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Jeremiah 9:22:
"Bodies will be scattered across the fields like dung, or like bundles of grain after the
harvest..." The point taken here is the allusion to bundles of crops tied in the middle, a standard image of end of summer
work with grain stalks.
Christianity talks about a Great Harvest of souls and often uses crops and plants in teaching stories such
as the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, so in the Bible the symbolic harvest can be bad or good.
What could be more basic to humanity
than growing crops and harvesting them for survival? Some Biblical examples are found at:
Luke 10:2 "And he said to them, “The
harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into
his harvest. "
Matthew
13:30 "Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and
bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."
Galatians
6:9 "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up."
The Bible book of Ruth is set during harvest time. After a field
was harvested, by law the harvesters could not go back over the field to gather what they missed the first time. This was
a provision for the poor who were allowed to come into the field after the first harvest and glean what was left.
According to the Book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, farmers should leave corners of their fields unharvested (pe'ah), should
not pick up that which was dropped (gleanings), and should not harvest any over-looked produce that had been forgotten when
they harvested the majority of a field.
Different types of grain were especially appreciated by early
man because it had more food energy to impart than garden vegetables and foraged foods such as berries, nuts, and mushrooms. Grain
could be stored for long periods of time.
Since man began to live in western Europe and grow and improve crops of grain,
there have been harvest festivals and gods.
The worship of nature in general eventually generated specific gods and goddesses
with various aspects connected to fertility and bloodshed, myths of yearly resurrection, and godlike and human like qualities
ascribed to the crops.
Maybe it was because the harvest provided for the very life and
body of humans that the grain especially was thought of in terms of the human body.
One very old custom called Crying the Neck is
still observed in England.
This seems to have a correlation to ancient harvest customs. Man, Myth &
Magic, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown, tells about a harvest custom enacted when
the gleaners reached the last ears of grain. This last handful was called 'the neck". The oldest reaper was given
the task of cutting the last handful and then shouted : "I havet! I havet!, I havet !t! When
asked what he had, he replied, 'A neck! A neck! A neck!' The sheaf was cut with much merriment, decked with ribbons and
then left until the following year..." (Cavendish, 456).
Crying the Neck
As summer ended, harvest festivals were held in Europe and the British Isles. The various
celebrations lasted until the beginning of winter. These festivals celebrated the end of the hard manual labor that
was required to bring in the crops. They celebrated the hope that there would be plenty of food to keep the people
alive until the next harvest. Many deities were given honor in the belief that their favor caused the crops to grow.
Though the names were different depending on the locality, the harvest gods and goddesses shared similar aspects. These pagan festivals were adopted by the church and renamed after various saints,
replacing the names of the old gods and goddesses. Many churches still show evidence of pagan art and customs, literally
carved and built into the church itself. These
harvest festivals and agrarian customs are still found today in places, sometimes in disguised form and sometimes
acknowledged openly.
Many harvest and end of year festivals that evolved were scary in nature
and often involved bloody rituals and tales connected to pagan beliefs about the dead and the spiritual world.
Samhain was one such festival
that was observes in Ireland. There is a brief mention of it in the Irish play Riders To the Sea. When the dark days
of Samhain are mentioned, they allude to the actual bleak late fall and early winter days as well as to the grimmer aspects
of ritual observance.
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