The Michaelmas Dance 2025 is tomorrow night, so I’m taking a short moment before writing out a final shopping list to reflect on traditions old and new. Deeply sunk in the earth of my mind are carrots, for I always bake a large carrot cake for the ticketed dances. Four cups of grated carrots are a lot of carrots.
Carrots are traditionally associated with Michaelmas in Scotland, which served as a Christian harvest festival to replace the pagan ones. Women would dig up the last ones on the Sunday before the feast day with a three-pronged fork representing the Blessed Trinity. This Sunday was therefore called Carrot Sunday.
Other traditional Michaelmas activities included feasting, dancing, horse racing, and (on Michaelmas Eve) stealing rivals’ horses and/or guarding one’s own. I hasten to add that these activities took place long ago and rather northwest of Edinburgh. Here the feast is most likely to be kept by the local Waldorf (Steiner philosophy) school, which hails St. Michael as a symbol of courage before the coming winter, and someone who helps us to overcome our own dragons. But being from Toronto–whose patron saint St. Michael is–I am happy to revive a tradition of the Western Isles here.
I do draw the line at baking the traditional Michaelmas struan, a kind of griddle scone that sounds most unappetising and reminiscent of the days when almost everyone in Scotland was poor and sugar hadn’t been discovered yet. Apparently struan was made from different kinds of grain and moistened with ewe’s milk: no, thank you. I much prefer a good carrot cake.
Excitement grew, in those old times, as preparations for the great feast (and its dancing and horse-racing) were afoot, and the same can be said for the Michaelmas Dance 2025. I add to the growing list of ticket-buyers and keep a tally of the gender ratio (currently neck-and-neck). I check in with the musicians and weather the various alarms and excursions (“But can we waltz to the Polonaise?”). The ceilidh callers have kindly agreed to volunteer. Our jazz singer, en route to Canada from Italy, has arrived and rehearsed with our jazz pianist. I have laid in half the supplies of beer. And of course we have had the dance workshops, three Sundays in a row.
Well, now I must go and make the shopping list.