The Autumn is here and a New Year too?

So again the autumn is here and the nights draw in and as they do we seem to start a new year or yearly cycle governed by school, jumpers and Christmas.

Please don’t tell me it’s too early to start talking about Christmas as I would actually have to agree with you. I always like to celebrate my birthday (the end of October if anyone is wishing to surprise me with gifts!) before turning my attention to the “C” word but, that seems really difficult to do as every shop now has some form of festive apparel sitting on shelves ready for purchase.

Back to School

With the end of the summer holidays a new school year is probably the trigger for the feeling of a new year starting. A new class, maybe a new school or even the beginning of college, university or an apprenticeship. This new school year always seems to bring a sense of being a year older (even as an adult, this sense of moving up a year is still fixed in me at this time of year) and then our thoughts turn to those of warm clothes, jumpers and scarves, and retrieving them from their summer storage – the suitcase under the bed or the cupboard above the wardrobe, packing away flimsy dresses and t-shirts and ending the summer for another year.

Jam making and preserving for the year ahead

Harvest Festival

The preparations involved for seeing us through the coldest months of the year all happen now and even though January is the start of a new calendar year, Autumn seems to bring with it tasks that do lead to the year ahead. Harvest festival for example, gathering of the crops and the necessary processes to store food to take us through – pickling and jam making are just two – I realise that we don’t all make jam from the blackberries on the brambles now or pickle the onions as we dig them up from the field (garden or allotment) but are these feelings passed to us from generations before? Animals know instinctively the seasons and what they need to do for survival so surely it must follow that somewhere deep down we have a sense of what we need to plan for and now is the time to prepare food and shelter for our own survival for the next year.