Traditional Festivals: A Multicultural Encyclopedia

TRADITIONAL

FESTIVALS a multicultural encyclopedia

TRADITIONAL

FESTIVALS a multicultural encyclopedia

VOLUME I

CHRISTIAN ROY

Pat L

Santa Barbara, California • Denver, Colorado • Oxford, England

Copyright © 2005 by Christian Roy All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roy, Christian, 1963Traditional festivals : a multicultural encyclopedia / Christian Roy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57607-089-1 (hardback : alk. paper)—ISBN 1-85109-689-2 (ebook) 1. Festivals—Encyclopedias. I. Title. GT3925.R69 2005 394.26'03—dc22 2005010444 07 06 05

/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an e-book. Visit http://www.abc-clio.com for details.

ABC-CLIO, Inc. 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116–1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Manufactured in the United States of America

To Lionel Rothkrug, for first suggesting that I be entrusted with this project that owes much to his groundbreaking work on the history of religious mentalities

CONTENTS

Preface, xi

TRADITIONAL FESTIVALS a multicultural encyclopedia

VOLUME I

A Adae (Akan), 1 Akitu (Mesopotamia), 5 Anna Perenna (Rome), 8 Annunciation (Christianity), 9 Apaturia (Greece), 13 Argei (Rome), 14 Ascension (Christianity), 15 Ashura (Islam), 19 Assumption (Christianity), 23

B Bear Festival (Japan), 27 Beautiful Festival of the Valley (Egypt), 30 Busk (American Southeast), 35

C Candlemas (Christianity), 41 Caristia (Rome), 45 Carmentalia (Rome), 46 Carneia (Greece), 47 Carnival (Christianity), 48 Cherry Blossom Festival (Japan), 56 Chiao (China), 58

A–L

Christmas (Christianity), 61 Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary (Christianity), 72 Corpus Christi (Christianity), 77 Cowherd and Weaving Maid (China, Korea, Japan), 81

D Day of Assembly (Islam), 85 Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan), 87 Days of the Dead (West), 92 Dionysia (Greece and Rome), 100 Divali (Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism), 109 Dong Zhi (China), 115 Double Nine (China, Korea), 116 Dragon Boat Festival (China, Korea), 116

E Easter (Christianity), 121 Eid (Islam), 129 8 Monkey (Mayas), 133 Eleusinian Mysteries (Greece), 135 |

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Elevation of the Cross (Christianity), 139 Epiphany (Christianity), 143

J Janmashtami (Hinduism), 213

F

K

Feast of Fools (Christianity), 151 Floralia (Rome), 155 Fordicidia and Parilia (Rome), 157 Fornacalia and Quirinalia (Rome), 158

Kasuga Festivals (Japan), 217 Kathina (Buddhism), 218 Kermis (Christianity), 221 Khoiak and Heb-Sed (Egypt), 223 KI.LAM (Hittites), 229 Kokuzahn (Voodoo), 231 Kukulcan Festival (Mayas), 232 Kunapipi (Australia), 233

G Games (Greece), 161 Games (Rome), 167 Ganesha Chaturthi (Hinduism), 178 Geerewol (Wodaabe), 180 Gion Festivals (Japan), 183 Gurpurb (Sikhism), 186

H Hanukkah (Judaism), 189 Holi and Vasant Panchami (Hinduism, Sikhism), 192 Hollyhock Festival (Japan), 197 Holy Week (Christianity), 198

I Inti Raymi and Huarachicu (Incas), 205 Izcalli (Aztecs), 211

L Laba (China), 237 Lag ba-Omer (Judaism), 238 Lantern Festival (China, Korea), 240 Lent (Christianity), 244 Liberalia (Rome), 250 Lugnasad (Celts), 251 Lupercalia (Rome), 254

c o n t e n t s | ix

VOLUME II

M Mahashivaratri (Hinduism), 257 Martinmas (Christianity), 261 Matralia (Rome), 264 Matronalia (Rome), 265 Matsuri (Japan), 267 Matzu’s Birthday (China), 270 Mawlid (Islam), 273 May Day (West), 276 Mid-Autumn (China, Korea, Japan), 282 Midsummer (West), 286 Midwinter (Iroquois), 291 Mi’raj (Islam), 295

N Naadam (Mongolia), 299 Naked Festivals (Japan), 302 Navaratra and Dusshera (Hinduism), 304 Naw Ruz (Zoroastrianism, Bahá’ism), 311 New Fire Ceremony (Aztecs), 315 New Yam Festival (Ewe), 317 New Year (China, Korea), 319 New Year (Islam), 326 New Year (Japan), 327 New Year (West), 332 Nineteen-Day Feast (Bahá’ism), 338 Noumenia (Greece), 340 Nyepí (Hinduism), 341

O Òsun Festival (Yoruba), 346

P Palm Sunday (Christianity), 349 Panathenaea (Greece), 353 Pardon (Christianity), 355 Paryushana and Dashalakshana (Jainism), 356

M–Z

Passover (Judaism), 358 Potlatch (Pacific Northwest), 364 Powwow (North America), 369 Presentation of the Virgin Mary (Christianity), 372 Protection of the Mother of God (Christianity), 375 Purim (Judaism), 377

Q Quinquatrus (Rome), 381

R Rain Festivals (Aztecs), 383 Ramadan (Islam), 384 Reed Dance (Southern Africa), 388 Ridván (Bahá’ism), 391 Rogations (Christianity), 393 Rosh Hashanah (Judaism), 395 Rosh Hodesh (Judaism), 398

S Sabbath (Judaism), 401 Sacred Heart (Christianity), 406 Saint George (Christianity), 408 Saint Lucy (Christianity), 411 Saint Nicholas (Christianity), 415 Samhain (Celts), 420 Saturnalia (Rome), 424 Sekku (Japan), 427 Seven-Five-Three (Japan), 431 Shalako (Zuñi), 432 Shavuot (Judaism), 438 Situa (Incas), 440 Spring Dragon (China), 442 Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis (Rome), 443 Sukkot (Judaism), 446

x | contents

Sun Dance (Plains Indians), 450 Sunday (Christianity), 453

T Terminalia (Rome), 459 Thaipusam (Hinduism), 462 Thargelia (Greece), 465 Thesmophoria (Greece), 466 Tisha be-Av (Judaism), 470 Transfiguration (Christianity), 472 Tu bi-Shevat (Judaism), 474

Venus Verticordia and Virile Fortune (Rome), 484 Vestalia (Rome), 485

W Water-Splashing Festival (China, Thailand), 487 Whitsuntide (Christianity), 489

Y Yom Kippur (Judaism), 501

V Vaishakha and Vaisakhi (Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism), 479

APPENDIXES I: Main Hindu Festivals and Buddha Day in North India 2001–2031, 509 II: Main Muslim Festivals 2001–2050, 518 III: Main Jewish Holidays in Israel 2001–2050, 519 IV: Main Moveable Feasts of the Western Church 2001–2050, 522 V: Gregorian Dates of Orthodox Easter 1875–2124, 523 VI: Dates of Chinese Lunar New Year’s Day 1995–2020, 525 VII: Comparative Table of Main Festival Entries for Each Cultural Area by Time of Year, 526 VIII: List of Full Festival Entries by Cultural Area, 529 Index, 531 About the Author, 549

PREFACE

S

INCE THE BEGINNING of time, and despite the advent of modernity as the reduction of the latter to the linear progress of secular history, the life of most human societies has usually unfolded within the sacred cycle of a strict succession of festive observances. Interrupting daily routine, they temporarily loosen and rearrange the social fabric—the better to reaffirm its underlying pattern of beliefs and assumptions, hopes and fears, founding myths and redemptive visions. The fact that festivals provide an important key to understanding the cultures that produce them is borne out by news reports I read as I was completing the entries in this encyclopedia in the spring of 2003. They told about the massive pilgrimage of a million Iraqi Shiites to Karbala, the holy site of the event commemorated by the Muslim feast and fast of Ashura, long banned as an expression of Shiite identity under the regime of Saddam Hussein—and this only days after his dictatorship’s downfall, amid the devastation of a war torn country where all social order had otherwise broken down! The bloody terrorist attacks targeting other major pilgrimage sites at the following year’s Ashura celebrations also sadly illustrated their highly sensitive—and therefore politically strategic—social function. The stakes can be so high precisely because a particular culture’s sense of its timeless underpinnings, whether conscious or unconscious, comes to the fore on such festive occasions. For that identity is then acted out in real time, through rituals that lift partici-

pants beyond time to a renewed awareness of their place in the scheme of things—whether in terms of social structures, of the seasonal cycles of nature, or of their own ultimate destiny as spiritual beings. These levels of meaning usually coexist in the ceremonies and customs of traditional festivals—understood here as regularly occurring sets of actions aimed at making present and effective a certain dimension of human beings’ belonging to a sacred cosmic order, as reflected in the ever-recurring cycles of time. Yet as a way for humans to “come home” to an original state outside the immediate demands of daily life—be it only to secure optimal conditions for their satisfaction—festivals also normally represent a certain release from customary practical strictures. This suspension of “normal” time is what makes them stand out as the archetypical manifestation of that “play element in culture” to which the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) has devoted a classic study: The sacred act is “celebrated” on a “holiday”— i.e., it forms part of a general feast on the occasion of a holy day. When the people foregather at the sanctuary they gather together for collective rejoicing. Consecrations, sacrifices, sacred dances and contests, performances, mysteries—all are comprehended within the act of celebrating a festival . . . Whether we think of the Ancient Greek festivities or of the African religions today we can hardly draw any sharp line between the festival mood in general and the holy frenzy surrounding the central mystery. (Homo Ludens 1955, p. 21)

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Every traditional festival is at once “a popular festivity and a mystic ceremony” and belongs, as such, at some level at least, among “the only true festivals that religious festivals are, unlike secular, social festivals, since no contingent caprice attaches them to some day or other that is not specially meant for them, that has nothing essentially festive about it,” as Marcel Proust appropriately noted at the outset of his vast novel cycle Remembrance of Things Past (freely translated from À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Tome 1: Du Côté de chez Swann 1919, pp. 106, 130). For it was no coincidence that its narrator’s personal quest for “privileged moments,” when his life fleetingly came together as a meaningful whole—connecting these dots of real presence into a vivid unified pattern beyond time and space—seemed to take him back precisely to childhood memories of springtime church festivals, as a touchstone of authenticity. This in turn brings to light how festivals do play a similar role in the collective psyche of communities, united as they are at such “privileged moments” in the recollection, reenactment, or anticipation of—and always participation in— “timeless” moments that stand out amid the flow of time. As long as it is structured by such peak experiences of heightened vitality, social time can be said to follow the sacred rhythm of tradition, in contrast to the homogeneous tempo of modern mundane life, with its agenda of arbitrarily set dates for public events—including deliberately invented “traditions.” Traditional festivals are defined here as opposed to such modern celebrations, as religious feasts are by Proust, though “pagan” impulses directly attuned to the seasonal rhythms of nature are given as much weight as the intimations of eternity woven into these or overwriting them in “high” or “world” religions— “revealed” or not. This illustrated encyclopedia offers a survey of more than 150 traditional festivals chosen from a wide range of eras and areas, that cover the major feasts of all world religions, as well as

high points in the sacred calendars of ancient civilizations and representative samples of the seasonal rites and celebrations of lesser known, indigenous local cultures. For this book is not simply meant to account for current festive customs, but also to provide insights into the festive patterns that structure all human societies—albeit more clearly and pervasively in the past than at the present time. The discussion of the festivals of extinct or remote societies may throw light on those still to be found in our own, by tracing their distant lineage or suggesting certain telling parallels with them—or with others that have made their mark in history. Full entries typically combine a variety of approaches—from traditional theology to cultural anthropology, and from folklore studies to social theory—to describe the content and context of a festival, including its historical development and geographical variations, wherever this is possible. They all aim to give a sense of what a traditional festival means to the people who celebrate it (or used to), while contributing to an understanding of the broader cultural dynamics and spiritual principles involved in its key features. On the one hand, every entry is a selfcontained portal to the cultural universe disclosed from the vantage point of a particular festival. Yet on the other hand, wherever they arise, connections are also made with the parallel universes of other entries—not only to fill out the immediate cultural context, but also to point out common patterns and related instances of festive behavior, whether it is done explicitly in the text or implicitly in the list of cross-references provided for each. Thus, should s/he be inclined to venture beyond the levels of casual browsing and the handy retrieval of information, the attentive reader ought to be able to “connect the dots” and see patterns emerge among, say, the New Fire Ceremony of the Aztecs of Mexico and comparable ones embedded in countless other festivals of new beginnings the world over; or among the

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Aztec rain festivals, those of the Pueblos of New Mexico, and Whitsuntide folklore from Britain to the Balkans; among African New Yam festivals and the Native American Green Corn Ceremony as examples of the taboos surrounding first fruits also echoed in some Jewish festivals; among the scapegoating rituals found in other Jewish feasts, as in ancient Greece and Rome, in contemporary Japan as in pre-Columbian Peru; among winter gatherings and gift exchanges from Celtic Ireland to the Pacific Northwest and from China to French Canada; among rowdy Carnival behavior at New Year celebrations and commemorations of the dead as well as at spring festivals from Rio to Morocco and from Rome to Mexico. Festivals and their various phases or combinations can often be known by a number of different names. All the names mentioned within the text of full entries appear in bold therein, even those of modern celebrations that, without being traditional, still have premodern connections or parallels and regardless of whether the festivals in question also have their own full entry in this book. Highlighted throughout it, just like the more than 150 full entry names (if “twin” entries for joint festivals are counted), over 700 additional or alternate festival names are thus listed in “blind entries” that simply refer the reader to the main entry heading under which they occur and are explained—sometimes quite incidentally; it should therefore be kept in mind that a given blind entry may actually point to a festival that is not synonymous or obviously connected with it. The reader can get an overview of the festivals covered in the general list in the Appendixes, where the full entries are grouped by religion or by cultural area, and in a graph showing at a glance the relative places of the main festivals discussed within the cycle of a single year’s seasons, from solstice to equinox to solstice. If balance has been sought in the number and length of entries between religious and

cultural areas, no worldwide “neutral” coverage could be approached within the limited format of this encyclopedia, and difficult choices had to be made in the selection of festivals to be discussed. I opted to aim at near exhaustiveness in those areas where it was within reach, as in the festive cycles of China or in the “religions of the Book,” at the expense of those marked by an overwhelming proliferation of festivals to choose from or by a relative dearth of readily available up-to-date studies, as in the cases of India and Africa, in which I settled for a selection of the best known, best documented festivals, without pretending to adequately cover the sheer variety or the full territorial distribution of all those to be found in these parts of the world. An effort was made, however, to provide examples for a fair sampling of the many deities or social groups around which a festival may focus. For each festival, a brief list of written, audio-visual, or digital materials dealing with it has been provided in order to facilitate further research on that specific topic. Directly relevant works may thus not always be particularly recent or widely distributed; but at least the reader can get an idea of what to look for through the channels available for such specialized bibliographical investigation. Though this reference work does not really emphasize calendar systems, it does include as appendixes tables of dates for the major feasts of Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and China and in the early twenty-first century—or at times beyond. References Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955, p. 21. Marcel Proust. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Tome 1: Du Côté de chez Swann, 1e Partie. Paris: Gallimard, 60th edition, 1919, pp. 106, 130.

A ◗ ACTIAN GAMES See Games (Rome)

◗ ADAE (AKAN) The Akan peoples of West Africa, who are concentrated in Ghana but are also found in parts of Ivory Coast to the west and Togo to the east, renew their connection with their past and present leaders once every three weeks in Adae ceremonies, held alternately on a Wednesday and a Sunday. Most of them also perform the Odwira New Year purification ceremonies and national festival in conjunction with either one of the last two Adae of the local Akan calendar.

Connecting with Revered Ancestors The 378-day Akan year is made up of nine 6week cycles called Adae. This is also the name of a ceremony that is celebrated twice during each cycle: first as an Awukudae, or Wednesday Adae, and then as an Akwasidae on the third Sunday thereafter, when the rites are more elaborate. The ritual is intended primarily to honor departed rulers and invoke the blessings of their spirits by recalling their names and deeds (although nature spirits are also recognized in the Brong version of Adae in Ghana’s Northern Region). Most of the ceremony takes place in the resting or sleeping place of these rulers,

which is where the Akan word adae comes from. Here, a lineage whose heads hold political office keeps all the stools of those who died while in power—provided they have proven worthy. Akans believe that they each have a sunsum (a part of the soul that wanders out of the body during sleep and joins the world of shadows after death) and that it is normally tied to his or her special white stool. However, they blacken the stools of their dead rulers with soot and egg yolk to preserve them as shrines. On an Adae, the current successors of those rulers may call their spirits by name to these shrines to dwell there again. All families commemorate their dead in a similar fashion on the Adae. However, they only permit a select few senior members of their lineage to follow its head into the stool house. While the chief offers water, food, meat, and eggs to his ancestors to ensure his tribe’s prosperity and the soil’s fertility, the queen mother does the same in her own stool house. No work or travel are allowed on the Adae except in connection with the ceremonies. All the articles needed for the ceremony are gathered and brought home, along with firewood, the day before. This day is called Dapaa—either Benada Dapaa, for a Tuesday, or Memeneda Dapaa, for a Saturday. Children born on these days are named Dapaa or Adae. This reflects the Akan |

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belief that each day of the week is matched by a different kind of kra (a breath-like life-force in the soul that flies back to God as a bird at death).

The Typical Adae The day of preparation for Adae is Dapaa, when all dwellings and their surroundings— as well as the stools and calabashes needed in the ceremonies—are tidied up. Drummers are heard playing in every chief ’s house from sunset until late at night. The following morning, the principal “divine drummer” gets up early to greet the chief with ceremonial songs. Then, the chief has a meal of mashed yam or plantain. Before the chief and his party proceed to the stool room or house, whatever ritual food remains is taken out and sprinkled in the courtyard to feed the dead courtiers and attendants. No salt is used (since the Akans believe the spirits cannot stand it), and a bell is rung to signify that the spirits are eating. The chief ’s attendants go back and forth to the stool room, returning with the blood of sheep they slaughter and prepare as additional offerings to the spirits in the stools. They use the blood to mark their master’s chest and forehead. At the same time, the queen mother makes an offering of fufu—a cassava or yam paste—on the spot. Finally, the head attendant pours rum on the stools; any leftover rum is passed around among those present. The chief ’s subordinates and subjects then come to wish him “Adae morn” in the main courtyard, where he sits in state while a court poet recites the deeds of past chiefs. The celebrations go on until dusk, accompanied by the beating of drums and the blowing of horns. The offerings are only removed from the stools late in the evening; and any pieces of fat are left there even longer.

The Great Adae The ninth Adae is the“Great Adae” or Adae Kese. At this ceremony, the chief carries the sac-

rificial sheep to the stools himself. Adae Kese ushers in the New Year under various names. The dates also vary from place to place between July and October, although several Akan states—such as Akim, Akwamu, and Ashanti— hold this ceremony in January. This is when a number of Akan peoples—such as the Akuapem and the Brong—carry out the Odwira ceremony (pronounced “Oh-je-rah”) of “purification” of the shrines of ancestral spirits and “cleansing” of the nation’s defilements. In most states, it tends to overlap in timing and content with the yam harvest and associated rituals—hence the misnomer “Yam Custom” by which it was long known to Europeans. In the Akuapem town of Aburi in Ghana’s Eastern Region, the two-day New Yam Festival of thanksgiving for first-fruits (centering on a fetish of the sky god Ntoa which aboriginal clan heads brought from Nkoranza in Brong country before the arrival of Akwamu and Akim settlers) even takes the place of Odwira on the ninth Awukudae. Like Odwira, it is preceded by forty days of adaebutuw or “turning over of the Adae,” when the ancestors are left alone in the stool house, and there is a ban on all loitering and noise-making in the streets. Even funeral ceremonies are scaled down to a minimum, as a barely tolerated transgression that should be atoned for by sacrificing a sheep. The point of these restrictions is to avoid disturbing dead ancestors and living elders who may reside elsewhere but often return to their ancestral villages for the duration of the festival. These lesser chiefs have their own Odwira ceremonies in the villages, usually on different dates than those held in the state capitals. Like all able-bodied men and women, the elders are required to attend the state events. At this great national festival, where all the social ties binding different groups—living or dead, human or divine—are renewed, recently enstooled chiefs swear allegiance to the paramount chief. How-

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A chief, carrying a golden staff, takes part in Yam Custom, or Great Adae, celebrations at the village of Akropong Akuapem. The festival attracts village chiefs from all over Ghana. (Margaret CourtneyClarke/Corbis)

ever, the paramount chief leaves all secular state functions to his second-in-command for the seven-to-twelve days the festival can last. The festival is observed by a ban on eating yam. Both the royal family and the paramount chief abstain from the new yam until completion of purification rites that the chief leads at the stool house and over graves of past chiefs. The ban on eating yam may be lifted earlier for the common people. In Akropong, the Akuapem capital, for instance, fresh tubers are paraded on the second day. There, the official Odwira date is the day after the ninth Wednesday Adae. It occurs in September or October— as does Aburi’s Yam Festival. The difference is that there, Adae Kese is considered a day of general mourning, especially for those departed in the past year. It is also when people who may

have died since the previous Monday are buried. Though there is much drumming and drinking on this day, Thursday is the primary feast day. At the royal palace, feasting is open to subjects and foreigners alike; in every private home, food and drink are made available to all comers, and a procession takes a ritual meal to the dead at their shrine outside of town. Yet after nightfall, a hush falls over Akropong, and people are warned to stay indoors since none but a privileged few are entitled by birth or office to cast eyes on the shrines of the nation’s revered ancestors, which are taken out in a solemn procession to the river and back to the stool house. An actual washing of the sacred stools of the state in the nearby stream is the “cleansing” that gives Odwira its name. When it is over, volleys of muskets are fired to give the all-clear.

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African Durbars Akuapem’s Odwira culminates in Friday’s great durbar. This Persian word for “court” was used in India for “any formal assembly of notables called together by a governmental authority” (Encyclopedia Britannica 1999) and gained currency in other British colonies, including those in West Africa. For on Odwira, Akan paramount chiefs convene such ceremonial assemblies to which lesser chiefs and all their subjects come to pay homage to their lord, while he in turn renews his oath of office to them and to the national government, amid the extravagant praise of minstrels and the frenzied drumming, dancing, and marching of courtiers and gunners. In Akwamu, the durbar takes place in January on the ninth Akwasidae, or Sunday Adae, which is the third and most important day of the weeklong local Odwira. It is better known there as Apafram. Saturday is called “Odwirahuruda”— “the day that brings in the Odwira”—and is marked by mourning for national heroes and offerings at the shrine holding their relics. On the Sunday durbar, there is a morning parade of warriors in battle array, a midday cleansing of the paramount chief, and a blessing on behalf of various gods that he gives to the crowds with the same water, all of which precede an afternoon rally of state executioners. The latter become possessed by the fetishes they carry in a procession around town all the way back to the durbar site. There, a clearing is made in the crowd for wild acrobatic and military displays by Asafo (“war people”) companies. These are hereditary militias formed by the neighboring Fante on the model of European units in the seventeenth century and adopted by the Akan peoples. The paramount chief, dressed in full regalia, will then, as elsewhere, renew his pledge to serve the public good before passing out rum to his assembled chiefs and subjects. In contrast to the custom in Akuapem, it is on the evening after the durbar—rather than

on its eve—that people huddle in silence inside the houses of Akwamu, at the approach of the “messengers of death”—the executioners on their way to the shrine of past rulers in the foothills to the south. At the royal palace, a vigil is kept, while townspeople hold their breath as these initiates perform a vital ritual that will determine Akwamu’s fortune over the coming year. The chief executioner loudly calls upon the male and female Odwira spirits in turn, and shouts of relief fill the air when they are heard responding in the distance each time. A gunshot gives the signal for the stampede of the executioners from this oracle of the Odwira festival to the palace. Everyone then rejoices over clear indications that the festival’s spirits have agreed to join living mortals in their celebrations of the past year and their welcoming of the New Year. See also Busk; Kokuzahn; Shavuot; New Yam Festival References R. E. G. Armattoe. “Akwasidae,” in African Affairs: Journal of the Royal African Society (Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Klaus Reprints Ltd., 1963), Vol. 50, October 1951, pp. 61–63. Kwabena N. Bame. Profiles in African Traditional Popular Culture: Consensus and Conflict, Dance, Drama, Festival, and Funerals. New York: Clear Type Press, 1991. Robert B. Fisher.West African Religious Traditions: Focus on the Akan of Ghana. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998. A. A. Opoku. Festivals of Ghana. Accra, Ghana: Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1970.

◗ ADHIK MAAS See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ ADULTS’ DAY See New Year (Japan)

◗ ADVENT See Christmas

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◗ AGONES See Games (Rome)

◗ AGRANIA, AGRIONIA See Dionysia

◗ AH-DAKE’-WA-O See Busk

◗ AKITU (MESOPOTAMIA) Akitu is the earliest New Year’s festival for which we have written records, as well as one of the oldest Mesopotamian festivals, dating back to the middle of the third millennium B.C.E. Although it was initially observed on a semiannual basis, due to a local system of six-month equinox years, it sometimes came to be celebrated with more emphasis on one of its two dates in some of the region’s city states. Thus, in Babylonia, it started on the new moon closest to the spring equinox to honor the sky god Marduk; the Akitu nearest the fall equinox in Assyria honored the high god Ashur; and Akitus were held on both dates each year in Uruk to honor the sky god Anu. In each case, there would be a procession to a temple called “Akitu house” along a canal out in the fields, cultic dramas reenacting the creation of the cosmos by the god being honored, and the sacred marriage of a god and goddess to ensure the land’s prosperity.

Development Which gods were involved depended on the current political fortune of the particular Mesopotamian city state that had them as patrons, since each would reenact with an Akitu festival a god’s original triumphal entry to take possession of it. Each city had a calendar of its own, with months named after local religious festivals. That of Nippur, which was the religious center of legitimate authority for the region and where all its local practices converged, eventually became the standard calendar. This

calendar incorporated the dates that originated in Ur for the Akitu festivals. One of these Ur Akitus was celebrated in the first month (lasting about a week) and the other in the seventh month (lasting eleven days) when the equinoxes occurred. In the Nippur calendar, one Akitu was celebrated in the fourth month (for five different deities!) and the other in the twelfth month, but the names of both months sounded like those of the Ur months for the Akitus. These imported festivals were absorbed by preexisting agricultural festivals after which these months were named in Nippur, and they lost their connection to the moon, whose god, Nanna, was the one Ur worshipped (though the original Ur dates were still observed much later in the Akitu festivals of Babylon and even Hellenistic Uruk). In its Nippur version, Akitu provided a model for other cities in Sumer and then Mesopotamia (the culture that succeeded Sumer in a larger area between the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates, which is now at the heart of Iraq), since each city also wanted to show its god the respect due it in a triumphal welcome (the equivalent of a medieval prince’s royal entry into one of his cities), in return for which the god would rule the city justly and grant it a happy fate. Thus, there was an Akitu for Urash in Dilbat and one for Belit in Sippar. In some cities, other deities beside the local patron, such as the more broadly regional goddess Ishtar, might also be welcomed into the city at times of the year that did not conflict with their chief god’s Akitu. In the course of the second millennium B.C.E., Babylon became the political capital of Mesopotamia, and its god Marduk incorporated the attributes of the agro-pastoral god Tammuz he largely supplanted in the new state religion. In the process, the semi-annual Akitu festival held previously by the Akkadians (whose kingdom held sway in the region from the twenty-fourth to the twenty-second centuries B.C.E.) in honor of Tammuz (who

6 | akitu

emerged with the spring shoots and rose again with fall harvests after his death in summer droughts) became strictly a spring event. It even absorbed a fall New Year’s festival called Zagmuk. It filled the gap between the end of the solar and lunar years with a dozen-day celebration tied to the spring equinox (just like the twelve days of Christmas that follow the winter solstice in European tradition). Having started out as a sowing and harvest festival, it came to prominence in Babylon as the proper occasion for the crowning and investiture of a new king. On this occasion, the reigning monarch’s divine mandate was renewed in connection with the sky god Marduk’s victory over Tiamat, the goddess of salt water. As a spring festival, Akitu thus bound together the renewal of nature’s fertility, the reestablishment of the king’s divine authority (formerly a fall ceremony), and the securing of the people’s favorable destiny over the coming year—especially the scorching summer heat—while putting an end to the sterility of the winter months when the world seemed old and worn out.

