Michaelmas

My Favorite Anachronistic Holiday

Random veggies & garden herbs for soup, Michaelmas 2021

Happy Michaelmas!

September 29, the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel. Known alternately as the Feast of the Archangels or simply Goose Day, Michaelmas falls just past the Autumnal Equinox, when dark and light are evenly matched. The dates were likely one and the same under the old Julian calendar (which I wrote about here).

It is one of the Quarter Days, the others being June 24th (Midsomer, or St. John the Baptist’s feast day), December 25th (Christmas), and March 25th (Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation, which I guess also kind of makes it the Archangel Gabriel’s special day). Devotees of Jane Austen will recall that Mr. Bingley, in Pride and Prejudice, takes possession of Netherfield at Michaelmas; really big Austen nerds (*cough*) may remember that in Persuasion, Admiral Croft starts his lease of Kellynch Hall at Michaelmas as well. It was also the date for payment of debts, start of school terms, beginning and end of employment contracts, and enactment of new legislation.

Jane Austen Society of Australia Facebook page

We started celebrating Michaelmas in our home several years ago, in an effort to acknowledge some of the minor feast days within the liturgical year. Michaelmas marked the end of the growing season in the northern hemisphere, often celebrated by feasting on the food just harvested. In our climate, too, the day lines up with the time our harvest is nearing its end.

The rhythms of the seasons guided our ancestors, whether through the solar events and their midpoints on the Wheel of the Year or the agricultural phases that were marked with religious feast days. When tending a garden, we pay a different degree of attention to the weather patterns of each week, to the cycles of the Earth that call for the annual repeating pattern of chores, and to the intervals of plenty and scarcity that are hidden from our view by the convenience of supermarkets.

A recent garden harvest. Cucumbers to pickle, tomatoes to dehydrate, squash to store in a box.

Michaelmas Traditions

A traditional Michaelmas feast in the British Isles included goose, bannock (pan-fried flat quick-bread), vegetables, and blackberries. There was a legend that when St. Michael kicked the devil out of heaven, the devil fell onto a blackberry bush and cursed the fruit (by either scorching it, spitting on it, or urinating/ pooping on it, depending on the story version one reads), so that it would be no good to eat after a brief period of ripeness. In the Celtic and Germanic cultures of pre-Christian times, it was a puca (a mythological shape-shifting animal trickster) that made the blackberries inedible by autumn.

Roast chicken (sadly, not goose) & root vegetables, Michaelmas 2018

Clear weather on Michaelmas was said to indicate a rough winter ahead, whereas if Michaelmas weather was poor, then winter would be mild. (I have to say, I like this weather proverb better than the groundhog thing in February.)

Blackberries a la mode, Michaelmas 2021

The Michaelmas Daisy, among dead weeds,
Blooms for St Michael's valorous deeds.
And seems the last of flowers that stood,
Till the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude.

— Old folk-rhyme

(SS. Simon & Jude’s day is October 28)

.Purple asters, aka Michaelmas Daisies, blooming in our yard. All the pollinators love them.

The Garden’s Waning Days

The tomatoes and peppers are still ripening, albeit in smaller batches now. The squash and gourds are having their heyday. Just this evening, Phillip cut down the sunflowers for seed harvesting. We’ve had a drop in temperature this week, though not enough for first frost.

The days of weeding and watering, of carefully tending, are long past. Preserving this year’s harvest has been limited to fermentation (hot sauce, pickles), freezing (whole tomatoes, shredded zucchini) and dehydration (tomato slices, herbs). The remaining tasks are to gather until the plants stop yielding, and then to lay it all to rest with a blanket of dry leaves.

Fermenting peppers for hot sauce.

So friends, I hope you have a great last week of September, and that your garden harvests are plentiful. Have any of you celebrated Michaelmas? If so, what foods did you include in your feast? Who’s with me for bringing back more days throughout the year on which to feast and be merry? Do you celebrate any other holidays this time of year? Oh, and shana tovah to those celebrating Rosh Hashanah now!

Happy Michaelmas!

— Erin, in Michigan