Paksworld

Since Holy Week kept me away from writing or posting new stuff last week, it seems appropriate to share a little background material on the holidays and celebrations of the Paksworld universe.   (The main religious background material is here for those of you just joining the party.)

The biggest–recognized in all the religions though celebrated differently–are the four big astronomical markers: the Eveners (spring and fall) equivalent to our Equinoxes, and the shortest day/longest night (Midwinter) and longest day/shortest night (Midsummer.)

Midwinter Feast is celebrated over several days by some groups, and only on Midwinter Night itself by others.   It is also known as the dark sunturning, cold sunturning, or winter sunturning.  All agree on the basics: at sundown before longest night, all fires are extinguished and the hearths cleaned out to bare stone or brick or whatever they are.   New wood (which woods vary with the group) and one unburned scrap from the previous year’s morning fire is laid in a precise pattern, but this fire is not lit until dawn.   Ideally, the new wood was cut at Midsummer, and has been curing for this purpose.   Whether a family or community celebration, everyone sits up, singing the appropriate songs and telling stories, until sunrise, when the new fire is kindled.  Special foods (such as the “fried snow” of Fin Panir) is cooked and the day spent in games, especially games of fortitude (running, riding, mock battles, etc.)

In some realms, Midwinter Court is the time when some criminals may be pardoned  or criminals of particularly vile sort executed.    The belief is that when the fires are all dead (including the sun),   other things die permanently as well.    A pardon at Midwinter is a pardon forever: it is forbidden to speak of the original crime after that.   But to be executed at Midwinter  is believed to doom the executed to complete nonexistence; it is afterwards forbidden for anyone to mention the dead one.

The spring and fall Eveners are similar in rituals but different in the meanings given them.  In most realms, a formal court is held around either the spring or fall Evener, if not both.   The Spring Evener is (logically) a time of beginnings.   The fires lit then celebrate release from darkness, ignorance, and past problems of any kind.   A fire lit at the Spring Evener has more cleansing power than other fires (so that, for instance, burning a document that imposed a debt is normally done at the Spring Evener  though the debt may have been cleared before that.    Water is also celebrated at the Spring Evener: wells are cleansed and blessed, springs blessed, and thanks given for water for crops.  (In the extreme north, where springs may not have broken yet, prayers are offered for this to occur.)   Starting a quarrel on the Spring Evener brings bad luck the rest of the year (at least until the Fall Evener); old quarrels must not be mentioned.

The Fall Evener is a time of closing, as the spring is of opening, and a time of judgment, related the ripening of fruits to the ripening of understanding–in some groups it is considered that quarrels should not last beyond the Fall Evener (and if they do, they must be brought to a mediator. )   Others consider the Autumn Court the right time to judge a petitioner’s request for pardon (which would then be granted on Midwinter)  or to sentence someone to die at Midwinter.    Groups vary in whether they propose an alliance/marriage/other contract at the Fall Evener and consummate it at the Spring, or vice versa.

In Lyonya, the Eveners are the days on which bones can be raised to be put in bonehouses or ossuaries.  This ancient practice persists in Lyonya though not in elsewhere–at least, not openly, though there are still strongholds and even individual houses in Tsaia and Fintha with an ancestor’s skull or skeleton built in.

Midsummer, the other Sunturning, falls on the longest day of the year and shortest night.    This is another time that fires are extinguished, and people stay up all night, but the rest of it goes differently.   People go outside, to the fields and gardens; they sing and dance the bounds of their home and their village (in cities, the entire city),  they eat the foods they can eat raw (fresh fruits and tender greens) that night and drink new wine,  they pick night-blooming flowers to make garlands that they first wear, then use to bring good luck inside.   The games are of friendship and love.