We live at a time when most foods are available most of the time. Want to brew a pumpkin beer? Look in your cupboard and think back to last Thanksgiving. You’ll probably uncover purée that had been sentenced to another year in the can.
But year-round availability of once-seasonal products is a new phenomenon. Canned goods as we know them didn’t exist until after the American Civil War, when the invention of double-seam canning made sanitary seals a reality. It would take a few more decades before mechanical refrigeration (developed, in part, to meet the demands of brewers) would widely deploy itself in households.
So for most of human history, our customs, our rituals, even our bacchanals, have been ruled by the perpetual but predictable cosmic waltz of earth and sun.