Thanksgiving & Harvest Festivals

HM-MHW Thanksgiving & Harvest Festivals The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1942 ^!^J^^W!_WW{ ^•^^M-^&MM %% Thanksgiving and Harvest Festivals 77?? Metropolitan Museum of Art Neiv York • 1942 COPYRIGHT BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART SEPTEMBER 1942 ^ 3 2 CD %<-. '6« Thanksgiving and Harvest Festivals HARVEST FESTIVALS to celebrate the gathering in of the year's grain, with rites in honor of a deity of fruitfulness, are among the most an cient of human customs. The Greek worship of Demeter, goddess of grain, and the Hebrew celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, or In gathering, are outstanding examples. The worship of Demeter and her daughter Persephone the Maiden was built about the theme of "seed time and harvest!' and tne Greeks' artistic genius recorded the story in painting and sculpture as well as in poetry and legend. Wherever grain was cut and threshed in ancient Greece, Demeter was honored, but the center of her worship was at Eleusis. Here, ac cording to legend, she had rested and been welcomed kindly on her search for Persephone, who, lost in the Underworld, symbolized the seed grain covered by the earth. In gratitude the goddess gave the king's son, Triptolemos, her sacred gift of grain, and a chariot drawn by winged dragons in which he could carry this gift throughout the land. And after Triptolemos became king himself he established Demeter's worship at Eleusis. These Mysteries at Eleusis, held early in October, were both the most sacred rites of Demeter and her greatest festival. Besides Demeter, Persephone and Iacchos (who was Dionysos, god of wine and vintage, by another name) were honored at this festival. Little is known of what happened at the Mysteries, except that there were sacrifices, processions, and mystical ceremonies which dramatized the stories of the three deities. Greek vase paintings show Triptolemos in his winged car, with Demeter and Persephone and sometimes other deities, and in a few reliefs Triptolemos stands between Demeter and Persephone. These may have been suggested by scenes in the Mysteries. Besides these formal celebrations, the Greeks held local festivals at their own threshing floors when the harvests were gathered in. The Greek poet Theocritus in his Seventh Idyll described such a festival in the island of Cos more than two thousand years ago. Three friends who had set out from the city to attend this feast were met by a goat herd, who asked whither they were bound. "We are going" answered one, "to the harvest-feast, for, look you, some friends of ours are paying a festival to fair-robed Demeter, out of the first-fruits of their increase, for verily in rich measure has the goddess filled their threshing-floor with barley grain!' The goatherd went his way, and the three kept on to the farm through a day warm and full of the sights and sounds of summer. "On shadowy boughs the burnt cicalas kept their chattering toil, far off the little owl cried in the thick thorn brake, the larks and finches sang, the ring-dove moaned, the yellow bees were flitting round the springs. All breathed the scent of the opulent summer, of the season of fruits; pears at [their] feet and apples by [their] sides were rolling plentiful, the tender branches, with wild plums laden, were earthward bowed" And when the friends came to the feast, "by the altar of Demeter of the threshing-floor" maidens brought them cooling drinks as they reclined "on deep beds of fragrant lentisk...and...new stript leaves of the vine" while the image of Demeter stood "smiling by, with sheaves and poppies in her hands!' TRIPTOLEMOS IN HIS WINGED CHARIOT BETWEEN DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE. Greek vase, V century B. C. Triptolemos holds in one hand the grain given him by Demeter, which he is ready to carry throughout the land. In the other hand is a cup for the wine which Persephone carries. Demeter stands behind Triptole mos, holding grain and a torch. The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Romans had many deities of grain and fruitfulness, some of whom they borrowed from other lands, at times calling them by the names of their own gods. In this way they adopted the worship of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysos, identifying them with three ancient deities of Italy who were connected with the crops—Ceres, Libera, and Liber. The most important of these was the goddess Ceres, the Roman Demeter, from whose name comes the English word "cereal!' Games called "Cerealia" in her honor were held during April, but other festivals of Ceres were celebrated in August and October. The country men of Italy offered to her the first fruits of their grain as the Greeks did to Demeter. Roman paintings of Ceres, "fair-robed" and stately, crowned with ears of grain, may have been copied from lost Greek paintings showing Demeter "with sheaves and