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Friday, November 20, 2009
When old becomes new
posted by Terry OShaughnessy at 0h21
November seemed to set in with a vengeance last week. Bleak skies, bleaker winds – grey mornings. A lot of people seem to hate November, but it can be quite an interesting time of year, I think. If you look at an older calendar, that of the Celtic year of the early Irish and Scots, or example, Nov. 1 was not the rag tag end of an old year at all, but was the first day of the new year as the winter season called Samhain began.
During that time of year, just like now, the days were darker and shorter, the trees increasingly leafless and bare, and the agricultural year at its end.
But this end-of-year moment was also seen to be a beginning – a new start, as increasingly cold temperatures began the work of forcing seeds to germinate in preparation for spring and nature began to temporarily doze off to preserve its energy for the returning light of the next planting. And so Nov. 1 was observed as a kind of New Year’s Day.
According to that venerable ancient calendar, this was the tail end of the season of Lughnasadh, the autumn season, a time when the ancients could relax for awhile and enjoy the feeling of security provided by a full larder – that sense of unaccustomed plenty provided by a bountiful harvest. And the first day of the new year heralding the winter season of Samhain was the signal to rest up as crop seeds germinated in anticipation of the growing season to come.
I don’t have many seeds to think about this November, but the ones I have are choice. My Love-in-a-Mist seeds – or nigella – which are the most fool-proof seeds I’ve ever planted, just require a couple of handfuls to be scattered by hand and left alone. Then there are the hollyhock seed pod or two stolen from the Cluny Museum courtyard in Paris, with their red, pink and darker pink flowers – hopefully. They are carefully collected in an old mint tin and a folded envelope respectively, pre-germinating their heads off, I suppose, somewhere in a messy drawer, ensuring that they won’t be found right away when I need to plant them.
Still, now that the new year (the Celtic new year, that is) has come and gone, their planting season seems sooner than ever and no line divides us from spring. A nice thought as we hunker down through the November blahs and head for the first snow storm of samhain.