The other day I was driving south in the middle of the night. I was out of Sioux Falls and enjoying the bright stars in a relatively humidity free night. The moon was moving towards full and I saw the lights in the field.
Every fall as I drive, I notice the harvesting being done in the middle of the night. I think about the long hours and the steady labor needed to bring in the harvest. Seeing those lights of a combine in the middle of the night always impresses me, but it also makes me feel lonely.
There is just something about that one light piercing the darkness, knowing some man or woman is laboring hard into the night. I also know I will soon be in bed and sleeping and someone will still be working in the fields.
Perhaps that is what makes harvest celebrations such a lingering tradition in our part of the world.
I would venture to guess that most people who live in the upper reaches of the northern hemisphere are unaware of the festivals celebrated by our ancient ancestors. Well, to be honest, we may be unaware of the names of these festivals, but their spirit lives on in our culture.
Some of the ancient celebrations were quite bizarre and included all manner of sacrifices and invocations; but the point was the same. Winter was coming and no one really looked forward to it. For many, it was a time of extreme darkness, isolation, loneliness, hunger and death. Our winters are a bit milder, but the feeling is the same.
We know winter is coming and with it will come cold and isolation, bitter winds and the struggle faced when simply trying to drive across town. We may not face the same possibilities of disease and death that our ancestors would face, and because of the long hours of farmers and ranchers, we have bountiful food, but we know it is going to be a struggle nonetheless.
So we celebrate.
We may not have the same festivals, but we have fall dinners and parish bazaars. Every year, as The Bishop’s Bulletin is being proofed, those of us sitting around with red pens in our hands reflect on the nature of parish dinners and bazaars. We are always amazed at the number of them, and we try to determine why turkey dinners have “trimmins” and all other dinners have “fixins.”
It is one of those imponderables, I suppose.
My mom and sisters are happily working on the bazaar for Sacred Heart in Aberdeen and their annual book sale. As they share with me their latest labors, I think about how excited I would be to go to our parish bazaar. It was always there, always, that I would buy the pumpkin that I would carve for Halloween.
I would walk endlessly around the cake wake circle until I finally could go to the table and pick my cake. I would throw my line over the small curtain of the fishpond and pull back my little toy.
School had started and the long summer days were slowly shrinking. The wind at night had a touch of cold to it and soon I would walk to school with my friends blowing steam into the air and hearing the soft crunch of frosted grass under our feet.
So it was time to celebrate. Time to go to the bazaar, time to worry about our Halloween costumes and the supply of candy to get us through the long winter.
Halloween and parish bazaars, fall dinners and Thanksgiving dinner, autumn decorations and bags of candy in the store, they are all a part of our cultural need to celebrate the bounty of the harvest and to prepare us for the coming struggle.
It is one of the best things about human beings. We know soon enough the cold will come, the snow, the ice and the wind chill will come; yet, before we move inside and close our doors and windows for the next few months, we celebrate.
It is really amazing when you think about it. Winter has been, since time immemorial, a cause of fear and loathing. So we prepare for it by celebrating, and we even have our best parties right in the middle of it.
If a person is looking for an explanation for the longevity of the human family, you could point to this. God has given us the grace, and by this I mean both his empowerment and our charm, to celebrate in the face of darkness.
We survive because God has enabled us to laugh and dance as the winter winds bear down upon us.