Lughnasadh or Lammas is stands out for our family from the other Pagan holidays. Most holidays we spend with family and the focus is on special meals, crafts, songs and kid-friendly rituals. But this holiday at the very beginning of August is different by its very nature. This is the season to focus on the harvest, community as well as work, skilled crafts and mentors or teaching. It's an outwardly focused time, the polar opposite of Imbolc's introspection.

Many Pagan communities choose to hold their large community gatherings at this time of year. The weather is most likely to be good and the energy is community oriented. As a result many families have very simple and flexible traditions attached to this season.

This year for the first time, we have a local Pagan event for Lughnasadh that is appropriate for families with children. That's because we're hosting it in our back yard. We're gathering Pagan families to do a simple ritual and hold a community feast. But given that this is the first year we've done this, it isn't a tradition yet.

Helping with this sort of gathering is a great way to combine the themes of this time. If your local community does organize Pagan events, consider asking what you can do to help, clean up the area after the event, arrive early to help set things up or take on one of the many small roles that are needed to make a gathering work. This is the day of giving back.

Even if your community doesn't have Pagan events and you can't make one happen yourself, there are other ways to contribute to your community. Many years we have found some way to volunteer. We plan to volunteer as ESL teachers at a summer camp for disadvantaged children when our kids are old enough. And we always have litter-clean-up expeditions at this time of year.

Even so, it's a challenge to do a big community project right in the middle of the harvest. If you grow a big garden like we do, this is a busy time of the year. The garden still needs tending and canning, freezing and drying food are now taking up a lot of time. Part of my craft is making herbal medicines for my extended family and friends. That is also one way I contribute to the community because I give my medicinals freely rather than selling them. That means that even when I don't pull off a community project at this time, I'm still putting energy into community with the herbs I'm gathering.

And yet, as always I want my children to have a tradition to anchor them in the energy of the season. So, we still have a few things we do as a family that will always tie the holiday together. They are simpler than usual and can be done anywhere, because we may not be home.

Crafts and Ritual

We sometimes do a ritual giving thanks for our harvest and blessing our garden. This is always outdoors at this time of year and often a bit informal. In our climate the corn on the cob isn't ready yet but it is tall and looking like it will be ready soon. The kids are eagerly waiting for it to get ripe.

So, this is a good time to use cornmeal as an offering to scatter outside. If you grow a different staple crop, you might want to use something related to that crop.

Because the kids are so active outside these days and more likely to be half naked and wet than not, it's a good time for crafts like face painting and tie-dye. But the primary craft of the season is a craft for me rather than for the children. And it's also our most important Lughnasadh family tradition.

Lughnasadh cloth - Creative Commons image by Arie Farnam

A few years ago, my mother gave me a special table cloth that I remembered from my childhood and this became our special Lughnasadh cloth. Whatever gathering of friends, family and community we attend at Lughnasadh, we take the table cloth with us, even if it is an outside event. I encourage everyone to sign the table cloth. Then I carry the cloth around with me most of the winter. And in those idle moments when I am waiting for kids at music classes or when there is a quiet evening, I embroider the names on the signed cloth in a color specific to that year. Last year our Lughnasadh event was a camping trip that included a bunch of Ukrainian friends of friends, so I spent the winter embroidering beautiful Cyrillic letters.

The result is a beautiful cloth full of incredible memories. I'm not particularly skilled with a needle but that doesn't matter much after the project gets going. It is still quite beautiful and it carries the sense of community that is perfect for Lughnasadh.

You can duplicate this tradition by choosing a sturdy table cloth and starting with whatever gathering you attend this year. White isn't mandatory and orange or light brown would absorb stains better than mine and be wonderful for the season. You could use permanent markers instead of embroidery for an easier but no-less-meaningful version. Just remember to use just one color per year and mark the year in the same color in the corner of the cloth. In a few years the cloth will be colorful and you will be able to look back and recall the gatherings of past years based on the colors of the names of those who were there.

