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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Harvest Festival
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The old ceremony of 'harvest home', celebrating the gathering of the final stook of corn, was a convivial and often disorderly banquet for the harvesters. But in the respectable mid-19C the event was gradually taken over by the church; 'Come, ye thankful people, come,/ Raise the song of Harvest-home', in the words of a hymn of the time. Nowadays, when the gathering of the harvest is largely mechanical, the produce itself has become the centre of attention – with a profusion of vegetables and loaves of bread arranged round the altars of country churches.
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