Holy Rood Church, Swinton

A local church serving its community

Harvest Festival 2007

Sunday 30th September

Come and join us whilst we celebrate the 'Harvest'

How Harvest Festivals began...

Our Harvest Festivals have very ancient origins. Festivals that celebrate the harvest by giving thanks to God have been held right back in time to hundreds of years before Jesus.

You can read about them in Leviticus (chapter 23) and Deuteronomy (chapter 15 & 16).

In Old Testament times, the first thanksgiving of the year was Passover, with the sacrifice of the first spring lamb and presentation of the first sheaf of wheat. The wheat harvest went on for fifty days and ended with the Festival of Weeks, Shavuot, (Pentecost, meaning fiftieth). Later there was the Feast of Tabernacles a celebration of the wine harvest.

These were all offerings of first fruits at the shrine, or Temple to thank God for liberation from Egypt and the desert and for the gift of the Law, as well as for the provision of food. Thus they linked thanksgiving for that year's food with Israel's historical faith in being the chosen people of God.

God was always to be thanked, for the land was the Lord's, and the people of Israel had only a 'life interest' in it. Some produce was to be left on the vine or in the field for 'the alien, the fatherless and the widow' because: 'Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt therefore I am commanding you to do this' Deuteronomy 24.21.

In Deuteronomy -a very practical book -it says that if it is not possible to transport the animals and grain, they could be converted into money and taken to the shrine, where other animals and grain could be bought with the money, offered and eaten. (Tithing to support the servants of the Temple, the Levites, also developed from these offerings.)

In Britain, for many years, there were unofficial religious festivals of thanksgiving for the harvest. By the mid-nineteenth century it was common to hold an annual parochial festival, which linked the gift of the fruits of the earth with our responsibility to God to use them 'to his glory, for our own well being and for the relief of those in need'.

The emphasis thus became less on 'first fruits', and more on thankfulness for the ingathering of the harvest.

So this autumn's Harvest Festival is our opportunity to bring gifts of food and money to help God's work of supporting other people in our community who are less fortunate than ourselves and serves as a reminder for us all to give thanks to God for our good fortune.

Office Address:

Holy Rood Church

Moorside Road

Swinton

Salford

M27 0HJ