Happy Michaelmas! Please enjoy reading about Michaelmas
here, in the Writer's Almanac, and
here, in Wikipedia. It's the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, a great warrior, and here he is in Belgium with his sword and shield. I am so glad Michaelmas falls on Thor's Day in the blog!
To celebrate, we should tonight eat a stubble goose and, if we are printers, have a wayzgoose party, involving eating the goose and then covering our windows with paper pulp against the hard winter to come, especially if we don't have glass.
I forgot to pick up a stubble goose at the grocery store yesterday, so I think it's potatoes for us.
A stubble goose is not a goose that needs a shave but instead a goose prepared after the harvest. So that's why they keep flying away in great haste!
Michaelmas is one of those holidays that moves around a bit on the calendar, and Old Michaelmas Day fell around October 8 (so maybe we can celebrate again), and was the end of blackberries for the season. Putting all your blackberries into pies and cobblers is still the right thing to do for Michaelmas, whenever it falls, because you want to use them up by the day Michael the Archangel sent Lucifer down from Heaven where he fell into a blackberry bush and cursed it.
Photo credits for St. Michael in Belgium
here. Lucifer falling by Gustave Dore in the
public domain and
Paradise Lost. Ah, time to re-read
Paradise Lost, by John Milton.
Happy Michaelmas! But for you, I might never have known the part about the stubble goose. I don't think our St. Michael's parish has ever offered one up.
ReplyDeleteBlackberry pies, though, I hope!
ReplyDeleteOoo, lots to think about here. Thanks for the nudge and the wonderful Dore image. He's fantastic all around.
ReplyDeleteDon't think too hard, though, because mostly I'm just drooling at the thought of blackberry cobbler.
ReplyDeleteHappy Michaelmas to you Kathleen! Happy reading and blackberry eating!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Carol!
ReplyDeleteLove it, and I'm so much smarter because of you.
ReplyDelete