Lammas 2025

The Friday before last it was Lammas (1st August). Although some people may celebrate on 31st July or 2nd August. My usual celebration for this sabbat is baking. This year I made gingerbread and also bread (using a mix).

The gingerbread recipe is the BBC Good Food one that I've used for the past several years: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/gingerbread_men_99096

This Lammas I made standard "men" shapes and a couple of other ones. Last year I used ready made icing but this year I made up my own again (icing sugar mixed with water). I iced some of them completely. lol. Here's a pic: 

 

The bread mix I used was from Sainsbury's. I think it was a crusty white bread mix (I forgot to note it before I threw away the packet). It was quite nice. Here's a photo:

 I had some bread after I'd baked it and more the next day for lunch, as a kind o Ploughman's lunch (with cheese and pickle, tortilla chips and guacamole). I also had some Thatchers Katy cider to drink. 

In the evening I lit a white candle since Lammas is a fire festival. 

The next day I went to the park for sunset (something I also like to do for sabbats). It wasn't as hot as the last time I went for Litha/the Summer Solstice (that was one of the hottest days) but still quite nice. I also went to Burger King and got a latte and a Coke. (They seem to have stopped doing mocha coffees for some reason!)

 Here are a couple of photos:

 

View from by Hove Park.

 

Sunset in the park.

The days are steadily shortening now, with sunset at 8.30pm in my area, compared to about 8.45pm when I went to the park. And sunrise is currently 5.41am, compared to 5.29am at the beginning of the month.

As I wrote in my spring-summer update, the weather has been varied in the UK this summer, with some hot weather and then cooler, rainy weather. We've had several heatwaves and a 4th one is forecast for this week. It may be up to 30C+ (86) in some places. The hottest it's been in my area of Sussex so far has been 28C (83F).

Having said that, you can feel hints of autumn starting to come in, even though we're still in summer, with the days getting shorter (as mentioned above) and colours mellowing. Adriana Tudorache of YR Studio has an autumn countdown series on her blog and although summer is my favourite season and I like to jold on to it as long as possible, I do like autumn as well. It's interesting to observe seasonal changes, which is what I do by celebrating the sabbats. 

If that's something you're also interested in, you can find Adriana's autumn countdown here:  https://yrstudio.co.uk/blogs/adriana-tudorache-blog/tagged/autumn-countdown

The next sabbat will be Madron aka Mabon/the Autumn Equinox (22nd September this year), which is considered the "official" start of autumn. Although some consider it to start on 1st September (it depends whether you go by the meteorological or astronomical start. I will do a post about my Madron celebrations.

Hope you had a good Lammas and your summer has been going well! (Or hope you had a good Imbolg/Imbolc and your winter has been going well! :)

 

P.S. Here is Adriana's slow living to-do list for August: https://yrstudio.co.uk/blogs/adriana-tudorache-blog/slow-living-august-english-countryside-to-do-list-autumn