Lughnasadh/Lammas

Celebrating Summer’s End The ancient customs of the Celtic festival Lughnasa, and how you can honor the holiday today.
Ancient Celtic Fire Festival marking the height of Summer and the first of the harvest. Anglo-Saxons called it Lammas, for loaf-mass, after the blessing of bread, made from the first harvest of grain.

Modern pagans celebrate the wheel of the year with eight seasonal holidays?the solstices and equinoxes and the cross-quarter-days in between. The ancient Celtic festival Lughnasa (pronounced loonasah), falling midway between summer solstice and autumn equinox, marks the end of summer and the beginning of the harvest. The Anglo-Saxons called it Lammas, for loaf-mass, after the blessing of bread, made from the first harvest of grain. Today, most pagans observe the holiday on August 1.
The 1990 play “Dancing at Lughnasa” (later a movie starring Meryl Streep) depicts the melancholy that underlies this festival, the sorrow at the end of summer, the sacrifice that comes with cutting the grain.
In ancient times, Lughnasa was also the time of an assembly in honor of the Celtic hero-god Lugh (nasad means assembly). The poet Cuan o’Lothchain wrote in 1007 that the purpose of the assembly was to provide corn, milk, good weather, and peace, and that Ireland will always have song as long as the assembly is held.
If you want to honor this ancient holiday, incorporate these Lughnasa traditions into your celebrations:
Hike to a mountaintop where you can overlook the land
Gather flowers and leave them as an offering to the sun god, or the fairies.
You could also bury them or burn them as a sign that summer has passed
Go berry picking
Enjoy new potatoes, or whatever you harvest from your garden
Dance and sing around a bonfire