Templar Edification

Holidays are often accused of being pagan, when in fact they are simply seasonal. Every culture that knows winter knows a winter feast; and a spring celebration; and a harvest festival come fall. Such are our shared natural responses to our shared natural world. They are pagan only in the sense that G.K. Chesterton used the word: as a synonym for human. Last month I spoke of the Loaf-Mass, or Lammas, a traditional Christian observance thanking God for the firstfruits of the grain harvest. This of course coincides most cleanly with the climate of northern Europe and the British Isles; other Christians would harvest at other times. And just as we solemnized the firstfruits, so now we salute the gathering of last sheaves at harvest’s end. In the Hebrew Bible, the Festival of Ingathering—also known as Sukkot, the Festival of Booths—corresponds to the end of Israel’s agricultural year. For 2023 this falls on 29 September, a day that Christians mark as Michaelmas, the Feast of St Michael and...