Seasonal Ordeals of Gods and Kings In Babylon, the year’s most important festival began with ritual preparations on the first three days of the month of Nisan. On the fourth day, a high priest, the sheshgallu, recited the creation epic Enuma elish (which was written down in the late twelfth century B.C.E.) in praise of Marduk (also known simply as Bel or Lord), who was the city’s patron and head of its pantheon. Meanwhile, the king went to Borsippa to fetch an effigy of that city’s patron, the sky god’s son Nabu. He brought back the statue of this god of vegetation and of writing in a solemn ritual procession that arrived the next day by barge. In the interval, residents and pilgrims roamed the streets of Babylon looking for Marduk, whose captivity inside a mountain (like that of Tammuz, his predecessor as supreme god) explained the land’s desolate

condition in the winter. The shrines of Marduk and Nabu were purified on the fifth day, when the king would enter the great Esagila temple to be greeted by a priest, who proceeded to lead him to Marduk’s shrine. There, the priest stripped the monarch of his regalia, slapped his face, and pulled his ears. As part of this royal penitential rite, the king had to kneel before the god and assure him he had not neglected his duties toward his city Babylon and his temple Esagila. Only then could he be reinvested with the insignia of Marduk’s kingship and partake again of his divine powers. It has been suggested (Cohen 1993, pp. 440–441) that this ceremony of the humbling of the king, which normally occured after his arrival from the Akitu house, was put on the fifth day because that was when time was available for it in the midst of the festivities associated with an Akitu of Nabu. The latter went on until the eighth day, followed by an abridged Akitu of Marduk which went on for another three and a half days (since the Akitus of Borsippa and Babylon seem to have been combined due to the growing regional importance of the cult of Nabu in the first millennium B.C.E.). After Nabu’s own triumphal entry on the fifth day, mock battles were staged to reenact his struggle to avenge and free his father from his enemies. The enemies were represented by two small figurines, one made from tamarisk and the other from cedar. These were decapitated and burned on the sixth day. On the eighth day, Nabu could serve as a scribe to register the decrees of an assembly of all the gods, whose statues were arranged and carried following a strict hierarchy. The king would “take Marduk by the hand” (i.e., escort him) first to the temple’s courtyard and then to his Throneof-Destiny on the Sacred Mound to proclaim the solar sky god’s sovereignty over all the other gods for the beginning of the New Year on Zagmuk. Then, he would “take Marduk by the hand” again to lead a grand procession of the gods, who went in battle order to the Euphrates

akitu | 7

in carriage boats to fight the forces of chaos. There, real boats awaited the royal party to take it upriver to the Akitu house (Bit Akitu), or “House of Offerings,” north of the city, for a “banquet of the gods,” which celebrated Marduk’s triumph and the resulting prosperity of his Babylonian kingdom.

Ritual Dramas of Divine Victory and Sacred Marriage As part of the ritual drama of this “banquet of the gods,” the story of the Enuma elish (meaning “When on high . . .”) was reenacted, either with the gods’ statues or by humans, including the king who represented Marduk. It related the story of the sun god Marduk’s victory over the titanic powers of chaos, which were unleashed by his great-grandmother Tiamat (turned sea dragon in her wrath) against her unruly divine progeny, and the resulting creation of the universe out of her carcass. With Marduk’s enthronement as head of the gods, at which Babylon’s gods annually renewed their consent to be governed by him, the dominance of the city’s royalty was also reaffirmed as the earthly representation of the order of the universe created by its national god. However, there was a period during the second half of the thirteenth century B.C.E. when Assyria defeated Babylon and took over its Akitu along with the statue of Marduk, only to cast him in a less glorious role: that of one who abused his commission in the cosmic battle by trying to claim for himself the legitimate supreme leadership of Anshar, the true hero of the Enuma elish in this alternate reading, allowing him to be identified with Ashur. In this version, Marduk appears to have been made to go through an ordeal and admit to having wronged Assyria’s national god, before being allowed to return to his captors’ capital and rejoin the assembly of his divine peers. At the conclusion of their banquet in Babylon, the king, in the role of Marduk, would normally consummate his “sacred marriage” or hi-

erogamy with a priestess of royal blood, representing the god’s consort Zarpanit—“she of the city Zarpan.” Since the days of Sumerian civilization, what made kings divine were the marital relations they had with the goddess of the land they ruled at the beginning of a new year. This assured that she would ease this delicate transition and bestow her protection beyond it, bringing some seasonal regularity to the unpredictable environmental conditions of the region. On the festival’s eleventh day, the gods’ statues were brought back by road to the Esagila from the Akitu house—whose main purpose was probably just to provide a city’s primary god with a “home away from home.” This journey gave him an excuse to reenter the city in the same glory as on the mythical day he first took possession of it.

Judgment and Celebration Another assembly of the gods would take place in Babylon’s Shrine of Destinies on the last day of Akitu. It represented the one held after Marduk’s initial victory, when the gods decided to create humans as servants to work for them and to reward or punish them accordingly. For this was when the gods ratified what had been decreed about the kingdom’s fate over the coming year at the previous assembly. It was followed by a final banquet of the gods. (Soon after Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year festival of God’s enthronement and “Judgment Day,” which is probably derived from Akitu—a similar ten-day interval separates God’s decree from its final ratification on Yom Kippur.) In addition to this ritual drama, many sacrificial offerings were made; they stemmed from agrarian rites that were used for Akitu when it was celebrated in the month of Nisan— whether as a spring festival or as the New Year—on which this public, political dimension had come to be overlaid. This solemn state affair thus also had a lighter counterpart in popular feasting and street celebrations. They

8 | anna perenna

included joyful songs and dances that were fostered by the “sweet sounds” of lyres, harps, tambourines, and other instruments, as described in the allusions of ancient texts to such occasions where the festive spirit of the Babylonians (like that of the Sumerians before them) had always found an outlet in fun and games. Once Akitu was over and a new year had begun, gods and men returned from Babylon to their native cities and regular functions, reassured that they might get the kind of treatment they expected from each other to prosper in their respective spheres. See also Christmas; Corpus Christi; Naw Ruz; New Year (West); Purim; Rosh Hashanah; Yom Kippur References Mark E. Cohen. The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993. Joachim Marzahn. The Ishtar Gate, The Processional Way, The New Year Festival of Babylon. Mainz am Rhein, Ger: Philipp von Zabern/ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Vorderasiatisches Museum, 1995. Svend Aage Pallis.The Babylonian Akîtu Festival. Copenhagen, Dk: Det kongelige danske Videnskabernes Selskab, “Historisk-filologiske meddelelser XII, 1,” 1926.

◗ AKWASIDAE See Adae

◗ ’ALÁ See Nineteen-Day Feast

◗ ALL HALLOW’S EVE, ALL SAINTS, ALL SOULS See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ AMBARVALIA See Rogations

◗ AMBROSIA See Dionysia

◗ ANALIPSIS See Ascension

◗ ANANTA-CHATURDASHI See Paryushana and Dashalakshana

◗ ANASTENARIA See Dionysia

◗ ANNA PERENNA (ROME) During the late Roman Republic, the festival of Anna Perenna was celebrated on March 15 to honor an ancient Italian divinity. This was a kind of New Year’s Day in the calendar used at the time of Rome’s foundation. Its name refers to the perennial course of the years.

Marking the First Full Moon Like China’s Lantern Festival or the archaic Little New Year of Japan, the mid-month holiday, or ides of March, had initially marked the first full moon of a New Year, when Anna Perenna was offered “public and private sacrifices for prosperity throughout the year and for years to come.” This is the translation of a passage in which the fifth-century grammarian Macrobius accounts for her name: “ut annare perennareque commode liceat” (Saturnalia I, 12: 6, p. 85). Romans continued to offer these sacrifices, even under the new official calendar starting on the calends, or first day, of January.

Expelling the Old Year On the eve of Anna Perenna, or March 14, the people of Rome would first expel Mamurius Veturius (just as the Hebrews used to drive away a scapegoat on Yom Kippur, ten days after their New Year). This mythical blacksmith was invoked by the Salian priests of Mars at the end of the ancient hymn they sang on March 19 as well as on October 19. But in the first context, he represented the old March of the dying year with its waning vital powers. A man was given animal skins to wear in order to impersonate

a n n u n c i at i o n | 9

Mamurius Veturius and thus become a human symbol of the degeneration and vulnerability associated with wintertime. To drive out the perils concentrated in his person, a wild procession would form, and citizens, who lined the streets all the way beyond the city limits, would beat the poor man with long white rods. This ritual was supposed to clear the ground for a new incarnation of Mars as an archaic god of vegetation (as opposed to his later military features), who was reborn every spring.

Merrymaking to Welcome Spring Welcoming spring on the day of Anna Perenna proper meant that couples of all ages would go a mile out of Rome on the Via Flaminia to lie on the grass near the Tiber river and drink all day among makeshift tents. For girls who had reached marriageable age, this was an occasion for romance with boys, regardless of which they would eventually marry. The idea behind this very old custom was that maidens should first pay their dues to the general fertility of springtime in the hope that it would rub off on them as young wives. For married people, the outing was an opportunity for casual, uninhibited merrymaking. It included dancing around the wine supply, loudly counting the cups of wine each person would gulp down in turn and asking the gods for as many happy returns of Anna Perenna as the cups they were able to drink. They would also sing and act out all the tunes and skits they could recall from the ancient Roman equivalents of the music-hall. A famous mime composed for the occasion by Laberius (106–43 B.C.E.) was even entitled Anna Perenna. See also Lantern Festival; Naked Festivals; New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Thargelia; Yom Kippur References Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. One-Volume Abridged Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1985.

Macrobius. The Saturnalia. Tr. Percival Vaughan Davies. New York: Columbia University Press, “Records of Civilization” No. 79, 1969. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London and New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

◗ ANNUNCIATION (CHRISTIANITY) The feast of the Annunciation on March 25 commemorates the Christian belief in the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary’s womb, when the Archangel Gabriel came to her to announce that she had been chosen to play this pivotal role in God’s plan to redeem mankind through the Incarnation of his Only-Begotten Son. It also recognizes that Mary had the option to refuse but that she made an historic choice to bear the child. Christians view Mary not only as heir to the providential history of the people of Israel, but as representative of the whole human race. The meeting of God’s gracious election and the response of human free will in the person of Mary is the object of this joyous feast. In Greece, the Annunciation has an especially exuberant character as both a religious and a civic celebration, which it also was in much of the rest of Christendom when celebrated before the Renaissance as the Roman New Year. The added dimension for Greeks is that they celebrate the same day as their national holiday, commemorating the start of the country’s war of independence in 1821. In Nice on the French Riviera, March 25 is also the traditional date of a lively folkloric spring festival known as Lou Festin dei Cougourdoun or “The Feast of the Gourds”— named after its displays of handcrafted gourds.

Place in the Calendar Sermons for March 25 as the feast of the Annunciation have been found going back to the mid-fifth century, but for another couple of centuries before that its place in the calendar

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A group of girls dressed as saints hold up cardboard plates with the various honorific names of the Virgin Mary during an Annunciation ceremony in Victoria, Seychelles. (Zen Icknow/Corbis)

was uncertain and it was celebrated on different dates, depending on local usage. The March 25 date seems confirmed as the oldest because of a tradition from the third century that linked three key events to what was the official spring equinox at the time: the Creation of the world, the Annunciation to Mary, and the Crucifixion of Christ. In 656, the regional Council of Toledo in Spain adopted December 18 for the Annunciation in order to avoid the difficulties of celebrating a joyous feast in March when the Lenten fasting season occurs, thus making of the Annunciation a logical prelude to the Nativity of Christ on December 25. However, this decision was overturned at the more universal Council in Trullo, held in Constantinople in 692. There are complicated arguments accounting for the final choice of date with reference

to the Gospel narrative of the parallel conceptions six months apart of Jesus and John the Baptist, the latter’s coming first when his father the priest Zechariah was designated to perform a Temple ritual of Yom Kippur in September. The feast of the Conception of Saint John the Baptist is thus set on September 23. Still, the most straightforward reason for putting the Annunciation on March 25 was to mark the conception of Christ exactly nine months before his birth, set on December 25 in the fourth century. This would imply that the Annunciation may have been celebrated on March 25 for nearly as long as Christmas, if not longer. But in Eastern Christianity, the Nativity of Christ was initially celebrated as part of Epiphany on January 6, so that, in the Armenian Church, in the absence of a distinct Christmas, the same reasoning based on the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy gives an April 7 date for the feast of the Annunciation. By the end of the seventh century, when the Greek-born Pope Saint Sergius I ordained processions from Saint Peter’s basilica to the church known today as Santa Maria Maggiore on the occasion of Marian feasts, this one was known in Rome as the Annunciation of the Lord, and Latin liturgical texts spoke of the Incarnation of the Word of God in Mary. It was later called the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary until 1969, when the Catholic Church made it a feast of the Lord again, along with the Purification of the Virgin Mary on February 2, Candlemas, henceforward known as the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, which is the name it had always had in the Eastern Church, where, on the other hand, the Annunciation has remained a Marian feast. As far back as 1042, March 25 also used to be the date for Mothering Day in England, when mothers would be offered an almond and spice “Simnel Cake.” Today, this celebration occurs on the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Anglican calendar.

a n n u n c i at i o n | 11

In the Eastern Church, there are two cases in which the Annunciation is not celebrated on March 25: if it happens to coincide with Good Friday or with Holy Saturday. It is then observed concurrently with Easter Sunday. However, in the Roman Catholic Church, the Annunciation is postponed to the following Sunday if Easter falls on March 25 or 26, while Good Friday remains an acceptable day for marking the Annunciation. Such overlaps have been eliminated in those Orthodox jurisdictions using the Gregorian calendar for fixed feasts such as the Annunciation, since the date of Easter is still calculated in a different way that usually makes this movable feast fall at least a week later than it does in the Western Church.

An Angel’s Good Tidings and a Woman’s Response The liturgical texts of the Annunciation are mostly based on the Gospel account of Saint Luke (1:26–38) and on Chapter Eleven of the apocryphal Book of James, as is its iconography, which is among the oldest to be associated with a particular Christian festival. Thus, the classic iconography of the feast of the Annunciation is first found in the second-century Roman catacomb of Priscilla. Angelos is a Greek word for “messenger”— for someone who announces. The Annunciation of the good news of God’s birth amidst mankind, called Evangelismos in Greek, is therefore the epitome of an angelic apparition. As one of the highest angels, Gabriel, who brought this announcement from God to Mary, has been depicted either with a staff as in the East or presenting a lily to the Virgin (but not with wings initially, since angels were not yet portrayed with wings in order to avoid confusion with pagan winged personifications of qualities such as glory and victory). This is one of the reasons that the lily, which had long been a pagan fertility symbol, has come to symbolize chastity.

Yet staff and lily were initially one, since early Greek icons portrayed Gabriel as a herald or ambassador like the keryx of classical times, who would hold a wand (called kerykion in Greek or caduceus in Latin) that made his person inviolable. This olive branch ending in two shoots decorated with garlands or ribbons thus became a symbol of peace in the hand of Greece’s Hermes and Rome’s Mercury—messengers of the gods. Now often confused with the serpent-entwined staff of Asclepius—the Greek healer god—it remains an emblem of the healing professions. Unfamiliar with the background of the Byzantine iconography for the Annunciation, thirteenth-century Western painters (eventually imitated by many of their Eastern colleagues) turned the stylized rod into a threepetalled flower, offered to Mary as a tribute to her virginal purity, rather than wielded to transmit a message of peace from on high. In Mary’s response of selfless obedience to God, Christian tradition holds that human freedom was fittingly reaffirmed, since it opened the way for Christ to liberate mankind through communion in his divinity.

Greece’s Independence Day In view of the theological role that human freedom plays in the feast of the Annunciation, it is also fitting that this day has become the national holiday of a country where this ideal has been championed since antiquity, namely Greece. For it was on March 25, 1821, that, after four centuries of oppressive Ottoman Turkish rule, the white and blue flag of the Greek liberation struggle was first raised at the Monastery of Aghia Lavra in the Peloponnese by Bishop Germanos of Patras. On this Greek Independence Day, all public buildings, houses, and shops are decked with flags throughout the country as well as in all foreign countries where there is a substantial Greek population. (On a March 24 evening, the author has even boarded a Montreal city bus to find its Greek driver had

12 | a n n u n c i at i o n

decorated the inside with white and blue balloons and streamers and was offering seasonal red candies to all passengers.) Churches and church squares are adorned with bay and myrtle, small paper flags, patriotic slogans on colored paper bands, and pictures of the Greek head of state and of heroes of the Greek Revolution. All local authorities, including guilds and trade unions, with their respective banners, are represented at the Annunciation and thanksgiving service held in great pomp at the main church of every town. People—especially womenfolk—who have traditional Greek costumes will wear them at this service and later that day at a colorful parade (where schoolchildren march through the streets led by their teachers), at the laying of wreaths at a monument to soldiers killed in action, and at a dance that is often held in the main square. However, since the Annunciation always falls during Lent, there is a limit to the amount of celebrating that can go on for the Greek national holiday. The Orthodox Church allows only a slight relaxation in the Lenten season’s vegetarian diet in honor of this feast; fish may be eaten, which, in Greece, will usually be fried or boiled salted cod with garlic sauce. On this day, the shepherds of Crete take their flocks to the mountain pastures for the fair season. In many parts of the country, children take off the red “March thread” they have been wearing around their wrist for good luck—a custom known in various local forms in the Balkans since ancient times and even in other festive contexts as far away as Tibet. They hang it on a tree for the swallows to take away, as these messengers of spring are supposed to come back from the south for the Annunciation.

Lou Festin dei Cougourdoun The fact that the Annunciation naturally doubles as a festival of spring is also well illustrated by the Nice custom of “The Feast of the Gourds”—Lou Festin dei Cougourdoun as it is still called in the local dialect of the Occitan

language. There, the word festin does not refer to a lavish banquet as it does in French, but to a homely country fair on the occasion of a local patronal feast. This one is held in connection with the Franciscans’ Church of the Annunciation near the Roman ruins on the hill of Cimiez. It used to begin in the early morning, when lay brotherhoods of penitents from the various quarters of Nice led the faithful in processions that collected in front of the Church of Saint Ann before proceeding to the Church of the Annunciation—forming a mystical pilgrimage from the Virgin’s mother to the Virgin as Mother. Some rest was in order to recover from this uphill journey out of town, so celebrants took the opportunity to relax, eat, dance, and play games on the convent grounds. There, stalls were put up to sell gourds of various shapes and sizes that had been emptied and dried over the winter either to be carved into utensils or made into funnysounding musical instruments for the next year’s Carnival. Today, the gourds are mostly turned into hand-painted heads wearing traditional fisherman’s red hats, as a form of typical folk art. One of the traditional treats sold at other stalls is the chaudèu, an orange blossomor anice-flavored bun on which an eggshell is held fast by a cross of dough. This is a reminder of the feast’s fading connection with Lent. For in Nice, each Sunday’s festin of this period of penance prior to Easter used to have a specific theme, like the festin of reproaches, when married couples would vent the winter’s pent-up grievances, and the festin of reconciliation, when they would make up. As for the connection with the Annunciation, it has also grown looser, since the city now puts on what has largely become a celebration of local folklore on just any early spring weekend that suits its schedule, although it still does feature an outdoor mass. See also Candlemas; Carnival; Christmas; Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Easter; Epiphany; Holy Week; Lent; Matzu’s

a pat u r i a | 13 Birthday; Midsummer; New Year (West); Yom Kippur References The Festal Menaion. Tr. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos, Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1977. George A. Megas. Greek Calendar Customs. Athens, Greece: [s.n.], 1963. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982.

◗ ANODOS See Thesmophoria

◗ ANTHESTERIA See Dionysia ˇ SAR ˇ ◗ AN.TAH.SUM

See KI.LAM

◗ AOI (NO) MATSURI See Hollyhock Festival, Matsuri

◗ APAFRAM See Adae

◗ APATURIA (GREECE) The Apaturia were an ancient Greek festival, held throughout Ionia except for Ephesus and Colophon according to Herodotus (I, 147), and as a three-day holiday that has been dated from either the nineteenth to the twenty-first or the twenty-sixth to the twenty-eighth of the month of Pyanopsion (October–November) in Athens, where it originated. An equivalent annual festival of Apollo in Dorian states was called Apellai. This was also the name of another festival in Sparta, featuring rites of passage similar to those of the Ionian Apaturia, that granted ephebes (adolescent boys) the status of manhood in the Spartan system of education: the agoge, as part of an assembly held on the seventh of each month.

Men’s Coming of Age in Athens The Apaturia were an unofficial celebration of relationship through a “common father” (the likely meaning of its name), when over thirty marriage-based clan groupings known as phratries or fraternities who made up Attica’s citizenry would gather to discuss their affairs and induct new brothers (phratores) into them. The older brothers would have a common dinner called Dorpia on the first day, after which they would drink offerings of wine contributed by the fathers of children being initiated. (The word for this sacrifice, oinisteria, was also used for another libation ephebes would offer to the hero Heracles on the occasion of haircuts—including one on the third day of Apaturia, when they were followed by a ritual drinking binge.) Various sacrifices—to Zeus Phratrios and to Athena Phratria in particular—were made on the second day. These were referred to as anarrhusis, after the “drawing back” of the necks of the animal victims. The third day, called Kureotis, owed its name to the koureion, the shaving or shearing of ewes and goats brought by the relatives of the candidates for admission—which became official once the phratores ate the meat and offerings of the hair of citizens’ sons were made. These offerings were normally made to deified heroes and originally next to a river where peasants had once met for mating feasts. They symbolized cutting the boys off from the world of childhood and occurred in the year they turned sixteen. As part of his second introduction to his father’s phratry, each boy’s qualifications for Athenian citizenship would then be scrutinized—mostly in terms of pedigree. The second introduction marked legal puberty, in contrast to an optional first introduction of children born since the last festival, when their fathers or guardians took an oath stating they were legitimate before their names were put down in the register. This ceremony was accompanied by a sacrifice called meion, about which little is known.

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A fourth day called Epibda was sometimes counted as part of Apaturia.

◗ APOLLINARIAN GAMES

Marriage as Women’s Rite of Passage

◗ APOSTLES’ FAST

A meion was also made when a young man’s bride was introduced to his phratry. In that case, it was part of a wedding feast called a gamelia, which was a sort of female counterpart to the koureion—except of course that young women did not obtain citizenship but only recognition of their male children’s legitimate claim to the birthright of freeborn Athenian men. A bride offered her hair on the eve of the wedding, because it was considered her passage into womanhood, even though there was no public rite entrenched in tradition comparable to the boys’. Originally, the gamelia ceremonies might have been celebrated collectively on the same day as the young men’s coming of age; the sacrifices made on behalf of young women on the last day of Apaturia continued to be called matrimonial offerings, while private feasts of the goddess Hera, patron of married women, were also known as gamelia. However, the month of Gamelion (around January) came to be favored for weddings in Attica. See also Inti Raymi and Huarachicu; Liberalia; Seven-Five-Three References Mark Golden. Children and Childhood in Classical Athens. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Marilyn A. Katz. “Women, Children and Men,” in Paul Cartledge, ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 100–138. H. W. Parke. Festivals of the Athenians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

◗ APELLAI See Apaturia

◗ APOKREOS See Carnival

See Games (Rome)

See Lent

◗ APPEARANCE DAY OF SRILA PRABHUPADA See Janmashtami

◗ APRIL FOOLS’ DAY See New Year (West)

◗ ARAFAT (DAY OF), ARBAIIN See Ashura

◗ ARBOR DAY See Tu bi-Shevat

◗ ARGEI (ROME) Because it was celebrated on May 14—an even day of the month—the festival of Argei was an anomaly in the calendar of ancient Rome. Usually, only odd days were set aside for religious festivals. It is also not clear what the object of the festival was, even though its practices (which are are fairly well known) suggest the expulsion in effigy of evil spirits from the city.

Dunking Dummies Twenty-seven or thirty shrines (sacraria) scattered throughout the city were visited by a procession several weeks before the Argei festival. The purpose of the procession may have been to bring puppets made from rushes and/or reeds to each neighborhood shrine. These twenty-seven whitewashed, bulrush-plaited effigies of old men were also called argives. They may then have been gathered again in a second, undocumented procession during the festival on March 16 and 17, when the pontiffs and the vestal virgins threw them into the Tiber from the old Sublician bridge (entirely made of oak for obscure religious reasons).

a s c e n s i o n | 15

The Greatest of Purifications Plutarch refers to the festival of Argei as “the greatest of purifications.” This makes it quite likely that the purpose of the reed figures was to channel and absorb the evils from every corner of Rome. These spirits, which were believed to exist in the form of unsettled, homeless spirits of the air, were regarded as malignant wanderers who envied the living and longed for homes. They were thought to be particularly active on the three odd days of the calendar immediately before Argei (the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth of May). This time was known as the Lemuria in recognition of the nocturnal household rituals practiced to drive away these spirits, who were called lemures. Once they had been caught in the plaited dummies, the lemures could then be expelled from the city on the fourteenth and washed out to sea by the Tiber. This ritual expulsion of evil seems to derive from a practice that was common among the ancients of driving away a scapegoat—that is, a victim singled out to be loaded down with the community’s sins and misfortunes. Indeed, the mythical hero Hercules is credited with convincing the Romans to stop scapegoating men and sacrificing them to Saturn in this way and to start using dummies instead for such rites. After settling their business with the dead on May 14, the Romans turned back to the daily business of the living, for on May 15, they celebrated the dedication of the temple of Mercury, god of trade and communications. See also Days of the Dead (West); Dionysia; May Day; Naked Festivals; Saint George; Situa; Thargelia; Vestalia; Yom Kippur References William Warde Fowler. Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic. An Introduction to the Study of the Romans. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1969. Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. One-Volume Abridged Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1985.

Robert Graves. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin Books, 1960.

◗ ASAKUSA SHRINE FESTIVAL See Matsuri

◗ ASCENSION (CHRISTIANITY) The feast of the Ascension commemorates the conclusion of the earthly career of Jesus Christ, when he is supposed to have parted from his disciples and risen to heaven. According to the main accounts, which are reported at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles and at the end of Luke’s Gospel, Christ ascended to heaven on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem in front of the disciples, forty days after his resurrection from the dead, which is the central event of the Christian faith, celebrated on Easter Sunday. The feast of the Ascension is therefore held forty days later, on a Thursday in May or June. This place in the calendar gave rise to the popular old English name for the feast—Holy Thursday (which should not be confused with the Holy Thursday, also known as Maundy Thursday, that is part of Holy Week).

History For over three centuries after the particular event it commemorates, the Ascension seems to have been celebrated as a secondary theme in the feast of Pentecost which occurs on the fiftieth day after Easter. Only in the fourth century did it begin to be detached from Pentecost as an independent feast (just as the Nativity was a theme of Epiphany that came to acquire an independent existence as Christmas around the same time). The Ascension likely began to gain a separate status in the second third of the fourth century, after the Roman Empire, having embraced Christianity, sponsored the reconstruction of Jerusalem, a city that it had previously destroyed in the process of suppressing Jewish re-

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bellions. At that time, churches were built on all the sites that could be connected with the life of Jesus Christ. Pilgrims from all corners of the Empire began to flock to these new shrines, creating a mass market for souvenirs of the sites and events from what then became known as the Holy Land. This in turn encouraged the multiplication of new or specialized celebrations for many of them. One of the earliest examples of the classic iconography of the Ascension was found in Monza in Lombardy on a sixth-century ampulla—that is, a small round bottle used by pilgrims to take holy water or oil from a place associated with a sacred event. As such objects were spread everywhere by returning pilgrims, so was the awareness of the events in question and of the need to celebrate them in more specific and elaborate ways, despite the concerns of some of the early church fathers about such innovations. A pilgrim from Gaul to the Holy Land in the 380s, named either Etheria or Egeria, left us her travel narrative. It includes the first known account of a feast of the Ascension on the fortieth day after Easter, though she also mentions the Ascension being commemorated on the afternoon of Pentecost. The Ascension was celebrated separately from Pentecost throughout Christendom, by the first third of the fifth century, when sermons were written for the feast by the most authoritative church fathers. Among them, Saint Augustine of Hippo even went so far as to say of the Ascension that “this is the festival which confirms the grace of all the festivals together, without which the profitableness of every festival would have perished . . .” (Farrow 1999, p. 9). For Christians believe that, with Jesus Christ, “the dignity of human nature has ascended to heaven above the angels”—to the angels’ great astonishment, concurred the midfifth-century Pope Saint Leo the Great, whose words appear in the fifth lesson of the Latin mass of the Ascension (de Mahuet 1948).

Theology The Ascension brings to a conclusion the whole process of salvation held in Christianity to be accomplished in the passion, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, who then ascended to be enthroned on the right hand of the Father. Moreover, since this is the day when Jesus is said to have left the earth in the flesh, the paschal candle—which in the Western Church is lit during the main Eastertide services—is extinguished. This ritual follows the reading from Saint Luke (24:51) at the Ascension mass (often followed by an afternoon procession) and is done because the flame representing the Savior must disappear with him. The Christian Church does not mourn Christ’s departure from the midst of men, but joyfully celebrates his universal kingship during Ascensiontide (the ten-day period between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday). In the East, the festivities begin with the repetition of the Easter Sunday liturgy on Wednesday night as the triumphal close of the Easter season and the climax of the incarnation of the Word of God, which had started to become manifest with his humble birth in human form. This is probably why early Christians long celebrated the Ascension in a cave in Bethlehem above the site of the Nativity, instead of on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem where he was taken up, as if to underscore the unity between the first day and the final day of the earthly life of Jesus. According to Saint Paul in his letters to the Philippians (Jerusalem Bible 1968, 2:8–11), Christ was not content to be born as a poor lowly human, “he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of the Father.” The Church understands itself as the community where this acknowledgment of Christ

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as Son of God takes place through the Holy Spirit, and Eastern Christians will therefore collectively kneel to receive it ten days after the feast of Ascension, at Pentecost vespers. For the Father’s promise of a final parting gift, as repeated on his behalf by Jesus on the day of his Ascension, was to be fulfilled ten days later with the sending to his disciples of the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, or Comforter, at Pentecost. The feast of the Ascension looks back to the full revelation of the second person of the triune God in the life of Jesus Christ and looks forward to the full revelation of the third person of this Trinity in the life of the Christian Church through the Holy Spirit. “The inner link between Christ and the Church is expressed in the icon by the whole structure of the composition linking together into one whole the group on earth with its consummation in heaven” (Ouspensky and Lossky 1982, p. 196). To underscore this central idea of the feast’s liturgy—the ecclesial union of above and below—an icon of the Ascension often appears within the dome of old Greek churches, representing heaven for the faithful below. The feast of the Ascension points beyond history to Jesus Christ’s triumphant return from heaven at the end of time. This Second Coming to earth in glory is prefigured by a luminous cloud (an Old Testament sign of the presence of God) that hid him from the sight of his disciples as he withdrew into the bosom of the Father—which Orthodox liturgical texts for the Ascension insist he had actually never left. According to Greek Church Fathers, this opened to human beings the possibility of the mystical process known as “deification,” which has remained a central tenet of Orthodox faith. It finds liturgical expression in Eastern Church matins for the Ascension (cathism II, tone 3), proclaiming at the outset of the feast that “the supereternal and beginningless God who mysteriously deified human nature by assuming it has raised himself to heaven today . . .”—lifting up mankind along with the Son of Man.

