Holidays

Of course, 'tis the season for a lot of people in the real world. And in my OSE game, there are a few holidays it looks like (and I've not kept up as I planned to, so to recap for myself and my players. they are in the evening of the 24th day of Haelhold at the Glade).

In looking at the Dolmenwood calendar, the next day is the Feast of Gretchen, and in a few more days there will be the Feast of St. Galaunt. Of course, I am just using that calendar to help keep track of time and days for the players. Does it make sense to celebrate the holidays from what is, at least in my game world, a Kingdom far away from the woods? Holidays and celebrations of that ilk are really going to be kingdom-based I would think. And species/race/heritage-based (getting so difficult to name things now!) Possibly wider depending on the pantheon and if the gods and goddesses are revered in more than one kingdom. I've read many fantasy books where the gods are essentially localized: they are tied to some land or kingdom, and rarely go beyond that. Would their holidays, or holy days, extend beyond that? Just like a lot of our holidays are simple re-imaginings of what was pagan to make it fit the current theocracy as you do not want to take away people's celebrations if you want them happy. 

Anyway, sidetracked by the current holiday season and for me what is the normal stress of the season which is severely compounded by my current job that actually makes things, so this is our busy season for a heavily reduced IT work force that is plagued by out-of-date and badly maintained software that drives the business. 

But dragging myself back to what I keep trying to ask: does your RPG include holidays? Traveller of course has Day 0 and the Emperors Birthday (I think...seems to me there was another holiday?) But as there are thousands of worlds, there is probably a holiday every day (probably several!) going on somewhere on some system. Same for a fantasy game - if there are dozens of kingdoms, and if you have any gods, there are probably a lot of holidays. And how would you handle that?

Circling back to my current OSE game, what is the Feast of St. Gretchen? Who is she a saint of? None of the characters will know of this, and the one PC, Sharn, is an Orc. Making the assumption that this St. Gretchen is not an Orc saint, she would not care, even if she knows about it. Same for St. Galaunt. I can, of course, ignore these, but thinking that the group may see something when they get back to town. Though thinking Bellatrix may know something about them for some reason. And of course, with feast in the title, there will be food. Come to think of it, many holidays revolve around food. 

And this also brings up that many holidays are going to also be species-specific: Orcs, Goblins, whatever are going to have their own holidays and celebrations and memorial days. And like humans, it will not be across all groups, so we are opening up a lot of potential holiday confusion.

From Wikipedia:

While the English word saint originated in Christianity, historians of religion tend to use the appellation "in a more general way to refer to the state of special holiness that many religions attribute to certain people", referring to the Jewish ḥasīd or tzadik, the Islamic walī, the Hindu rishi or Sikh Bhagat and guru, the Shintoist kami, the Taoist shengren, and the Buddhist arhat or bodhisattva also as saints. Depending on the religion, saints are recognized either by official ecclesiastical declaration, as in the Catholic faith, or by popular acclamation (see folk saint).

Do I need to care why Gretchen or Galaunt are considered holy? And perhaps others, such as Fey, may consider them evil if their holiness was in driving out the Fey? Everything is relative!

I do have a book that I've used a few times (The Lesser Keys) that randomly generates the holy days. I think I've done that for some of my little pantheon. So, in looking back to the Centaur Druid that the characters are likely to meet, turns out he worships Tonna (from this post). And Tonna has a single holiday: The planting of crops at the end of winter is when Tonna's adherents celebrate. Quiet prayers at the edge of the crops at dawn and pouring out mead from the previous year's harvest. And it turns out I HAVE named this mountain range: Vele Hory Range.

Hopefully I can remember some of this for our game! And welcome to December 2023!