Feast days and the farming year

In 1089, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports, the harvest was so late that many people reaped their grain around Martinmas, the feast of St. Martin on November 11, or even later. The chronicler gave no month or day; readers knew when Martinmas fell.

The church year was full of feasts for Christ, Mary and the saints. Some fell on the same date every year, such as Candlemas, the feast of the Purification of Mary, on February 2, and Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, on September 29. Others, the movable feasts, were counted from Easter, whose date changed from year to year. From the 1200s to the 1400s, documents were often dated by a weekday and a nearby feast, such as "the Wednesday before the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul." Lammas, August 1, kept its Old English name, hlafmæsse, from hlaf, "loaf" or "bread."

Feasts also divided the working year. Four quarter days, Lady Day (March 25), Midsummer (June 24), Michaelmas and Christmas, were the usual days to pay rent. Michaelmas came after the harvest, and farm tenancies often began or ended then. By the 1500s many servants were hired by the year at hiring fairs, around Michaelmas in some regions and Martinmas in others. The royal Exchequer, which audited the king's accounts, counted its financial year from Michaelmas to Michaelmas. On fish days, which included the weeks of Lent, the church forbade meat.

When Britain changed its calendar in 1752, Parliament kept markets and fairs, including fairs for hiring servants, on the same natural days as before, so by the new dates they fell eleven days later.

In the library, What to do on the farm each month, by Thomas Tusser, starts the farming year at Michaelmas, when a new tenant usually took over a farm, and times the work by saints' days and the moon. His dairy season runs to St. Andrew's Day, November 30, and he names St. Bartholomew's Day (August 24) as a time for fairs. A year in a sentence: entries from the Chronicle dates a hard winter, a flood, a late harvest and a king's voyage by feasts. Recipes from the king's kitchen gives some dishes in two forms, one for meat days and one for fish days. A diary for every day of the year includes Samuel Pepys's Christmas dinner of roast beef and mince pies.