Happy Feast Of The Moon

HAPPY FEAST OF THE MOON The holidays are upon us, and this year I will as soon as once more be compelled by my spouse and youngsters to rejoice them. Believe me, I’d quite not, however that’s another thing completely. This year’s holiday season sees me busily making ready for a class I’m teaching as regards to worldbuildingâ€"a topic close to and pricey to my heart, and what I imagine to be the very soul of the SF and fantasy genres. Mystery and romance authors want to select a time and place by which to set their stories, and do research accordingly, however SF and fantasy authors often must invent a time and place, and that’s not as simple because it sounds . . . and it doesn’t sound easy. It’s actually a subject that requires multiple blog post, or because the individuals who attended my seminar at Write on the Sound in October found out, greater than an hour and a half or so. Hence the eight-week class. This week let’s take a quick look at one component to a richly realized SF or fantasy world: holidays. The title of this post is impressed by my old stomping grounds, the Forgotten Realms world. Ed Greenwood’s Calendar of Harptos is an easy 365-day yr made up of twelve months every with a good thirty days. But 365 isn’t evenly divisible by thirty, so you find yourself with 5 additional days, and these are special daysâ€"holidaysâ€"that sit outside, or between, months. There’s a winter holiday that comes between Uktar (FR’s November) and Nightal (December) referred to as The Feast of the Moon. It’s described within the Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide: The Feast of the Moon: This vacation celebrates ancestors and the honored lifeless. During the competition, ancestral tales are recounted, and the tales and myths that bind cultures are taught anew. That’s a reasonably simple, two-sentence statement, and as you’re building your individual world (or universe) think about holidays in that sort of simple statement. In our actual world we've holidays like Ch ristmas, which might be described in two sentences like this: Christmas: Celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, founding father of the Christian faith, Christmas is certainly one of that religion’s most holy days. It is celebrated by an change of presents, and marked by celebrations and feasts with household and associates. I assume that more or less covers it. But clearly there’s extra to Christmas than simply that. I didn’t get into specifics like Christmas trees, mistletoe, stockings, Santa, Black Friday, and so on. And if I had been creating a holiday celebrated in my fantasy world, I would want to go on to add more detail as essential. And these last two phrases, as essential, are crucial, and not simply on the subject of holidays however for any element of your worldbuilding efforts. Does this vacation move your story ahead? Holidays could be extraordinarily helpful and effective tools for storytelling. They can present deadlines: We should stop the High Priest of Grogak before the Solstice Festival or he’ll summon the demon prince Frazzmiz and usher in a century of darkness. Holidays can provide a respite: The barbarians received’t storm the village on Grimnacht, so we now have twenty-4 hours to organize our defenses. Holidays can provide emotional context: This was the primary Gifting Day since the demise of their daughter and Galen and Bronwyn couldn’t stand the sight of the celebratory garlands draped across the city. The excellent vacation present, by the way in which! In my guide How to Start Your Own Religion I had an awful lot of enjoyable with holidays. Religions are likely to encourage most of them. The root of the word holiday is “holy day,” in spite of everything. That guide was meant to be silly, but in the chapter on holy days I did a little research and found a unique religious holiday for each month. I was amazed by each the variety of holidays and the frequent threads. Some celebration or at least marking of a new year is well-liked. The Earth travels across the solar in a round orbit taking roughly 365.25 days. Where alongside that course is the start of a yr? It’s a circle. There isn't any starting. That means you need to simply pick a day and run with that. The calendar we use now has been round for a long time however was developed little by little, tweaked and altered and reconfigured, again and again, till we’ve received it just about the place we wish it, or anyway where everyone appears to understand it and has agreed, one way or one other, to abide by it. Why does 2013 start on January 1st? as a result of the calendar says so. There really is nothing magicalâ€"or astronomicalâ€"about that date. You just have to select one. In How to Start Your Own Religion, I famous Nouruz, the Zoroastrian New Year’s Day, which occurs on March 21. Were the Zoroastrian’s wrong? No, they have been simply completely different. In that passage within the book I commented that I thought having the yr beg in in the spring was a good idea. Spring feels like a time of beginnings, or at least of renewalâ€"rather more so than the useless of winter, anyway. So if you’re Creating the World from scratch, when does your year start? For simplicity’s sake, the Forgotten Realms calendar roughly mimics the real world calendar, with the 12 months starting the primary day of Hammer, which is the equal of January. And there’s a lot to be mentioned for simplicity’s sake. But when you're making a world from the bottom up, you get to make those decisions, but as with all issues worldbuilding, make those decisions based on story. Does your story have one thing to say about rebirth and renewal? Then setting it across the Spring Festival, or the New Year Feast, which occurs on the spring equinox, helps you give your characters a more strong world to inhabit. They’re part of one thing, like we’re part of Christmas right here in America (the one spiritual vacation that’s additionally a nation al holiday). And identical to real Americans have differing opinions of Christmas, your characters can have differing opinions of your world’s holidays, which may even put them at violent odds with one another, or on the alternative facet of the coin, encourage a way of common floor, as we’ve started to do by saying “Happy Holidays” as an alternative of “Merry Christmas” in case the individuals we’re speaking to don’t happen to be Christian. In America in 2012 the so-known as “War on Christmas” is an imaginary creation of socially retarded TV pundits, but in your world an oppressive regime that for lack of a better analogy “cancels Christmas” could be a fascinating motivation for all kinds of interesting conflict, in the same way that an effort to place an end to the Solstice Sacrifice is one thing a hero might actually get behind. Think via those holidays. The birth or dying of a significant figure (both religious or secular) is usually a supply of holidays. Both Christmas and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day fall into that category. There are holidays like Veteran’s Day, which was once referred to as Armistice Day, that celebrate the tip of a warfareâ€"that’s usually something value celebrating. Then there are days that honor a group of people, as Veteran’s Day has turn out to be or Labor Day was meant to be. And then what do these holidays finally morph into? Memorial Day (originally established to honor the Civil War lifeless) has turn out to be the “unofficial start of summer” and Labor Day the unofficial finish of summer, and almost nobody actually thinks about Civil War veterans or labor union members on these days, very similar to Christmas for lots of American households, like mine, has misplaced its religious significance and turn into an annual Spending of Money Festival. And that jogs my memory: Your world can have its own model of Scrooge, too! â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans I know this is exterior of the broad premise of your weblog however your submit “…Jesus Christ, founding father of the Christian religion…” is mistaken. Jesus did NOT begin a church or a religion. The followers of Jesus(disciples)brought His word to the world. The word being that Jesus is the Son of God and believing in that is salvation and righteousness earlier than the daddy. People begin religions and churches. You don’t want a church or ritual to know Jesus. As a Christian I wanted you to know. Please delete this if you don’t approve instead of any flaming. Thanks and peace. I stand corrected. I recall my fifth grade teacher making me stand for correction in school. It wasn’t fun. Please consider my input right here as a most pleasant faucet that’s like the bumps they put at the fringe of the pavement that keep us from running off the road. Be well.