For me, the most enjoyable Harvest Home celebration is a large feast with friends and family. This takes a certain amount of work, and a circle of people around you who wish to join in celebration. Even if you usually work alone, this holiday does not lend itself to a solitary ritual, so try to find a few people to invite. You can put it in terms of a harvest feast to thank the earth rather than a witch’s ritual if some people might be put off by that wording. A potluck where everyone brings something to eat or drink will help to share the effort. It can be held at the house of whoever has the largest dining room table, or the most chairs, or whoever is most centrally located. If it’s at someone’s house, who you invite may depend on who they feel comfortable having there. If your group is small, invite spouses and partners, and friends who might be interested in this ritual. This is a very family-friendly ritual, since everyone is seated during most of the time, and kids can appreciate a feast. If you will be indoors and there will be children attending, having a corner with a few toys they can play with will provide a place for them to go when they get bored with the adults. An outdoor feast is also possible, weather permitting. If you are doing this celebration at a park or some other public place, it is an excellent time to invite people beyond your coven or usual circle. Check ahead to see if you can reserve space, and consider alternate plans in case the weather turns bad.
Use fresh, locally grown food as much as possible for this feast. If you don’t have a garden to provide at least a token amount of harvest, you could visit a “pick your own” farm or orchard, or get some of the food from a farmers’ market. This will enable you to be able to follow the food from ground to table.
This is a ritual that needs a leader, whether you call them priestess or priest, or whatever else, to keep the ritual moving. Emphasize that people choose one thing to be thankful for, one harvest from the season. Otherwise, this can take too long, people will get hungry and bored, and it may not be a pleasant experience. Also, the leader may need to gently intervene if one person is going too long or into more detail than others might find comfortable.
If you will be inside, decorate the dining room and the table with seasonal fruits and vegetables and other tokens of the season. If you will be outside at a picnic table, bring a tablecloth as well as items to use for decorating the table. Children can help with this, gathering leaves that have turned orange and yellow, arranging squash in a basket, putting bowls of walnuts on the table. Whether you are indoors or outdoors, the centerpiece can be an arrangement of fruit, nuts, squash, and other seasonal food. Fall flowers, like mums, and foliage can be displayed on the table.
Harvest Home Ritual
This ritual needs three courses: soup or salad, main course, and dessert. If you are doing a feast alone or with just a few people, a few seasonal dishes are enough. If it’s still hot, a cold vegetable soup like gazpacho would be perfect; if it’s gotten cool enough to want hot soup, try butternut squash or pumpkin soup. Some possible main dishes are stuffed peppers, cabbage rolls, roasted root vegetables, and squash or corn soufflé. Try a new dish like ratatouille, a French vegetable dish, typically containing eggplant, zucchini, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and garlic; many of these are in abundance right now. For dessert, apple crisp or apple pie, zucchini bread, or just fresh fruit.
To begin the ritual, everyone is seated around a table. Ring a bell or chime, or blow a horn to begin. The leader starts by holding out her or his hand to the person to their left, and saying,
Hand to hand, the circle is cast.
The person on their left takes the leader’s hand and says, “Hand to hand the circle is cast,” and holds out their left hand to the person on their left, who then takes it and says, “Hand to hand, the circle is cast,” and so on around the circle.
When all hands as clasped, the leader says,
The Circle is cast, may it hold fast.
Next, call the directions. My coven likes to do this geographically, which means they are not associated with the traditional elements. If there is a large body of water or a sacred mountain, or other important natural feature nearby, you could incorporate that into your calling. For example, we are in Minneapolis and sometimes invoke water to the east, because we live on the west bank of the Mississippi. We have also been known to call quarters by invoking Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the south, the Dakotas to the west, and Canada to the north. Modify this to suit your location; Paganism is, if nothing else, local, of the earth where you are.
You could sing a song at this point. The hymn many of us learned as children can be changed just a bit to fit in perfectly:
Come ye thankful, people come,
Raise the song of Harvest Home
All is safely gathered in
Ere the winter storms begin.
Earth our Mother does provide
For our wants to be supplied.
Come to Her own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.
First Course
Before the first course of dinner, go around the table deosil (clockwise) and have each person who brought something to eat or drink talk about that item. It could be a little about the history of that food or the farm it came from. It could be the recipe that was handed down from their great-grandmother who came from the Old Country. If this is a large group, there might need to be an informal time limit on how long each person should speak. This is also a good time to let people know ingredients, so that people can avoid allergens, and vegetarians and vegans know what dishes to avoid.
Before eating anything, the leader should give a blessing on the food, for example:
Lady of the Fields and Orchards, Lord of the Animals and the Hunt, bless this food and drink.
People may want to stand for this, or not.
Then serve the first course, soup or salad or both, and allow time to eat. Clear away dishes as needed before you proceed.
Second Course
Go around the table again, and have each person talk about just one thing they have—or have not—accomplished in the season past. What have they sown, and what have they harvested, on the physical plane, or the intellectual, or the spiritual. People should have the option of passing, and not saying anything aloud. If you wish, sing a harvest song at this point, like “The Ripe and Bearded Barley,” “John Barleycorn,” or “The Reaphook and the Sickle.” YouTube is full of recordings of songs like these, by groups like Steeleye Span, Clannad, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, and the Watersons, to name a few.
Serve the second, main course, and after everyone is finished, clear the table again.
Third Course
Go around the table a third time, and ask everyone to say one thing they are thankful for. Everyone should come up with an answer for this; if nothing else, they are thankful for the feast. Children who may not have answered the first round because they didn’t bring any food themselves, and didn’t answer the second round because they preferred to pass, should be encouraged to say what they are thankful for.
Serve the third course, usually dessert. If people want to sing another song, after dessert would be a good time.
End the meal with the secret of the apple. Get the best large apple you can find. One person holds it up, cuts it crosswise—across the “equator,” so to speak—and holds the cut surfaces to show everyone, saying “Out of death, comes life.” There is a five-pointed star, a pentagram, formed by the seeds in the center of the apple. Pass the cut apple around so that everyone can have a bite. (If you have never cut an apple this way before, practice on a few apples ahead of time.) The apple is one of the symbols of witchcraft because of the hidden pentagram.
Finally, thank the directions as you called them, and thank the Earth for Her bounty:
O beautiful and generous Earth, we thank you for your gifts to us at this season of Harvest.
To end, ring the bell or chime or blow the horn you used to start.
So mote it be!