Celebrations & Festivals
Celebrations & festivals highlight an important day for an individual or culture. Fictional celebrations and festivals can be a way of furthering your world by adding historical or cultural elements. They provide a context to explore what your people value and how they express their collective emotion. Celebrations and festivals can be small and centered on a single person, or they can be massive, and encompass an entire community or civilization.
| Synonyms: rites, traditions, parties, get-togethers |
| Example Mythonyms: the Night of Five Candles, the Arrival of the Autumn Spirits |
Designing Fictional Celebrations & Festivals
Overview
Fictional celebrations and festivals often include traditional elements that are incorporated each time the celebration occurs. These may include the eating of specific foods, dressing in a certain manner, an exchange of gifts, an offering to gods or spirits, singing or chanting, fireworks, candle-lighting, and other events. Consider what types of events occur at a fictional festival and the historical rationale for how they came to be.
Reasons to Celebrate
PERSONAL
- Birth
- Coming of Age
- Union
- Death
SEASONAL
- Autumn
- Winter
- Summer
- Spring
- Harvest
- Planting
- Flowering
- Solstice
HISTORICAL EVENT
- Battle (won or lost)
- War (won or lost)
- Death of Historical Figure
- Area Founded
- Cure for Disease
POLITICAL
- Birthday of Leader
- Establishment of Political Party
RELIGIOUS EVENT
- Birth of Savior
- Death of Savior
- Death of Martyr
- Religious Season
What is the largest celebration or festival in your world and what is it like?
Does your world have any celebrations that are forced, such as a tyrant autocratic party making their subjects celebrate?
