Lúnasa: Where Joy And Grief Share The Same Table

Joy and grief are not strangers at Lúnasa – they sit together at the same table, share the same bread, drink from the same cup. This first harvest of the old Irish calendar is often spoken of as a festival of plenty – golden grain, heavy fruit, cornucopia spilling over with abundance. But behind the feast lies a funeral.

The festival is held in honour of Tailtiu, foster-mother to Lugh. She cleared the forests of Ireland so that crops might grow – labour so fierce and unrelenting that it cost her her life. Without that work there would be no harvest; without that death, no reason to gather. Lugh decreed that her sacrifice should never be forgotten, and so the feast was shaped around remembrance. The people mourned with both tears and games – running, wrestling, horse racing, climbing, contests of strength and skill. Each victory, each feast, was both celebration and lament. Gratitude and grief poured from the same cup.

This is the lesser-known face of Lúnasa – that abundance is never without cost, and that cost is not something to be hidden away. It belongs to the feast; it gives it its weight. The first weighing of the year happens here – one hand holding what has ripened, the other hand holding the price that brought it forth.

It is a story that speaks volumes today, where the true cost of labour is so often hidden. I'll never forget, a few years ago and young child once told me he thought milk came from a carton. And perhaps that is the clearest image of all – that we no longer see the cow, the grass, the hand that milks, the body that tends. We see only the end product, not the life that fed it. Whether in fast fashion, industrial farming, or the greenwashing of corporations, the truth of cost is buried beneath the promise of plenty.

Tailtiu’s story cuts through the centuries to remind us – the feast is not free. Somebody, somewhere, has paid. And if we turn away from that truth, we dishonour the gift.

And perhaps that is why Tailtiu’s story called to me so strongly this Lúnasa. Her death, born of labour for the people’s sustenance, mirrors in myth what we live in flesh – that work has weight, that harvest carries sacrifice. To consume without consciousness is to break the circle. To honour the cost is to keep the covenant between labour and life.

And so the water element rises now – not as flood, but as an underground stream, carrying with it both joy and grief. Beauty here is quieter, inward, woven from what has been endured. The Enchantress archetype speaks not of seduction, but of restoration – the weaving together of broken threads, the tending of what was frayed.

Lúnasa teaches us that to celebrate abundance without naming its cost is to leave the story unfinished. My own harvest this year – the autumn collection – carries both. It is the fruit of a full year’s work, and it bears the mark of hands that have since had to learn stillness. It is joy held alongside its price, as the people once honoured Tailtiu with both mourning and games.

Joy and grief share the same table. They always have. To drink from that shared cup is to return to ourselves – conscious of the cost, honouring of the hands, and awake to the gift.

This reflection is part of 'Sanctuary of the Waters: Where Beauty Comes to Rest' , my Autumn / Water Element 2025 newsletter. The full letter will be shared shortly – you are warmly invited to join here.

© 2025 Niamh Criostail and Heartlands Publishing. All rights reserved.

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