Holy Days and Holidays

Holidays have always been a useful game setting. Whether it is the chaos of a masked carnival, or the dread of a skull- festooned death day, festivals provide an extremely heightened emotional background for adventures. A holy day is a period for time- hours, days, or weeks, where followers of a religion believe that some aspect of the supernatural world becomes closer to the world of day-to-day life. You can not design a realistic religion without creating a calendar of sacred time. This third “building better religion” is about designing that calendar. I will offer some suggestions to help world building of realistic, atmospheric religious festivals and holy days.

The first and most important thing to figure out when creating a holy day (or days) is, of course, what is it celebrating. What is the specific reason for your festival?

Some holidays are based on a general religious mood, a sense that some emotional force is coming closer to the world then normal. Holidays based on the seasons and cycles of the year are like this. A joyous celebration of fertility in spring, death in autumn, a feast for the harvest- any time a group feels some emotion or idea is more present then normal. These are the easiest type of holidays to design. If you know the mood you want to evoke, you can pick a time of year that emphasizes that mood. If you know the time of year, you can decide what mood would be emphasized. Remember, be creative. There can be completely different responses to the same time if year. Some cultures see the Winter Solstice as a time of death and fear, matching the external mood. Others have a celebration of life and hope in defiance of winter. As long as the time/theme pairing makes sense, you have plenty of options.

However, most religious holy days are based around a story. I am going to offer two general categories of those stories- history and myths.

History is the celebration of a religiously important event that the worshippers believe actually happened, in this world, to a holy person, or to the community. They believe that this event actually happened at a specific time and in a specific place. This event will be worthy of remembrance because it in some way gives modern day worshippers a sense of identity as a believer.

This is Who I Am Supposed to Be

One potential category of historic event that could be celebrated is a holy life. Many cultures celebrate the birth, death, or other important life event of a holy man or woman. This could be a saint, a demi-god, a martyr, a warrior or some other form of real or imagined hero. This hero’s life has been remembered as an example of a truly lived out faith. Celebration of that hero will probably involve making the story of that hero in some way present to the worshippers. Possibilities include acting out the story, public reading of the story, or rituals associated with the story. Any symbol associated with the hero- colors, shapes, weapons, plants, animals, etc- is going to be prominently displayed during the festival. If it is Victory Day for the Hero of Battle, then the ritual of strength is going to be a central part of the ceremonies, and swords will painted on doorways for blessing. The feast of the rebirth of the Great Druid Sage could include blessing of crops, and blessing of hopeful mothers, using the same ritual, while everyone wears sprigs of holy plants. The celebration of that story tells the worshippers “This is how I am supposed to live. This is a right life.” In character terms, a festival of individual remembrance might inspire religious PCs or NPCs to imitate the character of the subject hero. A martyr could inspire patience, a warrior cold inspire courage and aggressiveness, etc.

This is Who We Are

Another possible category of historic festival would be a community event. It would not be an important religious person, but an event that happened to the faithful. This could be a massacre, a miracle, a journey, battle- any event (real or imagined) that happened to the community that gives them identity. It does not give the worshippers an individual model of a well-lived life, instead it reinforces their identity as part of a community by defining the community. It tells them “I am part of this group, and this is what it means to be part of this group.” Once again, celebration will probably involve some sort of ritual re-creation of the story. These sort of sacred times are particularly dangerous for religious minorities. Religious passions and community-self defining are a volatile mix. For GMs, these sort of holy times present a good opportunity to explore group identity. Depending on the religious make up of the party and how it compares to the community they are in, there are plenty of different possibilities in such a highly charged atmosphere.

As always, these categories are not absolute. A sacred event could feature one or more heroes, or certain heroes can stand for the whole community. But I think it is a good initial distinction to help figure out what sort of holy day you want to design and what potential emotional effects its celebration would have.

Once Upon a Time

Another source of holy day celebration is a myth. Myths are when the worshipper believes a sacred event is actually currently occurring, in some other level of reality. When the Greeks saw winter coming, it was actually Persephone descending into the underworld, and spring was her returning life to the world above. This was a story that recurred in the world of the gods, the world of mythology.

When worshippers celebrate a mythological holy day, they are bringing that story into their own lives. They are becoming a part of the story, living in that story. Because this sort of holy day is less based on a real time anniversary, you have more flexibility in placing the date. This is where mood and story come together. The mythological event would be celebrated at a time of year that provided an atmospheric setting for the story, whatever the main emotion for the story is. Once again, you can design these in any order. You can have the mood first, the time of year first, or the myth first. Once you have one, you can figure out the others in some sort of coherent system. As with historical festivals, the celebration of this holy day would involve some sort of re-living or recreation of the story, with all attendant rituals and festivities.

