Mabon

Mabon is most often pronounced MAY-bon in modern pagan use. MAB-on is also heard, and the Welsh pronunciation is closer to MAH-bon, since the name comes from Welsh and belongs to the figure Mabon ap Modron. Any of the three will be understood, and MAY-bon is the safe default at a public ritual.

Pagans call the fall equinox Mabon, Harvest Home, or Alban Elfed, and many simply call it the autumn equinox, kept between September 21 and 24. Mabon is the most common name, given to the festival in 1974 and carried through Wiccan and wider pagan use since, though some practitioners question the name because its Welsh source has no harvest connection. Alban Elfed is the Druid name, used in the OBOD tradition. The day itself is kept by witches and pagans across traditions, whichever name sits on the calendar.

Witches on Mabon gather the season in and set it on the table. Most keep some form of the five parts: a walk for acorns and pinecones, a supper with apples at the center, an altar dressed in harvest colors, something given away, and the first long night marked when it falls. Wiccans who keep a ritual year often mark the Sacrifice of the God at this festival, the Wiccan telling in which the god gives his strength to the harvest, while other witches keep the day with the table and the walk alone.

Mabon falls on the astronomical first day of fall, the autumn equinox between September 21 and 24. Meteorologists start fall earlier, on September 1, because whole months are easier for record keeping, so whether Mabon opens the season depends on which calendar is asked. By the sky's own reckoning, the equinox is the turn, and Mabon stands on it.

The foods to eat on Mabon are apples first, then squash, fresh bread, nuts, the last of the berries, and cider warm or cold. Apples lead the table because the orchard harvest peaks at the equinox, and the Mabon apples page gives the fruit its full due, from the star in the cut apple to the dishes worth building around it. A Mabon supper needs no recipe beyond the season: what the market piles highest in late September is the menu.