Folklore Being thus on a level with Christ in a mystical way, Orthodox Christians no longer repeat the paschal greeting “Christ is risen!”—though Rumanians like to replace it with “Christ is ascended!” on this finale of the Easter season, when they also repeat their Easter custom of giving red eggs to friends and guests. In the coastal regions of Greece, this is the day for the first swim, when some people used to take water from forty different waves (representing the forty days since Easter) to sprinkle it in their house as they recited, “As Christ rose to heaven, so may slander, disease, the evil eye and all other evils rise from our house and disappear” (Megas 1963, p. 126). Similarly, since the Greek word for the Ascension, Analipsis, means “taking away,” herbs and mud gathered on that day are supposed to take away skin diseases. On the other hand, Greek shepherds fear that their ewes’ milk will be withdrawn as Christ was drawn up to heaven. This is why they make sure not to keep a single drop of the milk they draw on the Ascension. Instead, it all goes into making cheese for the local priest, as well as yogurt and other dishes for guests at a huge meal. Thus, the Ascension is really the greatest feast day of the Christian calendar for Greek shepherds. There is also a belief among Greeks that, as on Christmas Eve, the sky may be seen bursting asunder at midnight, so the pure of heart who staid up have a chance of witnessing the seasonal miracle of a light ascending to heaven. When Venice was a republic, the Ascension (known as the Festa della Sensa) was one of the highlights of its festive calendar the occasion for the annual ceremony of the city’s Marriage to the Sea. This commemorated the gift of a ring by Pope Alexander III to Doge Sebastiano Ziani in 1177, in recognition of the latter’s mediating role in his dispute with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and as a token of Venice’s independence from both secular and ecclesiastical world powers as well as of its dominion over the sea. To renew the city’s union with

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Departure of the Bucintoro towards the Lido for the ceremonies of Ascension Day, by Francesco Guardi (1712–1793). (Erich Lessing/Art Resource)

its watery domain, its ruler, the Doge, would set out with dignitaries on a gilded ceremonial galley, surrounded by several thousand small vessels, to the island of Lido, where he would cast a ring into the sea to take it as his bride—which made him its lord and master. A mass would follow at the church of San Nicolò di Lido before the seaborne procession went back to the city. This ceremony, often depicted by Venetian painters, and now reenacted every year in historic dress and boat replicas, has parallels in Southeast Asia, where Javanese princes act as gods in symbolic weddings to the sea goddess. See also Christmas; Easter; Epiphany; Holy Week; Transfiguration; Whitsuntide References J. de Mahuet. “Ascension,” in dom Fernand Cabrol and dom Henri Leclercq, eds. Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie. Paris, Fr: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1948.

Douglas Farrow. Ascension and Ecclesia. On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999. Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968. George A. Megas. Greek Calendar Customs. Athens: [s.n.], 1963. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. Terisio Pignatti. “Venetian Festivals and Amusements,” in Apollo, No. 102, 1975, pp. 208–215.

◗ ASCENSION OF BAHÁ’ULLAH, ASCENSION OF THE BAB See Ridván

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◗ ASH WEDNESDAY See Lent

◗ ASHURA (ISLAM) Islam’s oldest annual festival is Ashura, which is celebrated on the ninth and tenth of the month of Moharram. Modeled on the Jewish feast of Yom Kippur, it also comes ten days after the New Year. The interval may have been chosen to shift the focus away from pagan observances associated with the New Year. Ashura is an occasion for Sunni Muslims to fast and practice charity. There is also a carnival-like Day of the Dead among Sunnis of the Maghreb. Shiite Muslims—that is, Muslims loyal to the lineage of Imam Ali as the Prophet Mohammed’s designated successor in leading the Umma—have added a strong penitential dimension to Ashura, in mourning for the martyrdom of Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, as they mark its anniversary on this day.

The Original Fast The common idea of Ashura in both branches of Islam is that of expiation, which is derived from the great Day of Atonement in the Jewish calendar. It was referred to as asor in the Bible’s Book of Leviticus (Jerusalem Bible 1968, 16:29), and “Ashura” is the Arabic form of the Aramaic word derived from this term. It means “tenth,” because Yom Kippur falls on the tenth day of the first month of the year; as does Ashura in the Islamic calendar. When he came to Medina after his daring escape from Mecca in 622 known as the Hegira, Mohammed observed the Jews there fasting for Yom Kippur. But he somehow got the mistaken impression from his conversations with them that it was in commemoration of their forebears’ safe crossing of the Red Sea and of God’s judgment on the pursuing army of Pharaoh that was drowned in it. As it happens, these are the events remembered on

Passover, not on Yom Kippur, though some allusions to the flight from Egypt in the latter festival’s prayers may have been at the source of his confusion. In any case, it is on the basis of such a garbled account of the meaning of asor that Mohammed decided Muslims had all the more reason to fast, given their own flight across the desert and providential escape from pagan pursuers. He therefore took up for the Umma—the community of believers—the Jewish custom of fasting from one sunset to the next, as opposed to just during daytime as is the case with other fasts. Then came the Battle of Badr in mid-March 624—a stunning victory for the fledgling Muslim community of Medina over the twice as numerous, better equipped, and seasoned warriors of pagan Mecca. As a result of his deteriorating relations with the Jewish community, on whose practices he had at first patterned the emerging ones of the Umma, Mohammed had just changed the qibla—the geographical orientation of prayer, which is marked by a niche in the wall of a place of worship—from Jerusalem (as found in ancient churches) to Mecca, only a few weeks before. (The anniversary of this crucial turn is celebrated during the Night of Sha’baan from the fourteenth to the fifteenth of that month; it is spent in prayer after a day of fasting.) He now similarly downgraded Ashura to an optional fast and made of the current Arab month of Ramadan—the one when he had first received the Koran now seen as such a sign of salvation and judgment from God—the main period of fasting for Muslims. To further distinguish Ashura from the Jewish festival of the tenth day of the New Year, its date was changed. Some traditions go so far as to place the day of fasting on the ninth of the first month of Moharram. For most, however, it was eventually set on the tenth day of the new, wholly lunar Islamic calendar, under the name Ta’sua. A couple of months prior to his death on June 8, 632, the Prophet Mohammed made a

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pledge to fast on the ninth and tenth of Moharram of that new Arab year (not yet dated from the Hegira). Once he had done so, he declared that Ashura was the best fast—better even than Ramadan. He is also believed to have said that the fast of Ashura takes away the sins of the past year as well as those of the coming year, whereas only the latter are removed by the fast of the Day of Arafat—named after the valley where pilgrims to Mecca converge on the ninth of Dhul-Hijja, the last month of the Islamic year, to prepare for the Great Feast of Sacrifice: Eid-al-Adha.

A North African Carnival and Day of the Dead After Eid-al-Adha comes the New Year, soon followed by Ashura, a day commemorating the one when Noah left the ark to repopulate the world at the end of the Flood. This new beginning after the atonement of sins is celebrated on the twentieth of Moharram as the Bianu festival of the southern Sahara’s Tuareg nomads, in a kind of Saturnalia that overlaps with the solemnities of Ashura and the New Year. Likewise in the Maghreb, the seasonal renewal of creation is marked on Ashura by colorful customs that go back to pre-Islamic agrarian rituals (possibly in honor of Near Eastern fertility gods like Adonis and Tammuz), in which mourning for the year gone by is mixed with a joyful welcome to spring. The many variants of the carnival known as farja almost always include the mock trial, execution, and funeral of an elderly man or woman dressed in animal skins or woven plants, while a traditional impersonation of a huge beast, such as a camel, a lion, or a mule, is intended to both scare and amuse the crowds in turn. Along with animal sacrifices, actual weddings are performed in Morocco or else they are depicted with dolls or dummies representing Ashura and her bridegroom Ashur (the name by which the month of Moharram is known in the region). Many customs involve fire—such as

jumping over bonfires, throwing firecrackers in them, or tossing embers into rivers—and water—like pouring water into ashes or bathing or soaking both the living and the dead (since in Morocco the dead are honored by having water thrown on their tombs to clean them). Elsewhere in the Maghreb, the dead are honored merely by laying myrtle leaves on their graves. There is also much alms-giving, whether it is in the guise of an official tithe (called the zakat and originally paid in grain) or of offerings to the Koranic school pupils who go from door to door singing to collect donations for their teachers—much as the chapter school pupils of medieval Europe did before their own Yuletide Feast of Fools. Certain foods—such as donuts, cakes, or porridge, but especially eggs and poultry—will be eaten on this festival. Not surprisingly, the optional fasting that is recommended on this day tends to be lost sight of in the lively bustle of its festive atmosphere. Nevertheless in Tunisia, on Ta’sua (Ashura’s Eve) people refrain from having their customary couscous fare; they kill a chicken instead, and before eating it, they may nibble dry fruits and unleavened cakes. Also, women rub kohl on their eyelids, since this is a sign of mourning appropriate for a fast.

The Shiite Day of Mourning for Martyrs The Shiite rites of exacerbated mourning on Ashura may well have originated in agrarian precedents, such as those so well preserved in the Maghreb. Yet a pietistic interpretation rife with political overtones soon displaced all other aspects of this festival. For Shiites, it commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammed’s son, the third Imam Hussein, called the “Prince of Martyrs,” at the Battle of Karbala, 110 kilometers southwest of Baghdad, on the tenth of Moharram 61 A.H. (October 10, 680 C.E.). (At one time, Sunni Muslims under the Umayyad Caliphs used to commemorate this battle as well—but as their dynasty’s victory over Hus-

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sein.) The Shiite dynasty of the Fatimids (910–1170) made it a day of mourning for Imam Hussein, when princes and their officials dressed accordingly, and no meat or pastries were allowed to be eaten by their subjects. After the fall of the Fatimids, their Egyptian base came under the Sunni rule of Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty (1171–1258), and joy returned as the dominant note of Ashura there. Today in Egypt, as in other Sunni countries, it coexists with the fast recommended by Mohammed, in addition to being the customary local day for giving legal alms (zakat)—one of the five pillars of Islam. In Iran, Ashura has long been central to the national consciousness, since it provides a link between that country’s Zoroastrian past and its adoption of the Shiite version of Islam in the person of Imam Hussein. Iranians claim Hussein married the daughter of the last Sassanid Emperor of Persia, defeated by Arab armies at the battle of Nahavend in 632. During the first nine days of Moharram, other imams may also be remembered in Iran, along with all Shiite martyrs, providing inspiration to recover a sense of sacrifice for the Umma’s sake and of personal spiritual commitment. In mosques as well as in specially erected private courtyard enclosures and their permanent public equivalents (called hoseynieh), which are all shrouded in black fabric, preachers sermonize and recite stories of the martyrdom of Hussein or of some other imam in elegies called rowzekhani during that period. People in their audience, dressed in black with faces covered in ashes, beat their chests and cry bitterly as they call out: “Hoseyn! Hoseyn! Hoseyn!” This even goes on nonstop from the evening of the ninth to the morning of the tenth, when all this somber exaltation culminates in the sinezani, a famous procession of black-shirted flagellants, who strike their chests with their fists, flog their own backs with chains, or cut themselves with sabers. This event is sometimes opened by blood-soaked performers displaying the wounds of the martyrs of Karbala, while participants with no special part to

play go bareheaded with their shirts open and often dirt on their faces. Each delegation from either a neighborhood or a guild is signaled by a distinctive banner. The procession stops in front of every mosque and holy tomb, until noon when all its paraphernalia are put down on the ground as a sign of mourning, and people go back whimpering to their starting point—the sad picture of the defeated heroes of Karbala. Also specific to Iran is the tazieh (which means “consolation” in Farsi). This may be seen as a rare Muslim example of a passion play (similar to the kind put on in Europe about Christ’s Passion) about the martyrdom of an imam, usually Hussein or one of his seventytwo companions, who almost all died at the hands of Caliph Yazeed’s minions. It is only since the accession of a Shiite dynasty—the Safavids—to the Persian throne in the sixteenth century that these Ashura rites could be carried out openly, in spite of the reluctance of religious leaders to allow such extravagant displays of piety. Later, under the Qajar dynasty in the nineteenth century, they were even encouraged to take on spectacular proportions. Yet by the time of the last shah of the Pahlavi dynasty in the mid-twentieth century, they had become an outlet for religious opposition to their leader’s westernizing regime, and his attempts to control the rites went as far as an outright ban of these observances. They could no longer be suppressed, however, and were instrumental in the demise of the monarchy in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Ashura fit in well enough, however, with the ideology of systematic martyrdom promoted by the fundamentalist Islamic Republic that followed and was used to justify Iran’s protracted war with Iraq. In the latter country, the public observance of this feast (known there as Arbaiin) was banned after the massacre of pilgrims on the road to Karbala in 1977, until the American invasion in 2003, whereupon a million of its long-repressed majority Shiites were finally able to make the pilgrimage to their holy

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Iranians shout religious slogans and beat themselves with iron chains inside Tehran’s bazaar during the Shiite version of the Muslim festival of Ashura on March 1, 2004. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters/Corbis)

place—which they did on foot through the rubble left by the fall of Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship. During the same period, Ashura penitential rites have also been used for political ends among the Shiite populations of Lebanon—especially by the moderate Amal militia. The festival was first introduced in that country by Iranian students of religion in the early twentieth century. It was then limited to urban centers like Baalbek, Nabatiyah, and Saïda, and marked with collective laments and public readings on the lives of Ali and his descendents. But it gradually came to include bloody processions of penitents who hit their own skulls with sabers to share in the suffering. This type of event expanded spectacularly from the 1970s onward as a militant expression—through the potent symbolism of martyrdom in the context

of civil war—of the previously voiceless identity of a Lebanese underclass of Shiite peasants and displaced persons. Other minority Shiite communities in the Middle East and South Asia (except in India where self-mutilation is banned), as well as in the West (for example, in Montreal for the first time in 2005), make a point of holding processions and assemblies on the occasion of this feast, when a popular slogan proclaims: “Every day is Ashura, every place is Karbala!” See also Carnival; Day of Assembly; Days of the Dead (West); Eid; Feast of Fools; Holy Week; New Year (Islam); New Year (West); Passover; Ramadan; Saturnalia; Thaipusam; Yom Kippur References Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968.

a s s u m p t i o n | 23 Mahmoud Ayoub. Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of Ashura in Twelver Shi’ism. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. Vernon James Schubel. Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam: Shi’i Devotional Rituals in South Asia. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. Steven M. Wasserstrom. Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Edward Westermarck. Ritual and Belief in Morocco. Foreword by Bronislaw Malinowski. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1968.

◗ ASS (FEAST OF THE) See Feast of Fools

◗ ASSEMBLY (DAY OF) See Day of Assembly

◗ ASSUMPTION (CHRISTIANITY) The Assumption is the Western name for a feast day on which many Christian churches commemorate the miraculous translation to heaven of the body of the Virgin Mary upon her death. Eastern Christians refer to this event as the Dormition of the Mother of God and hold a two-week fast to prepare to celebrate it on August 15.

History The traditional story of Mary’s passing from earthly life to eternal glory was first recorded in an apocryphal text entitled De Transitu Mariae around the turn of the fifth century. The cult of Mary was then about to blossom, since she would be officially proclaimed the Mother of God (incarnate as her son Jesus Christ) in 431 at the Council of Ephesus. Ephesus is the Ionian port where Saint John the Evangelist likely took

Mary after Jesus entrusted his mother to his beloved disciple’s care at the time of his Crucifixion, and many assumed she died there some time in the second half of the first century. It was also a major center of the cult of the moon goddess of fertility Artemis, who used to be invoked at the full moon of mid-August to protect vines and fruit trees from hail—just as it was claimed Christ’s apostles had decreed prayers to Mary for blessings on vines and fruits on her feast day, which is around the same time. And yet, since most pilgrims went to Jerusalem to visit the holy sites, Mary’s grave was soon conveniently located in the Garden of Gethsemani in that city. By 451, a church was built on it and dedicated to her Dormition or “falling asleep” on August 15. That same year, when the Eastern Roman Emperor Marcian requested to have Mary’s body transferred to Constantinople, Patriarch Juvenal of Jerusalem answered by pointing out that the body was in heaven, so that the monarch had to be content with having her tomb and her shroud. In the absence of any relics of Mary’s body (often taken as evidence that it was indeed removed from this earth), by 590 her clothes had become the object of a cult in Constantinople’s church of Blachernes. This was the year the Emperor Maurice made the observance of a major feast in honor of Mary on August 15 official throughout the Empire. (There is actually a possibility it originally celebrated her entire life, since the Dormition was not yet specified.) Such a feast had also been observed previously on January 18, following an Egyptian usage that was also prevalent in Gaul in the West in the second half of the sixth century. But a 676 inscription from this same area (now France) is the first to explicitly link August 15 to the feast of the Dormition, as it was still known in the West. Unlike the Greek-born Pope Saint Sergius I, whose reign (687–701) saw the introduction to Rome of the four major Marian feasts of the Nativity of the Virgin, Candlemas, the Annunciation and the Dormi-

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tion, there were many Western Christians who hesitated to follow Eastern Christians in affirming the nearly instant bodily resurrection of the woman they saw as the Mother of God. This may be why they preferred to talk of the “Assumption.” First recorded in Gaul in 790, this term distinguishes the passive raising of Mary’s dead body—to be revived in a glorious afterlife—from the active “Ascension” of a resurrected Christ. In the tenth century, there were even those who talked of a double “Assumption”: that of Mary’s soul on her Dormition, and that of her body upon the general resurrection at the end of time, which it would have been awaiting in an uncorrupted state at a secret burial site.

Theology and Liturgy Though there was a general consensus by the fourteenth century about Mary’s bodily resurrection, the papal bull entitled Munificentissimus Deus issued by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950, proclaiming the dogma of the Assumption was not welcomed by the Orthodox Church (to say nothing of Protestant denominations). For the Eastern Church felt that these hidden mysteries and pious conjectures were not meant to be proclaimed explicitly— like the good news of the public death and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ—but to be approached instead with discreet, respectful veneration—much as it is in Orthodox services for the occasion. Thus, when the French Catholic hierarchy at the time consulted the émigré Russian Metropolitan Vladimir about the Orthodox stance on the Assumption, he referred them to these texts since “right doctrine” and “right worship” (the two meanings of “orthodoxy”) are experienced as one and the same in the liturgy the Eastern Church. In the words of the Orthodox lay theologian Vladimir Lossky, “the significance of the Incarnation of the Word thus appears at the end of Mary’s life on earth,” two weeks before the close of the

Church calendar with its yearly cycle of feasts. For, he writes: the glory of the age to come, the last end of man, is already realised, not only in a Divine Hypostasis [or Person: Christ as the Word of God] made flesh, but also in a human person made God [Mary insofar as she partook by grace of her son’s divine nature]. This passage from death to life, from time to eternity, from terrestrial condition to celestial beatitude establishes the Mother of God beyond the general Resurrection and the Last Judgment, beyond the Second Coming which will end the history of the world. The feast of August 15th is a second mysterious Easter, since the Church therein celebrates, before the end of time, the secret first-fruit of its eschatological consummation. This explains the soberness of the liturgical text which, in the office of the Dormition, permits a glimpse of the ineffable glory of the Assumption of the Mother of God. (Lossky 1982, p. 213)

Customs This sobriety permeates the whole of Eastern Christians’ lives for a two-week period known as “Our Lady’s Lent” prior to and in preparation for this feast. Indeed, this day is itself actually a day of strict fasting on a par with Christmas Eve, Good Friday, and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, which occurs two weeks later, on August 29, when Eastern Christians emulate the fasting life of this ascetic prophet in the desert. In Greece, the beginning of Our Lady’s Lent on August 1 is marked by customs such as the cleansing of all copper pots, and offerings of fruit at church altars. After the first of each day’s early afternoon invocations to the Mother of God, the priests distribute these offerings to their fasting parishioners. It must be said that the season’s abundant harvest of fruit and tomatoes makes it relatively easy and not altogether unpleasant to follow the strict vegetarian

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diet that the Orthodox Church prescribes for such fasts. When the day of the Dormition does arrive, a Blessing of Herbs and Seeds takes place at church services in many Eastern Christian countries. In Armenia, following a taboo on the first-fruits of a harvest (to be found the world over—e.g., as at African New Yam Festivals), no grapes are eaten until they are taken to church to be blessed on the Sunday closest to the Dormition and distributed to the faithful as they leave. Seeing this feast as their name day (at least as important as a birthday in many cultures), women named Mary then have parties in vineyards or in their gardens. According to the Armenian rite of the Blessing of the Grapes, “through this blessed fruit we shall receive in our spirit the intelligible grace of [God’s] blessing, earning pardon and remission of our mortal sins; to be also worthy of partaking from the Tree of Life” (Guroian 1999). The Tree of Life is identified with Mary as the vine of salvation’s wine in Dormition hymns, since in her son Jesus she is believed to have borne the fruit of immortality that takes away the bitter taste of death that is associated with the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. On the Ionian islands of Patmos and Corfu, a symbolic bier for Mary is decorated with flowers and carried through the streets in a solemn candlelight procession, on the model of the Epitaphios of the dead Christ on Good Friday. Copied on the matins of Holy Saturday (when Christ is buried), the August 17 service for the Burial of the Mother of God is a theologically doubtful recent addition to the Orthodox liturgical calendar. In Greece, the Dormition is also the time for annual mass pilgrimages to miraculous icons of Mary on the Aegean islands of Tinos and Paros. In Ethiopia, the thirteenth day of the Dormition fast (observed there by everyone over six or seven years old) and the ones before traditionally saw the whip-cracking festival known as Buhe. In the wet season, whips make an ex-

plosive sound in the humid air, and the countryside would echo with that of shepherds cracking theirs for fun. There were even organized battles of men, young and old, who lashed out at each other in teams until one of them could no longer stand the pain. The whip cracking would go on into the night around the bonfires dotting the countryside, where people ate some of the dabo (whole wheat bread) specially baked for shepherds on Buhe. In the West, on what was called Our Lady’s Herb Day in Central Europe since at least the tenth century, Mary’s victory over death used to be made manifest through aromatic herbs and flowers, which people brought to church to be incensed and blessed so they could bind them into a sheaf and keep them all year to ward off disease, disaster, and mortality (following the same principle as the “odor of sanctity” that wafts from the uncorrupted bodies of many deceased holy persons when they are exhumed). At Dunkirk in northern France, while August 15 also has the quality of a memorial service and a blessing, its importance lies in commemorating the miraculous discovery of a statue of the Virgin Mary in 1403 in the course of the construction of city walls. A shrine was built to house this statue—called Our Lady of the Dunes—by a brook near the spot. Every year, a procession of fishermen and their wives in traditional Flemish dress takes the statue from there to Minek Square for the blessing of the sea—greeted by the howling sirens of all the ships in port. A rescue ship then goes out to sea with a number of seamen’s widows on board to launch wreaths of flowers in memory of the victims of maritime disasters. In the south of France, in Nice, a blessing of the sea also takes place on the Assumption (as well as on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29). In France as a whole, August 15 is often the occasion of a large family meal—if only because it is one of several religious holidays that have remained enshrined in the civil calendar

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as statutory holidays, whether or not people are mindful of their religious meaning. In Scotland on what is called there Saint Mary’s Feast of Harvest, a magic bannock cake is handmade from sun-dried new grain, kneaded on a sheepskin and baked on a rowanwood fire around which family members walk sunwise after each eating a piece in order of seniority. The embers are later also carried in the same clockwise direction as the sun in a pot around the farm and fields while an invocation of Mary’s blessing is recited. In the Balearic Islands—a Spanish archipelago in the Mediterranean—popular celebrations of the Assumption often feature masked dancers. In Italy too, this date still sees, alongside Christian celebrations, many ancient local harvest rituals of thanksgiving, such as the erection of a thirty-meter straw obelisk in the square of Fontanarosa near Avellino east of Naples. A little to the north, there is a sunset procession of tractors covered with straw decorations marking the Wheat Festival of Foglianise near Benevento. August 15 is also the date for the traditional exhibits of the work of the madonnari—street artists who use colored chalks to reproduce religious paintings of the Madonna on the pavement. They then display their skills on the square outside the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Curtatone near Mantua in Lombardy. In European folklore, the Assumption marked the start of Our Lady’s Thirty Days (until the Elevation of the Cross on September 14), a period of relief when beasts and plants became wholesome again, purified of the threat of pestilence of the Dog Days of summer. The ancients attributed the latter to the combined heat of the sun and of Sirius, the sky’s brightest star, which is in the constellation of the Great Dog, since they rise together from about July 3 to August 11. According to Plutarch’s treatise on Isis and her son and husband Osiris, Egyptians in Ithiyiapolis—modern El-Kab south of Thebes—then burned this good god’s evil brother: his murderer Seth, in the guise of hu-

man scapegoats (a practice also noted by Julius Caesar among the Gauls on May Day), before scattering their ashes in the wind to purify the air. In contrast to the Dog Days (caniculares dies in Latin), the auspicious thirty days that began on August 17 were also sometimes known as the Cat Nights. See also Annunciation; Ascension; Christmas; Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Easter; Elevation of the Cross; Games (Rome); Holy Week; Lent; Lugnasad; May Day; New Yam Festival; Shavuot References Paul E. Duggan, The Assumption Dogma: Some Reactions and Ecumenical Implications in the Thought of English-Speaking Theologians. A Doctoral Dissertation in Sacred Theology with Specialization in Marian Studies. Dayton, OH: International Marian Research Institute, University of Dayton, 1989. Vigen Guroian. Inheriting Paradise. Meditations on Gardening. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999. Vladimir Lossky and Leonid Ouspensky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. Akalou Wolde Michael. “Buhe,” in University College of Addis Ababa Ethnological Society Bulletin, No. 7 (1957), pp. 57–64. On the Dormition: Early Patristic Homilies. Tr. Brian J. Daley. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997. Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. Tr. J. Gwyn Griffiths. Cardiff, Wa: University of Wales Press, 1970.

◗ ATEMOZTLI, ATLCAUALO See Rain Festivals

◗ ATONEMENT (DAY OF) See Yom Kippur

◗ AWUKUDAE See Adae

B ◗ BACCHANALIA See Dionysia

◗ BAEKJUNG

portant ritual in the Ainu religion centered on the sacrifice of a bear, typical of similar rites among many cultures of the Northern Hemisphere’s higher latitudes.

See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

An Ancient Circumpolar Bear Cult ◗ BAHÁ See Nineteen-Day Feast

◗ BAISAKHI See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ BANK HOLIDAYS See Lugnasad, Samhain, Whitsuntide

◗ BASANTI PUJA See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ BAYRAM See Eid

◗ BEAR FESTIVAL (JAPAN) The largely assimilated remnants of Japan’s aboriginal Caucasoid Ainu people can now only be found in the country’s northernmost Hokkaido Island (where they number some twenty-four thousand), as well as on the Sakhalin and Kurile Islands annexed by Russia at the end of the Second World War. The most im-

According to legend, this sacrifice began when a hunting party discovered a bear that had taken care of an abandoned child and was then pursued and shot as a deity deserving worship by offerings of food, wine, and prayer sticks to accompany the soul to the other world. Today, it survives in a folkloric guise, but remains a classic example of a circumpolar bear cult that dates back to distant prehistory—since the bear was the first being to be worshipped as divine, by Neanderthal Man—and that is most developed among a range of cultures scattered around the Arctic Circle from Lapland to Labrador. The original ritual of the Ainu was the sacrifice of a bear as an incarnation of “That Divine One Reigning in the Mountains,” considered the most important of the spirits ruling the natural world. “The very essence of Ainu religion consists in communion with the greater powers, and the people imagine that the most complete communion they can possibly hold with some of their gods—animals and birds, to wit—is by a visible and carnal partaking of |

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Ainu men capture a bear and then threaten it with bows and arrows as part of the Ainu Bear Festival. The Ainus are the aboriginal people of Japan. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

their very flesh and substance in sacrifice. At the time of offering, the living victim is said to be sent to his ancestors in another place” (Batchelor 1908, p. 249). Thus, the Ainu word for “sacrifice,” which is Iyomande, has the meaning of “sending away.” Hence the festival’s name: Kamui Omante or “sending off of the bear.”

