But when is Harvest? Please, please, when is it?

The Church Mouse has a good post today on whether Harvest Festival is redundent.

The most potent paragraph is this:

So we have the comical scene of a pile of disposable razors, shower gel and nit treatment being brought to the front of church while a group of unenthusiastic adults and confused children sing about ploughing the fields they have never set foot in, and think about how that relates to modern issues like GM production, big agri-business, global trade rules and local subsidies, over-fishing and CO2 emissions on food miles.

I have to admit that I have a great deal of sympathy with the Mouse on this one. More than once I’ve heard clergy who do have such an event complain that their well to do congregregation appear to go to the supermarket and buy the cheapest tins and cheap razers to present unto the Lord when one suspects that they would not use these themselves. A pile of “essentials” style grocery can make you think a lot about generosity.

Harvest seems to me to be one of the great triumverate of festivals which don’t actually appear in the Christian Calender (go look for Harvest in Cranmer’s prayer book) which most make well meaning folk rude to well meaning clergy. They are Mothering Sunday, Remembrance Day and Harvest. Such rudeness can come on with or without the festival being celebrated.

The driving force of the kind of harvest festival that the Mouse is referring to is and always was nostalgia and not agriculture. Its a piece of Victoriana too. When I say this, people do tend to contradict me. Oh no, they say, harvest festival comes from the time when the peasants worked in the fields and wanted to celebrate that all the harvest was safely gathered in. To which I reply patiently, for I am always so patient, no, this is a piece of Victorian nostalagia promoted by people who lived in cities. Harvest hymns are pure Victoriana.

I don’t just feel out of sympathy with the kind of limp festival that the Mouse describes. I don’t feel at all comfortable with the idea that God provides us with a good harvest whilst presumably letting others starve. That can’t be right. Its just a version of the Prosperity Gospel for the Middle Classes which is socially acceptable but no less theologically obscene.

Whilst I’m broadly in agreement with the suggestions that the Mouse makes about moving forward on this topic and liberating some of the good themes from harvest and doing something positive with them, I also think that won’t satisfy some people. I did a harvest sermon at Lammastide, (the real Scottish harvest festival which celebrated first-fruits) and then we picked up and ran with some nice music celebrating the natural world on Sunday night (Francistide), including one specific harvest hymn. I threw in some nice eco-prayers and some thanksgivings for the beasts of the field.

Result?
Satisfaction and happy people?
No – I was simply asked why we don’t keep harvest.

I’ve come to the view that some folk really do want limp veg and tins and no amount of thoughtfulness about eco-justice, food-ethics, the dignity of work, fair-trade, clean water or what have you will replace that.

Comments

  1. Knitted food patterns…
    http://www.knitfish.com/12/

  2. Elizabeth says

    I really appreciated the Lammastide sermon and service. But I’m not sure if I said so at the time – probably not!

    I’m reminded how important it is to share appreciation as well as (more than!) criticism. Perhaps a new year’s resolution in the making.

  3. Harvest.

    Autumn is here
    and there is no harvest
    The trees have leaves but no fruit
    The wheat has ears but no grain
    and if you should return
    I wouldn’t know
    how to begin to explain

    I would offer you a gift
    but of all the things I own
    all I have is my sin
    all I have that’s mine alone

    Spare me – I pray
    another year or two
    if you will extend your hand
    I will fill a harvest basket for you

    I have laboured in these fields
    among this bracken, broom and whin
    and a lifetime to understand
    all you wanted was my sin.

  4. Ah, the Grauniad! No – I only see that when I’m in a primary school staff-room, and never had the time to open it.
    But cute pattern – might be the next addition to the Choir dog collection.

  5. Scott from the States says

    Over here in the U.S. we have our national Thanksgiving Day (when very few actually go to church) designated to celebrate the harvest, peace and an end to civil strife, and general thanksgiving. Perhaps the UK needs to take a page from the U.S. and Canada and just make it an official government holiday!

  6. Sarah from Virginia says

    But what I was taught in school was that the first Thanksgiving was held in imitation of the traditional Harvest celebrations back home in England. Perhaps these were not actual church services? Anyhow I’m now confused!

  7. Incidentally, from a sample of 13 comments made on my photo of a harvest display in church, I deduce people’s expectations include:
    a) it’s long-life products, tinned or pasta, that one brings
    b) giving them to old dears who don’t really need them
    c) it’s something relegated to childhood memories

    Up to you where you draw the churchy/non-churchy line amongst that lot. Maybe it means there’s a *lot* of scope for a message of mission (to folks who normally exist outside the door) and ethics?

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