The Seasons Round
by Lorri Amsden
“Soul, soul, for a souling cake, I pray, good missus, a souling cake. Apple or pear, a plum or a cherry, Any good thing to make us all merry.”
While it’s true that modern man sees time as linear, or as a great line stretching both behind and before us, to the ancient agrarian societies whose lives revolved around the harvest, time was cyclical. The year was seeing as a great wheel that turned through the seasons, and to many ancient cultures, the end of October marked the beginning of the New Year. With the end of October came the death of the Sun God which brought the cold as the days grew short descending the world into the darkness from which all new life begins.
October marked the time when the harvest had been reaped; the livestock gathered and brought in. To the ancients, bountiful grain fields were a sign of health and harmony and from the last of the corn, barley, oats wheat or rye, dollies were fashioned and cherished as the embodiment of the reaping. The dollies were always fertility charms and some would put her to bed until the following year when she would be buried in the new field, while others would hang her in the kitchen to promote prosperity during the dark time to come.
Two themes central to this season were honoring the dead and divining the future. The people of the Birtish Isles called October 31, Samhain or ‘end of summer’ and they believed that on this night, the barriers, or the veil, between the worlds grew thin merging the different planes of existence making it possible to look through and divine the future. It was also believed that, on this one night, the dead could, if they wished, return to the land of the living to celebrate with their families so feasts were served with extra places set at the table and food set out for any who had died that year. In Sweden, it was tradition to draw extra chairs to the fire and set out cups of milk for visiting souls.
The Catholic Church established All Saints Day on Nov 2 to merge the holidays into a day to honor all the saints and today many Catholic families set aside this day to remember their relatives who have passed, by having picnics near their loved ones’ graves lunching on “soul foods” made of peas or lentils.
There are many foods central to this holiday many of which, to pay homage to the harvest, are grain oriented. Indeed, the time-honored tradition of baking for the holidays goes back to antiquity. There is something very magical in baking up a special dish for family and friends. The tradition of giving Soul Cakes, a small cake filled with allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon or currants, originated in Britain or Ireland during the Middle Ages. Soul cakes, farthing cake, or Saumans loafs were made for distribution among the poor and handed out to children with “a blessing upon the living and a prayer for the dead.” In Scotland, the soul cakes were made of oat flour and known as Dirge
