holidaze and observances in your SF/F world....

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bluejester12

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I tend not to write about religion. Since many holidays are religious based....

But tying in with leisure thread, I have one story that takes place on Game Day, when the protagonist has to win his finacee's ring back in a game of Capture-the-Flag with elves.
 

Zane Curtis

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preyer said:
have any? ever think about it? don't know, don't care?

Oooh. I've got lots of these. Most of them are parodies, extensions, or misunderstandings of present holidays, because my novel is set in a future where people look back at our era as a sort of golden age.

Valentine's day is a good example. For some reason, the day has become associated with the early film star, Rudolph Valentino. The festivities are presided over by someone dressed in black suit with white makeup (an imperfect memory of black and white film). The highlight of the festival is the "man hunt", where all the women of the town take up nets and ropes and try to snare men. Any that they catch have to be their slave for a day.

:whip:
 

SeanDSchaffer

In WC I have a holiday called Renewal. (First day of Spring, when the world regenerates itself.)

Otherwise, I don't think I have any in my other works... aside from the usual Sunday Sabbath. You know, Church day.
 

Shiny_Penguin

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Oh Zane, that's funny!

I had a festival in mine. The main characters are in a forgien land, so they don't really know what it is all about (which means I hadn't figured it out), but I think that scene will be dropped.
 

whitehound

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Zane Curtis said:
The highlight of the festival is the "man hunt", where all the women of the town take up nets and ropes and try to snare men. Any that they catch have to be their slave for a day.
This brings back memories of looking out of the window at my school on the last day of the Christmas term, and seeing Dr Farouk, the physics master, running like a hare for the safety of the staff room pursued by a whooping pack of 14-year-old girls brandishing sprigs of misteltoe.

Terry Pratchett's pure SF novel The Dark Side of the Sun is particularly good on futuristic festivals - mostly connected with Sadhimism, a religion founded in cold blood in order to promote "green" ecological practices. Sadhim, the founder, was later ritually murdered by a breakaway sect called The Little Flowers of the Left-Hand Path.

I vividly remember a time-corrupted prayer beginning

Green Prayer paternoster
Great Sadhim was my foster
He saved me under the burning tree...
 

preyer

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for some reason that reminds me of a festival here in the states called the burning man, if i recall correctly, where people gather and burn a giant effigy (though i'm not sure what it represents). i want to say they do it out in arizona. it seems like a very odd thing to do today, though i don't think it's got any particular meaning for most of the people who see it as a party (though certainly there are those who see some deep religious meaning in it).

another 'holiday' happens in sturgiss, a biker festival (n. dakota? damnit, i used to know these things), where bikers from all around the country congregate and have a good time. a newer version happens in myrtle beach, s. carolina, called 'black bike week,' which is sturgiss' equivalent, the difference there being they trash myrtle beach and plenty of businesses go on 'haitus' for a week.

of course, there's spring break, where mostly kids/college types go to daytona (college, mostly), another city in florida where the teeny-boppers go (can't remember the name off-hand), or cancun (these are where most of spring break happens, but not exclusively).

of course, every year we have state fairs, county fair, and city festivals. my hometown has 'the paper festival.' whee. around here there are pretzel, strawberry, apple, and sauerkraut festivals. i've been to the tobacco festival a few times, too, but that's near kentucky.

the point is that once you stop to think about it, we humans celebrate anything. often it's a great excuse to get drunk. let's face it, if we 'celebrate' pretzels, we'll celebrate anything.
 

whitehound

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We still have a few ancient traditional festivals - some of them really dangerous, so that they are having problems with modern insurance requirements. There's one in England where people of both sexes roll giant wheels of cheese down about a 1-in-2 slope and then chase after them and try not to fall - another on the Welsh borders where men dress in jackets and gloves of thick canvas and then run through the village with abrrels of burning tar on their backs, passing them on to someone else when their gloves char through!
 

Zane Curtis

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preyer said:
for some reason that reminds me of a festival here in the states called the burning man, if i recall correctly, where people gather and burn a giant effigy (though i'm not sure what it represents). i want to say they do it out in arizona. it seems like a very odd thing to do today, though i don't think it's got any particular meaning for most of the people who see it as a party (though certainly there are those who see some deep religious meaning in it).

That's quite a common theme that goes back a very long way. The original religious significance of it was pagan rather than Christian, and rather sinister. According to some sources, the original giant effigies were made of wicker, and filled with live human sacrifices.
 

whitehound

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Yes - although some scholars think that that was just Roman tabloid propaganda, because there is very little mention of human sacrifice in early Celtic mythology (e.g. The Mabinogion), and when it is mentioned it is portrayed as an aberration.
 
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