Cooking

The best food of Lughnasadh is the fresh produce of a garden. Ripe tomatoes, corn on the cob, salad greens, carrots and herbs. We eat big salads or put the veggies into no-cook spring rolls. Lughnasadh is also the known as the grain harvest so bread or pasta salad are big favorites and it's handy that they are easy to carry because unless we're working in the garden, we're unlikely to be home at all.

Bohemian fruit pizza

Another way to both use your local fruit harvest and make bread at the same time is to make Bohemian fruit pizza. It is technically called pie in the Czech Republic but it resembles pizza more than anything else to foreigners. This is a pretty healthy recipe and can be eaten for breakfast and snacks, not just for desert. This is also a handy finger food to bring to community feasts.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound potatoes
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup cold water
1/4 cup butter
2 smallish eggs (or 4 egg yolks)
1 tablespoon Yeast
1/4 cup slightly warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
Several cups of flour depending on consistency
Fruit (such as plums, apples, blackberries, pitted cherries, blueberries or huckleberries)
1/2 cup Powdered sugar
1/2 cup flour (half and half whole grain if you want to be really healthy about it)
1/3 cup cold butter

Directions:

Peel and chop 1/2 pound of potatoes. Place in a small pan with one cup of water and half a teaspoon of salt. Cook until very soft and don't strain the water off.
Mash up the potatoes and add half a stick (1/4 cup) of butter and mash that in to the hot potatoes as well.
Start yeast off to the side. Mix tablespoon of dry yeast, 1/4 cup slightly warm water and one tablespoon of sugar in a separate container. Let it sit while your potatoes cool off.
When the potatoes have cooled off a bit add your eggs. You can use just egg yolks instead. This is an old grandmother's trick from Bohemia that is supposed to make the cake even better. Mix it in and make the potato mixture into a smooth mass.
Add a cup of flour to your potato mixture and stir well.
Once it is cool enough that it is around body temperature, add the yeast mixture and stir well.
Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl and add more flower until the dough is kneadable. You'll need several more cups of flour.
Let the dough rise for an hour under a warm damp cloth.
Spread flour on your work surface. Knead your dough again and then roll it out into roughly the shape of your baking tray. Then carefully roll the dough around your rolling pin and transfer it to the greased baking sheet. Gently pull at the corners and sides to shape the dough to fit the pan and stick it slightly to the sides.
Spread thinly sliced fruit over the dough. Try to cover as much of the dough as possible but don't overlap into too thick a layer.
In a separate bowl tweak together 1/2 cup flour with 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 1/3 cup cold butter to make a crumbly mixture.
Scatter the crumbly mixture over your cake.
Let the cake rise for another half an hour or hour. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit (180 C) fifteen minutes before you want to put it in.
Back for 30 to 45 minutes.

Spring rolls with fresh seasonal greens

1. Prepare:

Thin sheets of rice paper
Cooked fine rice noodles
Small pieces of cooked, lightly salted meat or egg
A bunch of salad greens an herbs cut up fine
Thinly sliced strips of red pepper (optional)
Thinly sliced boiled eggs (optional)

2. Fill a low pan with hot water and place it on a table with all your supplies.

3. Lay a sheet of rice paper into the pan of hot water, covering the sheet entirely and then carefully lift it out and put the wet sheet on a plate.

4. Put the most colorful bits of prepared food on first (usually eggs, peppers and dark greens or herbs). Place them in a line across the middle of the rice paper. Then add greens, meat or tofu and noodles. (You only really need a little of each thing for one sheet of rice paper. Keep them small and rolling will be easier.)

5. Carefully fold a bit of rice paper over the ends of the line and then roll the rice paper around the line of food. The rice paper will stick to itself, so that the roll won't come open once you've rolled it up.

6. Set your spring roll on a plate and repeat the process until you have enough (An adult in our household usually eats 5 or 6 spring rolls for a meal.)

7. Serve the spring rolls with small bowls of spicy dressing for dipping. To make easy Vietnamese sauce for fresh spring rolls mix these ingredients roughly in this order: