At General Synod in 2025, the Anglican Church of Canada adopted the Feast of the Creator, adding it to our liturgical calendar on 1 September each year. This is part of a widespread ecumenical project seeking to offer another opportunity for Christians to connect God’s act of creation and sustaining of all life with their own faith. This shared feast unites us across many ecclesial borders and addresses the growing concern for climate change and its effects around the world.
In the conversations that I was part of regarding this new feast, I asked how it would connect to our ancient—if underused in modern-day—Anglican cycle of creation celebrations. I was surprised to learn how many people were unaware of these traditions, or who had heard of them but had not had the opportunity to participate in them. Rogation, Lammas Day, and Harvest Thanksgiving are a trio of celebrations of our relationship with the natural world which may deserve renewed attention in the twenty-first century.
Many Canadian Anglicans have heard of Rogation Day (or days) but may not have had the opportunity to participate in the traditions associated with this time. Rogation takes its name from the Latin verb rogare, to ask or request. Held at the beginning of planting season, Rogation liturgies were an opportunity to formally ask God for good weather, abundant harvests, and deliverance from calamities such as drought and flood.
Traditionally, Rogation is marked as the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day. In practice, the time of observance is flexible depending on what the local growing season looks like. The service often included a celebration of the Eucharist and a procession around the parish bounds, singing litanies and hymns of praise, blessing seeds, fields, and equipment along the way. The procession was also a practical opportunity to take care of spring details like checking fences that needed mending before animals were moved to pasture, and so on.
Rogation is an opportunity to remember and give thanks for the abundance of the previous year’s harvest. It is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of our dependence on God’s loving generosity. After all, we might scatter the seeds, but it is God who sends rain and sun to make them grow into the crops we share. Rogation, whenever you observe it, is a great time to bless seeds, plants, gardens, fields, and tools, to invite the community to a plant sale or work in a community garden, and to plan spring cleanup events in the neighbourhood.
Lammas Day is probably the least well-known of these three celebrations, even though it appears in our BCP calendar on August 1. The name, Lammas, is a combination of the Anglo-Saxon word meaning “loaf mass”. The day was a celebration of thanksgiving using the first bread made from the earliest wheat harvests. The tradition of the congregation baking bread from the new wheat crop and bringing it to church to be offered to God for blessing diminished greatly during the Reformation, but some communities in the Anglican Communion have revived it more recently.
Depending on your local growing season, August 1 may not be the ideal time for a Lammas Day celebration, but it is easily moved to an appropriate time to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest. It would also make for a great opportunity to host a summer fair, a parish picnic, and to hold educational events around local, native plants, especially edible ones!
Harvest Thanksgiving is familiar to most Canadians because it was enshrined in our civic calendar in 1879. This celebration focuses on gratitude for the abundance God has provided in the year’s harvest. All has been safely gathered in, and we have provisions for the coming winter.
There is also, of course, profound gratitude that the work of harvest is done! Many of us do not perform the physical labour of harvesting much of our own food these days, but Harvest Thanksgiving would be an ideal time to remember and give thanks for those who do. All of the farmers, migrant farmworkers, seafarers, and other labourers around the world who make the abundance of food in our supermarkets and on our tables possible.
Harvest Thanksgiving is a wonderful opportunity for all kinds of community gatherings. Who doesn’t love to gather in fellowship over food and drink? Invite the neighbourhood to a community feast, encourage community elders and experienced cooks and bakers to share treasured recipes with younger generations, write a communal litany of gratitude, or pair your expressions of thanksgiving with collections for a foodbank or the Migrant Farmworkers Mission.
We should rightly celebrate the ecumenical achievement that is the new Feast of the Creator. We should also remind ourselves of these ancient and distinctively Anglican ways of engaging with the created world of which God has made us stewards. We would do well to spend more time all year long giving thanks for the goodness of God’s creation, for the world that sustains us, and to rejoice and praise the God who entrusts the care of this good creation to us.
