Templar Edification

The fields grow ripe with amber waves of grain. An unseasonably blessed cool spell in the midst of July entices my mind with autumnal thoughts. And retail shelves, having cleared the hurdle of Independence Day, now begin to bedeck themselves with Halloween. August welcomes Lammastide, the “Loaf-Mass,” when the firstfruits of the wheat reaping would be ground into flour and baked into bread, then gathered at the altar for a blessing to be brought back home. The Dog Days aren’t yet done, but the harvest has begun. And to my heart, at least, that makes all the difference. I am a melancholic creature, a devotee of fall. Blame it on my mother, who made every holiday magical, none more so than the Hallowtide and Christmas. Our whole house would transform to match the turning of the seasons, the colors and scents and spices and sounds—when ghosts and witches, elves and saints, populated my imagination, wonders given form and flesh. I suppose I’ve always been a little mystic. I suppose I’ve al...

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  (Mon, Oct 6, 2025 – Mon, Oct 13, 2025) , a day that Christians ma...