Few will remember it in today’s secularized Europe, but the feast of St. Martin of Tours, celebrated on Nov. 11 each year, has for centuries held a similar significance to Thanksgiving in the U.S.

Coinciding with the end of the harvest period in the countryside and the gradual onset of winter, two weeks before Advent, this feast is a time for gratitude and charity.

Although often stripped of much of its religious significance, it remains a popular peasant tradition that brings families and food-lovers together across much of the continent every year. It gives rise to all sorts of cultural events, adapted to local customs, and provides an opportunity to taste new wines and poultry — especially geese, which are closely associated with the saint of Tours in the popular imagination.

A Symbol of Sharing and Gratitude

Before being a seasonal peasant celebration, Nov. 11 marked primarily the burial of the great evangelizer of Europe, St. Martin, who lived between 316 and 397 just as Christianity was beginning to gain ground following the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 313.

Born in the Hungarian region of Pannonia, this son of a military commander of the Roman Empire converted to Christianity at the age of 10, while accompanying his father on a mission to Pavia, in today’s northern Italy. In the 330s, having himself become a Roman legionary assigned to the Gaul region in present-day France, young Martin came across a needy man trembling with cold, with whom he shared his cloak, cutting it in halves. In a dream the following night, he realized that it was Christ himself who had appeared to him in the guise of the destitute man.

Discharged from his military duties, the man who went down in history as the “Apostle of the Gauls” subsequently became a monk and introduced monasticism to the heart of modern-day France, converting crowds with his good works and the many miracles he performed. This monasticism then spread into the rest of Europe through the construction of churches and monasteries.

His extraordinary fame led to his being chosen by the people of Tours to replace their recently deceased bishop, despite the reluctance of the local clergy to accept him because of his unkempt appearance.

Legend has it that, panic-stricken by such a distinction far removed from his life as a hermit, the missionary monk fled and tried to hide in a farmhouse among a flock of geese which, agitated by this intrusion, signaled his presence to the crowd looking for him. This story illustrating his humility and asceticism quickly became legendary, and the image of the palmiped (webfooted bird) consequently became indelibly associated with him.

In the centuries that followed, the Nov. 11 feast day commemorating St. Martin became the subject of great popular devotion in Europe, giving rise to all kinds of celebrations around the symbolism of sharing, charity and gratitude for the harvests accumulated during the summer and autumn that would enable families to get through the winter.

New Wine, Roast Geese, Foie Gras…

A passage from Father Francis Weiser’s Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (1958) — quoted in a 2023 publication by Professor Jared Staudt — noted the particular importance of St. Martin’s Day in medieval Europe:

“The most common, and almost universal, harvest and thanksgiving celebration in medieval times was held on the Feast of Saint Martin of Tours (Martinmas) on November 11.”

The author continued:

“It was a holiday in Germany, France, Holland, England and in Central Europe. People first went to Mass and observed the rest of the day with games, dances, parades, and a festive dinner, the main feature of the meal being the traditional roast goose. With the goose dinner they drank Saint Martin’s wine, which was the first lot of wine made from the grapes of the recent harvest. Martinmas was the festival commemorating filled barns and stocked larders, the actual Thanksgiving Day of the Middle Ages.”

This passage makes no mention of Italy, where the miracle-worker of the Gauls first encountered Christianity, yet Nov. 11 has always featured prominently in the country’s list of popular festivals, even giving rise to the famous proverb “A San Martino, il mosto si trasforma in vino” (“On St. Martin’s Day, the must turns into wine”).

In Italy, as in the rest of Europe, this feast day has always been an opportunity for winegrowers to present their new vintages to local consumers each year, and have them blessed by a priest. It is a tradition that the de-Christianization of the Old Continent has not totally suppressed, as it continues in almost all countries in the form of popular wine and pastry tastings, particularly in the Central European countries of Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Hungary, the birthplace of the bishop-monk, is still very attached to these customs, which invariably bring geese to family tables and fairs combining gastronomic and folk music traditions. Hence the popular Hungarian saying that “He who does not eat goose on St. Martin’s Day will starve all next year.”

As Providence would have it, the commemoration of St. Martin’s burial coincides with the period when the poultry reach maturity, having been well fed with the corn harvest during the summer and early autumn. This offers an opportunity for farmers to sell them in large quantities on city markets, and for consumers to get a foretaste of the Christmas festivities by enjoying roast geese and, in the case of Hungary and France, the first foie gras (goose liver) of the year.

In fact, Hungary is now the world’s leading producer of goose liver, while France retains its undisputed position as the leading producer, consumer and exporter of both duck and goose liver combined.

St. Martin’s adopted homeland thus continues to cherish this centuries-old tradition, particularly practiced in rural France, notably in the southwest and in Alsace, two gastronomic epicenters where foie gras reigns supreme. Foie gras is typically eaten on toast, accompanied by local sweet or dry white wines.

Moreover, in an ironic twist that only God knows the secret of, in recent years breeders have had to summon up the figure of the saint to maintain the popular enthusiasm surrounding the celebrations, as illustrated by the campaign “A la Saint-Martin, le foie gras revient” [On Saint Martin’s Day, foie gras returns] launched by a French association in 2010, and repeated every year since.

This is yet another sign that this popular tradition — for which the peoples of Europe, often disenchanted by urban globalization and the loss of transcendence, seem so eager to retain — is crying out to be restored to its original evangelical spiritual purpose: to arouse human gratitude for the gifts of Providence.