The First of Them

Cedar Valley News
July 31, 2026
The First of Them
By Dan Larson

A woman in my congregation brought me three tomatoes this week. She set them on my desk still warm from the vine, dirt still on the skins, and said she thought I might like the first of them.

She keeps a big garden. In a month it will come in faster than she can give it away, tomatoes on every doorstep in the ward, zucchini nobody asked for left on porches like foundlings. She could have waited for the flood. Instead, she picked the first three, before she knew whether the rest would come, and carried them across town to me.

I have thought about those tomatoes all week, because tomorrow is one of the oldest holidays almost nobody keeps anymore.

It is called Lammas. Loaf Mass Day. For more than a thousand years, on the first of August, people carried the first loaf, baked from the first grain of the harvest, into the church to be blessed. Not the whole crop. The first of it. The wheat was barely cut, the fields still full of grain standing, a month from safe, one hailstorm from ruin. And on the day itself, before any of it was certain, they stopped, baked the first of it, and gave thanks.

I find I do my own gratitude backward from those people.

I give thanks when the harvest is in. When the check clears. When the scan comes back clean, when the wayward child finally calls, when the deal closes, and nothing is left to go wrong. My gratitude waits for the all-clear. It is real, but safe. It costs me nothing to be grateful for a thing in hand.

The woman with the tomatoes was braver than I am. She gave thanks at the beginning, on faith, for a harvest she could not yet see. She was saying, in the only language a gardener has, I believe there will be more, and even if there is not, this first handful was worth stopping for.

There is an idea older than Lammas, older than any one faith, running underneath all of it. You bring the first and the best, not the leftovers. There is a very old story of two brothers and two offerings, and the whole weight of it turns on the one difference. One brought the first of his flock. The other brought some of his crop, when he got around to it. The first, or the leftovers. Anyone who has ever given knows in his bones the two are not the same.

I watched a family in my stake live this out last winter, when they had almost nothing. A hard year, hours cut, more month than money. And when the time came to give, they gave first. Off the top, before the bills, before they knew whether the numbers would work. I know because they told me, not to be admired, but because it frightened them and they needed to say it out loud. They gave the first, not what was left, because what was left might be nothing, and would not learn their gratitude only came when convenient.

Here is the thing about first fruits. It is not really about the fruit. It is about who you become when you give thanks before you are safe. Anyone can be grateful at the end of a good year. It asks more to stop in the middle of an uncertain one, pick the first three, and carry them across town to somebody’s desk.

So here is what I ask of you.

Bring the first of something this week. Not the leftovers. The first. The first hour of your morning, before the phone. The first of your pay, before the bills. The first tomato, before the flood. Give it, or give thanks for it, or both, before you have any idea how the rest of the season will turn out. Do not wait for the barn to fill.

The three tomatoes are sitting on my desk as I write this. I have not eaten them. I keep looking at them. Three small red first things, given before the harvest was sure, and worth more than a whole August of them given after.

Cedar Valley News has a Facebook group. If you have comments and want to join the conversation, you are welcome. What is the first of something you could give this week, before you know how the rest turns out? Come and tell us. And if we get something wrong, tell us, and we will run the correction. https://bit.ly/40p8jKy

Cedar Valley News is free, and it comes to your inbox every morning, six days a week. If this morning’s editorial was worth your time, please forward it to someone who would value it. And if someone forwarded it to you and you’d like your own each morning, just reply with the word “subscribe.”

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series, written by Evan Swensen, Publisher, and Claude Marshall, AI Developmental Editor. While the people and town of Cedar Valley are fictional, the observance is real. Lammas, or Loaf Mass Day, falls on August first and is among the oldest harvest festivals in the English-speaking world. The name comes from the Old English hlafmaesse, meaning loaf-mass; on this day people brought a loaf baked from the first grain of the season to be blessed, giving thanks for the first fruits of the harvest before the rest was gathered. Traditions of offering the first and best of a harvest appear across many cultures and faiths. This editorial reflects on the idea and takes no position on any religious practice.

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