Giving Thanks for Creation Through the Year
At General Synod in 2025, the Anglican Church of Canada adopted the Feast of the Creator, adding it to our liturgical calendar on 1 September each year. This is part of a widespread ecumenical project seeking to offer another opportunity for Christians to connect God’s act of creation and sustaining of all life with their own faith. This shared feast unites us across many ecclesial borders and addresses the growing concern for climate change and its effects around the world.
In the conversations that I was part of regarding this new feast, I asked how it would connect to our ancient—if underused in modern-day—Anglican cycle of creation celebrations. I was surprised to learn how many people were unaware of these traditions, or who had heard of them but had not had the opportunity to participate in them. Rogation, Lammas Day, and Harvest Thanksgiving are a trio of celebrations of our relationship with the natural world which may deserve renewed attention in the twenty-first century.
Many Canadian Anglicans have heard of Rogation Day (or days) but may not have had the opportunity to participate in the traditions associated with this time. Rogation takes its name from the Latin verb rogare, to ask or request. Held at the beginning of planting season, Rogation liturgies were an opportunity to formally ask God for good weather, abundant harvests, and deliverance from calamities such as drought and flood.
Traditionally, Rogation is marked as the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day. In practice, the time of observance is flexible depending on what the local growing season looks like. The service often included a celebration of the Eucharist and a procession around the parish bounds, singing litanies and hymns of praise, blessing seeds, fields, and equipment along the way. The procession was also a practical opportunity to take care of spring details like checking fences that needed mending before animals were moved to pasture, and so on.
Rogation is an opportunity to remember and give thanks for the abundance of the previous year’s harvest. It is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of our dependence on God’s loving generosity. After all, we might scatter the seeds, but it is God who sends rain and sun to make them grow into the crops we share. Rogation, whenever you observe it, is a great time to bless seeds, plants, gardens, fields, and tools, to invite the community to a plant sale or work in a community garden, and to plan spring cleanup events in the neighbourhood.
Lammas Day is probably the least well-known of these three celebrations, even though it appears in our BCP calendar on August 1. The name, Lammas, is a combination of the Anglo-Saxon word meaning “loaf mass”. The day was a celebration of thanksgiving using the first bread made from the earliest wheat harvests. The tradition of the congregation baking bread from the new wheat crop and bringing it to church to be offered to God for blessing diminished greatly during the Reformation, but some communities in the Anglican Communion have revived it more recently.
Depending on your local growing season, August 1 may not be the ideal time for a Lammas Day celebration, but it is easily moved to an appropriate time to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest. It would also make for a great opportunity to host a summer fair, a parish picnic, and to hold educational events around local, native plants, especially edible ones!
Harvest Thanksgiving is familiar to most Canadians because it was enshrined in our civic calendar in 1879. This celebration focuses on gratitude for the abundance God has provided in the year’s harvest. All has been safely gathered in, and we have provisions for the coming winter.
There is also, of course, profound gratitude that the work of harvest is done! Many of us do not perform the physical labour of harvesting much of our own food these days, but Harvest Thanksgiving would be an ideal time to remember and give thanks for those who do. All of the farmers, migrant farmworkers, seafarers, and other labourers around the world who make the abundance of food in our supermarkets and on our tables possible.
Harvest Thanksgiving is a wonderful opportunity for all kinds of community gatherings. Who doesn’t love to gather in fellowship over food and drink? Invite the neighbourhood to a community feast, encourage community elders and experienced cooks and bakers to share treasured recipes with younger generations, write a communal litany of gratitude, or pair your expressions of thanksgiving with collections for a foodbank or the Migrant Farmworkers Mission.
We should rightly celebrate the ecumenical achievement that is the new Feast of the Creator. We should also remind ourselves of these ancient and distinctively Anglican ways of engaging with the created world of which God has made us stewards. We would do well to spend more time all year long giving thanks for the goodness of God’s creation, for the world that sustains us, and to rejoice and praise the God who entrusts the care of this good creation to us.
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