How to Celebrate Mabon

What is Mabon?

Mabon is an old European and Scandinavian harvest festival. You may see the word Mabon tossed around with words like “Pagan” and “Witchcraft” but don’t let that scare you away. While it is a common holiday amongst the more mystically inclined, “Pagan” just means “Wasn’t Christian when we wrote it down” when it comes to the history books. So, chances are, your ancestors took part in Mabon, and there wasn’t a single spell or blasphemous word spoken amongst them!

Joking aside, Mabon is technically a harvest festival, the second one after a game and harvest festival known as Lughnasa (Or Lamas). Where Lughnasa was a large and boisterous festival, Mabon is sort of like the Pagan Thanksgiving. There may be a meal to give thanks for the prosperity of the year, but the primary function of the time was to take stock of how the year’s crops and livestock had fared and put away what would be needed for the winter months ahead.

That meant storing grains, meats, and fruits by drying them out and salting them. This process was usually attended to for around a week, so the “festival” stretches the span of about 6 to 8 days.

Since Mabon begins at the start of the Autumn solstice, the wobble of the earth will cause a change in its start date, ranging from the 21st of September to the 23rd of September and then ending some 8 days later.

How to Celebrate 

Well, you can go out and pick some apples or other seasonal vegetation, and you can arrange a gathering with friends. Take stock of what you have and what you need, and help your close friends and family do the same. After all that is said and done, if you decide you’ve got something worth celebrating, have yourself a meal of thanksgiving and be thankful for what and who you have.

Final note, if you do some googling, you will see that the apple is the symbol of this time of year, and you may wonder why. Well, it’s not some mystical reason, it’s pretty simple. Apples would have begun ripening around this time in western Europe and the British isles, and the dishes served during meals would certainly have been incorporating apples into the food, juices, and liquors. We put together some recipes for you on this post!