Lughnasadh, or Lammas, is an ancient Celtic festival celebrating abundance and the bread and grain harvest. It falls on August 1st every year in the northern hemisphere and on February 1st in the southern hemisphere.
The ancient people who relied on agriculture saw this as a season of plenty, a time when all their hard work during the planting season was paying off. This is the harvest of fresh fruits and bread.
Lughnasadh is also a time to prepare for the darker times ahead. This is a midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, so although times are good, darker times are ahead, so this is a time to prepare.
Nature, abundance, gratitude, and spirituality are at the heart of this time of celebration. You can celebrate alone or gather your friends and family and introduce them to this gratitude ritual.
Lughnasadh Idea One
Bake Bread Harvested in the Fields
Agriculture and nature were very entwined in the lives of our ancient ancestors. What nature offered was what they had to work with. If the harvest is fruitful, Lughnasadh ushers in the grain harvesting season.
So, make all things grain the heart of your celebration. Wheat, barley, and oats, all major staple crops for the people of Celtic Europe, were at their peak at this time.
Celebrate this grain harvest time by baking bread and sharing a fresh loaf. Consider starting a sourdough starter. Also, consider experimenting with different grains. Barley and rye were common among the Celts.
Lughnasadh Idea Two
Lughnasadh is the Season of Fresh Fruit, so Pick Some Fruit!
Celebrate the fruit harvest by visiting your local farm and seeing if they have any pick-your-own opportunities.
Fruit is in season at this time. Blackberries, watermelon, and raspberries celebrate nature’s sweet bounty. Find your local farm and see if they offer pick-and-keep opportunities where you can pick your own fruit.
Lughnasadh Tip Three
Make a Lughnasadh Altar to Nature
There are many correspondences with this festival. Anything that makes you think of wide open fields. Poppies, cornflowers, heather, and wheat stalks can all appear on your home altar this season. Consider setting out seeds and offerings to nature.
Colors include peridot greens, earth tones, browns, yellows, and hints of pink, purple, or blue. They are also the colors of a bouquet of poppies, heather, cornflowers, and wheat stalks. Sunflowers are also a major theme here.
Scents and smells include sweetgrass, fruit, cotton, rosemary, sandalwood, and basil.
Crystals for abundance and fortune include malachite, peridot, yellow aventurine, golden topaz, and tiger’s eye.
Lughnasadh Idea Four
Celebrate the Lughnasadh Summer Sun by Brewing Sun Tea
Enjoy fresh tea brewed by nature. All you have to do is fill a pitcher full of water, drop a few tea bags in, and put it under the sun for about 24 hours.
You can flavor your tea with fruit and mint. This is a spiritual way of sharing in something brewed for you by the sun itself.
Lughnasadh Idea Five
Make Corn Dollies
Corn dollies are a fun craft to get the kids involved with. They represent the spirit of the corn and wheat harvest. You can spend the afternoon constructing these dolls made of corn husks, decorating them, and customizing them. Then, set them out in the garden or in the forest as an offering to nature.
Lughnasadh Idea Six
Go Fishing
Learn how to fish. Get a local fishing license and head out to your local lake or river to see if you catch anything. This is a way of learning how to live off the land. It’s not important to catch anything. Just spending a day in silence, with nature all around you, will ground you and help bring out the magic of this time of year.
If you catch something, learn how to clean it and cook it properly. Share it with friends and family, maybe inviting them to a Lughnasadh feast.
Lughnasadh Idea Seven
Go to the Fair
August is fair season for most states in the United States. State and county fairs, where farmers and ranchers showcase their best animals and crops and the land’s bounty, are a great way to get into the spirit of the season.
It’s important to get back to our roots. Human civilization began when agriculture began. This is a way to embrace and honor the land. It’s important to appreciate where your food comes from.
Lughnasadh Idea Eight
Go to a Farmer’s Market
Try shopping for produce at farmer’s markets instead of the grocery store. Learn about what’s in season and what’s local. Thanks to modern technology, we are used to enjoying produce any time of the year, but consider how far that produce must travel in order to be in the store when you want it.
Instead, support local farmers by attending farmer’s markets.
Lughnasadh Idea Nine
Honor Your Ancestors
Lughnasadh is a time to think about where you come from. Think about how you got here and the people who came before you. Learn some wisdom from the older people in your life.
The wheel of the year and the eight sabbats celebrated throughout the year all have origins among Europe’s Celtic and Germanic peoples. This can be a good time to explore the culture of those ancient people.
Lughnasadh Idea Ten
Do a Water Ritual
This is a way of grounding yourself and immersing yourself in nature. Lughnasadh is the height of summer; it’s warm, and water activities abound.
