What’s the point of celebrating harvest festival?
Harvest festival is an annual celebration of the year’s harvest, usually held around the autumn equinox. It’s a celebration of thanksgiving and abundance. Traditionally, people gave thanks for a good harvest and decorated places of worship with produce.
Celebrating harvest is still a wonderful way to bring communities together, even in 21st-century Britain.
Why celebrate harvest?
- It connects children with where food comes from. Learning about farming helps children appreciate the work that goes into every meal.
- It teaches care for the environment and for others. Harvest is a natural way to talk about the seasons, farming and food poverty, locally and globally.
- It brings communities together. Decorating halls and places of worship, harvest suppers and food bank collections all help children connect with one another.
Harvest at home
Even as our children get older, we still celebrate seasonal festivals, rooting ourselves in the turning of the year. Wilded Family resources reference these festivals and link the natural world with tradition, bringing cross-curricular learning to life: farming, lifecycles, people and cultures can all be explored through painting and seasonal activities. It’s especially rich if you’re celebrating the same festivals at home.
A compass through the year
Steiner Waldorf education follows the seasons through a series of festivals, each with its own values and messages – like breathing in and out through the year. For my family, they act like a compass.
People across religions, ancient and modern, celebrate the turning of the year. Traditions, yes, but also a wonderful way to renew ourselves. We’re divided by language, culture and religion, but united by our common home.
We can choose to live outside nature, inside technology – but our lives are richer, and our children’s lives filled more deeply, when we connect with these natural cycles.
Explore harvest and autumn learning with our Farming Through the Year workbook and Seasons & Festivals collection.