Discussing mythology and what makes a myth could fill an entire column ("Building Better Religions Part Four, Sacred Stories"). But in a nutshell, a myth is a story about some basic aspect of life, which believers use to understand that aspect of life. Myths take place in a different level of reality from the day-to-day. They don’t take place at a specific date, but once upon a time. When believers celebrate those myths, they are becoming part of the story. The meaning of the story gives their own lives meaning.

The key distinction between a history story and a myth is the question of setting. Does this story place in the lived world, at a certain time and date? If so, then even if it is a story of some divine force entering the world then it is still history and celebrated in remembrance. These stories do not need to be true history, just believed true by the worshippers. If the celebrated story takes place in an eternal “god time” then it is a myth. The worshippers are not remembering the story but living it.

Of course, do not let my distinctions limit your won creativity. Blending history and myth is a great way to use religion in a story, and create a general atmosphere of divine power and meaning. A good pop culture example of this would be the current Battlestar Galactica series. The characters are from a race that believes that their ancient religious stories are repeated in their own lives as part of an eternal cycle. “All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again”

Feasts and Fasts

Once you have decided why a particular day is holy, you can decide how that day is celebrated. Whatever specific way you decide, remember that it should involve heightening the core emotion of the story. If a community is remembering a tragic story, there will be fasting and morning. If they are remembering a great triumph, it might be feasting, drinking, celebration. The whole point of a religious festival is to create a heightened emotional sensibility, which is why they are so useful for gaming settings.

A final note on designing the rituals of the holy day. The rituals will be a re-creation of a story, but that doesn’t mean you should be limited to straight forward acting out of the story. The day will be celebrated through layers of rituals that all build on the core emotion or concept of the story.

Also, you want to consider the effects of holy days on clerical characters. If you are creating a D and D-esque “the gods are real and self-evident” universe, then a holy day is actually a time when the divine world is actually closer to the normal world. What effect would this have on characters who access divine powers? In a celebration of their god’s triumph, clerical power might be stronger. The celebration of a cosmic tragedy might decrease that power.

If you are creating a more real-world “gods in the background and maybe not real” setting, the charged emotional power of holy days will change public perceptions and interactions. A cleric will have more persuasive power, non-believers will be more shunned, believer PCs will feel more religiously charged, etc. Even if the divine power of the story is not really present, the emotional power of the story is.

On a final purely practical note, holidays are traditionally times when businesses are closed and work is ceased. Using a holy day is a reasonable in-game way to control PC access to businesses, locations, or even people. If an NPC is playing a role in the celebration, they may be unreachable.

Gods and Princes

Here is an example building a ritual off of a story. The Aquaine family was trapped in a terrible sea storm. The youngest daughter, Ithra, cast herself into the sea as a sacrifice to calm the sea-god’s wraith. Moved by her sacrifice, the god lifted her from the waves and carried her to land. The storm ended, and her family rejoiced to see her standing, safe at what would become their new home, the city of Aquavia.

In the pre-dawn morning of every midsummer’s day, the unmarried women of Aquavia dive off the great harbor, and race through the Grand Canal to the temple of the sea-god. The current Aquaine prince will be their, dressed as the sea god. The first maiden to arrive at his feet will be proclaimed Foundress. She and the prince will parade through a riotously celebrating city, blessing the people and the city.

The Movement of the Year

Depending on how ambitious your world building is, you can then move on to creating more holy days. A fully developed world will have an entire calendar of events. The holidays will interlock and compliment each other. A time of feasting could prepare for a time of fasting, which could end with a great feast. The calendar of the year should be an integrated cycle of different moods, stories, and worship.

If you have no idea about what would go into a calendar, you have plenty of sources. You can derive a rich series of archetypal festivals from something as omnipresent as American holidays. If you look at a bank calendar you see an entire series of stories that celebrate key events and individuals that define and reinforce American identity. Halloween gives us a festival of death and fear. April fools day is a classic chaotic, “lord of misrule” festival when normal conventions are turned upside down. The Christmas season gives us a celebration of life in the face of winter. Any pre-existing calendar can provide you with basic emotional settings for a religious calendar. The trick is creating your own take on those festivals. Don’t just slap a fantasy name on Halloween. Take the emotional content of Halloween and integrate it into your own myths and stories.

Holy days play an essential role in creating a playable religion. The sacred calendar provides religious resonance to the year. Living out the myths and stories of a religion helps make them real, which helps give aspects of life meaning. Community celebration reinforces group identity and unity. In a way, they are the culmination of every aspect of religious creation. Your holy days should combine your rituals and your stories into a single emotionally powerful experience that can make an excellent and profound setting for stories. Questions? Comments?