The first harvest festival of the season

August 1st is the day that the Celts in Ireland celebrated the first harvest of the Autumn known as Lughnasadh (loo’-naw-suh).  It has various names across the Gaelic world and even was celebrated in England as Lammas–the Christian appropriation of the pagan holiday (all of the Christian holidays started as pagan holidays but I won’t bore you with a lecture…..for now).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lughnasadh