Highharvestide was an annual festival in the Calendar of Harptos, taking place between 30 Eleint and 1 Marpenoth. It was traditionally a feast to celebrate the harvest and the abundance of food, but also the time when those wishing to travel left on their journeys before winter set in.
Preparations for the feast started as early as a tenday before, while preparing, cooking, and preserving the harvest for the cold winter months. Traditions varied from community to community, but examples of festive activity included food-related contests; races and challenges of skill and strength; receiving homemade sweets from the local clergy; and priests blessing larders, wine cellars, grain bins, and food preserves.
This day was often an important anniversary to various governments. Often, taxes and tithes came due, rulers held "open courts" to hear the concerns of their citizens, oaths were publicly renewed, troops received marching orders to new duty stations, and guilds met to confer on prices and rate changes for goods and services.
According to tradition, dwarves only drank water and elves drank only dew on this day. However, these traditions began to fade in the 14th and 15th century DR.
It was said that children born on this day were favored by Tymora to have lifelong good luck but be smitten with wanderlust. Another legend was that human females born on this day had control over their reproductive system (i.e., got pregnant only when they wanted to) by force of will alone, and that they could instantly sense when they had been poisoned, either by ingestion or being bitten by a venomous creature for example.