Hello everyone!
I can’t believe it’s the end of September already! Time flies! A couple of weeks ago, it was really hot here but now it’s definitely starting to feel more like autumn.
Do you have a special day in your country to celebrate the harvest? (“Harvest” means the time of year when farmers collect fruit, vegetables and other food from the fields.) Or do you have any kind of autumn festival? You can share in the comments if you like.
I live in England and I like sharing a bit about English culture with you. Sometimes it’s impossible to talk about culture and traditions without mentioning religion and occasionally people get upset with me because of this! I don’t really understand why, to be honest. I have my beliefs but I enjoy reading about other religions and their festivals too. Let me assure you that this post is intended as a reading exercise and not a lesson in religion! I’m just telling you what people do in my country and why. I’m not telling anyone what they should believe.
Harvest Festival
America and Canada have Thanksgiving, which you may have seen on TV, but in the UK, we have Harvest Festival (or Harvest Thanksgiving). This is a day when people celebrate and give thanks for the harvest. It is usually on the Sunday nearest the harvest moon. A harvest moon is the full moon nearest to the autumn equinox. This year, the harvest moon is on the night of 29th September and so Harvest Festival is on Sunday 1st October, although not everyone celebrates it on the same day.
Harvest Festival is mainly a Christian event but it can be enjoyed by people of other religions and no religion too. In fact, pagan people gave thanks to the gods for the harvest even before Christianity came to Britain. The first English people to settle in America took the idea of saying thanks for the harvest with them and this later became Thanksgiving, which is held in November in the USA and October in Canada.
In Britain, Harvest Festival became part of the church calendar in the middle of the nineteenth century. On this day, people can go to church and thank God for providing us with food, and for the sun and rain which makes the crops grow. They sing songs and hymns and they might take food to the church, especially fruit and vegetables, or maybe some homemade bread, and also tinned food. This might be taken to poorer families and elderly people who live nearby, or it might be donated to a food bank. People also think about those in other countries who are less fortunate.
Some primary schools have their own harvest festival. I remember doing this when I was a child. We used to sing “We plough the fields”. It’s a hymn that came from Germany originally but has been translated into English. It starts like this:
We plough the fields, and scatter the good seed on the land;
But it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand:
He sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain,
The breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain.
All good gifts around us
Are sent from heaven above,
Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord
For all His love.
I have lived in towns and cities most of my life and this is probably not a very important time of year for city people. In fact, a lot of people nowadays don’t think much about where food comes from and some people don’t even know! Some children don’t know that beef comes from an animal and carrots grow in the ground. Harvest Festival is a good opportunity for schools to educate them about this.
In the countryside, Harvest Festival is much more important. Some villages have a harvest supper. This might be a bring-and-share meal where everyone brings a dish to share, or sometimes just a few people cook the food and then tickets are sold to cover the cost.
Vocabulary
the harvest = 1. fruit, vegetables and grain when they are collected from the fields or 2. the time of year when this happens
to harvest = to collect the fruit, vegetables and grain
crops = plants that we grow for food
field = an area of land on a farm for growing food or keeping animals
full moon = when the whole moon can be seen
equinox = when we have the same hours of day and night
autumn equinox = September 22nd or 23rd
pagan = a person who worships many gods, especially someone who lived before the main world religions
19th century = 1800-1899
hymn = a religious song which is sung in church
elderly = old
donate = give
food bank = a place which collects food for people who don’t have much money
plough = to dig the land to prepare it for planting seeds
seed = part of a plant which will grow into a new plant
almighty = having the power to do anything
swell = get bigger
grain = seeds from wheat, rice, oats etc.
breeze = a light and gently wind
I hope you enjoyed this reading lesson!
If you like learning English by reading and if you enjoy learning about life in other countries, you might be interested in my e-book, “A Year in England”. Click here to get your copy.
See you next week,
Katie
Thanks for reading! I’m Katie Salter and I teach British English online. I help adult learners to speak better English through conversation and grammar lessons.
This is my free newsletter which gives you weekly learning tips, quizzes and English lessons. If you choose to upgrade, for £5 a month, you can get extra grammar, vocabulary and reading lessons with PDF downloads, plus full access to all the posts on this site.
Its a really amazing,
Thank you so much 😍
Thank you teacher for your reading lesson it should be useful get it necessary words in your collection. That's 🙂 fine 🙂 😍