Lugh and Lughnasadh
Lughnasadh
Lughnasadh is celebrated in the quarter of the year following Beltane. Tradition, and Julius Caesar, set the date as 1st August, but since the Ancients Celts passed their days from sundown to sundown, for some people, the celebration might begin the night before on July 31st.
In the Southern hemisphere, Lughnasadh is celebrated on February 1, and, for some, can be the night before on January 31
The Great Lugh, Lord of Light, established a harvest celebration in memory of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, held on 1 August at the town which still bears her name, Teltown, County Meath.
At Lughnasadh the Wheel of the Year begins to shift from growing time to harvest time and the shadows become longer as the subtle changes of the waning sun that occurred at Summer Solstice become more evident. Time to honour the Gods!
Lammas
Lughnasadh is also known as the Celebration of Bread, with the reaping, threshing and preparation of breads as part of the rituals. Christianity adopted Lughnasadh, as it did many other pagan holidays in order to convert the Celtic people.
‘Lammas’ was the medieval Christian name in English for the holiday, Loaf-Mass, and we still pronounce it very much the same. On this day, Christians would bake loaves of bread from the first grain harvest and lay them on the church altars as offerings. The Harvest Festival still continues, across the wild oceans in Canada, America and Australia.
At Lughanasadh we are not celebrating the death of Lugh (the Lord of light does not mythically die until the autumn equinox), but rather the funeral games that Lugh instituted to commemorate the death of his foster mother, Taillte. In Ireland, Lugnasadh is often called the “Tailltean Games”. A common feature of the games in medieval times were the “Tailltean marriages”, lasting a year and a day or until next Lammas, at which time the couple would decide to continue the partnership or to separate. Priests did not perform these Tailltean marriages, but a poet, bard or shanachie oversaw the rites. We derive our present-day Handfastings from this custom.
However, Lughnasadh itself is a celebration of Lugh’s triumph over the spirits of the Other World who had tried to keep the harvest for themselves. Lugh is still honoured at the time of harvest, not only as a god of grain, but also as a god of late summer storms.
And to this day in Ireland many celebrate Lughnasadh with dancing, song, and bonfires, while the Catholic priests venture out for a ritual blessing of the farmers’ fields.