But instead of being content with just relaxing on the lakeshore, consider swimming out as far as you feel comfortable and dunk your head underwater for a few seconds.
Being underwater is a serene feeling. It reminds us of our ancient origins. The ancestors of humans, the first creatures to evolve in this world, did so in the oceans.
Lughnasadh Idea Eleven
Celebrate Abundance by Giving to Charity
Lughnasadh is about abundance and gratitude. Be thankful for what you have, but also take this chance to give to others. Giving to charity helps those in need and makes you grateful for your own lot in life. This is a great way to teach children gratitude and humility.
Lughnasadh Idea Twelve
Make Baskets
Another fun arts and crafts activity for Lughnasadh would be to learn basket weaving. Make homemade baskets from grass stalks and corn stalks harvested from the wheat field. Learn how to dry the grass properly and weave it into baskets.
Then, you can take your baskets with you when you go berry picking.
Lughnasadh Idea Thirteen
Gather Friends for a Lughnasadh Feast
Bring friends together for a Lughnasadh feast. Include all the tastes of the season: fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh fish, and perhaps some game if you have hunters in your family. And, of course, make sure to include plenty of fresh-baked bread made from the season’s grains.
Have a picnic or a barbeque with all the seasonal foods you’ve gathered and cooked. Lughnasadh is the first of three harvest festivals. Together with Mabon and Samhain, these festivals celebrate a true thanksgiving. Be grateful for the bounty you harvested and for the loved ones at your table.
Lughnasadh Idea Fourteen
Go Camping and Tell Stories Around a Campfire
Go camping with friends and family. Camping is a great way to connect with nature. Pitch a tent, gather around a campfire, and tell stories of long ago.
Make smores, fish, meat on sticks, or anything that can be cooked on an open fire. Returning to nature, understanding and respecting nature, and being in tune with your Paleolithic ancestors is a great way to celebrate Lughnasadh.
Lughnasadh Idea Fifteen
Journal About the Meaning of Abundance on Lughnasadh
Write a journal entry about what gratitude means to you. Think about the people in your life and the blessings that have come your way, and write about them.
You could do a ritual. Write down some things, some meanings of abundance, take them out to a garden or forest with a small cauldron or abalone shell, and burn the paper. Then, bury the ashes under a tree. This way, you will set your intention and give thanks to the universe for the blessings in your life.
Lughnasadh Idea Sixteen
Travel to a Reserve, Park, or Zoo
Spend time with animals. At this time of year, many animals are at their most active in the wild. For bison, it’s the end of mating season. For bears, they are eating and getting fattened up in anticipation of hibernation.
You should never feed or approach an animal in the wild. Respect them by leaving them alone. But zoos, especially ones that showcase animals that were rescued due to human interference, are a great place to get close to them.
Lughnasadh Idea Seventeen
Preserve, Preserve, Preserve!
This is the season to start preserving your harvest. Learn how to can fruits and vegetables, cure, dry, or smoke meats, and properly freeze or dry foods.
Stalk up on canned fruit that you’ve canned yourself. Make jams, fruit preserves, and jellies. Learn how to can meats.
While the harvest is at its peak, don’t waste all the produce you might be getting from your garden or the massive hauls you gathered from your local farms. These preservation methods will ensure that you can enjoy fruit and vegetables in the winter. They will be homemade, lacking artificial preservatives, and they will make great Christmas gifts later.
Lughnasadh Idea Eighteen
Make Fruit Syrups
If you have any leftover produce after you’ve made all your preserves, consider making fruit syrups. These can be stored and then used to top desserts or even to sweeten coffee and tea. This is just another way of taking advantage of the fruit harvest.
Lughnasadh Idea Nineteen
Do a Beach or Forest Cleanup
Participate in a local beach or forest cleanup. It’s unfortunate that some humans leave trash when they go out into nature. Plastics and things that can’t be composted by nature are dangerous to nature.
Protect nature by keeping it clean.
Lughnasadh Idea Twenty
Save Your Seeds
If you grew a garden this year, make sure to collect your seeds. You can use them to plant next spring.
Lughnasadh Idea Twenty-One
Make beer
Another way to honor the grain harvest is to learn how to brew beers, ales, and mead. This was very popular in ancient times; many farmers had their own brews. Consider adding it to your homestead if you live somewhere where hops grow. Otherwise, you can find many ingredients online. Set the beer to ferment and then enjoy it when it’s aged properly. If you brewed beer the year prior, try some.
You could also try your hand at learning how to brew root beer.
Conclusion
Lughnasadh is all about abundance and thanksgiving. Make your August celebrations magical with activities that emphasize these intentions. Keep the spiritual meaning of Lughnasadh in mind throughout the month of August. And enjoy your summer!