 Fantasy: December 13, 2023 Issue [#12313] |
This week: Holidays Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
—Dave Barry
The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.
—P. J. O'Rourke
A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!
—Alan King |
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Note in an attempt to avoid linguistic confusion: In this editorial, I use the word "holiday" in the sense of an officially designated commemorative day.
With the "holiday season" coming up fast, I thought I'd share a few thoughts about holidays in general. Works of Fantasy often involve different cultures, worlds, or even universes from the one we live in, so, naturally, they'd have different holidays, suited to their own worlds and histories.
Or maybe they wouldn't have holidays at all, but that's boring.
While the word "holiday" obviously shares linguistic roots with "holy day," I'm including cultural, non-religious, and secular observances here.
In my view, there are two basic kinds of holidays: feasts and fasts.
These don't necessarily have to be about food, but they often are. A feast holiday is generally the celebration of something considered good; the tradition here is to do a thing that you don't normally do. Here in the US, Thanksgiving is an archetypal example, with its focus on a literal feast. But I'd also consider Independence Day here to be a feast holiday, because it's not every day that we have gigantic fireworks displays (unfortunately).
In contrast, a fast holiday is usually (though not always) about remembering something unfortunate. Where a feast involves doing a thing not normally done, a fast involves not doing a thing normally done. Examples of fast holidays include obvious religious ones such as Ramadan, Lent, and Yom Kippur.
I should note that, for the most part, whether feast or fast, the observance of many official holidays involves refraining from work. I'm unaware of any holidays that require a person to work more instead of less, not even Labor Day, which probably says something important about humanity. Which means it's ripe for speculation in Fantasy; imagine, for example, a culture where you're expected to work harder on their equivalent of Labor Day.
Holidays can be further categorized by when they're observed.
Some are astronomically based; on our world, they often have their origins in solstices or equinoxes, with maybe a phase of the moon thrown in. Halloween is one example. Others are meant to mark anniversaries of particular events, as with various Independence Day observances. Sometimes, these two are combined; for example, Christmas or Easter.
Other holidays seem to be set on dates that are simply convenient, for whatever reason. Memorial Day in the US is one of these. For over a century, it was always set on May 30, but the official observance became the last Monday in May, presumably for the guaranteed three-day weekend. (I'm unaware if May 30 had any special significance, or if it was also convenient at the time.)
It's also possible to have holidays not tied to a calendar, observed on an irregular basis. I don't know of any official ones on our world, but one of the fun parts of Fantasy is that you get to make things up.
So don't give your imagination a holiday; get to work and come up with some holidays. |
Some works of Fantasy, holiday or otherwise:
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Last time, in "Long Form Fantasy" , I talked about longer works of Fantasy.
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  : Sometimes one story can inspire a Saga. My John Wrangler Saga is something born from an interactive I got with another writer. A character I made, John Wrangler. In a world were vampires and werewolves rule, humans are on the bottom of the food chain. John Wrangler, formally a Feral Human, was captured by a werewolf. However, John has a Dream - Set his People Free! This Saga is his story, and the consequences of his actions affect his descendants.
Yes, we don't always set out to write epics, but there's often more story to be told.
Enby_Liz  : Please add this story to your next newsletter.
Submitted Item: "Chapter 1 to Chapter 8" [E]
Well, that's it for me... see you next year! Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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