Sending Off an Honored Guest The black bear used in this ritual has traditionally been captured in the mountains and raised—even suckled—like one of the children of a chosen family. When it has gotten big enough to risk hurting its siblings, it is then placed in a special log cage for several months

and fed a special diet of fish and millet porridge, until the time has come to release this spirit from its animal body and allow it to go back to its divine parents in their mountain. The ceremony’s host convenes the entire village to the sacrifice of this little visitor. Prayer sticks ending with a cluster of shavings are then fashioned and stuck in the ground, first around the hearth of the household that adopted the bear, and then at the place of sacrifice—alongside ok-numbani, “the poles for strangling.” Men approach the cage, followed by women and children who entertain the bear with singing and dancing. Once they are all seated in a circle around it, one of them comes up to it to explain to the god that it is about to be sent back to its

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parents, asking it to come again to be hunted and honored with its own sacrifice. Lovingly raised by village elders, the animal is now usually spared in the reenactments of this sacrifice, which are usually held some time between December and February as part of a Snow Festival. It is chained to a pole in the center of festival grounds, where it can witness rare performances of Ainu folk dances performed in traditional costumes on what is today no more than a tourist attraction and secular celebration of Ainu identity. However, when live bears were used in the ceremony, an actual sacrifice occurred after the bear, held with two ropes, had been taken out of its cage and walked around the circle of the people, who teased it with small bamboo hepere-ai, or “cub arrows,” the tips of which were blunted by clumps of shavings like those of the prayer sticks. (This kind of bear baiting, though it eventually became more recreational than religious in focus, has been known in Europe from the Etruscans down to Elizabethan England, and was only banned by an act of the British Parliament in 1835.) The crazed beast was then tied to a decorated pole and held down by half a dozen strong men, who choked it between the two long thick poles, as an expert marksman shot an arrow through its heart in a way that prevented the blood from spilling on the ground. The bear’s head and hide, still attached in one piece, were then taken inside and set on a makeshift altar among the prayer sticks and valuable gifts such as sacred wine arrayed by its adoptive family near the east window. In the bear festivals of mainland Siberian peoples of the Far East such as the Koryaks and Gilyaks, the victim is cut the same way and also oriented eastward (the favorable direction of the rising sun and benevolent spirits). These peoples also observe the same ritual as the Ainus, who symbolically fed the bear with a serving of its own meat and a helping of its own stew, along with wine or beer. He was then asked in a speech to tell his parents: “I have

been nourished for a long time by an Ainu father and mother and have been kept from all trouble and harm. Since I am now grown up, I have returned. And I have brought these prayer sticks, cakes, and dried fish. Please rejoice!” (Campbell 1988, p. 154).

Everyone Eats Everything Once the bear had been fed, humans could begin their own feasting too, although laughter and tears alternated for the departing deity’s adoptive mother and her predecessors of former years. After he had had a second bowl of stew, the host announced that “the little god is finished; come, let us worship!” He then ceremoniously shared the bowl’s contents among the guests. Some of the men also drank the blood for strength and smeared it on their clothes, and other parts of the beast were eaten. The only part not consumed was the head, which was set among the skulls left from previous feasts upon the ke-omande-ni, “the pole for sending away.” The Ainu festival went on until every bit of the bear had been consumed—a requirement that is found at other rituals of its kind.

American and European Parallels In addition to the neighboring Lamut and Asian Eskimos around the Sea of Okhotsk, this ritual was practiced in the Arctic Northeast of the distant American continent, among the Innu, East Cree, and Attikamek of Labrador and Quebec. Equally far away in the opposite, western direction, the ancient Finns (who were related to Siberian peoples, possibly even the Ainus) used to have a similar “bear feast” whenever they killed one of these animals. However, they only treated the bear’s bones like a friend once they had eaten the flesh, as they buried the bones with various objects and asked the creature to tell other bears about the honors it had received from humans. The rationale was the same for the Finns as for the Ainus at the other end of

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Eurasia—witness the seventeenth-century report by the Lutheran bishop Isak Rothovius: “When they kill a bear they hold a feast, drink out of the bear’s skull and imitate its growling in order to ensure plenty of game in the future” (Mythologica 2003, p. 254). See also Games (Rome) References J. Batchelor. “Ainus,” in James Hastings, ed. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. I. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908, pp. 239–252. Joseph Campbell. Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Vol. I: The Way of the Animal Powers, Part 2: Mythologies of the Great Hunt. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. William Fitzhugh and Chisato O. Dubreuil, eds. Ainu. Spirit of a Northern People. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000. A. Irving Hallowell. “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere,” in American Anthropologist (new series), Vol. 28, No. 1, January–March 1926, pp. 1–175. Mythologica: A Treasury of World Myths and Legends. Vancouver, BC: Raincoast Books, 2003.

◗ BEAUTIFUL FESTIVAL OF THE VALLEY (EGYPT) Once a year for the two millennia preceding the first century C.E., the Amon of Karnak was taken in effigy to the royal temples of the “city of the dead” across the Nile from that religious metropolis of Egypt, using ceremonial boats that were then carried overland through the funerary complex in a popular procession.

Amon’s Nile Journeys Throughout ancient Egypt, it was common practice to take out the idol of a god on his or her feast and have him or her visit the other gods’ temples in a ceremonial boat. Such a boat, like a portable throne, was thought of both as the “powerful image” (shm) and the “upholder

of beauty” (wetes neferu) of a deity—that is, as a magical actualization of timeless resurrected life—for the boat was raised up on the shoulders of priests, as on the life-giving waters of the Nile, floating above them like a permanent embodiment of their seasonal overflow. In the Theban region, the god whose comings and goings were most often and most festively observed was Amon-Rê. The governors of Thebes—the name the Greeks gave Nuwe, meaning “the city” of Amon—made it the capital of a united Egypt when they founded its Eleventh Dynasty four thousand years ago, having combined the attributes of Amon as the god of their hometown of Tod to the south with those of the local goose deity of Thebes. Thereafter, based on the east bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt, a sacred royal domain (known as the Palladium of Thebes in modern times) stretched over ten square kilometers on both sides of the Nile River around Karnak and held many temples of national significance. In this national center of his cult, the god Amon had a double significance: as “unknowable” (the first meaning of the hieroglyph for his name) or “source of all things”; and as this hidden source’s “manifested light,” or Rê, the sun above as well as the “breath” within each particular thing. The revelation of the supreme deity’s creative activity, normally confined within a closed sanctuary, was publicly acted out several times a year in solemn journeys along well-defined paths, using slender boats whose gilded wooden cabins were actually duplicates of the temple’s inner sanctum. The same term: pr wr, or “the big house,” was used for both, as well as for the southern half of Egypt, corresponding in turn to the hidden world of the hereafter—that is, to the divine locus of the mysterious eternal life that such tabernacles were felt to hold within them. The god’s actual image remained hidden behind the heavy curtains of the boat’s cabin throughout the processions. In this way, his very inscrutability was allowed to become both tem-

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The Sacred Bark of Amon-Ra at Abydos, Egypt. (Roger Wood/Corbis)

porarily manifest and mobile beyond the fixed confines of the temple’s dark recesses, much as the sun radiates energy from an inaccessible source as visible light that cannot be directly gazed at. Amon’s boat was carried on a platform by specialized priests, who often sang as they walked, holding it up on transversal bars. Since the Middle Kingdom at least (that is, from the mid-twentieth century B.C.E.), thirty-two of them would take Amon’s ship along symbolic itineraries of cosmic import at certain turning points of the cycles of nature, enshrined in the Theban calendar in use under the New Kingdom (that is, over roughly the second half of the second millennium B.C.E.). Thus, after the vital Flooding of the Nile that gave its name to

the season of Akhet had been welcomed with the New Year in the Coptic month of Thoth (around July 19), the river’s power to wash over the land all the way to the sea was enhanced by such a ritual boat journey that began in the middle of the next month of Paophi (meaning “that of Opet”). The great Opet festival took its name from the shrine called Ipet-Resyt to which the Amon of Karnak, his consort Mut, their son Khonsu, and Rê’s personification as Montu, god of weapons (though not of war), were taken for a few weeks, to visit the harem of the Amon of Luxor to the south of Thebes.

A Procession to the Western Land But even more popular in the region was the procession that took Amon’s court upstream

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again in late May or in June. This occurred at the time of the new moon of the month of Payni, which meant “that of the Valley,” since the months, initially numbered from one to four within each of the three Egyptian seasons, were to be named by Christian Copts after the main festivals formerly celebrated during them by the Copts’ pagan ancestors. Payni was thus associated with the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, which differed from most other festivals in that it straddled both sides of the river, rather than unfolding just along the eastern one (which was the side of the rising sun and thus of the living). To be sure, from about 1000 B.C.E. until well into the Roman era, Amon of Luxor, or Imenipet—who was “the Unknowable” and therefore aniconic (or imageless)— crossed the river every ten-day week to pay homage to the gods buried opposite his shrine at the mound of Djemê—where creation first arose from the ocean of primordial chaos. Since the time of Ramses III, the sacred mound was enclosed within the temple compound he built in the second quarter of the twelfth century B.C.E. at Madînet Habu, in front of the entrance to the Valley of the Queens. As the initial spot of the renewal of the sun’s cycle, Djemê was considered sacred, and it held the creative principles revealed in Rê by Amon as universal monarch before the world even existed: the Kematef or “He who accomplishes his instant,” and the ten Baîs or sparks of manifested energy emanating from divine thought to provide the basic structure of material life. Cosmic order was thus reinforced by regular crossings to Djemê, as the still-active repository of all the divine energies otherwise latent in the material world. In contrast, the yearly procession of the Beautiful Festival went there directly from Karnak to the north and then continued inland toward the setting sun along the Amentit range. It made its return journey northward through the necropolis—the “city of the dead” (made up of royal mortuary temples and the houses of

priests, soldiers, craftsmen, and laborers in their service)—almost up to the Valley of the Kings, before crossing back the Nile River to Karnak. At both crossings, a bridge of ceremonial barges welcomed the portable boats, which special galleys, manned by officials who vied for this honor, would tug—all the way upstream to the canal opening across from Luxor on the first leg of the journey, while the crowds followed at some distance on the shore. Thus, imitating the sun’s cycle, the Amon of Karnak reached the southernmost symbolic point of the cycle of earth and water. Along with jars of perfume and quarters of meat, the first-fruits of the year’s harvest were offered by the pharaoh on behalf of mortals to his fellow god Amon in a kind of intimate dinner. This was depicted as such on the wall of the inner shrine where it took place at Madînet Habu, while a calendar of Egypt’s festivals on its southern outer wall details the make-up and recipes of the offerings required on each occasion. This mythical point of Amon’s first arising and of the original world of the Cycle of Light is where the vast procession gathered on the first divine station of its journey by land. The boats of Amon and his court were proceeded by standard-bearers, fan-bearers, censers, royal guards, instrumental musicians, and choral singers— pious ladies playing sistrums to soothe the gods with jangling sounds—and assorted clergy singing hymns in their praise—not to mention acrobats and other entertainers to cater to the crowds of townspeople, while vendors set up their booths along the way to attend to their needs. Bystanders would throw themselves in front of the boat to make petitions to the god in the form of questions about issues in their personal lives, which he would answer by making the priests who carried his boat take a step ahead for “yes” or back for “no.” Oracles could also come forward on the same occasion, like the one who confirmed the exceptional occurrence that a woman would take up the male

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role of pharaoh in 1473 B.C.E. This allowed the Regent Queen Hatshepsut (who also maintained she was literally sired by Amon) to take the reins of power—and male attributes of power such as a ceremonial beard—as a “king.” The first, highly successful, female ruler of a historical state, she reigned for twenty-two years thereafter. There were an impressive number of other similar boats for all the statues of divine manifestations and immortalized ancestors. Carrying branches, soldiers marched in front of the royal family’s escort as it visited the mortuary temples of its forebears, though their actual tombs were hidden in the cliffs’ recesses to the south and north. The wealthier among their faithful subjects in the Valley had been conceded their own “dwellings of eternity,” along the accessible eastern slopes, dug into the limestone, sometimes with several chambers to hold the mummies of many generations of a single family underneath a brick chapel.

Stations along the Way To allow the boats to be laid down and their priestly carriers to rest awhile and feast on the offering, stations were provided at strategic points, such as royal temples on the procession’s way. From raw brick, these stations gradually evolved into permanent structures of limestone, granite, or sandstone. Although they are long since ruined, they were originally meant to testify to the Egyptian monarchy’s endless continuity over time—proof that it partook of divine eternity. They were thus called “temples of millions of years.” Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for most of the thirteenth century B.C.E., dedicated the great pillared hall of his jubilee temple—the Ramesseum—to the liturgical observances appointed for that station of the boat procession. Though the common people and resident foreigners were not admitted within the sacred precincts where these took place, the workers of the Western Valley’s necropolis would surely have

gathered outside for the ongoing related celebrations. After all, they had long been erecting their own smaller monuments along the joyous procession’s lotus-strewn path. One of them, kept at the Cairo Museum, shows the great state barge called “Powerful-isthe-Front-of-Amon,” with a ram’s head on the stern, being welcomed with incense by Ramses II and escorted by his vizier Pa-Sar, then in charge of the Theban necropolis, toward the “Great Meadow” (Sekhet aât) of the Valley of the Kings. It is tucked behind the colonnaded temple built by Queen Hatshepsut in the midsecond millennium B.C.E. at Deir al-Bahri—the centerpiece of an ambitious building program meant to shore up her authority and legitimacy as a pharaoh.

An Egyptian All Souls This station came after ten to thirteen days of solemn ceremonies and popular celebrations that echoed with the singing of pilgrims from Thebes and all of Egypt as they responded as a chorus to the love-praise of Amon when the procession reached its northernmost point. The nights were dotted with the hundreds of lights of small oil lamps, papyrus wicks, and brasiers—those of the banquets held in honor of Hathor (who was Amon’s heavenly mother as identified with the Western Summit crowning the Valley of the Kings), and of all these royal embodiments of the solar deity—living, resurrected, or still to be born. All along the Theban mountain’s eastern face, after each royal station in the boat procession, ordinary families would have first gathered in the open funerary chapels of departed relatives and friends to decorate their statues with lotus wreaths, also offering them food and drink along with floral bouquets soaked in frankincense and terebinth resin “that makes divine.” They ate and drank a lot themselves, and the wine helped them reach altered states of consciousness in which they could feel closer to their departed loved ones. Often, wistful verses

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about the cycle of life closed these votive offerings, leading up to a happy commemoration of the dead, in advance of the yearly return of their spirits at the end of the Season of the Flood, during Khoiak. See also Days of the Dead (West); Khoiak; New Year (West); Shavuot References A. Rosalie David. The Ancient Egyptians: Beliefs and Practices. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 1998. Henri Frankfort. Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000. Donald B. Redford. The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Ramona Louise Wheeler. Work Like an Egyptian: A Modern Guide to Ancient Time and the Egyptian Horoscope. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003.

◗ BIANU See Ashura

◗ BIG SUNDAY See Kunapipi

◗ BIJOYA See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ BINDING OF THE YEARS See New Fire Ceremony

◗ BIRTH OF BAHÁ’ULLAH, BIRTH OF THE BAB See Ridván

◗ BIRTH OF THE MOTHER OF GOD See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ BISKET See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ BEFANATA See Epiphany

◗ BEGINNING OF THE MONTH See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ BEHEADING OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST See Assumption, Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ BLACK FRIDAY See Christmas

◗ BLACK SABBATH See Tisha be-Av

◗ BLOWING THE HORN (DAY OF) See Rosh Hashanah

◗ BLUTRITT See Rogations

◗ BELTANE See May Day

◗ BOHAG BIHU See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ BÉNICHON See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ BON See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ BESTA BERRI See Corpus Christi

◗ BOOK DAY See Saint George

◗ BHAI BIJ, BHAI TIKA, BHRATRI DWITIYA See Divali

◗ BOXING DAY, BOXING NIGHT See Christmas

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◗ BOYS’ FESTIVAL See Sekku

◗ BRIGHT WEEK See Easter

◗ BRUMALIA See Saturnalia

◗ BUDDHA’S BIRTHDAY, BUDDHA DAY See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ BUHE See Assumption

◗ BULL RUN See Games (Rome)

◗ BURI DIALI See Divali

◗ BURIAL OF THE SARDINE See Carnival

◗ BURNING OF CLOTHES FESTIVAL See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ BUSK (AMERICAN SOUTHEAST) The most important festival of the Native American cultures of the Southeastern United States is the Busk. Celebrated in late July or August, this Green Corn Ceremony of purification traditionally involved discarding old utensils, extinguishing fires, fasting, and refurbishing structures. It was both a celebration of thanksgiving to the Breath-Maker or Creator for the first-fruits of the harvest and a New Year festival of new beginnings, when grievances were laid to rest and a New Fire was kindled, from which all household fires were rekindled.

Purification and Pacification The Creek Confederation of mostly Muskogean-speaking tribes that had settled in the greater part of Alabama and Georgia at the time of European contact were united by a major festival that each town celebrated over four to eight days around the same time every year during the “Everything Grows Moon” (July–August), albeit on a slightly different date determined locally by the ripening of the late corn crop. It is called the Green Corn Ceremony, and white traders came to know it as “Busk,” which is a corruption of the Creek word puskita for “a fast.” It is said to have been dreamed by a man in ancient times as a way to bring to an end all fighting and warring. During this Great Peace Ceremony, war-like deeds are acknowledged and all transgressions are forgiven—somewhat as in Iroquois Midwinter ceremonies. Young people are initiated as members of the square ground in related rites that further foster social unity within a town, just as the tribal bonds uniting various towns are renewed sometimes by celebrating the Busk together. In any case, it was only held in “white” towns dedicated to peacetime activities and ceremonies, as opposed to the “red” towns devoted to military functions and observances. As Joseph Campbell has pointed out: An appreciative comment on the Busk by the naturalist and explorer, Benjamin Franklin’s friend John Bartram (1699–1777), published by his son William, illuminates the spiritual aspect of the annual fast, which in its psychological sense might be likened to an eight-day compression of Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, and then Easter. “When a town celebrates the busk,” Bartram wrote, “having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furnitures, they collect all their worn-out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town, of their filth, which with all the remain-

36 | b u s k ing grain and old provisions, they cast together into one common heap and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed, all malefactors may return to their town, and they are absolved from their crimes, which are now forgotten, and they are returned to favor.” (Campbell 1989, p. 239)

Old items had to be destroyed and absolutely everything used in the Busk had to be brand new to contribute to the renewal of the world, the seasons, and the agricultural cycle. As for the Green Corn Medicine in question, it was prepared while the ritual ground was swept clean, and a layer of white sand was sprinkled over it. English traders and later anthropologists named this medicine the “Black Drink” because the liquid itself is very dark in color, though a white froth formed on the surface when the Indians shook it before consuming what was to them the “White Drink.” Its very whiteness betokened the spiritual presence breathed into it through a straw. This caffeineladen mixture of seven to fourteen herbs was otherwise known to strangers as “Carolina Tea.” The main ingredient was assi-luputski—Creek for “small leaves” of Yaupon holly or Ilex vomitoria. It is also known as Ilex casseina, from casseena—the word used by the Timucua allies of the Spaniards in Florida whom the Creeks had helped English Carolina colonists exterminate in 1704. Like other cultures north of the Gulf of Mexico, the Creeks knew the right mix and temperature needed to maximize a caffeine “high” along with diuretic and vomitive properties. In conjunction with fasting (and even skin-scratching), the drink thus acted as a purgative at every level—both physical and spiritual, at the same time as it favored an altered state of consciousness, more open to higher powers. Purification was also achieved

by scratching the skin. The White Drink was only prepared in a ritual context—whether as a gift of good will to allies, enemies, and strangers alike or as a peacemaking tool for deliberations within or between clans and tribes, fostering male bonding. Women only ever drank small amounts— never enough to throw up. In some cases, most of them were deemed unfit to enter the consecrated ground, along with children, animals, and any other beings who had not followed marriage laws and the taboo on unconsecrated first-fruits. Sentinels made sure only initiated warriors came in to observe the strict fast of a couple of days, when they purged sins from their bodies with White Drink and another strong vomitive known as passa made from button-snake root. The people kept out were given green tobacco to chew on so as to afflict their souls, while they were allowed to relax their own fasting after noon if they happened to be female, very young, or very frail. Women would also be in charge of preparing food from old provisions for the general breaking of the fast, but all traces of it had to disappear before noon. They would also prepare the new maize for the subsequent feast, but no one could touch it before it had been consecrated by the head priest or Mico.

First-Fruits and New Fire Just as with the New Yam festivals of West Africa that revolve around such a taboo, all home fires had to be completely extinguished and their ashes swept away thoroughly with all rubbish before the ritual of thanksgiving for the new crop was carried out by the priest. He would have first cleaned out and purified the ceremonial public fireplace, often set atop one of the pyramidal mounds typical of Southeastern cultures. In some cases, he would plant some fresh green branches on it before kindling the new fire by the friction of two pieces of wood and placing it on the altar underneath. A specially appointed fire-maker might also light

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A lithograph of Jemez Indians performing the Green Corn Dance. Celebrated in late July or August, the Green Corn Ceremony of purification traditionally involved discarding old utensils, extinguishing fires, fasting, and refurbishing structures. (Corbis)

the New Fire in the middle of four logs laid crosswise to point to the four directions. The Mico would take out a little of each of the new crops—not just corn, but beans, squash, and all wild plants as well, rubbing them with bear oil and offering them together with some meat as first-fruits and an atonement for all sins (except maybe murder) to the fire as Little Brother of the Sun and life force of the people. This New Fire would then be given out to the women to rekindle their home fires with, and they could now bake the new fruits of the year over it, to be eaten with bear oil. At different points in the endlessly varied proceedings, men and women might rub ash, white clay, or analogous mixtures over themselves and then bathe as purification, and do the same with the new corn as a kind of blessing. There were dances throughout, performed by various clans and specialized groups until a mad final climax, which might be preceded by a mock battle of the warriors. This ceremonial violence has allowed L. R. Farnell to draw a par-

allel between the Busk and the ancient Athenian Thargelia festival of first-fruits in honor of the sun god Apollo, famous for the custom of taking unpopular “losers” as scapegoats through which evil was expelled from the community at the delicate time of the new harvest.

Variants and Distribution of a Mississippian Institution But the sun is actually more central to the theology of all of the peoples primarily influenced by Mississippian culture, as it is the BreathMaker animating all living things and represented on earth by a sacred fire. It was rekindled at dawn in some versions of the Busk among the Creeks, and the Mico faced the rising sun to make his offerings, setting copper plates with mythological designs on sand altars so they could reflect it as the image of the Breath-Maker. While the Natchez, who belonged to the Creek Confederation, had an equivalent New Fire Ceremony with the same Mexican roots as the widespread cultivation of

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maize, beans, and squash, the neighboring Muskogean-speaking Choctaws and Chickasaws, who did not belong to this political entity, celebrated the Busk itself. Likewise, though the Cherokees were not even Muskogean but Iroquoian, their civilization was similar to the Creeks’ in almost every respect, so that they too celebrated a Green Harvest Festival of first-fruits. They had a theory that disease was the natural world’s revenge for humans’ contempt and indifference toward animals, and could only be contained by plants, herbs, and trees as mankind’s faithful friends. In such a view, dances are done and prayers and offerings are made in thanks for all of the foods and medicines that are gifts from the plant kingdom, as well as for the air we breathe as a gift from the Breath-Maker. For many centuries, Cherokee towns, like those of their Creek neighbors, were built around large central square grounds as the place devoted to just these kinds of ritual ceremonies, gatherings, and prayers. An annual festival is celebrated on these sacred grounds in North Carolina by the Cherokees who managed to buy back their ancestral lands after they were seized by the American federal government. But even for those Cherokees the authorities scattered or resettled in the Indian Territory that became the state of Oklahoma in 1907, the Green Corn Ceremony is still a time for coming together to renew family ties and honor traditional ways. Due to the extensive early disruption of their own way of life, it is hard to say whether the Cherokees’ original neighbors, the Tuscaroras, used to follow the Busk ceremonial in full or in part before they had to flee their North Carolina homeland in the eighteenth century. The Tuscaroras eventually joined their distant Iroquois cousins in New York State as the sixth nation of their famous confederation. But the fact remains that the August Green Corn Ceremony called Ah-dake’-wa-o has somehow become part of the ritual calendar of the Iroquois

as far north as the Kanesatake Mohawk reserve at Oka near Montreal in Quebec, Canada. At the southernmost tip of the range of cultures in which it figures, the Green Corn Dance is still performed today by the thousand or so Seminoles left in Florida. It normally begins while the White Drink is being consumed— failing which, the new corn partaken of the next day is sure to make one sick over the year. A day’s fast would follow (so as not to pollute the sacred food still present in the system) before the great feast on the third day. Until recently, Seminole medicine men would join in the dance and open their deerskin medicine bundles of sacred objects on the annual occasion of this festival. They might also perform incisions—especially on the arms—to purify people and protect them over the coming year, relying on dreams sent by mostly animal “spirit helpers” to dispel the fear of spirits who might otherwise turn against humans. Like the Creek people of which they were an offshoot, and along with the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees, the Seminoles were counted among the so-called Five Civilized Tribes who had largely espoused a Western lifestyle by 1830. But that did not prevent the Indian Removal Act from coming into effect that year or from being enforced over the next decade or so, when they were sent packing along the infamous “Trail of Tears” to an alien prairie habitat in and around Oklahoma. It is now mostly there that the Green Corn Ceremony, once central to the basically Mississippian cultures of the American Southeast and best exemplified by the Busk, may still be found in a variety of altered forms. See also Easter; Holy Week; Lent; Midwinter; New Yam Festival; New Year (West); New Fire Ceremony; Thargelia References Joseph Campbell. Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Vol. II: The Way of the Seeded Earth, Part 2: Mythologies of the Primitive

b u s k | 39 Planters: The Northern Americas. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. William C. Sturtevant. ed. A Creek Source Book. New York: Garland Press, 1987.

John Witthoft. Green Corn Ceremonialism in the Eastern Woodlands. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1949.

C ◗ CALÈNA See New Year (West)

◗ CALENDS OF JANUARY See Saturnalia

◗ CALUMET See Powwow

◗ CANADA DAY See Midsummer

◗ CANDLEMAS (CHRISTIANITY) In the West, it has been the tradition on February 2 that the candles set aside for use over the year in churches or for religious purposes be blessed with holy water before a solemn candlelight procession. This is why this day has been known as Candlemas (and by similar terms in other languages) for about a thousand years. These rites were performed in honor of the Purification of the Virgin Mary (that is, in commemoration of the day she went to the Temple of Jerusalem after giving birth to Jesus in order to present him and be restored to ritual purity). They are accompanied by many folkloric customs of pagan origin, like those of Groundhog Day, though the latter has always remained a purely secular seasonal observance.

Timing and Meaning Being temporarily considered unclean due to the raw, earthy messiness of childbirth, Jewish women could not be admitted into consecrated space for a forty-day period after having a baby. In compliance with this religious law, as well as with the one demanding concrete acknowledgement that any firstborn belonged to God, Mary went to the Temple in Jerusalem with her husband Joseph to introduce the child Jesus into the community of God’s people by making the customary sacrifice of two pigeons. In this event, echoed in the Orthodox Blessing of Infants when they are forty days old and more widely celebrated as a yearly liturgical feast forty days after the Nativity of Christ, the Christian Church sees the chosen people represented at the Temple by Symeon the Elder and Ann the Prophetess, who both recognized the infant Jesus as the Messiah they had been waiting for all their lives. This day has therefore long been known in the Anglican Church as the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and to Catholics too since the liturgical reforms of 1969. The same idea is conveyed by the more succinct names for this feast in the Eastern Church: the “Meeting of Our Lord” (by Ann and Symeon, that is), called Hypapantí in Greek and Srétenye in church Slavonic. |

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The scribe Symeon’s song of praise for this day of fulfillment, known from the Latin translation of Luke’s Gospel (2:29–32) as the Nunc Dimittis, provides much of the material for the day’s liturgical texts, and is also part of both the Catholic mass and the Orthodox divine liturgy. It says: “Now, Master, you can let your servant go in peace, just as you promised; because my eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared for all the nations to see, a light to enlighten the pagans, and the glory of your people Israel” (Jerusalem Bible 1968). This light is revealed when the lawgiver willingly submits to the law, just as he would freely lower himself by taking baptism from John in the Jordan, as celebrated at Epiphany as the “Feast of Lights” on January 6 by the Eastern Church. But believers also hold that divine light had actually begun to shine in the world when God became incarnate in lowly human form through the Nativity of Jesus Christ. Following this common theme of the selfemptying (called kenosis in Greek) of the Word of God, the Nativity sequence of celebrations, which opened with the four-week Advent period in the West and the forty-day Short Lent before Christmas in the East, comes to a close with the feast of the Meeting of Our Lord on February 2, forty days after Christmas. This is the reason for the Greek saying: “Hypapantí drives away all festivals with the distaff ” (Megas 1963, p. 57), since the holidays are over and a more regular work schedule resumes until the Easter cycle. Because the observance of the Nativity of Christ began as part of Epiphany on January 6, it was on February 14 that the Meeting of Our Lord, as the fortieth day after Epiphany (Quadragesima de Epiphania) was initially celebrated “with the greatest joy, just as at Easter,” by the time Egeria (formerly known as Etheria), a pilgrim from Gaul to the Holy Land, gave us the first historical record of it in her travel diary in 386—the earliest surviving prose text by a woman in the West. The feast was moved to February 2 by 542, when

Emperor Justinian established the festival throughout the Roman Empire. Yet on its Eastern frontier, February 14 has been kept as the date of this feast in the Oriental Orthodox Armenian Church.

