Autumn Wind

Autumn wind washes away fallen leaves and over fallow fields of leftover grain, recently harvested by a hungry country unable to abstain from eating everything in sight. The lingering seeds not taken by the farmers or picked apart by birds will spend the winter frozen, hoping to thaw in summer and spring forth to life, satisfying the insatiable appetite of some spaghetti spinning child. The word autumn comes from the Old French word autumne, and was later normalised to the original Latin word autumnus. Before the 16th century, harvest was the term usually used to refer to the season, as it is common in other West Germanic languages to this day. However, as more people gradually moved from working the land to living in towns the word harvest lost its reference to the time of year and came to refer only to the actual activity of reaping, and autumn, as well as fall, began to replace it as a reference to the season. Association with the transition from warm to cold weather, and its related status as the season of the primary harvest, has dominated its themes and popular images. In Western cultures, personifications of autumn are usually pretty, well-fed females adorned with fruits, vegetables and grains that ripen at this time. Many cultures feature autumnal harvest festivals, often the most important on their calendars. Still extant echoes of these celebrations are found in the mid-autumn Thanksgiving holiday of the United States and Canada, and the Jewish Sukkot holiday with its roots as a full-moon harvest festival.