Harvest Festival

Although there was a medieval tradition of Lammas Tide - Harvest Festival, like Christmas, was a bit of a Victorian invention. 1843 a Cornish Vicar called Robert Stephen Hawker held the first Harvest service - it sort of caught on!

If you don't know John Betjeman's "Diary of a Church Mouse" I recommend it. JB at his best! The mouse who lives in church all the year round has been complaining about all the other mice and rats who just move in during the Harvest Festival in order to enjoy all the goodies that are around. It ends -

While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival. John Betjeman (1906-1984)