Roman Remnants In the West, where it was long a Marian feast (or feast of the Mother of God) rather than a feast of the Lord, Candlemas took over from some well-established fertility rites. This explains the large amount of folklore surrounding this festival. The very name of the month of February referred to seasonal purification in ancient Rome, which was accompanied by rites intended to appease the spirits of the dead at the end of winter as well as to usher in springtime fertility. It was probably no coincidence that the same North African Pope Gelasius I, who instituted this Christian festival in the West at the end of the fifth century, also took steps at the same time to ban the Roman people’s continued observance of the Lupercalia on February 15. Calling for the use of goat-skin strips called februa to dispel evils and bring on fertility in women, this pagan festival of purification could not be better countered—or indeed outdone— than by a Christian feast devoted to the restored purity of a miraculously fertile virgin mother. The Roman Church started calling it the Purification of the Virgin Mary in the eighth century, and after the blessing of candles was introduced by the late ninth century, it became “Candlemas” in the eleventh. The actual procession with candles seems to have been first suggested by the Roman matron Ikalia in the middle of the fifth century, when the faithful held candles during the feast’s services in Jerusalem. Candles were already conspicuous at an ancient Roman festival of the dead, the February Parentalia, and were even used to evoke the dead in Rome’s Shrove Tuesday parades during the Renaissance. But candlelight processions were held in honor of the Virgin Mary on February 2 instead, and they

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accompanied the Church feast on this date as it spread to other European countries from Spain to Britain, mostly around the turn of the second millennium. Since the Reformation, Protestant pastors in many of those countries have often endeavored to suppress these processions, just as they have also tried to ban the lighting of a large candle to burn through part of the night, but it is a Candlemas custom still observed in some English homes. Protestant denominations objected to the superstitious use of the light of candles to ward off evil spirits, and, when King Henry VIII nonetheless authorized the keeping of the feast in his British realm, it was with the understanding that this was not its purpose, but that the custom only symbolized the proclamation of Christ as the light of the world. Candlemas observances had practically vanished in Protestant countries by the middle of the eighteenth century. The Catholic faithful, who continued to take part in such Candlemas processions, often wore black or purple as a sign of penance before purification; and the children would ask for money as they sang seasonal tunes on the way to the day’s highpoint— the formal blessing that purified the candles in order to make them fit to be used at church (and incidentally at home for the power of their wax as well as their light to dispel evil).

A Celtic Variant: Saint Bridget’s Celtic people had long been accustomed to celebrating one of their four major yearly festivals, called Imbolc, on February 1. It involved collecting the purifying water that came down from the sky as dew. It was thus easy for their many descendants in the west of Europe to relate to the sprinkling of holy water on candles during the feast of the Purification of the Virgin on February 2, to the point of generally naming it after these candles. However, the February 1 feast of Saint Bridget (452–525) remained a distinct and more prominent festivity in Irish, Scottish,

and Manx folklore. It traditionally involved various observances aimed at securing protection for crops, beasts, and people alike over the coming year. The namesake of Ireland’s patron saint, the goddess Brigit, had fulfilled a similar function in the ancient Celtic winter purification rites of Imbolc. One of the few specifics that have come down to us is the washing of feet, hands, and head—which people may have done for one another. This would explain the “mutual cleansing” suggested by the Celtic roots of the name of this pagan festival. In Ireland, the evening of January 31 was one of the year’s handful of universally observed “set-nights,” like New Year’s Eve, “Old Christmas” Eve on Twelfth Night or Epiphany, Shrove Tuesday as Carnival before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween, and Christmas Eve proper. Some milk would be put aside by the housemistress over a week before the first of February, at a time of year when milk was not easy to come by, so that freshly made butter could be part of the Saint Bridget’s Eve dinner. Otherwise, it would not be worthy of the holy woman. This custom may also reflect the requirements of Imbolc, since we know they involved tasting food in a certain order. In any case, on Saint Bridget’s Eve, an Irish house would be thoroughly cleaned, barnyard animals would get fresh straw in their stalls, and a good fire—or at least candles—would be lit. The idea was that everything should be nice and fresh to welcome Saint Bridget at dinner in the guise of a large sheaf of wheat, fashioned into roughly human shape under “Saint Bridget’s coat” (the brat). The saint’s protective power remained concentrated in whatever piece of clothing the brat had been made from, once it had been left outside during all of Saint Bride’s (or Bridget’s) night. Sometimes on Saint Bride’s Eve, people would dress up as for a Carnival, and walk in a procession with a puppet depicting the holy woman, called a “Biddy.”

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Pancake Sunday and the Christmas Season In France, Candlemas remains—if nothing else—a day for eating crepes, whether in church halls or at home. The crepes are usually served with apple cider from Normandy or Brittany. Turning these thin pancakes over in the pan with a piece of gold (such as a ring) in one’s hand is considered to bring good luck. In the past, it might have been rolled into the first crepe to be flipped and carried in procession to be put on top of the cupboard of the eldest person of the household, from which the previous year’s gold piece would be taken from the remains of its crepe and given to the first poor person to come along. There even used to be a collection for the poor of the parish among the Acadians of the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. In the French-Canadian countryside, Candlemas also used to mark the very end of the festive season (Temps des fêtes) following Christmas, when people would visit each other for family parties. Leftover eggs and dairy products would therefore go into the making of large amounts of pancakes on this happy sendoff of the winter holidays, anticipating Mardi Gras. Generally speaking, in French Candlemas folklore, the remainder of the previous year’s wheat harvest is entirely used up in crepes, or alternatively in donuts, as a way to secure an abundant and healthy harvest in the coming year, by symbolically completing the cycle of the sun—also represented by the golden color and round shape of the dishes involved. In Spain though, many regions have a tradition of family barbecues on Candlemas; in Mexico, it is the person who found a bean or a baby Jesus in his or her share of the Epiphany cake who is supposed to organize and pay for the Candlemas party centering on tamales— another kind of crepe. Also underlining the links between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year, in much Northern European folklore, the failure to take down all

Christmas decorations by Candlemas was believed to invite bad luck. Because of the feast’s association with the child Jesus, it was chosen as the World Day of Orthodox Youth in 1992. No doubt on account of an underlying parallel between the early stages of Christ’s life, of human life, and of the yearly cycle itself, there was long a custom in Scotland of small-town children presenting gifts to their teachers on Candlemas. Much as with related seasonal rites of social inversion from Saint Nicholas Day to Epiphany elsewhere in Europe, they had a little party afterwards, where they would elect a Candlemas king—and sometimes a queen as well. For each of the six weeks of his reign, this Candlemas king was entitled to claim an afternoon of games or recess for his classmates and had the royal prerogative of canceling punishments at his discretion.

Groundhog Day and Weather Forecasting That same six-week period, which lasted until Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17, was one when the Irish would closely watch the skies for indications of future weather, just as they observed the behavior of hedgehogs on Saint Bridget’s for the same purpose. Though in some Slavic Orthodox churches, there is a service of the Blessing of the Candles, which the faithful can then take home, in Greece, the popular name of the feast of the Meeting of our Lord is not “Candlemas,” but Miliargousa—the “Miller’s Holiday.” This is because the windmills stay idle on this day. Cretans maintain that the windmills would not work even if the miller did try to use them. Whereas other Greeks and Eastern Christians think the weather remains what it was on this day for forty days—or at least to the end of the month—the inhabitants of the island of Crete believe that clear weather on this day means the winter will be long. This ancient folk belief about Candlemas, if it was not inherited directly

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from the Celtic folklore of Imbolc, may have been taken by the Roman legions to the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, who related it to the hibernation patterns of certain animals— such as the badger, the wolf, and the hedgehog—which they credited with an ability to gauge how much winter weather was left before spring. German and British immigrants took it to North America, where it became the premise for Groundhog Day customs as a divination ritual based on whether or not the rodent sees its shadow. If it does, it will hibernate through another six weeks (forty days framed by two extra ones) of cold weather. The towns where Groundhog Day is still celebrated with the most fanfare and media attention are Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania, and Wiarton, Ontario. Based on the same principle as the Cretan belief about Candlemas, Groundhog Day is a living example of the connection ancient peoples made between this point of winter (about midway between solstice and equinox, as in other Celtic festivals beside Imbolc) and the coming spring—evident as far away as China (with a festive calendar also structured around these four midpoints between our current seasonal markers). It is no mere coincidence that Chinese New Year celebrations tend to start around this time by early February, as the Spring Festival. See also Carnival; Christmas; Days of the Dead (West); Easter; Epiphany; Holi and Vasant Panchami; Inti Raymi; Lugnasad; Lupercalia; New Year (China, Korea); New Year (West); Saint Nicholas; Samhain References Bill Anderson. Groundhog Day: 1886 to 1992. A Century of Tradition in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Punxsutawney, PA: Bill Anderson, 1992. The Festal Menaion. Tr. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1984. Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968.

Stewart A. Kingsbury, Mildred E. Kingsbury, and Wolfgang Miede. Weather Wisdom: Proverbs, Superstitions, and Signs. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. George A. Megas. Greek Calendar Customs. Athens: [s.n.], 1963. Séamas Ó Catháin. The Festival of Brigit: Celtic Goddess and Holy Woman. Blackrock, Ireland: DBA, 1995. Sean Ó Súilleabhìn. A Handbook of Irish Folklore. Detroit, MI: Singing Tree Press, 1970. The Pilgrimage of Etheria. Tr. M. L. McClure and C. L. Feltoe. New York: Macmillan (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1978).

◗ CANICULARES DIES See Assumption

◗ CAPITOLIA See Games (Rome)

◗ CARÊME See Lent

◗ CARISTIA (ROME) The Roman festival of Caristia was also known as Cara cognatio (or “Dear Relatives”). It came on the day after Feralia, marking the end of Parentalia, nine days devoted to making peace with dead relatives. On February 22, Roman families turned from the dead to the living and put aside their quarrels amid good cheer, bringing concord to the home. No outsiders were allowed to take part.

Minding the Lares As the poet Ovid wrote about this festival, “It is sweet of course to turn from dead kin and tombs / And direct one’s gaze toward the living / And view what line remains after so many lost / And enumerate the generations” (Fasti 2:619– 622, p. 45). But a plate had to be laid out for the meal to be shared with the familiar deities or be-

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nign ancestor spirits known as Lares, who protected the household and its fields. The day before the festival, their mother Tacita would have been invoked in magical rites by an old woman so as to prevent any slander against the family and especially to preserve the reputation of maidens. There originally used to be one Lar familiaris for every Roman homestead, but by the time of the Empire, domestic chapels like those found among the ruins of Pompeii would depict Lares dancing in pairs with their tunics hitched up, as they poured wine into cups.

From a National to a Clerical Fathers’ Day Also, the first Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar had combined the cult of his own genius or individual protecting deity (also known as his Fortuna) with that of the Lares when he restored the collega compitalicia—associations which sponsored their own crossroad shrines and festivals (such as Compitalia). Thus, when night fell on Caristia, the family members who had gathered would each take a great cup of wine and spill it onto the ground as they made this double toast as a solemn prayer: “To your health, Lares! to your health, Father of the Fatherland [Pater Patriae], excellent Caesar!” Many early Christians would endure martyrdom rather than toast or salute, let alone worship in any way, the Emperor’s Fortuna on these and other occasions. Witness the earliest story of a saint’s martyrdom, that of Saint Polycarp on January 26, 155, which provided the model for this pious genre, down to the identification of its date with that of the saint’s eternal birthday or dies natalis. In order to displace the pagan practices still current in Rome around February 22 (like the ancestorworship of Feralia) long after the Empire became Christian, the date of Caristia was later chosen for the feast of the See of Saint Peter in honor of the bishop of Rome, heir to Caesar’s universal authority as Holy Father (pappas in Greek—hence pope) of the Catholic Church,

and eventually to his temporal power in the Eternal City after the fall of the Empire in the West in 476. See also Days of the Dead (West); Matronalia References William Warde Fowler. Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic: An Introduction to the Study of the Romans. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1969. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

◗ CARMENTALIA (ROME) Carmentalia was an ancient Roman festival dedicated to a goddess of childbirth, held on January 11 and 15. If little is known of its origins and exact nature, historical records reveal a few instances when the key role of women in it gave them unaccustomed leverage at some turning points of Roman politics.

Maternal Privileges The Arcadian goddess Carmentis or Carmenta was said by Romans to owe her name to the rhymed prophetic songs or carmina (plural of carmen and Latin for “divine incantation” and later “song”) that she inspired. But this old divinity of childbirth who protected women was no longer very important by the time of the Empire, when no one seemed to remember just why the Senate had added a second day (January 15) to her festival of Carmentalia, which was originally celebrated on the eleventh only. Some said it was so that one could ask for the safe delivery of baby boys or baby girls, but there is no indication of any such gender specialization on the two festival days. We do know from the Roman historian Titus Livius (64 or 59–7 B.C.E.) that the matrons had been granted the privilege of going to Carmenta’s shrine (situated between the Capitol

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and the Tiber) on two-wheeled wagons called carpenta. This was an enduring reward for having offered their gold jewels so that the dictator Camillus could pay what he still owed the Delphic Apollo from the booty of Veii, since the god had granted Rome a victorious end to her ten-year long siege of this Etruscan city—her great rival in Italy—in 395 B.C.E. This privilege was abolished during the Second Punic War by the Oppia Law of 215 B.C.E., but it had to be restored ten years later. Some authors say this was as a result of a pressure tactic of systematic abortions on the part of the women of Rome.

Portents of Childbirth This would have constituted a striking inversion of the life-fostering energies of Carmenta, which were normally disturbed by the mere introduction into her shrine of dead materials such as leather. Among the ancient rites performed there by her priest at Carmentalia were prayers that included obscure invocations of Porrima and Postuerta. The poet Ovid (43–17 B.C.E.) took these names to refer to prophecies of times past and times to come, while the scholar Varro (116–27 B.C.E.) thought these attributes referred to the positions of the fetus at birth, which determined whether it came out of the womb safely head-first or unsafely feetfirst. See also Matralia References Cyril Bailey. Phases in the Religion of Ancient Rome. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972. Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

◗ CARNEIA (GREECE) The Dorian festival of Apollo Carneios, protector of herds, was celebrated in most of the Pelo-

ponnese with sacrifices, military contests, and a race to catch a “jack-in-the green.”

A Portrait of Dorian Camps Though this festival was common to Dorianspeaking Greeks, we only know its date in the calendar of Sparta, where it took place from the seventh to the fifteenth of the month of Karneios (in late July and August). This was a time sacred to all Dorians on account of their common cult of Apollo Carneios. In Argos, both Apollo and his priest were called hagetor—that is, “leader of the host”—of Dorian Greek tribes who took over most of the Peloponnese over 3,000 years ago. Elsewhere, the priest was called karnos or karneio (likely meaning “ram”)—the name of the prophetpriest of Apollo who led the host and was unjustly killed by the Dorian descendants of Heracles. He would thus have been commemorated in this festival to appease divine anger, or he might actually have been a local fertility god displaced by the Dorians’ own sun god Apollo. During the nine days of Carneia in Sparta, a sacred truce was observed during which no military action might be undertaken. Instead, the Spartans experienced this festival as an “image of the military life,” everything being done “by word of command” by nine groups of three phratries or brotherhoods. Each occupied a place called a skias, where they lived in “something like tents” (probably huts made out of branches), according to Demetrios of Skepsis (Farnell 1907, p. 260). There, young and old feasted together naked all the while, as they formed competing choirs (whose leaders wore palm crowns) to sing and dance as well as test their athletic skills in celebration of past victories and achievements. The Gymnopaidiai or Festival of Naked Youths in honor of Apollo Pythaeus, Artemis and Dionysus seems to have formed part of the celebrations of Carneia in Sparta, and unmarried men were not allowed to attend. From about the Twenty-Sixth Olympiad (676 B.C.E.)

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onward, poets and artists from all over Greece would gather in Sparta for a contest on the occasion of Carneia, since the sun god Apollo was the patron of the arts.

Racing Against Death It was perhaps to commemorate the Dorians’ legendary crossing to the peninsula that Spartans also carried model rafts in procession; at the same time (in a custom also attested in Cnidus and on the island of Thera), staphylodromoi (young grape-cluster-runners) pursued the garlanded priest who would have first prayed for blessings on the city. These would only come if the five-man teams of unmarried Karneatai chosen in each tribe every four years caught the running man—thereby effecting a transfer of magical energy from him as vegetation spirit to the samples of vines the runners held. Allowing the priest to get away was a bad omen, tantamount to letting the power of growth go by after the harvest without laying hold of it for future crops. If this was a typical agrarian ritual to secure the fertility of the vintage and the harvest (with many equivalents in European folklore, as well as a similar race once held on one of the last days of the Shalako festival in Zuñi, New Mexico), military rites reinforced its power, as they staged the mythic struggle of the forces of nature’s bounty over the demons of scarcity. Thus in Cyrene, a Dorian colony in Libya, there was a war dance of hoplites—heavily armed infantrymen. For the warrior hero is someone who has been victorious over death and thus stands for invincible life, like Heracles when he arrived just in time to wrest Alcestis from the clutches of Hades (that is, death and the underworld), because her husband Admetus, king of Pherae, had been granted the privilege of getting someone to die in his stead on Apollo’s intercession, and Zeus would not let this unnatural trading of places be carried out. This allowed Euripides to imagine in his play about Alcestis (verses

449–452) that hymns were sung in her praise “both in Sparta when the Karneian month rolls around in its season/ and when the full moon risen/ stays high all night, and in/ shining, happy Athens, glittering and bright” (Alcestis 1974, p. 31). See also Games (Greece); Shalako References E. H. Binney. “The Alcestis as a Folk-Drama,” in Classical Review, Vol. XIX, No. 98, 1905. P. E. Easterling and J. V. Muir, eds. Greek Religion and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Euripides. Alcestis. Tr. Charles Rowan Beye. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Lewis Richard Farnell. The Cults of the Greek States. Vol. IV. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907. Michael Pettersson. Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai and the Karneia. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen and Göteborg: P. Åström, 1992.

◗ CARNIVAL (CHRISTIANITY) The word “carnival” probably comes from the Latin carnem levare, meaning “to take away meat,” or perhaps simply, carne vale, which translates as “goodbye, meat!” It stands for a fond, often boisterously self-indulgent goodbye to meat and all the other carnal pleasures that Christians are traditionally supposed to abstain from during the Lenten season of ascetic preparation for Easter. Carnival allows them to give in with wild abandon to the unruly passions that any established order usually frowns on and which church discipline is then about to repress with a vengeance. Prior to modern attempts to channel them into more genteel, officially organized urban attractions, Carnivals were structured around rituals of social inversion and scapegoating. These were pagan remnants of archaic agrarian observances (the reason they were later banned in Spain under the right-wing Franco dictatorship). Carnivals often dramatized the competition between the

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bountiful powers of a new spring and the constraining forces of winter, together with the last hurrah of the chaotic remnants of old life as the fertile ground for revitalized order.

Place in the Calendar: East and West In Greece, Carnival is called Apokreos—“away with meat.” The Carnival season begins three weeks before Lent, when its commencement used to be announced from atop a hill by a villager, with drumbeats by the town crier or with the firing of guns in cities. The first week was therefore known as Propsonî, from the verb “to announce,” and was the one when fatted pigs were killed so they could be eaten during the second or Meatfare Week (when even regular fasting is banned), on the big family meals of Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. This is when Carnival activities really get under way, with after-dinner masquerades, including satirical plays on a variety of themes. Among the most common are mock weddings and the moot trial of a man accused of having killed a pig, who is pardoned just when he is about to be hanged. The climax of the sanctioned licentiousness and merrymaking of the Orthodox Carnival season comes on Cheesefare Sunday, after a week without meat has already passed. Similarly, in prerevolutionary Russia, peasants managed to stuff themselves with pancakes (since all dairy products had to be consumed before the onset of full Lenten fasting) so much that many died each year. In Greece, firecrackers go off until vespers, and then large bonfires are lit—especially in the north. Neighbors greet each other with gunshots after the big meatfree dinner, when dances are often disrupted by marauding bands of maskers. Though officially part of Lent, the next Monday is really an extension of Carnival, with mummers staging the funeral of King Carnival in some places. However, it is generally an open-air holiday when people go outdoors—be

it in the country or in their backyards—to have special Lenten-fare meals, dance, and fly kites. These are all ways of greeting spring and dismissing winter, as is the custom after which Clean Monday is known. This is when pots and pans are cleaned the next day with hot water mixed with ashes. In the West, the Carnival season generally begins on Quinquagesima Sunday—the one before Lent. Ash Wednesday is included in it in some parts of Spain—a holdover from the time over a thousand years ago when it had not been made the official start of Lent yet. Carnival normally reaches its final climax on Shrove Tuesday, when one used to get “shriven”—that is, absolved after confessing one’s sins, having no doubt committed more than one’s usual share over the last couple of days alone. In France, where Carnival is often limited to this single day, it is called Mardi Gras—“Fat Tuesday,” and is the last opportunity to consume meat and poultry products. However, in New Orleans, the Mardi Gras season extends ten days back as the culmination of a Carnival season that itself begins on January 6 with Epiphany, as it does in Guadeloupe, as well as in most Catholic German lands.

German-Speaking and Low Countries The Rhineland is different from other Catholic countries since November 11 (at eleven past eleven o’clock) marks the start of Cologne’s elaborate Karneval for instance. Though characteristic Napoleonic costumes arose as a satire of French invaders in the early nineteenth century, this celebration was first recorded in 1234. The equivalent Fastnacht was observed even earlier in Mainz and other southwestern German cities; in Bavaria and Austria, it is known as Fasching. The celebration of these German carnivals starts on the Thursday before Lent, but it reaches fever pitch on the last three days, as a time when everyday rules are turned upside

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The three-day Binche Carnival, held near Mons (Belgium) just before Lent. During the Carnival, festivities are led by “Gilles,” men dressed in high, plumed hats and bright costumes. (Charles & Josette Lenars/Corbis)

down. Thus, the keys of the city could be handed over to a council of fools, or to women, who were solemnly invested with full powers. Surviving practices include satirical plays, speeches, and newspaper columns, along with noisy costumed parades and masked balls, and all manner of overt excess. These are also observed in the German-speaking area of Belgium in Eupen and Malmédy, as in most other Carnivals still thriving in that country, like those in nearby Stavelot and in Aalst in East Flanders— where bloody panties are even thrust at bystanders. Yet the tone is strangely different in Belgium’s most famous Carnival: that of Binche near Charleroi. Going back at least to the fourteenth century, it has become highly formal-

ized over later ones. This is especially true of the Shrove Tuesday procession of the Gilles. The Gilles societies are comprised of hundreds of native sons and longtime male residents, who save and prepare all year for the privilege of solemnly stomping in step through the streets for nearly twenty-four hours at a stretch. Like quaint clowns in eerie masks, they dress in one-of-a-kind, elaborate, and costly Carnival outfits, with meter-high ostrich feather headdresses worn only in the afternoon. This famous event remains primarily a ritual of collective belonging, and little effort is made to welcome the many outsiders who come to witness it. Though it has spawned many cheap imitations in other Belgian towns, the genuine article is jealously guarded by the locals, who are not allowed to collaborate in such exports, since doing so would demean this unique bond between them. Despite the uncharacteristic decorum strictly maintained throughout, there is no mistaking the features of archaic agrarian rites: the rhythmic gait with heavy wooden clogs to a steady drumbeat as a dance to trample the ground so as to awaken its fertility and chase away evils— with the help of a ritual rod—and the spreading of fruitfulness through an ongoing offering of bread—which has been replaced by the throwing of at least 300 oranges by the Gilles to the crowd ever since railways have made it possible to import them all the way from Spain.

Food Fights and Seasonal Scapegoats In Spain, as in Portugal and parts of Southern France, things were a lot rowdier when not only oranges and lemons, but lupines (as in ancient Rome’s Floralia), flour, eggs, mud, and a variety of unsavory fluids were thrown at passersby with the same implicit symbolism. Such lifegiving aggression might include pitched battles using wax lemons, plaster eggs, corncobs, and beans (blown through straws) as projectiles, as well as brooms and wooden spoons as hand-

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held weapons. Verbal abuse and obscene gestures, mostly under the cover of bawdy humor (evident in cross-dressing), did not exclude actual street brawls in the popular quarters of Spanish cities like Seville, where women would deliberately provoke them. True to the inner logic of the primitive crowd psychology thus ritualized, all the energies of life and death were first exercised and then exorcized under the rule of a temporary Carnival king. This was usually a kind of colorful dummy who no doubt stood in for a former human scapegoat like the one who used to be sacrificed at the end of the year-end Roman Saturnalia after having presided over all its excesses and social inversion. In some places, a real scapegoat was even appointed to be the butt of the public, as in Oviedo until as late as 1867. Elsewhere in Spain, the poor, customarily dealt with in a kindly manner until the end of the eighteenth century, would suddenly find themselves fair game for all manner of derision and cruel taunts, in a perverse twist of social inversion. As a rule, the Carnival king took all the credit and all the blame for the unleashing of passions—listed in detail by a monk who denounced all the sins indulged in by Don Carnal (as he was known in Spain) in the sermon closing the Carnival and opening Lent. In modern times, a similar practice has been revived since 1981 in a Vaucluse valley, in a lively parody of French central administration and Provençal village life, when all of the bad blood between members of the community and any resentments at broader social or natural conditions may be freely vented at the moot trial of Caramantran (a name derived from a phrase meaning “entering Lent”) at the end of the Murs Carnival. In order for the community to put behind itself all its pent-up frustrations and the guilt of their unruly release, the final outcome is invariably the same—the Carnival king’s execution by any combination of methods: gunshot, fire, water, reflecting the range of nature’s violent energies. Being scapegoated as

the embodiment of unruly passions as well as of their past and coming repression, the king is also mourned as both their short-lived liberator and a redeemer from the personal guilt incurred by all under his brief rule. For it is marked both by dangerously antisocial freedom and by the community’s renewed “partnership in crime”—sealed by the collective murder of a scapegoat. In Murs, all can then partake in the crespeou—a communal meal having as a centerpiece a large omelet that uses up all the eggs soon to be forbidden for the duration of Lent. In the English-speaking world, Mardi Gras is also known as “Pancake Tuesday” for similar reasons. The pig often had an important role to play in the Carnival. In Madrid, a rowdy ceremonial, immortalized in the Goya painting Burial of the Sardine, was held until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. However, it did not owe its name to the fish that was about to become standard Lenten fare, but to a certain pig bone. It was also out of pig’s bladders that the balloons formerly used to hit people at the Nice Carnival and to this day by the Clovis clowns of the Rio Carnival were originally made. In Renaissance Rome, the stately Shrove Tuesday parades still culminated with an archaic sacrifice reminiscent of the all-important pig feasts of Oceanian cultures, when six carriages took live pigs up the fifty-meter high Monte Testaccio. The city’s thirteen quarters each led a magnificent fierce bull in procession to tether it to one of the carriages. The raging bulls would stampede behind the carriages (draped in red to excite them) when they were suddenly sent carening downhill and over a cliff, to crash on the rocks at the bottom. There, thousands waited to thrust spears into the mass of broken wood and torn limbs, providing the meat for a massive early morning Ash Wednesday feast. Cats have often been favorite scapegoats, especially during Carnival. In Renaissance Venice, this was a favorite time for the “Cat Game,” in

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which men shaved their heads and used them to crush a cat that had been spread-eagled on a plank or a pole. (The nasty Fascist character played by Donald Sutherland gives a memorable demonstration of this Italian game in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1975 family saga 1900.) In Denmark, where Fastelavn (pronounced “Festalawn”) is now limited to Fat Sunday as a time for children to dress up and go trick-ortreating for seasonal cream cakes (fastelavnsboller), they also play a game of “killing the cat in the barrel” with a stick, although the animal is now made of paper. In Brazil, the sacrifice of a cat traditionally marks the climax of Carnival in Bahia. There, as in Rio, “making a cat’s skin speak” means playing the cuica, since cat hide is supposed to be used in the making of this seasonal instrument—an open-ended drum with a metal stick in the middle to produce a high squeaky sound when it is rubbed with a wet cloth. Just as the cuica accompanies baterias or percussion ensembles in Rio, the similar (though closed) petadou is part of the traditional vespa ensemble of sculpted gourd instruments of the Nice Carnival. They are both relatives of the Rummelpott used on Martinmas or New Year’s Eve in Northern Europe as the eerie yet comical voice of the underworld.

From Venice to Nice: The Eagle and the Bat It has also been reported that, since rabbit skins were in short supply, some 300 cats from the popular quarters of Nice were used to make the costumes of the forty bat impersonators who flapped their wings on the famous float called Ratapignata (the Nissart word for “bat”), which forever changed the character of the city’s official Carnival in 1875. There, an organizing committee had been set up in 1873 by the local bourgeoisie and some wealthy winter residents, who wanted to attract more of the latter, since they had become wary of recent revolutionary movements ensuing from France’s defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1870.

