By Annie Plane

As a seasoned Steiner “lifer” and ten-time Michaelmas-er myself, I can sometimes be overly blase about what can be for many first-time students an eye opening in their Waldorf education. Interviews with first time students garnered varied responses from “It was fun.” to “It’s f#!?%g weird and y’all are a cult.” Most more experienced high schoolers just complained about the heat (which, I have noticed, has steadily increased each year as the planet progressively melts into a puddle of microplastics) and the lack of access to water. One senior offered, “It’s grown on me since 6^th grade, and nobody told me I was supposed to wear red.” A recently arrived 11th grader from Belgium described a celebration at her previous Steiner school that involved the 6^th grade dressing up as one long dragon, while one fifth grader stepped forth as Michael to ‘vanquish’ it. She described our festivities as “smaller” and “comparatively normal.”  

What is this yearly festival that at best elicits mixed responses? That is one of the most public facing aspects of our Waldorf education? What does ‘Michaelmas’ mean? And does it matter?  

In brief (and I mean brief, liturgical scholars do not know how to summarize), the Archangel Michael is one of the four principal angels of the bible and is renowned for having cast Lucifer and his band of renegade angels into hell in the book of revelation. Saint Michael the Archangel was never canonized but has deep roots within medieval catholic theology. The initial base of the Michael mythos is with the late 5^th century story of the dedication of the Solarian church on Monte Gargano. The story goes that when a nobleman’s bull was trapped in a cave, he shot at it with a bow and arrow and found that the arrow bounced back and returned the blow to himself. Upon hearing of this miracle, locals gathered at the cave to fast and pray. Before long, the angel Michael appeared, healed the man’s injuries, and appointed the people to build a shrine at this spot. This was initially celebrated May 8^th, but it was conflated with a later Micheal related event a century later. The story goes that When a plague struck Rome in the late 6^th century, the Pope Saint Gregory the Great instructed people to parade each day in front of the Moles Hadrian temple. On the third day, he saw the apparition of the angel Michael on top of the shrine, sheathing a bloody sword. This was seen as an omen of the end of the plague. This day was celebrated September 29^th, and by the 8th century Michaelmas was firmly established in September in Anglo Saxon Europe, especially Celtic regions. In a later 9th century story, Archangel Micheal is summoned to battle a demon in the form of a dragon, on Mount Dol in Britanny; the story recounted through Michaelmas songs in the elementary grades.  

For the next few centuries, Michaelmas, though celebrated through odd customs (most of which involved geese), lost most of its religious significance. By the 16^th century and onwards, Michaelmas was used simply as a date in the calendar year, especially in academics and recordkeeping. Searches for “Michaelmas” in most online archives produce pages on pages of ledgers and academic reports (broken only by an article about Michaelmas Term, a 1604 homoerotic satirical play following a naive gentleman who is swindled out of his money).  

When Rudolph Steiner began his own cannon of philosophy, anthroposophy, in the latter half of the 19^th century, he sought to revive the holiday. Steiner called his own epoch of intellectual awakening, “the Michael age,” believing that the Angel Michael embodied the kind of spiritual enlightenment that modern humans should strive for. Steiner instated Michaelmas as a kind of parallel holiday to Easter: the latter being the story of a death, then a spiritual resurrection; Michaelmas must then be the story of a spiritual resurrection, then death. “In order not to sleep in a half dead state that will dim my Self-consciousness between death and new birth, but rather through my inner forces before I die.”  Michaelmas is meant to bring awareness of self and society: we should spiritually awaken ourselves to prepare for death. 

I decided to prod Mr. Marsch, who has been a Waldorf teacher for over 25 years, and who studied German philosophy in college, about some of these philosophical aspects of Michaelmas; he gave responses perhaps more illuminating than a few lines from Steiner’s lectures.  

At Chicago Waldorf, Michaelmas gave the impression of “An attempt to bring pedagogical meaning to something that was just on the calendar.” “The experience of summer [vacation] for students, teachers, adults and children is giving yourself to natural processes.” This “sensory” experience of the world needs to be let go once school begins and nature begins to wither away. Energy instead needs to be turned inward towards mental and spiritual participation. A course like the current 11th grade main lesson on sequences and series, he believes, would be nearly impossible to teach during unfocused months like July. The Michaelmas dragon is meant to ground us; Mr. Marsh imagines him worldly, walking past the liquor store.  If Michaelmas is meant to physically calm and spiritually awaken us, why have a large outdoor celebration with chaotic games? Why not an assembly like those for winter holidays, before spring break, and even last year’s assembly in honor of Black History Month? I point out that the current style of Michaelmas festivities is far from popular among highschoolers. Mr. Marsch agrees. “It’s run its course,” he says. The current festivities are easy and cheap enough for the school to organize, but “it is against the spirit of Michaelmas to keep repeating them.”  

Other students and faculty I talked to believe that our yearly Michaelmas festivities are at least in need of a redesign. Though many might advocate that the holiday be retired completely (not without good reason, considering its strongly catholic origins), the central role of Micheal and Michaelmas in Steiner’s philosophy make that unlikely. Instead, I believe we should use the intended inward energy and celebrate indoors, or at least somewhere with less risk of heat stroke (or, might I even suggest, a day of schoolwide reflection, to be taken at home?). Michaelmas, as such an iconic and foundational part of Waldorf education, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so I encourage students and faculty to have open conversations about what celebrations should look like going forwards. We have plenty of time to plan.