A supper at the dark of the moon

In ancient Athens, when a house was cleansed, what was cleared out went to the place where three roads met, where a statue of Hecate stood.

At the end of each month, on the night the moon disappeared, something else went out to the same place: a meal. Bread, and a few small things from the kitchen. It was set down there for Hecate, goddess of the crossroads, and left. Nobody stayed to watch.

By morning it was gone, and everyone knew where it had gone. In one of his comedies, the playwright Aristophanes has a character say that the rich send Hecate a supper every month, and the poor snatch it away before it's even set down.

The families who set it out knew where the bread went. They set it out anyway, every month, into the dark, and someone hungry ate.