In the spirit of Victorian charity events, they decided to award prizes to allegorical floats and flower-covered carts at the various parades, as well as to cavalcades and masquerades. Originating in Renaissance Florence and further developed in Venice, such events had been features of the Carnival in Turin, capital of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, to which Nice had belonged until 1860. They had become part of its Carnival after being first put on in honor of a royal visit in 1830. Some of the county’s residents longed for Nice to return to the House of Savoy—which now ruled over a united Kingdom of Italy. This conservative, largely upper-class separatist party rallied around the committee’s decision to award the first prize to an allegorical float depicting Caterina Segurana—the popular heroin of the city’s resistance to a siege by France’s Turkish allies in 1543. But the more lower-class French party, which was loyal to the newly founded Third Republic and was supported by the winter residents, bitterly contested the neglect of a widely favored, albeit unorthodox and fanciful, float on the theme of the bat. The black bat symbolizes the inversion of the red imperial eagle of Savoy heraldry on Nice’s coat-of-arms, since it hangs upside down by day and takes its flight under cover of night, in the dark realm of subconscious drives as opposed to the bright daylight of organized social life. The bat would endure as a kind of mascot of Nice’s “wild side”—that of a native folk culture often overlooked by the cosmopolitan patrons of the Riviera’s tourist industry and looked down upon by those who catered to them. It managed to find officially sanctioned expression at the Carnival after the 1875 Ratapignata affair, which forced that year’s organizing committee to step down. From then on, the float parade would be given over to the grotesque fantasy and outrageous satire favored by the popular imagination, with stock characters developed by dynasties of float designers and master-builders. (One example is the

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Babau dragon that started embodying the nowsuppressed Paillon River in 1882—just when it was covered over by a new boulevard.) By contrast, genteel allegory would be reserved for the “flower battle”—as the parade of flower-covered floats along the beachfront is known. While today scantily clad local beauties (succeeding the daughters of Nice’s good families) throw flower bouquets at the spectators, this flower battle used to be more vigorous and less one-sided. It first broke out between the decorated carriages of the gala corso in which Nice’s notables paraded before King CharlesFelix in 1830, and included not only flowers, but also rock candy coriandoli and flat, almondshaped sugar confetti. Over the years, the Carnival battlefield expanded, and there was an arms race of sorts. The winter tourists at their windows and on their balconies and the locals on the streets below would confront each other— at first with “noble” missiles: flowers, candies, and cigars, and then with all manner of ammunition—dry vegetables like peas, soot or sawdust, eggs (which were often rotten), and especially flour (also often gone bad). There came a point where, replacing the original candies, plaster confetti became the weapon of choice in a total war from which there was no safety, so that one needed to go out in a dustproof overcoat with a protective wire mesh mask, armed with a large bag of confetti and a shovel. In 1892, paper confetti were invented by an engineer from Modane in Savoy (ceded to France along with Nice in 1860), recycling paper used in raising silkworms, and replaced the heavy plaster confetti, the use of which was now limited to certain days and events. Today, the streets get white from the flour used liberally and aggressively in the wild neighborhood carnivals that have recently made a comeback in Nice (much as in Rio) with homemade floats and costumes, off the tourist-beaten track of the city’s official Carnival. In the latter, aside from confetti, innocuously nonsticking colored foam sprays now

largely replace all other projectiles along the course of both the flower and float parades. As highly organized spectator events, these have provided the model for other modern urban Carnivals that often started out as genteel bourgeois affairs, from that of the Viareggio beach resort near Pisa since 1873 to the Quebec Winter Carnival held continuoulsy since 1955 after some late-nineteenth-century precedents. In 1998, after nineteen years of interruption, the Gran Veglione—an exclusive masked ball on a chosen theme, first held in Nice in 1873—was revived. The Venice Carnival that was a prototype for this Italian-style event was also revived for the benefit of tourists as of 1980. However, it now lasts only ten days, which is a far cry from the two months it took up before it died out at the end of the eighteenth century. It grew out of the Baroque taste among the ruling classes for exhibiting oneself as an allegory. The mask came to denote not so much the vertical inversion of social roles among the increasingly separate classes as the ability to escape them horizontally within their top ranks and to take liberties in the pursuit of private fantasies under the cover of conventional anonymity. This was now symbolized by a small domino mask for the eyes— white for men or black for women—and it was enough to pin one of these to one’s hat in order to get away with unconventional behavior.

Brazil’s Character Unmasked Masks became all the rage in much of Europe and even in some colonies such as Louisiana, where the masked balls started under French rule in the 1740s remain the oldest component of the New Orleans Mardi Gras (followed by other European imports like pageants from 1827 and by the torchlight parade of King Carnival from 1857). However, masks were banned in Portugal in 1689, and this original focus of most modern Carnival traditions was long missing from those of Portuguese-speaking countries like the Cabo Verde islands and above all Brazil.

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There, as in the rest of Latin America, Carnival instead evolved from the Entrudo—the Iberian food fight described earlier. In addition, so much water was used for it in Rio de Janeiro that it put the city’s water supply at risk. One could not go out without an umbrella to avoid the dousing, which was accompanied by pelting with wax lemons that entire families—along with their slaves—would spend weeks making just for this occasion. This was even true at the Imperial Palace in Rio de Janeiro, though eventually the tide began to turn. In contrast to the premodern disorder, both masked balls and competitive allegorical float parades (featuring a “Float of Criticism” about topical issues as well as beauties in risqué disguises) had already begun being organized by the bourgeoisie’s sociedades carnavalescas in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1888, Emperor Pedro II attended the Nice Carnival as part of his tour of Europe, and his Princess Regent Isabel was inspired by it to organize Brazil’s first parade of flowerdecorated carriages to celebrate the abolition of slavery she had decreed in her father’s absence. Similarly, on January 1, 1890, a Battle of Flowers patterned after that of the Nice Carnival by Francis Rowland was first organized in Pasadena, California by members of the Valley Hunt Club from the East Coast and the Midwest who wanted to celebrate the mild winters of their new home. This was eventually renamed the Tournament of Roses. Meanwhile in Brazil, a military coup had made that country into a Republic, and urban middle-class propriety soon seemed to prevail over the festive excess of Carnival, as traditionally indulged in by both the landed gentry and the rural populace. For Black slaves too had begun to express their heritage under cover of their masters’ Entrudo in the lundu—joining tribal dances and syncopated percussions. Even the urban working classes then formed their own groups or blocos to sing and dance to the accompaniment of batteries of pots and

pans, which used to be thrown out as part of the Iberian Entrudo. Recent, mostly Portuguese immigrants to southern Brazil turned the ranchos de reis—Yuletide processions dramatizing that of the Three Wise Men to the Christ Child for Epiphany—into the secular, satirical rancho carnavalesco accompanied by brass and string polka bands and waltz ensembles. Their European modinhas (or sentimental ballads) were eventually put to African rhythms to give the samba. The first-known samba Pelo Telephone (“By Phone”) was recorded in 1917. Soon the Rio suburbs took it up as the music for low-end ranchos, who were accompanied by enlarged rhythm sections due to lack of money for other instruments. The modern Carnival bateria was born. Blocos grew and organized, their largely illiterate members composing new songs in bars, until at the 1929 Carnival one of them stood out in the middle of a chaotic parade by its marching order, uniform costumes, and unified musical program. The idea of this first “samba school” caught on like wildfire, and others like it multiplied, vying for popularity in contests that became official along with the Carnival in 1935, since state authorities had come to appreciate its populist potential. Favored by the common people, the increasingly well-organized samba schools of the peripheral underclass with their itinerant miniature musicals came to compete seriously with the Mardi Gras costumed saloon-car parade of the sociedades and increasingly racy society masked balls, not to mention the ranchos of workingclass districts. A breakthrough came in 1948, when the samba schools’ parade first extended over two days at the climax of Carnival. Both the samba schools and the underprivileged groups that invested endless energy and creativity (along with their meager resources) to maintain them had long been repressed, and even compelled to go underground or to seek sanctuary in official places of Afro-Brazilian pagan worship. They

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came to be recognized as bearers of the national character of a dynamic, multiracial Brazil, now embraced (and idealized) in all its diversity by the intellectuals, and they were supported as such by the urban middle class after about 1960. This was when Rio de Janeiro was replaced as federal capital by Brasilia, built from scratch to reflect this modern spirit by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. As if to confirm the convergence of Brazil’s public identity with the Carnival as the scene of its egalitarian self-image—on which the poorest citizens temporarily take center stage, Niemeyer (who happened to be a Communist) would also design Rio’s Sambadrome, a stadium holding over 50,000 people built in 1983 especially for the great competition of the samba schools. Each one slowly circles it as a kind of mobile Las Vegas revue in its own right that takes about an hour and a half to complete, so the whole show can last more than twenty hours—from one afternoon to the next —on the last weekend before Lent. The city of Rio de Janeiro also organizes about 100 balls and 50 free parades for Carnival. Many feel this channeling of Carnival’s chaotic energy into well-organized events at well-defined venues and times goes against the original spirit of street-level spontaneity it epitomizes. They prefer to look for it in the less publicized, less tourist-oriented urban festivals of Brazil—not so much to the west in its other megalopolis São Paulo, as in those of the otherwise very poor Nordeste, in Recife or above all in Salvador de Bahia. This is where Brazilians go when they want to plunge headlong into no-holds-barred, old-fashioned Carnival madness as it sweeps through all the streets of a city, rather than look at a glittery parade going by on its predetermined path between rows of spectators. In Bahia, this traditional spirit has been galvanized by a technological innovation first introduced in 1950. The orderly corso of expensive convertibles in which the rich liked to show

off in fancy costumes as they threw streamers and confetti on less fortunate onlookers was then thrown into disarray when a radio technician and a small garage owner burst in driving a 1929 Ford they had rigged up with electric instruments connected to the battery. The crush of the frenzied crowd suddenly swarming around the jalopy carried it along without anybody noticing the motor had given out. The next year, a third player joined the original two in a Chrysler van equipped with a small generator, two amplifiers and eight fluorescent lamps; the trio elétrico was born. This name was kept for other customized musical trucks that would multiply and expand in size and power from 1952 onward. Today, they may be fifteen meters long, four meters high, and hold a recording studio—complete with air-conditioned bar and washrooms for the show going on on the rooftop stage with tropical props—as thousands of light-bulbs blaze, and dozens of speakers blare the demonic rhythms that keep in thrall the entranced throngs furiously jumping up and down in their wake. The phases and traits of the contagious possession taking hold of an electrified crowd in the procession of Bahia’s electric gods has been compared point by point to the unfolding of the Dionysian rituals described in Euripides’ play The Bacchae, to show the ancient roots and perennial wellsprings of Carnival celebrations. See also Ashura; Candlemas; Christmas; Dionysia; Epiphany; Feast of Fools; Floralia; Games (Rome); Holi; Lent; Lupercalia; Martinmas; Midsummer; New Year (West); Purim; Saturnalia; Thargelia; Yom Kippur References Daniel Crowley. Bahian Carnival. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, Monograph No. 25, 1984. Umberto Eco, V. V. Ivanov, and Monica Rector. Carnival! New York: Mouton Publishers, 1984. Albert Goldman. Carnival in Rio. Photos by Douglas and Lena Villiers. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1978.

56 | c h e r r y b l o s s o m f e s t i va l Maria Julia Goldwasser. “Carnival,” in Mircea Eliade, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. III. New York: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 98–104. Samuel Kinser. Carnival, American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile. Photos by Norman Magden. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Annie Sidro. Carnaval à Nice. Nice: Serre Éditeur, 1993.

◗ CASK-OPENING See Dionysia

◗ CAT NIGHTS See Assumption

◗ CERIALIA, CERTAMEN See Games (Rome)

◗ CHALANDA MARZ See New Year (West)

◗ CHEESEFARE WEEK See Carnival, Lent

◗ CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (JAPAN) Japan’s most famous festival may be the Cherry Blossom Festival called Hanami or “FlowerViewing.” It celebrates the weeklong flowering of the cherry trees in the early spring.

A Festival of Fleeting Beauty Japanese people experience this as the best illustration of their typical aesthetic and spiritual sensibility, summed up in the phrase mono no aware by the literary scholar Moto ori Norinaga (1730–1801) to refer to the sadness that is inevitably bound up with the experience of beauty, because nothing lasts. This Buddhist sense of impermanence is joined to Shinto communion with nature in the joyous,

yet solemn, way the Japanese relate to the short-lived, overwhelming beauty of the pink and white cherry flowers. There are two hundred varieties of cherry trees now growing in Japan. And yet this national symbol is not indigenous to the country. Cherry trees were first introduced over a thousand years ago. They are in bloom at different times in different places, depending on the latitude and the particular variety growing there. The sevenday Flower-Viewing Festival can accordingly be held as early as March in the South and as late as May in the North. For these two months, huge crowds of Japanese people travel by car, by bus or by train to gather in whichever stretch of the archipelago happens to be the current scene of this fleeting, yet ever-recurring wonder of nature. This is especially true during the so-called Golden Week, when most people in Japan get several days off in a row connected to a weekend, so as to bridge three successive holidays: the first is April 29, which is Emperor Hirohito’s birthday and is still observed even after his death in 1989 as Greenery Day (Midori no Hi) to perpetuate his concern, as a marine biologist, for the natural environment; the second is Constitution Memorial Day (Kenpo Kinen Hi) on May 3; and finally comes Children’s Day (Kodomo no Hi) on May 5, preceded by another statutory holiday on May 4, which was enacted in 1985 to bridge the latter two.

Floral Pilgrimage Sites A favorite station on Hanami’s floral pilgrimage is Mount Yoshino on Honshu Island. Tradition holds that this is where a Buddhist monk planted the first cherry trees in Japan. Over 100 thousand wild cherry trees now grace the mountain’s slopes. A long time ago, it was only the Emperor and his retinue that used to go there from nearby Kyoto, the former capital. But nowadays, people of all classes go by the thousands in the early morning, when the mountain is still shrouded in fog, and the smell

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A troupe of women dancers wears traditional Japanese kimonos at the Cherry Blossom festival in Kyoto, Japan. (Jack Fields/Corbis)

of the flowers is said to be particularly subtle and heady. Many artists over the centuries have depicted Mount Yoshino at this time in the spring, as it seems to be floating in mid-air. At the local temple of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, priests burn green leaves in order to get the attention of the kami—Japanese deities of the land and the elements. In Kyoto itself, the Heian shrine is one of the many sacred precincts where people gather to meditate in silence as they gaze at the cherry trees in bloom in the park. They come in such numbers that each person has a time limit of an hour to do it. People who have an inauspicious horoscope can write it on a strip of paper and tie it around a blooming bough, in the hope that the cherry tree will cancel the ominous predictions and bring good fortune instead. All through the cherry blossom season (from

around late March to early May), the Kodai-ji temple is splendidly illuminated from dusk till about half past nine.

Dignified Secular Entertainment Not all Hanami observances are particularly religious or magical in character, but they tend to be rather formal and always highly aesthetic. Each year, novice geishas (called miko) perform elaborate ceremonial dances (called miyako, kyo, and kitano) in honor of the cherry tree (called sakura) on the main stage of Kyoto’s Kabureno Theater, which is decorated with pink trees. During intermission, the audience is offered tea and is shown around the garden’s cherry trees. In fields and parks in town and country, friends, relatives and neighbors—often joined by passersby—gather for cheerful picnic lunches under the blossoming trees.

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Sometimes dressed in their best kimonos, they may get up afterward to perform very dignified classical dance figures with fans to recorded or broadcast traditional melodies. These picnics on the grass under the cherry trees began as a way to mark the beginning of the agricultural calendar and have been popular in all walks of life from the seventeenth century onward. They may now also be organized in the Japanese gardens of botanical gardens in the West; thus, at the one in Montreal, Japanese lunchboxes are even prepared for the visitors who reserve a place in advance, though apple trees in bloom have to stand in for the cherry trees. See also Sekku References Isamitsu Kitakoji, and Jack and Dorothy Fields. Cherry Blossoms. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1973. Wybe Kuitert with Arie Peterse. Japanese Flowering Cherries. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1999. Manabu Miyoshi. Sakura, Japanese Cherry. Tokyo: Board of Tourist Industry and Japanese Government Railways, 1934.

◗ CHIAO (CHINA) A chiao or “offering” (formerly known as chai or “retreat” in medieval times and also known as hui or “gathering”) is a Taoist community festival centering on penitential observances and liturgical rites of cosmic renewal in a local Chinese temple.

feminine or yin number, and three, the first odd, masculine or yang number). However, the sixty-year schedule is rarely observed nowadays, either due for instance to religious persecution causing a community to miss the appointed time and hold its chiao many years late, or on the contrary because economic prosperity allows temples to hold them at shorter intervals—of ten years for example in many Hong Kong temples. The end of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one is a proper time to reaffirm the integrity of the community that unites people with each other and with their protective deities. The same holds true for the dedication of a temple after it has been built or renovated, so that it is very common to have a special “construction offering”—chien-chiao— on such occasions. Other kinds of chiaos may be celebrated to be delivered from a drought, in thanksgiving for relief from an epidemic, or to exorcise the spirits of disease causing such disasters, like the “plague expulsion ritual” performed every three years in the southern Taiwanese town of Tungkang, where they are literally sent packing on a drifting boat. In addition to these external agents of evil and peril, the community must rid itself of its own inner impurities and restrictive old energies as well, down to the ritual confession of individual sins. Only then can the blessings of peace—p’ingan—from above be bestowed on it by the Great Triad of heavenly powers, which it is the job of priests to bring down through rituals to restore the harmony of the community and rekindle its spiritual energies.

Renewing the Cosmos and the Community

Preparation

Normally, a da-chiao (great offering) should be held at the transition between one sixty-year cycle and the next. The cosmic significance of the number sixty is that it is the product of the number twelve (after the twelve animals or branches affecting each year in turn in an astrological cycle) and the number five (that of the five elements and the sum of two, the first even,

These rituals could take fifty days or longer in ancient times, but today they are more likely to last either nine, seven, or most commonly five or three days, due to the high cost of putting on such elaborate affairs. (Sometimes, two extra days are added before the chiao proper for an exorcism of fire and water at the start of a new era, so as to pacify the volatile spirits of these

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two elements that can so easily turn destructive in accidents and bad weather.) It is the board of directors of a temple which decides the time is coming to hold a chiao, and sets up different committees (under a general planning committee) to take charge of the tasks involved in its organization, such as finances, equipment, venue, catering, travel, traffic control, and of course the rituals themselves. Preparations begin at least a year in advance (or in the larger temples several years ahead) of the lucky date selected by fortune-tellers or a medium. For instance, special symbolic objects have to be collected, and the main Taoist temple needs to be refurbished while many temporary additional shrines are erected for the occasion. This construction work is among the biggest expenses, along with the priests’ wages. To finance this whole operation, each household on the temple’s territory is taxed, and prominent community members make large donations in exchange for fancy honorific titles and getting listed as such in temple records. Also, shelf space around the temple’s sanctuary is rented out on the basis of size and location to the sometimes thousands of visiting deities whose statues are brought over from other temples to witness the local rituals, and get recharged by the extra boost of beneficent power they imbibe there. The entire community gets involved through volunteer work, which in itself works miracles in renewing social bonds of cooperation, by allowing people to gain personal prestige within it and project civic pride beyond it, to start a new cycle on the right foot in the spirit of the chiao. To this same end, certain meritorious acts are called for in the weeks preceding a chiao. They may include the repayment of debts, moral as well as financial, demonstrations of filial piety, purification through a vegetarian diet, and penitence through charity. As the time for the rites approaches, temple guards will be on the lookout around the sacred precinct, ready to deny ac-

cess to anyone wearing leather, woolen, or white objects, because of their association with death.

Welcoming Heavenly Guests All classes of spiritual beings are invited to attend the ceremonies—aside from human dignitaries and foreign visitors: they range from ancestors and souls from the underworld that may find rest on this occasion, to the liberated Buddhas and bodhisattvas who join up with Taoist and folk deities and the immortal founders of Taoist sects. At a larger chiao like a sixty-year one, an endless succession of gods or goddesses, impersonated by devotees in solemn poses and lavish costumes, may be carried on a float that is pushed in a procession. In any chiao, wealthy families set up special shrines to host these celestial dignitaries, while the small images from country shrines are put on a platform before the main temple. Yet rich and poor, clergy and laymen all address their petitions to them in similar fashion: they take a bundle of five, twenty-one, or any lucky number of joss sticks, put the lower end to their chest, their forehead, and sometimes their head, and point the burning end in each of the five directions (including the zenith) before sticking them in the sand of the incense-burners, where they shine like hundreds of dots of light among scented clouds of smoke. Every day of the festival begins with an announcement (fa-piao) and an invitation (ch’ing shen) to all these gods and spirits to come down and take part in the festival. This welcome, part of a liturgy that goes back largely to the early days of organized Taoism, is offered by the specially enlisted professionals of the Way or Tao shih (pronounced “dawshr”), the hereditary priests of the spiritual lineage of the secondcentury patriarch Chang Tao-ling, founder of the Way of the Celestial Masters or T’ien-shih Tao. Called “Blackheads” (wu-t’ou) after their headgear as opposed to the “Redheads” (hungt’ou) of enthusiastic folk religion, they are trained in the rituals described in the vast col-

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lection of sacred literature known as Tao tsang. A high priest and at least four other priests (up to twelve or fourteen in larger temples) with four or five liturgical musicians are each paid a fee to perform their office in the local temple, wearing elaborate red vestments. During a service, the head priest (tao-chang) stands in the main courtyard of the temple with two cantors: one on his right who leads the alternating singing as the representative of yang forces, and an assistant on his left representing yin forces. The chanting of canons of repentance is associated with the first day. It is also taken up by the Purification of the Sacred Area—a succession of exorcism rites behind closed doors, where the priest sprinkles holy water everywhere, writes sacred formulas in the air, wields a ritual sword to cut down evil, before the attempted stealing of the gods’ incenseburner by a demon is acted out—often by a professional actor playing the part of the devil catcher Chung K’ui.

Between Heaven and Hell Held on the first or second evening in most cases, to recall pre-Taoist rites of seasonal renewal for fire and water, fen-teng is the Consecration of New Fire—brought inside the temple for the Great Triad of deities. At the end of the day, toward midnight, talismans symbolizing the five life-giving cosmic elements will be placed in the five directions of the temple, in a key ritual aimed at renewing the community by implanting these five energies in it as microcosm, once the master has drawn them from primordial inner space into his own body with meditation. Starting on the second day, the master uses the same method to ascend to the heavens so as to draw into himself and channel to the community the powers of the three supreme deities. These audiences with the threefold Tao are spread out over the morning, midday and evening. It is also at night that the focus shifts to ancestors and the dead in general. Aside

from burning huge stacks of spirit paper money as an offering to facilitate their journey, they are invited to join in the last day’s feast by paper lanterns that are either hung atop bamboo poles—to attract the land ghosts, or attached to small rafts and lit up before being released on the waves of the sea or of a river that leads them out to it—to call up the sea ghosts. On the third or final day, a special rite of homage to the Jade Emperor (chanting his scripture) precedes the Tao Ch’ang ceremony, that completes the renewal of the cosmos by bringing all Three Pure Ones of Taoism (that is, in addition to the Pure August One just mentioned, the August Ruler of the Tao, and the August Old Ruler representing a deified Lao-Tzu) into a compact with the local people. Their names and petitions, with an account of the festival, appear in a memorial presented first to a host of heavenly worthies inside the temple, and then to the Jade Emperor outside. A great banquet is then offered to the souls of the underworld, each family having brought dishes for display on tables set up on temple grounds or a nearby field. Row upon row of goats and pigs (some of the latter fattened over years to weigh close to a ton) also rest on tables or on special wooden frames, while ducks may be dressed up with masks as the same gods whose statues stand on temple roofs to guard against evil curses, and cakes and fruits are artfully arranged in piles alongside impeccably aligned bottles of wine, beer, and lemonade. In the evening, the priests, in addition to their prayers for the well-being of the country and for world peace, for enough rainfall in the countryside and for the city’s protection from typhoons, come out to bless these offerings and chant the scriptures of salvation (tu-jen ching) in the hope of giving rest to the hungry ghosts who have just partaken of them, and of ultimately releasing them from hell, into a better life. Yet in ancient times, after this rite of universal salvation (p’utu), all hell would break loose as hundreds of

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beggars scrambled for the food left physically intact by the ghosts’ banquet. Nowadays, individual families pay caterers to organize this final banquet for their own benefit after the spirits have enjoyed it and all the deities have been thanked and sent back to their sacred homes. But in case gods or men are ever in doubt that the proper ritual of renewal has recently been offered for the entire community, each family receives a yellow certificate to this effect to put up over its home altar. All can then relax and enjoy an evening carnival with festive entertainment ranging from crassly pornographic sideshows, through classical opera, to ritualized Punch-and-Judy shows where the puppets have been consecrated as gods, and are often handled by Taoist masters, to reflect the cosmic play of good and evil, reality and illusion. All through the chiao, but especially before people sit down to partake of the final banquet, mediums (that is, Taoists of the Redhead persuasion) are also on hand to allow people to communicate with heavenly powers or with the spirits of dead relatives or even of historical characters. These specialists of kung-fu (in the full sense, encompassing a whole range of “meritorious action” aside from the better known martial arts) do this by falling into a trance, often induced by whirling dances and various forms of self-laceration under the spirits’ control. In the midst of their speaking in tongues, they may then allow the spirits to answer through them the public’s questions about whether they liked the offerings they got at the chiao and will be kind to the mortals over the new cycle it ushers in. Though the Redhead mediums can also give people private consultations for anything that ails them in body or in soul, including business concerns and political problems, their public seances are most popular. Proceeds from these Redhead sideshows are very helpful in complementing the community-based financing of the more formal and elaborate Blackhead liturgical affair that takes center-stage at a chiao.

See also Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan) References John Lagerwey. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Julian F. Pas and Man Kam Leung. Historical Dictionary of Taoism. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998. Michael Saso. Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1990.

◗ CH’I CHIEH, CHI CH’IAO T’IEN See Cowherd and Weaving Maid

◗ CHILDERMAS, CHILDREN’S CARNIVAL See Feast of Fools

◗ CHILDREN’S DAY See Sekku

◗ CHILDREN’S FESTIVAL See Lantern Festival

◗ CHILSEOK See Cowherd and Weaving Maid

◗ CHOAI See Dionysia

◗ CHONGJIU, CHONG YANG See Double Nine

◗ CHOYO NO SEKKU See Sekku

◗ CHRISTMAS (CHRISTIANITY) Christmas is a festival of light in two senses: as the church feast of the Nativity of Christ—the transcendent Light of the world entering it as a lowly human being, and as the pagan celebration of the winter solstice—when sunlight starts growing back in strength just after having

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reached its lowest ebb. The two meanings of Christmas are intertwined in the host of seasonal observances that have developed around it in the many cultures of the Christian world, as varied as the local backgrounds out of which they grew, yet united by certain recurrent themes from ancient nature religions as well as from theology.

Advent Christmas is preceded by Advent, a preparatory period instituted by the church in the sixth century. It already existed in Gaul and Spain at the end of the fourth century, in the guise of three weeks of ascetic preparation, initially aimed at converts who were to get baptized at Epiphany. At that time, this feast was still second only to Easter, because the feast of the Nativity was just getting detached from it to become Christmas. The Roman Church gave Advent a less ascetic, more festive liturgical character as the new Nativity celebration developed. The old pagan term adventus came to be understood in a new eschatological sense, to refer to the advent of Jesus as the promised Messiah, not only through his humble human birth as foretold at the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, but also in view of his Second Coming in glory at the end of time. These remain the themes of the four Advent Sundays before Christmas and used to be those of the Regem venturum (“Future King”) nightfall services of the novena preceding the feast. The services from December 17 to 23 were known for the O antiphons addressing Christ by a different name or attribute each day, from O Sapientia (Oh Wisdom) on the seventeenth to O Emmanuel on the twenty-third. In Northern European folklore, it was the custom to plant four candles—one every Sunday—in the braided Advent crown. In France, Advent was traditionally a bad time to get married, to do the laundry, to go out with friends at night, when will-o’-the-wisps and ghosts were roaming; but it was the proper time to clean the house, stables, and sheepfold, and to renew the

furniture and utensils, as used to be the case in Finland too, and it still is in Sweden on the occasion of the Advent feast of Saint Lucy (Sancta Lucia) more specifically. In the Eastern Church, the initial ascetic focus of Advent has remained: it is not even called “Advent,” but the “Christmas Lent”—a fortyday fast like the one before Easter. Yet a joyful mood prevails during the five days of prefeast celebration before the Nativity of Christ. Thus, Orthodox services do not emphasize the Second Coming as in the Latin West, but the precondition for this ultimate fulfillment in the first blossom of the Incarnation of God, leading up to the redemption of mankind at Easter in the resurrected life of Christ as the New Adam.

Midnight Mass At the origin of the feast’s English name (Cristes Maesse is first recorded in 1058), Roman Catholic services for Christmas are unique in that the mass is celebrated four times: with a vigil mass and a night mass on Christmas Eve, and a dawn mass and a day mass on Christmas Day. “When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run the half of her swift course, down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leaped your all-powerful Word.” Owing its timing to this passage about the Exodus, as applied to Christ in the Book of Wisdom (Jerusalem Bible 1968, 18:14), the midnight mass that bridges the two days is the focus of popular traditions playing on the anticipation of the wondrous occasion of a joyful gathering of the whole community in the middle of the deepest winter night. This brings about a transfiguration of the cold and dark by the sheer overflow of human warmth and fellow feeling, often underlined by feasting and gift-giving once the family is back home—which used to be welcome relief after a long day of fasting. The emotional appeal of midnight mass has endured in secularized Western societies: for many people, this is the only mass they attend all year, be it only as a quaint prelude to their private family gatherings.