poppies in her hands!' The Latin poet Ovid in his Fasti, or Calendar, says that "white robes are given out at the festival of Ceres" and "white is Ceres' proper color" because "the harvest whitens when the ears are ripe!' In the early centuries of Christian Europe the celebrations of the harvest season changed from regular religious ceremonies to popular customs, although some traces of the old practices lingered even in the Church. Priests blessed the harvest and the fields as a natural part of their own religion, and peasants carried their last sheaf of grain home with music to the harvest feast because their fathers and grandfathers had done so. Though they were not consciously remembering the wor ship of any pagan deities of grain and harvest, they knew that their customs had grown out of some very ancient usage, and that they were associated with good luck in raising crops. The old ideas lived on in their different forms all the more easily be cause things closely connected with the seasons, the earth, and its crops changed little. The grains harvested in the Middle Ages and, indeed, until after the discovery of the New World, were much the same as those of ancient Egypt and Greece—barley and wheat first, with rye and oats becoming more important as time went on. "Corn" was the word used for all kinds of grain in England, as it still is today, and other countries of Europe had some word of close kin to it. Indian corn, or maize, was still unknown. Methods and tools of harvesting, too, remained much CERES, OR DEMETER, GODDESS OF GRAIN. Roman wall painting from a house in Pompeii. National Museum, Naples the same as in the ancient world. Like the men of Egypt and Greece, the mediaeval peasants used the short-handled sickle, as well as the long- handled scythe, swung with both arms, which had come into use in Roman times. Threshing was done by beating with a flail or treading with the feet. Scenes of harvest are often pictured in mediaeval art, but they are not REAPING GRAIN WITH A SICKLE: THE MONTH OF AUGUST. French, XIII century. Carving on one of the west portals of the cathedral at Amiens. THRESHING GRAIN WITH A FLAIL. Woodcut from Crescentius's book on agriculture, printed in 1493 -The Metropolitan Museum of Art scenes of festival. They show the harvest as it has always been—hard work, driven by the need to make the most of good weather to get the grain under cover. The labors of harvesting are enumerated realistically in The Vision of Piers Plowman, written by an English poet more than five hundred years ago. There Conscience asks the laborers: "Canst mow or stack or bind the sheaves? Canst reap or guide the reapers? Canst rise early? Canst blow the horn and keep the kine together; Lie out o' nights, and save my corn from thieves?" Some of the laborers hasten to excuse themselves in words that suggest the backbreaking toil of harvesting: "I am too weak to work with sickle or with scythe, I am too long, believe me, to stoop down low!' Cutting grain with a short-handled sickle does indeed require the har vester to "stoop down lowj' and being "long" would be a disadvantage. Yet to the able-bodied and energetic there was satisfaction in this honest, rewarding toil and its accompanying feasts, as one man recalls from his youth: ".. .when I had my health, in hot harvest time, And my limbs to labour with, and loved good fare!' Pictures of harvesting in the Middle Ages appear usually in scenes illustrating the twelve months with their appropriate occupations- haymaking for June, reaping or threshing grain for July or August, picking grapes and making wine for October. Such series of pictures decorated the illuminated books of clergy and nobles, were carved in stone about cathedral doors, and painted on castle walls. In the fifteenth century they were also used as woodcut illustrations in printed books. The Middle Ages passed and were followed by centuries in which the civilizations of Greece and Rome were studied, and educated men began to understand the relation between their ancient customs and their still more ancient past. The harvesters themselves probably had no idea of the connection between the worship of Demeter and Per sephone the Maiden and the dressing up of a sheaf of grain called "the Maiden!' which was carried with rejoicing to the harvest feast. But those who had read of Greece and Rome could draw their own con clusions. In 1598 Paul Hentzner, the tutor of a young German noble man traveling in England, wrote: "As we were returning to our inn, we happened to meet some coun try people celebrating their Harvest-home; their last load of corn they crown with flowers, having besides an image richly dressed, by which perhaps they would signify Ceres!' An English harvest-home celebration is vividly described by Robert Herrick in a poem called "The Hock-Cart, or Harvest-Home" which was published in his Hesperides in 1648.

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