided enough light. As sunlight wanes, so does the summer season.

Ah but that celebration comes on the 24th, and I will send you an invitation to our online Library Wayzgoose Festival at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Save the date, in fact: Monday August 24 at 7 PM Eastern Daylight Time. We’ll be posting a link on Vimeo and on Facebook, where Convivio Bookworks will be hosting a watch party. And if you can’t make it then, worry not, the video will be available afterwards, too, anytime, from wherever you are. We may not be able this year to gather together for the Library Wayzgoose Festival, but the good news is this year you can join us from anywhere.

As August begins, though, it’s time for another old celebration: Lammas. It is a cross quarter celebration, an old festival of the first harvest, also based in that same idea that summer is ripening, slowly giving way to fall. The Celts called the day Lughnasadh (LOO-na-sa). We find ourselves now at the midpoint between the midsummer solstice of June and the autumnal equinox of September. A freshly baked loaf of bread is a traditional part of the celebration. Indeed, the name Lammas descends from the Old English hlafmaesse, or “loaf mass.”

This Lammas, we wish you good health, we wish you glad tidings. We have our challenges here in Florida right now. Those of us who feel quarantining is best in the current situation, or who at least see benefits to wearing masks, see no end in sight to our isolation. It’s frustrating, and small family businesses like ours are affected disproportionately than corporate businesses. Friends of ours who own small restaurants are afraid to open. For us, pop-up shops are our livelihood, and these are not an option now, and won’t be anytime soon––not in a state that sees over 10,000 new cases of Covid-19 each day. But we stay at home and we know others who do, too, and we know that eventually, we will get through this. And, as we always do, we do the best we can. The Library Wayzgoose Festival on the 24th of August is a fine example of this, and I am so excited to share that special event with you. Mark the day. This month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar, by the way, is, as usual, a printable PDF document… and a good companion to this blog. See you on the 24th? Good.

 

Transition: Lammas

Well, hello! It’s been a while. I inadvertently took a small vacation from the Convivio Book of Days, which is maybe best attributed to summer laziness, and if you’re ok with that explanation, so am I. The equivalent of a “Gone Fishing” sign posted on the shop door. Summer does this to us. The peaches have been extraordinary this year, sweet and juicy, and the weather has been hot, which is as it should be, of course. But now comes August, which brings a bittersweet time of year. Especially if you are a kid, or someone who works in a school and has had the summer off… for August brings the understanding that summer is waning and not long from now it will be back to school and workaday schedules.

It’s different for everyone, of course. That was always the feeling that August brought to me when I was in school. Nowadays, though, I feel different about August. Probably because I do not have summers off, and––here’s the big thing––because I live in Florida. Summer came to settle in here sometime in May and now I know we are halfway through the constant heat and humidity. I just have to make it through August and September––the height of hurricane season––and then I know there will come a day in October when the weather will change and things will feel cooler, drier. August can bring on a bit of that punch drunk feeling that Florida summers bring, and if August doesn’t do it, September will. But still, we know that summer’s days are numbered.

Our ancestors knew this, too, and they celebrated this transition from July to August with a holiday little known today. It’s called Lammas. In the Celtic tradition, it’s called Lughnasadh (LOO-na-sa). Daylight in the Northern Hemisphere has been waning with each passing day since the solstice of June and this cross quarter day marks the midway point between the solstice and the approaching equinox. Lammas brings the first of the harvest festivals, and if the word “harvest” calls to mind autumn, that is not so bad, for our ancestors also considered Lammas just that: the transition toward autumn in the wheel of the year. In seven short weeks’ time, daylight and darkness will be balanced, and the days beyond will grow shorter and shorter still.

And so we enter Lammastide, tonight with Lammas Eve, tomorrow with Lammas proper. These days and nights are marked well by simple things made from the grains that are traditionally harvested at Lammas: a fresh baked crusty loaf and perhaps a pint of ale or a dram or two of whisky. Indeed, the name Lammas descends from the Old English hlafmaesse, or “loaf mass,” so the idea of loaves of bread celebrating the First of August goes back a very long time, to time immemorial. I see no harm in getting a loaf for the occasion from the local baker, rather than baking your own. Savor it, crumbs and all. And if you take a drink, then please raise your glasses to each other and to me, if you will, and to old John Barleycorn, the grain, personified. Summer is waning, autumn is coming, and we begin to turn our thoughts toward gathering in. John Barleycorn brings a bit of melancholy but a bit of warmth as well––warmth in his crusty bread, warmth in his spirits, warmth in the ones we gather with to celebrate. Happy Lammastide.

Image: On our recent travels through Europe, though it was July, I felt like Leonhardts Stall-Besen in Humbrechts, Germany, was looking ready for Lammas. The meal was amazing, and I’ve always had a thing for wooden Dutch doors.

 

Lammastide

The passing of July when I was a kid was always met with a bit of melancholy. The beach days were numbered. The afternoons playing Italian card games with Grandpa, games like Scopa and Briscola, were numbered, too. Once August rolls around, summer is much changed, for it comes with the knowledge that school is going to start soon.

Early on in our agrarian past we had a day to mark this change. It’s a day not much celebrated anymore, though it has value, for it marks the transition as summer begins to make its way toward autumn. It’s called Lammas in the English tradition, Lughnasadh (pronounced LOO-na-sa) in the Celtic tradition. It is the first of the harvest festivals, and we celebrate it with fresh baked bread from the first grain harvest of the year and we celebrate it, too, with spirits made from that grain. John Barleycorn is the personification of that grain; he is celebrated in poems and songs. Drinking songs, mostly, to go along with those spirits.

Perhaps because it is such an agrarian holiday, this cross-quarter celebration has fallen out of favor more so than the others of its ilk. Cross-quarter means it marks a halfway point––in this case, the halfway point between summer solstice and autumnal equinox. By traditional reckoning of time, this is the start of autumn, even though the hottest days of summer are perhaps still ahead of us. Certainly that is the case here in Florida, we know this, but I have been in Maine at Lammastide, too, and noticed the sumac trees beginning to turn toward shades of red, as we approached there the time of Queen Ann’s Lace and Black Eyed Susans and soon, asters blooming purple––a sure harbinger of fall.

And so we enter Lammastide, days marked well by a fresh baked crusty loaf and perhaps a pint of ale or a dram or two of whisky. Raise your glasses to each other and to me, if you will, and to old John Barleycorn, too. Summer is waning, autumn is coming, we are beginning to turn our thoughts toward gathering in. There is melancholy to that but warmth as well––warmth in that crusty bread, warmth in those spirits, too, and in the ones we gather to celebrate with. Happy Lammastide.

 

Image: “Lammastide,” one of a series of British postage stamps issued in 1981 celebrating folk traditions. As for your Convivio Book of Days calendar for August, it’s going to be a bit belated. Look for it after this weekend!