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Christmas Meals As for the special Christmas meals, their main course depends on local custom. For Estonians, it was long vital to have blood-pudding heated with lard on Christmas Eve, or major trouble might ensue over the coming year. Their Finnish cousins however used to have rice porridge (still favored in Denmark) and stockfish after coming back from the outdoor sauna that night, but now they mostly have cold cuts. Pork was the favorite dish in Russia and still is in Europe from Greece to Germany, as well as in French Canada, whose tourtière meat pies and cretons mince stand out in the midst of Englishspeaking North America with its Christmas turkeys. Yet pork was originally preferred in England too, where Christmas turkeys appeared in 1542, after the species was introduced from America; but they only became popular at the turn of the next century—partly in imitation of King James I, who did not like pork. In France, customs vary: if Parisians have oysters, caviar and foie gras, turkeys are also eaten in Burgundy, and geese are preferred in Alsace— as they are in Denmark, along with ducks. Among traditional desserts are fruitcakes, because they are a promise of plenty in the New Year. This also goes for Britain’s plum pudding, eaten at lunch on Christmas day. In Poland, the Christmas meal takes place long before midnight mass, at the end of a day of fasting that can only be broken when the first star appears. On a pattern also found in Southern Europe (though the symbolic number there may also be thirteen or seven), but mostly through much of Eastern Europe, the Polish dinner consists of twelve traditional dishes, supposed to stand for the Twelve Apostles. It starts with the solemn breaking of a Christmas loaf, said to evoke the Last Supper, which the father passes to all family members standing around the table (one place being left empty for Christ), so each of them can make three wishes. Sometimes, he may instead break an unconsecrated host previously blessed by the local

priest for him to distribute to the family, giving each member his best wishes as he does. In the Serbian version of this family blessing as part of a final meat-free meal, a piece of the Christmas loaf is put aside for the first Christmas visitor as a bringer of good luck—like the first New Year visitor elsewhere (and much as departed relatives used to be symbolically included in this family gathering in Russia). Also, whoever finds the coin hidden in the bread will be blessed over the year—which is reminiscent of Greek New Year and Western Epiphany customs about the King of the Bean. As a rule, the actual feasting, including meat aplenty, does not follow the Christmas Eve vigil as in the West, but only the Christmas morning liturgy.

The Christmas Crib In Eastern and Western Christmas services alike, the faithful sing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men!” This is the song of praise of the host of angels that suddenly appeared to the shepherds at Bethlehem after one brought them “news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the town of David a savior has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Jerusalem Bible 1968, Luke 2: 10–14). This sign is the basis of the religious and folkloric practice of the Christmas crib, reproducing the scene of Christ’s birth in a cave outside Bethlehem, where it probably originated, so that pilgrims brought home this image on small flasks of holy water or oil called ampullae. Local imitations are thus attested as early as 248 by the theologian Origen, and in a sermon of December 20, 386, Saint John Chrysostom mentions how he is looking forward to finding the Lord lying in his crib in every Christian home. He was the bishop of Constantinople, where there was a tradition of building a grotto in every church on the day of the Nativity, with a child lying on a mattress inside it to represent

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the Christ Child. In Rome since at least 435, the crib was long confined to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore—first called until the ninth century Sancta Maria ad Praesepe, which means “Saint Mary’s of the Crib” in Latin; it was built there in the context of a permanent reproduction of the original cave in which Christ was born, since a fragment of the latter was kept as a relic. Saint Francis of Assisi put up the first actual manger filled with straw as a presepe in the nearby forest in Greccio in 1223, in combination with an actual ass and ox to represent the ones held by custom to have kept the Christ Child warm with their breath. He even put an altar in it to celebrate Christmas mass, since he wanted the people to better understand its meaning with the help of these props. Christmas cribs are therefore still set up in all of Assisi’s churches, streets and squares, while the shepherds of Abruzzi and Calabria used to come down to play fifes and bagpipes as they sang a cantata dei Pastori about their Bethlehem colleagues in front of Roman churches on Christmas Eve. Since the sixteenth century, evolving from three-dimensional sculptures on church altars, Nativity scenes have been put together in a variety of forms and combinations of live and crafted figures, primarily in Catholic countries—Sweden being a belated exception. Monasteries sometimes had such scenes for all feasts of the church year and might even set up “Lenten cribs,” while princely courts allowed ever more detailed depictions of popular life and exotic costumes to crowd out the Christmas story itself. Such local flights of fancy had a free rein with the Catholic Counterreformation’s successful use of the crib as a propaganda tool for the Roman church, once the Council of Trent (1545–1563) authorized departures from the canon in the characters shown as present in Bethlehem at the Nativity; it was soon thereafter that the first modern crib with movable characters was displayed in Prague by Jesuits. But in Southern Germany for instance, the En-

lightenment’s repression of folk piety banned cribs from churches in the eighteenth century, allowing them to find pride of place in countless individual homes instead by the nineteenth century. This in turn gave rise to a flourishing church crib industry, as in Austrian Tyrol, while the Polish city of Cracow is known for its crib contest. Yet with a host of popular traditions as well as historic centers of artistic Nativity scene production like Naples and Sicily, Italy is rivaled only by Southern France in this respect, especially since the development there in the seventeenth century of pastorales—Nativity plays (also known in Spain and related to Mexico’s posadas or caroling quests led by Joseph and Mary impersonators), and in the late eighteenth century of santons—crib figurines made of clay (like the first man by God in Genesis). They both drew on the loving depiction of characters of traditional Provençal life, which proliferated in an endless variety of types and sizes. Since 1803, they are all displayed in an early December or January santon fair in booth upon booth along Marseille’s main thoroughfare, the Boulevard de la Canebière. (Other Advent fairs in France are more similar to the older Christkindlmarkt or “Market of the Christ Child” found in many Germanic cities from Strasbourg to Vienna where the first one is recorded in 1278, often taking the form of a temporary “village” of booths displaying Christmas items and foods amidst a fairy-tale array of colored lights and decorations—the likely prototype of the Christmas lighting of commercial streets and shop-windows in all Western or Westernized urban centers.) Santons were not so prominent until well into the twentieth century in the long distinct County of Nice, which has however since 1942 made a specialty of “mechanized cribs”—whole landscapes with moving parts and crowds of santons (not unlike the ones that have been a family tradition for generations in a number of Czech towns).

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A priest holds the crib in procession during the midnight mass celebrating the birth of Christ at St. Peter’s Basilica, December 25, 2003, in Vatican City, Italy. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

Nice had used to be better known for its Nativity scene puppet shows, gradually supplanted in the last century by live pastorales like those of the rest of Provence. Both kinds of Christmas plays present variations on a common theme: typical representatives of all walks of preindustrial life (shepherds, merchants, notables, common people) receive the news of the Savior’s birth and rush to the scene, thereby foiling the Devil’s schemes as all forget their quarrels and mutual shortcomings to gather in wonder around the Christ Child in the crib.

Christmas Carols Such a striving to realize—however fleetingly— “peace on earth, good will toward men” was institutionalized in medieval Europe’s twelve-day Christmas truce, as well as in Greek Constantinople, where no one was to be arrested or put

in jail on Christmas Day, no matter the crime. On the way to and from the morning liturgy at the basilica of Saint Sophia, the Emperor was welcomed and acclaimed at six different places by official representatives of the Eastern Roman capital’s boroughs. Twelve poor people were invited at his festive luncheon along with officials and foreign guests, as living symbols of Christ’s Twelve Apostles. During all twelve days of Christmas, from morning till late at night, the city’s children went from door to door singing seasonal songs and wishes called kalandai. These were probably the first Christmas carols (though the word refers to the calends of January: the Roman New Year). Accompanied by adults playing instruments, Greek children might expect a tip when they threw in a flattering couplet for their host. Today, a Greek housewife gives them buns, chestnuts, and walnuts when, in town and country, they come

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singing kalandai from the break of day on Christmas Eve. The demand for treats was more insistent in seasonal children’s processions elsewhere in Europe. These collections were often made before Christmas, sometimes during all of Advent. The related terms aguinaldo and guignolée for this collection were used in Spain and France respectively. Christmastime food drives are still called guignolées in French Canada, as heirs to an old tradition of more adult caroling collections on behalf of the poor of every parish on the night of December 23. In the northern Spanish province of Asturias, older boys and unmarried girls might tag along with the tambourine-playing children singing villancicos (carols) from homestead to homestead, but they rarely got any of the sausages handed out to the bona fide youngsters. In the neighboring Basque Country straddling Spain and France, aside from money, children got chicken, ham, and eggs for the Christmas lunch, as well as apples and nuts they could eat in the meantime, when they went from door to door between seven and nine in the evening on December 24: Eguberri, the “New Season” or winter solstice in Basque. They were led by Olenzaro—Yuletide as personified by a pipe-smoking, blackfaced coal man, who has been enjoying a revival in the guise of a regional Father Christmas handing out small gifts to children in an informal parade in most towns and many villages, largely due to the spread of Basque languageschools since the 1970s. And yet the traditional Basque songs for this occasion describe this unattractive character as a dim-witted, gluttonous drunkard, who used to be invoked to frighten children—when it was not the sickle as his main attribute, symbolizing the cutting away of the old to make way for the new, like the scythe of Saturn as Father Time often depicted in modern New Year imagery. It was often in effigy that Olenzaro was carried from house to house by youngsters, and sometimes expelled or burned in a lighthearted festive mood, like a

Carnival king embodying the old year. Though folklore depicts him as a messenger of Christ’s birth, the charcoal-maker coming down from his mysterious workplace in the wild mountain forests points to the much older solar symbolism of new light coming out of pitch darkness like fire from embers—or a revived sun when the night is longest. Likewise, in much of Spain, there is a practice echoing classic Midsummer solstice customs: that of lighting bonfires called hogueras with torches and jumping over them in the belief this will keep illness at bay, the more so the higher the flames get. In Russia, December 24 was the culmination of the winter solstice festival of the Slavic solar deity Koliada (a name possibly derived from both an old Russian word for something circular and the Greek word kalanda), starting around December 12. In time, its focus shifted from ancestor-worship and it came to acquire Christian trappings, such as the large eightpointed wooden star of Bethlehem with an icon in the center that children and young people might carry on a stick as they did the rounds of a kolyadovanye, singing their wishes for wealth and a good harvest at every house in hopes of getting small gifts of food or money. In the former Russian colony of Alaska, every night between Christmas and Epiphany (that is, from January 7 to 19, since the Julian calendar is still followed), Orthodox Christians of all ages go “starring” from house to house or, in some cases in Western Alaska, from village to village, singing traditional songs in English as well as Slavic and Native American languages, talking about the holiday, and socializing at each stop. In the capital Juneau, they go starring to nursing homes and those of some church members, following two stars—one made in Juneau and the other in Western Alaska. A similar questing pattern typified Russia’s ryazhen’ye during the Christmas holidays or Sviatki (as well as on Cheesefare Week before Lent and in other Eastern Slavic lands), except that youngsters grouped in brotherhoods were

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rewarded for their mostly animal disguises. For instance, a bear or a goat might ritually resurrect somebody who played dead (at a time when the recently departed were kept in a shack outside the village until they could be buried in the spring), and aside from the “bull’s game” and “goats’ parades,” there was much drinking to licentious songs and lewd gestures, all of which was no doubt meant to stir up and spur on the fertility spirits of new life still dormant under the frozen earth. In Rumania, adults may still wear goat masks and carry a decorated Morning Star, much like the Russians do, as they go from house to house to carol (colindat in Rumanian), and perform Nativity plays that seem to go back as far as ninth-century Constantinople.

Christmas Mummers In Northern Europe, the Renaissance masque— an allegorical short play with masked actors— developed from Christmastime banquets at medieval courts, where the guests ended up joining on the dance floor the traveling mummers’ troupes which had been entertaining them in bird masks or other animal costumes. Similarly, formal pageants of music and dancing evolved from rowdy year-end street entertainment, as in Philadelphia, where the latter was channeled into the official, century-old, competitive carnival of the New Year’s Day Mummers’ Parade, featuring a succession of comics, fancy costumes, string bands, with fancy brigades to provide indoor entertainment. Closer to the archaic origins of these seasonal revels, informal mummers still follow the Hooden Horse or the Christmas Bull over the Twelve Days of Christmas in some localities in Wales and the west of England, where the animal’s wooden or skeletal head is mounted on a stick. The beasts can thus roam the streets and invade houses, bringing them fertility and luck and driving away lost souls. A hobbyhorse that would chase people with whips tipped with inflated bladders also used to figure in the mum-

mering practices brought from these same areas of Britain by the early settlers of Newfoundland. A province of Canada since 1949, this North Atlantic island is one of a handful of places in the world (another one being the tiny South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha) where they have survived in some form to this day, in remote outports. But leaving aside a few contemporary revivals in university towns, modern life and mass entertainment have been more successful in nearly stamping them out than legislation dating back to the sixteenth century in England and to 1861 in Newfoundland—after somebody died as a result of the rowdy excesses of mummering. “To mum” (from Momus—court jester of the Greek pantheon) means both “to mutter” and “to be silent”—two ways of concealing one’s identity, aside from the bags and scarves worn on their heads by the outrageously costumed bands of cross-dressing revelers going from door to door (except for houses where there had been a death during the year), asking to be let in. They would have to admit who they were if someone succeeded in recognizing them as they loudly horsed around through the house demanding a drink before starting their performance. In the Middle Ages and since pre-Christian times, this would be a seasonal play about the death of winter and the old year (though mummering is also known at Easter and Halloween). This theme is echoed in the death and resurrection of the Turkish knight in his fight with Saint George the dragon slayer in the traditional mummers’ plays long preserved in Newfoundland, and related to the Carnival Fastnachtspiel and its Jewish equivalents on Purim. (In Ethiopia, this kind of festive inversion is brought to a violent pitch at the seasonal freeform hockey-like game of ganna that gives Christmas its common name in Amharic, since it is only played that January 7 afternoon in the Julian calendar, so roughly that injuries usually result by the end of the day, when victors abuse their defeated opponents with offensive limer-

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icks.) Over the years, these brief formal mummers’ plays were eventually replaced on the island by more informal step dancing, accordion playing, and singing. If Boxing Night (December 26) was the high point of the mummering season, the afternoon of Old Christmas (January 6) at its tail end was set aside for “little mummers”—youngsters who would go their rounds in daylight and receive molasses cookies and Christmas candies.

The Winter Solstice In the fifth century, Saint Cesarius (470–553), bishop of Arles in Provence, seems to have been alluding to similar pagan Winter Solstice practices when he denounced the seasonal habit of some supposed Christians of dressing up in cattle remains and wearing animal heads. There is little doubt that the date of December 25 for the Nativity of Christ was established around 330 largely in order to counter—or at least channel—not only these Celtic seasonal rites, but the ones current in Rome on this traditional date of the winter solstice. Since a decree by Emperor Aurelian (who saw himself as a solar epiphany) in 273, it officially marked the pagan holiday of the Nativity of the Invincible Sun (Natalis Soli Invicti), celebrating the start of the sun’s victorious northward progress from its southernmost point on the horizon, as well as the birth of the Persian god Mithra from a stone as the bringer of light in Mithraism—an Oriental religion rivaling Christianity in popularity at that time. It also closely followed the Roman Saturnalia with their orgiastic social inversion and laborers’ costume parades, and even Hanukkah—another festival of lights celebrated on the twenty-fifth day of the Jewish month of Chislev. Yet the fifth-century Pope Saint Leo the Great, at the end of his second “Sermon on the Feast of the Nativity,” insisted that “the festival has nothing to do with sun-worship, as some maintain.” He forcefully rejected “the pestilential notion of some to whom this our

solemn feast day seems to derive its honor, not so much from the Nativity of Christ, as, according to them, from the rising of the new sun. Such men’s hearts are wrapped in total darkness, and have no growing perception of the true Light: for they are still drawn away by the foolish errors of heathendom, and because they cannot lift the eyes of their mind above that which their carnal sight beholds, they pay divine honor to the luminaries that minister to the world” (A Select Library of Nicene and PostNicene Fathers of the Christian Church 1997, pp. 131–132). Still, unable to stamp out these practices, the early church not only learned to accommodate the general habit of celebrations on this date, but encouraged the faithful to see in the annual renewal of created light a symbol of the eternal dawn of uncreated Light, brought within easy reach by the coming of Christ, which thus freed mankind from bondage to the endless natural cycle of light and dark—life and death. There was good scriptural ground for depicting Christ as the true, though invisible, Light of the world, and to substitute the material sun of the solstice that comes and goes each year with the ever-unconquered spiritual Sun of Justice announced in one of the last verses of the Old Testament (Malachi 3:20 or 4:2, depending on the version). It is thus easy to see how seasonal symbolism is used to convey a theological truth in the Latin “O” antiphon (see above) for December 21: “Oh you Orient [i.e., Rising Sun], Splendor of the Eternal Light [of the Father], and Sun of Justice: Come enlighten those who sit in the darkness and shadow of death.” It seems the Three Wise Men were already led by their very devotion to the heavens’ natural lights to shift their allegiance to the Light without evening toward which the star of Bethlehem guided these fire-worshipping Persian kings, as they are referred to in the final prefeast matins of the Orthodox Christmas service. A direct result of this double meaning of the solstice was the decoration of houses with

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Christmas lights—usually candles (before electricity largely replaced them), whether they floated in water basins set in front of them, as in Spain, or they were set on window sills as elsewhere, often in combination with evergreen branches or with boughs of holly, bearing winter fruits. In northern Europe, shoots of quickblooming trees or flowers would be put in water in a warm room around the start of Advent in order to later produce the wonder of Yuletide blossoms—as harbingers of nature’s springtime renewal. In Denmark, the flowering of the hyacinth used there is said to keep disease away from the house. In other places, setting evergreen decorations in the home before Christmas Eve and removing them after January 6 was thought to bring it bad luck. Foliage strewn with lights and small gifts already adorned ancient Rome at this time of year. As for the New Rome—Constantinople—the city’s governor had the streets washed and decorated for Christmas with rosemary and myrtle and with columns decked with seasonal flowers.

The Christmas Tree This came close to a kind of tree symbolism that the Western Church was not always so comfortable with, largely due to its age-old pagan association with fire from heaven—be it sunlight or lightning. But scattered attempts by Catholic or Protestant clergy to suppress the Christmas tree were no more successful than all those of the early Church against other Yuletide foliage. First recorded and depicted in Alsace in 1605, the Christmas tree was denounced as a revival of pagan tree-worship by the clergy of Strasbourg in the seventeenth century. Yet it was but an offshoot of the devotional plays of Paradise performed on church porches in Alsace in the Middle Ages on Christmas Eve as the day of Adam and Eve. In order to depict the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life in the earthly Paradise, a tree that was still green was used. An evergreen fir tree soon came to be favored, which was thus decorated with red apples and

white hosts, symbolizing the old mortal Adam and Christ as the New Adam respectively. It was likely Nuremberg merchants returning from the Strasbourg fair who popularized the Christmas tree throughout Germany, although its spread long met with some resistance in Catholic areas. There, it was seen as a Protestant practice, since Martin Luther is said to have decorated one with candles. Thus it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that it made a breakthrough in Catholic Italy, France, and Spain—as an American import. The Christmas tree may have been first brought to the United States and Canada by German troops who fought in the British army in the War of Independence. It long remained confined to some German communities there as in Britain, where the one in Manchester had just begun to make it a local custom by the time Queen Victoria and her German Prince-consort Albert had a tree at Windsor Castle for Christmas 1841. (It was soon afterwards that the busy British civil servant and designer Sir Henry Cole asked an artist to create the first holiday card as a way to expedite seasonal greetings—an idea that was commercialized by merchants around 1868.) Czar Peter the Great had introduced the Christmas tree from Germany to the Russian nobility in the eighteenth century; it became part of the seasonal celebrations in Saint Petersburg in 1852, when one was lit up in front of Saint Catherine Railway Station. The habit of putting up Christmas trees in all public places seems to have first arisen in 1909 in Pasadena, California; imitated in New York City, it then turned into an unstoppable worldwide trend. The exception that confirms the rule is Greece, where it has recently been reversed in favor of boat models, as a reminder of sailors who used to spend Christmas at sea, but mostly as a way to save trees and preserve the forests.

The Yule Log More entrenched in European folklore from ancient times than the Christmas tree, the Yule

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log now mostly survives in the shape of a Christmas cake devised to replace it by a Paris confectioner in 1875. Yule is an old Germanic word for the twelve-day gap or “loose end” between the start of the solar year and the end of the lunar year following the winter solstice, when the heavens also gaped, allowing the Wild Huntsman and his crew of lost souls to be seen and heard riding the season’s storms. They take the form of gnomes called tomter in Norway, where people still visit their dead and decorate their graves on Christmas, and used to be wary of the pranks of those less welcome spirits (quite comparable in this to the Kallikantzaroi in the Balkans) over the twelve days to Epiphany—although the thirteen tomter of Iceland (perhaps still following the Julian calendar) concentrate their mischief before Christmas, starting on Saint Lucy’s on December 13. On the other hand, it is a scrawny, bearded Jultomte who traditionally puts the gifts at the foot of the Christmas tree in Scandinavian countries, where people still use the old pagan term Jul for the feast. Its equivalent Joulu also prevails in the Finno-Ugric languages of Finland and Estonia, which both once belonged to Sweden. Nevertheless, it is in the folklore of some Balkan countries like Greece and Serbia, as well as in that of France and Britain, that the Yule log (as it is known on that island) long featured in customs that used to be remarkably pervasive, in endless variations. The log was often taken from a tree ritually cut down on Christmas Eve, or else was a choice log from the past year’s supply of firewood (sometimes cut on Candlemas as the end of the previous Christmas season). It was burned in the hearth that night amid much ceremony, which could include aspersions of wine or oil, incantations, wishes, blessings, and the collaboration of the family’s elder with a youngster, to parallel the replacement of the previous year’s symbolic log with a new one. The Yule log was often kept in some form—either charred or ground to

ashes—over the coming year to obtain protection from lightning, sorcery, human and animal diseases, and to promote the fertility of fields, animals, and people by contact with its remains. Spreading them or keeping the flame for all Twelve Days of Christmas was often vital: the number of sparks generated in the process was an indication of the positive results to be expected. Though its ashes might cure swollen glands, carelessly sitting on the chosen log could cause boils. Depending on local tradition, a range of tree species was favored: oak, ash, beech, olive, and fruit trees such as the pear tree—hence perhaps the latter’s appearance as one of the gifts “my true love gave to me” in the famous Christmas carol.

The Twelve Days of Christmas The twelve-day period bridging the twin winter feasts of Christmas and Epiphany is known by its Greek name of Dodecahemeron to the Church, which declared it festive at the synod of Tours in 567. It actually perpetuates pre-existing pagan winter holidays such as Yule, being a period of transition from one yearly cycle to another and, as such, a kind of supernatural microcosm of the year itself, with twelve days to match its twelve months. This has given rise to a variety of seasonal divination methods, be it about an unmarried girl’s prospects for a wedding over the coming year, as in Russia and Greece, or about the weather of each one of its months, as in the West. There, many such pre-Christian observances have come to be associated with the saint who happens to be commemorated on a given day of the Dodecahemeron. Whereas in the Eastern Church, the day after Christmas is dedicated to the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God and December 27 to Saint Stephen, this first deacon and first martyr of the Church is commemorated on December 26 in the West, while Saint John is honored on December 27. On his feast, called Priests’ Day, Alsatians would begin preparing Johannisminne—

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a schnapps-based orange liqueur; this was an auspicious day to start something new. Saint Stephen’s feast was Deacons’ Day in medieval Europe, and was associated with death. Identifying with deacons and staging a mock martyrdom, boys in France and the British Isles would kill a wren—the king of all birds—as they sang from door to door, holding it up on a fir branch or a stick decked with holly or mistletoe. People would give them food in exchange for a feather, or else, for instance, a fisherman would be risking shipwreck. (In the long exclusively Irish copper-mining town of Butte, Montana, the Day of the Wren used to be observed under this name, even though children paraded a Christmas turkey’s head instead.) Saint Stephen’s name means “crown” in Greek, and if his martyrdom defines the kind of spiritual kingship that Jesus Christ came to establish, it also overlaps with the ancient pagan pattern of the slaughter of the king at year’s end. The same ambiguity surrounds the commemoration of the Slaughter of the Innocents on December 28 (or 29 in the East), glorifying the children of Bethlehem whom the old king Herod had killed in a vain attempt to get at the newborn king Jesus. But just as the new year and daylight break free of a declining cycle, Jesus Christ escaped this darkest hour of peril and grew to invincible strength, while King Herod soon died. This reversal of the existing order to establish a fresh new one—often through the sacrificial shedding of innocent young blood—is a familiar feature of nature religions. This probably explains the social inversion of the Feast of Fools that was Innocents’ Day on December 28 and January 1 in the Middle Ages, when the lower strata of society and of the human psyche ruled with complete abandon and irresponsibility for a day or more. Even though the feast of the Holy Innocents is still a day of merrymaking for children in Roman Catholic countries, in Rome itself it used to be a day of fasting and mourning. In England until the seventeenth century, children

were whipped in bed in the morning, so as to give them a sense of the pain felt for their sake by these early infant martyrs for Christ. The red berry sauce on the light-colored pudding still served on Childermas (as this feast is also known) symbolizes the blood they shed. In Ireland, this is known as “the day of the cross of the year”—là crosta na bliana—when it is best to refrain from any activity if one’s endeavors are to be successful during the rest of the year—a taboo found in the New Year customs of many cultures around the world.

Boxing Day The element of slaughter on the other hand may in part account for the fact that December 26 is the main traditional date for the foxhunt in the English countryside. In the towns of Great Britain and former colonies like Canada, the prevailing mood of this day is now the thrill of the hunt for bargains that brings crowds into the stores on their busiest day of the year, comparable only to what is known in the United States as Black Friday, when retailers’ accounts leave the red the day after Thanksgiving. Boxing Day has its roots in the medieval custom of English feudal landlords giving their tenants utilitarian products—leather, linen, dried fish and meat, seeds to plant crops, and the like—in boxes when they went back to their cottages after Christmas festivities around the manor’s church. It came to be somewhat resented as demeaning and fell into disuse, until it reappeared in a new urban setting in the nineteenth century on December 26. Upon returning from their Christmas day off, employees would each set a box at their workplace for the boss to put a little something in. Similar practices were long observed in the United Kingdom and its overseas possessions by servants, then by mailmen and milkmen, and finally by newspaper boys, until shopping outlets came up with the clever advertising ploy of slashing their prices on Boxing Day, as just such a belated “gift” to customers. Boxing Day discounts on Christmas

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cards, decorations, and gift wrapping are now part of the season—as the economic first seeds of the next year’s cycle of holiday celebrations. See also Ascension; Candlemas; Carnival; Days of the Dead (West); Easter; Epiphany; Feast of Fools; Hanukkah; Lent; New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Purim; Saint George; Saint Lucy; Saint Nicholas; Samhain; Saturnalia References R. J. Campbell. The Story of Christmas. New York: Macmillan, 1934. Nina Gockerell. Krippen—Nativity Scenes— Crèches. Munich: Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, 1998. Herbert Halpert, ed. Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland. Essays in Anthropology, Folklore, and History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969. Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968. Claude Labat. Olentzero. Le charbonnier qui ranime les braises du soleil. Bayonne, France: Elkar, 2004. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd Series, Vol. VII. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. Tony van Renterghem. When Santa was a Shaman. The Ancient Origins of Santa Claus and the Christmas Tree. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995. Herbert Henry Wernecke. Christmas Customs Around the World. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1959.

◗ CHUNG YUAN See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ CHURCH NEW YEAR See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ CHUSEOK, CHUSHU KANGETSU See Mid-Autumn

◗ CIRCUMCISION See New Year (West)

◗ CLEAN MONDAY See Carnival

◗ COLACHO “BABY-JUMPING” FESTIVAL See Corpus Christi

◗ COLD FOOD DAY See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ COLOR (FESTIVAL OF) See Holi

◗ COMING-OF-AGE DAY See New Year (Japan)

◗ COMPITALIA See Caristia, Days of the Dead (West)

◗ CONCEPTION AND BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN MARY (CHRISTIANITY) ◗ CHRONIA See Saturnalia

◗ CHRYSANTHEMUM FESTIVAL See Sekku

◗ CHUN JIE See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ CHUNG CH’IU See Mid-Autumn

The first feast of the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar celebrates the Birth of the Mother of God, incarnate as Jesus Christ, on September 8. Alternatively known as the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, it is complemented by another, lesser feast dedicated to Mary’s conception by her parents, Joachim and Ann, coming nine months earlier: on December 8 in the Western Church, where Roman Catholics know it as the Immaculate Conception, and on December 9 in the Eastern Church, where it is called the

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Native Indian women carry candles as they march to celebrate the day of the Immaculate Conception in Antigua Guatemala, on December 8, 2001. (Reuters/Corbis)

Conception of Saint Ann. The September 8 celebration of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary has more often been surrounded by folk practices, marking turning points in the agricultural and pastoral year, especially in the Alps.

Church New Year The Catholic Church’s liturgical year begins on September 1—a date adopted when Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire in the fourth century, on account of its administrative and popular observance as the New Year. It is traditionally known as the Feast of Indiction, after the fifteen-year taxation cycle used for property evaluation that started on that day since it was introduced by Emperor Constantine in 312 (a year before the Edict of Milan

recognizing the Christian religion), and continued being used in the West with a September 24 date in the Holy Roman Empire until the latter’s demise in 1806. It is therefore still surrounded by New Year festive customs in some Greek islands like Carpathos and Rhodes, and especially in Ethiopia. In this East African country, celebrations start on the last feast of the old year: the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist on August 29 (actually mid-September in terms of the Gregorian calendar), with children caroling or bringing wild flowers to relatives for a piece of whole wheat dabo bread, and the slaughter of an animal in most homes. In 1989, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Dimitrios I officially dedicated this day to Creation as a whole (much as the Jewish

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New Year—Rosh Hashanah—commemorates Creation as an event), to promote environmental awareness among Orthodox Christians.

