Michaelmas

From the Historic UK website:

• Feast of Michael and All Angels.
  
• As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days.
• In England, it is one of the “quarter days”. There are traditionally four “quarter days” in a year (Lady Day (25th March), Midsummer (24th June), Michaelmas (29th September) and Christmas (25th December)). They are spaced three months apart, on religious festivals, usually close to the solstices or equinoxes. They were the four dates on which servants were hired, rents due or leases begun.
• St Michael is one of the principal angelic warriors, protector against the dark of the night and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels. As Michaelmas is the time that the darker nights and colder days begin – the edge into winter – the celebration of Michaelmas is associated with encouraging protection during these dark months.
• A well fattened goose, fed on the stubble from the fields after the harvest, is eaten to protect against financial need in the family for the next year; and as the saying goes:

  “Eat a goose on Michaelmas Day,
  Want not for money all the year”. 

   

  More Michaelmas Links
  

  The Merry Foods of Michaelmas
  
  Richmond Waldorf School Michaelmas Page
  
  Michaelmas: Prayers, Food, and Flowers

  Project Britain: Michaelmas

  
  

Autumnal Equinox

"Th[e] word, autumn, goes all the way back through Medieval English and Old French, autumpne and autompne, to the Latin autumnus, which is listed as "of uncertain origin." It simply means the third season of the year, that time between summer and winter, and apparently it always has. But my big dictionary adds, comfortingly, "the season known in America as Fall." Fall, of course, means many things—the fall of the leaves, the fall of temperature, the fall of man perhaps. Follow that word back and you come out at Old Dutch and Old German, vallen and fallen, meaning to go down, to descend, pretty much what we mean today when we use the word as a verb. It must have come to us as a season name through the Anglo-Saxon.

"Whatever you choose to call it, it is a beautiful time of the year, a comfortable and comforting time. It brings some of the most beautiful days, with clear, blue skies and mild winds and comfortable temperatures. It is adorned with color in the woodlands. It is the end of summer, but it also is a thoroughly pleasant interval between summer and winter."

. . . . . . . Hal Borland's Book of Days