The Nativity of the Virgin Mary A week later, the sun reaches the middle of the constellation of Virgo. This is likely why the date of September 8 had been favored for a while by the time it was made official by the Greek-born Pope Saint Sergius I in the late seventh century for the new, but already widespread, Christian feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, except in the Coptic churches of Egypt and Ethiopia, where it falls on May 1 in their version of the old Julian calendar. At the first Council of Lyon in 1251, Pope Innocent IV gave new prominence to this mostly Eastern feast in the Roman Church by adding an octave of extra celebrations to it over the following week. The city of Lyon had been an early center of Marian piety in the West since the early twelfth century, when an altar was for the first time dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of Mary at the abbey of Ainay—much to the chagrin of no less an authority than Saint Bernard, who decried this innovation. Yet it became part and parcel of the powerful cult of Mary in Lyon, whose officials vowed to hold a yearly procession to the chapel of the Immaculate Conception of Fourvière on the hill above on the Nativity of the Virgin Mary if the city was spared from the plague of 1643—which it was. Except for a break between the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, the September 8 feast has been a cherished tradition in a city known a century ago as the one with the most statues of Mary.

Between Covenants It is appropriate that the Birth of the Mother of God is celebrated on the heels of the church’s New Year, since it marks the beginning of the final stage of God’s providential care for His Creation: after the first Covenant with Noah and all creatures, and the Old Covenant with

Moses and the chosen people of Israel, a New Covenant with all mankind in Jesus. In it, God as the Holy Trinity takes on human nature in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, so that, through this gift of adoption, human beings may in turn partake of divine nature. To this end, an opening first had to be prepared from the human side in order for the divine gift to be freely accepted. As the human being who, at the Annunciation (commemorated on March 25), will freely consent to give birth to the Son of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary comes at the culmination of this process of providential preparation through the history of the people of Israel in the Old Testament. From the start, her life is preordained for this vocation, just like the life of Saint John the Baptist also is for his own mission, as another transitional figure between the Old and New Testaments. Both Mary and her young cousin John were miraculously born of sterile parents, in a way that calls to mind Old Testament antecedents like the birth of Isaac to Abraham’s ninety-year-old wife Sarah, which Christian tradition reads as prefigurations of the Resurrection of Jesus. But in Mary’s case, the symbol is the doorstep to the real thing. As Orthodox Christians sing in the vespers of the feast, “mystery goes before greater mystery”: “the sterile door is opened and the virginal Door comes forth” to “introduce Christ into the world” (Sticheria of Tone 8, in Ouspensky 1982, p. 146). If the Conception and the Nativity of John the Baptist, as lesser festivals of the Catholic Church (held on September 24—or 23 in the East—and June 24, respectively), are based on solid Gospel accounts, the corresponding Marian feasts draw from apocryphal sources, chiefly the Book of James, where the relevant passages date back to the 130s. They tell how the righteous Joachim came to the Temple of Jerusalem one day to make his offering and was turned away by the high priest because he did not have any children. This added insult to injury, and a dejected Joachim went to hide his

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shame among the shepherds. As he was praying in the hills, so was his wife Ann in the garden of their Jerusalem home. The old spouses were simultaneously visited by angels announcing that Ann would bear a child whose name would be famous throughout the world. She promised to dedicate the child to God and ran out of the house to tell her husband the good news. She ran into him at the city gate as he came running down from the hills to tell her the good news. They fell into each other’s arms, and nine months later Mary was born. Their passionate embrace against the backdrop of Jerusalem is depicted in the Orthodox icon of the Conception of Saint Ann, in a moving celebration of the holiness of marital love. The blessing and election of Mary as its “fruit most pure” has never required in the East the special exemption from a sexually transmitted original sin, which the Western Church saw fit to apply to the Mother of God.

Immaculate Conception The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (of Mary—not to be confused with her virginal conception of Jesus as most people do) arose in Europe in the eleventh century, shortly after the schism between the Roman Church and the Eastern Church. But this did not prevent the former from importing the feast of the Conception from the latter, where it was born in the eighth century. However, in a move that only deepened the rift between the Roman and Eastern Churches, the controversial teaching of the Immaculate Conception was made official after centuries of theological debate by Pope Pius IX in a definition published in his encyclical letter Ineffabilis Deus on the December 8 date of that feast in 1854. It “holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.” This was now declared to be an official dogma of the

Roman Catholic Church, “revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful” (www.papalencyclicals.net/ Pius09/p9ineff.htm). The revised, reemphasized December 8 Marian feast which Catholics have since been calling the Immaculate Conception was observed with spectacular gusto in Lyon, France, the oldest site of this devotion, and even more nowadays, though for more mundane reasons. Two years earlier, around December 8, 1852, the inauguration of the golden statue of the Immaculate Conception on the new bell tower of the Fourvière shrine had been marked by the largely spontaneous, widespread illumination of the city with candles and lamps and by every available means, in a universal outburst of popular devotion by which clerical as well as civic authorities were taken aback. This was in stark contrast to the lukewarm observance of the official illumination decreed a few days before to celebrate the proclamation of the Second Empire of the Bonaparte Dynasty under Napoleon III on December 5. Times had changed since such illuminations could be decreed by state authorities on the occasion of a royal entry into a subject city. Apart from a handful of special religious occasions, the annual December 8 illumination in honor of the Immaculate Conception was the only one to stand the test of time from then on. It even became politicized in the anticlerical climate of the Third Republic around the turn of the twentieth century, when it came to sometimes fatal blows in scuffles with militant secularists intent on disrupting the celebrations. Generally speaking, December 8 became known as the “winter July 14”—the Catholic answer to the Fête Nationale instituted in 1880 by the Republic; the more lights could be seen, the larger the ranks of opponents to the secularist regime were deemed to be. If the First World War, while reducing this polarization at a time of national peril, only caused a temporary scaling back of Lyon’s illuminations, the Second World War triggered a

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more prolonged interruption from which they long seemed unable to recover, even after they started again in 1949 minus the procession. The clergy stopped supporting such quaint expressions of popular piety in the wake of the Vatican II Council, so that there was almost no trace left of the practice by the late 1980s, when a couple of fundamentalist groups helped initiate a minor comeback. But the illuminations were about to be reinvented by civic authorities in a very different spirit, with Mayor Michel Noir’s Plan Lumière to wrap the city’s monuments in sophisticated lighting as part of a secular Feast of Lights centering on the traditional date of the Immaculate Conception. In its present form, the Fête des Lumières was launched on the tenth anniversary of the plan on December 8, 1999, and is held over four days on the weekend closest to that date, attracting over a million tourists annually. Since 2003, people from all over the world can even send their own designs through the Internet to be projected onto Lyon’s night sky by twenty huge light beams. Yet the display of the religious feast’s humble candles is still encouraged by city hall, and the illuminated Fourvière basilica continues to stand out in the skyline above the lightshows distantly inspired by its ancient cult of the Immaculate Conception. In Italy, the Immaculate Conception is the occasion for a fair in the Fornoli quarter of Bagni di Lucca in Tuscany, and near Naples, for a sausage and polenta festival in San Bartolomeo in Galdo, in addition to the procession of an elaborate float depicting the Madonna with angels and carried by a team of over a hundred men through the streets of Torre del Greco in thanksgiving for her role in saving that town from a volcanic eruption in 1861. In Central America, December 8 celebrations in Antigua Guatemala include a traditional dance called Los Diablos, done in demon and skeleton costumes, and going back to the Mayas. In Argentina, this religious feast is also a national holiday known as Virgin Mary Day.

Popular Devotion on Mary’s Birthday The September 8 feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary remains a more important festival in East and West alike and a joyful one in tone— not just for theological reasons. In Hungary, it is a day of rest for women. In Lanciano, in the Abruzzo region of Italy, it is known as the feast of the Madonna del Ponte; there, the women of the town’s various quarters carry on their heads typical copper vessels containing seasonal produce, and decorated with colored ribbons and paper flowers. In Corsica, peasants and craftsmen from the entire island gather for its major fair over three days in the village of Casamaccioli in the Niolu Valley. It starts after the September 8 mass honoring the local Madonna statue and features the spiral-shaped, dancelike Granitola procession as well as an improvisational song contest between the men. Elsewhere in France, marriageable girls used to stick pins into wooden Madonnas so as to get the Virgin to heed their requests for a husband. If they threw two pins in the holy wells to which pilgrims came that day in many places, and the pins happened to form a cross as they reached the bottom, they were supposed to get their wish within the coming year. On France’s northern coast, miniature ships as well as Madonna statues are taken to the sea in processions to bless it in French Flanders and Brittany, and a shepherds’ feast ushers in the novena in honor of the Leaning Virgin of Brebières in Picardy on September 8. In many Greek villages that day, the privilege of carrying the icon of the Mother of God to the church in the procession is sold to the highest bidder every year. Sick children are sold to the Virgin Mary as “the slaves of Our Lady” so she will take care of her own and cure them by the time their parents buy them back from her a year later. It is thus to four centuries of healing miracles that the famous church of Our Lady of Health at Vialankanni in Tamil Nadu owes its prominence among a number of Marian shrines spread around India where

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Catholics and Oriental Christians flock for the Nativity of the Virgin. In this case, it comes at the climax of a week of celebrations, surpassing those at the church of Saint Mary in Niranam, one of the shrines said to have been founded by the Apostle Thomas himself in Kerala.

Alpine Pastoral Customs The period between the feast marking the end of Mary’s earthly life—the Assumption on August 15—and that of her Nativity on September 8 formed an end-of-summer Marian period that covered critical points in the yearly cycle of Europe’s peasant cultures, sometimes extending a full month to the Holy Cross festival of September 14, and therefore known as Our Lady’s Thirty Days. Because it gets cold early in the Alps, it is on the occasion of the Virgin Mary’s birthday that the cattle are ceremoniously brought from the pastures—where the beasts have been grazing all summer—down into the valleys, where the entire community is again reunited for the winter. In the preceding days in Bavaria, women weave splendid wreaths out of fir branches and decorate them with paper roses and little mirrors—meant to keep away demons over the long trek downhill. In other Alpine areas, cattle are also adorned with special decorations of flowers, branches and ribbons, following different rules. On the eve of what is called la désalpe in French-speaking areas, the shepherds of France’s Hautes-Alpes region invite each other to eat lasagna and doughnuts and signal their imminent arrival to the people below with fires. In the Swiss canton of Unterwald, the shepherds have rosemary sprigs on their hats or in their mouths when the cattle’s owners welcome them back to the villages with lavish feasts. These bénichons (the word for “blessing” in the local French dialects), lasting until the next morning, feature oratorical contests and cattle competitions. It has been suggested that these folk customs may have been derived from a pre-Christian end-of-summer festival of the Germanic goddess Idun. She kept the golden apples of eternal

youth but was kidnapped for a while by the giant Thiazi. This would have explained the sudden onset of the cold at this time of year. It seems nonetheless appropriate that Alpine shepherds come down from the hills on this feast of the Birth of Mary, just as Saint Joachim did when he first heard it announced by an angel after finding refuge among Jewish shepherds. See also Annunciation; Assumption; Corpus Christi; Elevation of the Cross; May Day; Midsummer; New Year (West); Rosh Hashanah References Gérald Gambier. La merveilleuse histoire du 8 décembre à Lyon. Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, France: Éditions La Taillanderie, 2003. Donald N. Levine. Wax and Gold. Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Edward Dennis O’Connor, ed. The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1958. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982.

◗ CONCEPTION OF SAINT ANN, CONCEPTION OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ CONSTITUTION DAY See Cherry Blossom Festival

◗ CONSUALIA See Games (Rome), Saturnalia

◗ CORPUS CHRISTI (CHRISTIANITY) Shortly after the general adoption of Trinity Sunday a week after Pentecost in the early

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fourteenth century, the following Thursday (or Sunday in some countries) was chosen by the church of Rome for a joyous new feast of the Eucharist alone, free of the tragic setting of the sacrament’s institution at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday.

From Liturgical Act to Sacred Object For the first thousand years of the Christian church, while it was still a single body, it seemed enough—as it still does in its Eastern half—that the Bread of Life was timelessly available on almost any day through the sacrament of the Eucharist, to be experienced by the faithful as the mystical union of God with mankind in which all could take part. The consecrated host representing Christ’s body was initially important only in this liturgical context. Its ontological status did not become an issue until scholastic philosophy, seeking rational explanations for the mysteries of the faith, made it into one in the West by the twelfth century, by trying to keep track of how, when and for how long a piece of bread could actually become God. These Eucharistic controversies were resolved (until the Protestant Reformation at least) when the Roman Church adopted the doctrine of transubstantiation at the Lateran Council of 1215, proclaiming in the dogma of the Real Presence of God in the Eucharist that it was switched with the natural substance of the bread at a given point of the Mass. In a prime example of that “metaphysics of presence” typifying Western thought according to post-modern thinkers, the objective fact of the Supreme Being’s presence among—yet above—other beings had gained center-stage, over against the existential act of the mutual—albeit asymmetrical—gift of Creator and creatures in the inscrutable mystery of the liturgical sacrifice. In a parallel process, full participation in the sacrifice of the Mass was gradually curtailed, so that it came to be experienced more like a dramatization of the Passion to be watched from

a distance. For the drinking of the wine standing for Christ’s blood came to be restricted to the clergy (hence the flourishing of lay literature about the Quest for the Holy Grail as the original chalice containing it), while the rest of the faithful were now too intimidated most of the time to even take communion with the bread as Christ’s body (except at Easter when it was mandatory). Looking at the latter with reverence and yearning, both during Mass and increasingly outside of this normal ritual setting, therefore became an attractive alternative to actual participation in the sacrament. An emerging subjective piety dwelt on the reserved consecrated host as a selfcontained object of worship.

A New Feast of Private Devotion and Corporate Pride The Blessed Juliana (1193–1258), Augustinian prioress of the abbey of Mont Cornillon near Liège, thus came to have visions in which a dark spot on a full moon was supposed to point to the lack of a feast in honor of the Eucharist in the church calendar. On this basis, Robert de Torote, bishop of Liège, ordered the festival celebrated in his diocese in 1246. It had already been adopted in many German and Slavic lands when one of its early promoters in Liège, Jacques Pantaléon, became pope as Urban IV, and decreed in the 1264 bull Transiturus de hoc mundo that the whole church should celebrate the officium novae solemnitatis, “the service for the new feast.” There was still resistance to the observance of this “new feast” (or Besta Berri as it is still known in Basque-speaking areas of Spain and France) even in Liège and Rome, until Pope Clement V confirmed the bull at the Council of Vienne in 1311. Nevertheless, by the next century, Corpus Christi had virtually become, as a public event at least, the main feast of the Church—witness its French name of Fête-Dieu (“God’s Feast”) or the Hungarian Urnap (“Lord’s Day”). This was even truer of the Roman Catholic Church after the Protestant bodies that left its

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fold also dropped the feast celebrating one of the dogmas they questioned. For in the context of the Counterreformation, it became a defiant proclamation of the core of the Roman faith and of Catholic identity, centering on an evermore lavish display of pomp and luxury around the Eucharist itself in a splendid procession. First put on in Cologne in 1279 on the model of Holy Week precedents, in which the Eucharist was carried in a veiled chalice, the procession became general practice over the next century. Reliquaries were first used to make the consecrated host more visible, until a round glass monstrance was designed specifically for this purpose. It was itself set within an ornate ceremonial display prop designed by the best goldsmiths: the custodia, from the fifteenth century onward. Throughout Europe, the Corpus Christi procession of the Blessed Sacrament under a golden canopy, preceded by clergy and followed by rulers and magistrates, had soon become a public celebration of the corporate identity of all the bodies constituting the Christian community around the body of Christ as its triumphant king, from whom all sovereignty was derived, both spiritual and temporal. It thus resembled a royal entry into a subject city, as all orders of society from prince to pauper, and from guilds or professional corporations to religious and neighborhood associations, would appear and parade through the streets in full array, each at the rank that fit its importance within the community. They all proudly displayed their distinctive banners and symbols as they deliberately came together as an organic body politic—much like the faithful communed in the church as the mystical body of Jesus Christ.

Animal Symbolism and Agrarian Rituals In Germany, the procession also wound its way out of town into the country. But there, certain Rogationtide rituals to secure good weather for the crops seem to have been absorbed or

echoed in the practice of stopping at four different spots to bless the four directions in turn with the singing of the beginning of each of the four Gospels. The same association with stomping the ground—on horseback this time—is suggested in the story attributing the institution of the spectacular Fronleichnam (“Lord’s Body”) processions sponsored by Austria’s Hapsburg dynasty to its founder Rudolf I. While he was riding, this late thirteenth-century German king had once come across a priest carrying the Blessed Sacrament, stepped off his horse to leave it to him, and declared he could no longer ride an animal which had carried the Lord Himself. In Brindisi on the heel of the Italian boot, it is still a splendidly caparisoned horse that bears the tabernacle in the Corpus Christi procession. Rogationtide dragons and other processional giants and symbolic animals typical of summer festivals, originally tied to the regularity of the water supply and to fertility, started to figure more prominently in Corpus Christi processions in Spain at the end of the sevententh century. However, monsters (such as the tarasca imported from Provençal festivals like the famous Aix Fête-Dieu procession later banned by the French Revolution) were sometimes rationalized there as allegories of the vices and heresies that church and state subdued. A century later, neo-classical taste and Enlightenment ideas had made such popular displays—smacking of paganism—appear too profane; like many of the peasant dances that had become fixtures of the feast, they were eventually forbidden or discouraged by royal authorities, with varying success.

From Mystery Plays to Modern Theater Accusations of irreverence to the Sacrament while straying into secular social comment brought the same fate to the auto sacramental (“mystery play”) as a short allegorical verse play illustrating a particular dimension or some

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implications of the mystery of the Eucharist. It had evolved from the tableaux depicting religious stories on floats within the Corpus Christi procession, with live characters who eventually performed them in dramatic form, until such carts formed a parade of their own to selected places in the city. The autos would be presented in sequence, much as the scriptural mystery plays had been on pageant wagons during the Middle Ages in the Netherlands and northern England—sometimes over several days on the occasion of Corpus Christi. Such dramatic cycles, like the York one that has come down to us in late-fourteenth-century manuscripts and is still performed at York Minster every four years, are not without literary merit. But whereas the genre was soon to disappear—usually along with the feast—in northern Europe as the Reformation set in, it would become a regular feature of Corpus Christi in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the sixteenth century. There, it was taken from an unsophisticated form of pious entertainment to a high level of artistic achievement by the likes of the Spaniards Lope de Vega (1562–1635) and Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600–1681), thereby providing an important formative nucleus for the emerging literatures of both Portugal and Spain.

Floral Symbolism and Baby-Jumping In the latter country, tapestries and flags still hang from windows, balconies, and walls on the way of the procession, as fruits and flowers also used to. It is hard to tell whether they imitate or inspired an even clearer celebration of nature’s summer bounty: the elaborately designed carpets of flowers, petals or dyed wood chips of many colors, evoking ancient triumphal processions and floral festivals, that are painstakingly assembled in front of each house on the Sacrament’s passage and on wayside altars, there and elsewhere in Catholic Europe—from Brittany to Poland and from Italy to Alsace. It is sometimes largely as a Rogation-like plea for divine bless-

ings on the coming harvest that Corpus Christi processions subsist in parts of rural Quebec— one of the places where they have been considerably toned down since the Vatican II Council made the Roman Catholic Church move away from the somewhat arrogant triumphalist stance long affirmed through this feast. This recent trend has not significantly affected the Colacho Baby-Jumping Festival of Castrillo de Murcia instituted in seventeenth-century Spain by the local lay brotherhood of the Santisimo Sacramento de Minerva. It was based on the belief that babies could only be protected from the effects of original sin on their chances for survival if their guilt was taken away on the heels of the devil jumping over them, whom someone still impersonates, waving a whip as he leaps over a mattress where babies have been lined up, as crowds of locals and tourists look on.

Precolumbian Survivals Yet Corpus Christi generally remains a major celebration in former Spanish colonies. This is especially true in Peru, where it absorbed the Inti Raymi solstice festival of the Incas, or rather allowed it to continue in a Christian guise. Similarly, the Qoyllur Riti (“Star of the Snow”) festival, held on the full moon before Corpus Christi on a peak fifty miles east of the former Inca capital Cuzco, perpetuates the worship of various mountain deities, in seamless conjunction with a mass pilgrimage of Indians from all over Peru and Bolivia to the site of a miraculous apparition of the Christ Child to an Indian herdsman in 1780. During the general procession from the glacier’s edge to the valley, some men fetch glacier ice, which they bring back to Cuzco for the celebration of Corpus Christi. See also Akitu; Easter; Holy Week; Inti Raymi and Huarachicu; Rogations; Sacred Heart; Whitsuntide References Ronald Hutton. The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

c o w h e r d a n d w e av i n g m a i d | 81 R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills. The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Alan H. Nelson. The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Christi Pageants and Plays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Miri Rubin. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

◗ COWHERD AND WEAVING MAID (CHINA, KOREA, JAPAN) This minor festival, called Chi Ch’iao T’ien in Chinese and also known as Chilseok in Korean and Tanabata no Sekku in Japanese, comes up on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (Double Seven), in either July or August, in honor of the stars Altair and Vega. Separated by the Milky Way, they are identified respectively with the legendary lovers Cowherd and Weaving Maid, who are reunited once a year on a kind of Far Eastern Saint Valentine’s Day. This is a day to foretell the success of womanly pursuits and pray for it.

A Bridge of Magpies Over the Milky Way Known in China as the Heavenly River, the Milky Way is said in Chinese folklore to have arisen when the Queen of Heaven waved a hairpin to put this obstacle between the celestial Weaving Maid (Chih-nü—or Jingnyeo in Korean, represented by Vega) and her chosen husband the mortal Cowherd (Ch’ien-niu—or Gyeonu in Korean, represented by Altair). He had been about to overtake the two goddesses as the fearsome queen was forcibly taking her granddaughter back home, pursuing them in a flying boat (the transformed horn of his magic buffalo), which also held the couple’s son and daughter. The Queen of Heaven challenged him to cross the torrent if he wanted to see his wife again; but hearing this, the Phoenix was moved by the lovers’ plight to intervene by sending all

the magpies in the world to form a bridge between them (called Ojakgyo in Korean). Taken at her own word, the Queen of Heaven then relented, and allowed the family to reunite once a year over this bridge of magpies on Chi Ch’iao T’ien. This story was first mentioned under the Western Han Dynasty (206–24 B.C.E.) in Ying Shao’s book on Uses and Customs as something that occurred on the seventh day of the seventh month. It is traditionally said that if one witnesses the actual scene and prostrates while saying a wish for fortune, long life, or descendants, one of the three will be granted within three years. Alternatively, if a brick is thrown up in the air at the very moment when Heaven’s gate is opened to allow the Weaving Maid to walk onto the bridge, it will fall back on the ground changed into gold. But should it rain on that night, the Heavenly River will swell to overflow and carry off the bridge, leaving Cowherd and Weaving Maid to wait another year for the chance for a brief encounter. Hoping to avert such a sad and inauspicious occurrence, women pray for clear skies on that night and leave cosmetics on the roof for Weaving Maid, asking her in return to give them lasting beauty, a child, or skill in needlework, at which maidens compete by moonlight to show they are marriage material. On this day for drying clothes and books in the sun, Korean wives and children also used to perform a sacrificial rite at the well to secure the water supply, as well as an ancestor memorial service in honor of the Big Dipper God for the prosperity of their homes.

Divination Techniques In late Imperial times, Chinese women would buy a moheluo clay doll to promote childbirth, and children would go around carrying a lotus leaf, like this doll often did. But most popular customs about that day involved divination concerning productive needlework over the coming year, since the star Vega was one of the beings who spent eternity weaving the clouds

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in the sky. This elevated but thankless estate made sharing the hard but free life of an earthbound peasant comparatively attractive to the Weaving Girl. Hearing the hapless lovers whisper through the grapevine on the one day when they were reunited held the promise of expert weaving. There were also ways of telling this kind of fortune that were less dependent on otherworldly visitations, as they could easily be practiced at home under controlled conditions. One of them was called pao chieh, and used shadows at the bottom of a bowl of water. In the long version, having let some peas soak in the dark a month in advance of Chi Ch’iao T’ien, a woman would tie a red ribbon to the foot-high shoots that resulted by then and break off their ends with her hand while praying to Cowherd and Weaving Maid. She would then put them overnight in a bowl of water, in the hope of being able to see needle-like shadows in it before dawn the next day. In an alternate short version, women watched out for any shadows evoking flowers, birds, or beasts that might be thrown by needles floating on the surface of the bowl, literally foreshadowing the figures they hoped to realize in their own handiwork. Another method, called bu chieh and attested under the Sung Dynasty (960–1279), was based on the regularity of the web that a spider would spin overnight in a box. In some places where Ch’i Chieh (as Chi Ch’iao T’ien was also known) was called the Women’s Festival, they would meet at nightfall and offer wine, fruits, and melons to the two stars, before launching on a competition about who would first succeed in putting multicolored threads through the nine holes of a special needle. Under the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420–589 C.E.), women used seven-hole needles for the same purpose.

The Timeless Tale of the Seven Bathing Beauties It was no coincidence that this number of holes in the needle matched that of the Seven Sisters

Cowherd espied bathing in the Silver River when he went there on the counsel of his magic buffalo, as this incognito exile from Heaven knew very well that these weaving girls must have slipped away unnoticed from their celestial workplaces. When it was time to go back to the sky, one of them had to stay behind on earth, because Cowherd, following the plan of his faithful companion, had stolen her clothes, and was thus able to make her his wife. Interestingly enough, the same story of bathing beauties is told by the Toradja people of the central highlands of the island of Celebes or Sulawesi in Indonesia about an earthly prince and the same seven stars known in the West as the Pleiades, only to account for the origin of mankind as the offspring of heaven and earth. But the Chinese versions of this motif of East Asian folklore, as told about Double Seven, do not emphasize its cosmological dimensions so much as its social overtones, from the dispossession of the orphan Cowherd at the instigation of a greedy sister-in-law to the obstacles to love marriages, especially across class barriers. This has contributed to make of the story of Cowherd and Weaving Maid and their yearly encounter a classic theme of Chinese letters, because of their touching loyalty, as evoked in a fine example of the genre like this famous poem by Qin Guan from the time of the Sung Dynasty: Purple clouds of many shapes go across the sky. Although the Heavenly River separates the Cowherd from the Weaving Maid, It cannot prevent them from telling each other their sorrow. They can only cross the river on one night every year. The happiness they know then The happiness they know then is greater than the whole world. Their love is as tender as water, Their rendezvous is as brief as a dream. At the time of parting,

c o w h e r d a n d w e av i n g m a i d | 83 How can they bear the pain as they look at the way back? But if they remain faithful to each other, Do they really need to spend their life together? (Freely translated from pp. 50–51 of Qi Xing 1987.)

Goh Pei Ki. Origins of Chinese Festivals. Singapore: Asiapac Books, 1997. Qi Xing. Les Fêtes traditionnelles chinoises. Beijing: Éditions en langues étrangères, 1987.

◗ CUARESMA See also Lupercalia; Sekku References Juliet Bredon and Igor Mitrophanow. The Moon Year: A Record of Chinese Customs and Festivals. Shanghai, China: Kelly and Walsh, 1927 (New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1966). Choe Sang-su. Annual Customs of Korea: Notes on the Rites and Ceremonies of the Year. Seoul: Seomun-dang, 1983.

See Lent

◗ CULTURE DAY See Seven-Five-Three

◗ CYBELE AND ATTIS (SPRING FESTIVAL OF), See Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis

D ◗ DAEBOREUM See Lantern Festival

◗ DAHIHANDI See Janmashtami

◗ DAMBA See Mawlid

◗ DANO See Dragon Boat Festival

◗ DAPAA See Adae

◗ DASAIN See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ DASHALAKSHANA See Paryushana and Dashalakshana

◗ DAY OF ARAFAT

Origins The Day of Assembly was devised by the Prophet Mohammed in 621 C.E., when he was still based in Mecca but already had a large following in Medina—as we now know the oasis of Yathrib after the Arab form of the Aramaic name given to it by its substantial Jewish community. The new Prophet was then trying to reach out to the Jews as heirs to the first genuine monotheistic revelation, prefiguring the ultimate one: the Koran. One of his moves in that direction was to ask his disciple Mu’sab ibn ’Umayr to get the Muslims of Medina to have prayers in the middle of the day like the Jews, and to do them as a group once a week while the Jews were preparing for Sabbath the next day. Choosing Friday as the Day of Assembly for Muslims at once established a parallel with the weekly Jewish festival and a crucial distance from it, signifying at first respect for a potential ally, and later on rivalry with infidels who refused to follow the new dispensation.

See Ashura

Practices ◗ DAY OF ASSEMBLY (ISLAM) In Islam, the weekly Day of Assembly for collective worship is Friday; but unlike its equivalents the Christian Sunday and the Jewish Sabbath, this is not a day of rest.

The five daily prayers required of all Muslims ever since this early phase of emulation of Jewish practices do not have to be said in common as a congregation, with the exception of the one replacing the early afternoon Dhur on the Day of Assembly (Yawm al-Jum’a in Arabic) set |

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Muslims attend Friday prayers in Moulay Mohammed Mosque in the Libyan capital Tripoli on February 2, 2001. (Reuters/Corbis)

aside for this purpose. But since attendance is only optional for women because of their household duties, they may say their Dhur prayer at home as usual. In this respect, the call of the muezzin or “mosque crier” to Friday public worship is no different from the standard calls to the five daily hours of prayer. This adhan (Arabic for “announcement”) was originally a simple injunction to “come to prayer” shouted by someone outside the mosque, but Mohammed soon looked for a more dignified formula. In the first or second year of the Hegira (the Muslim era beginning on July 16, 622), after his disciple ’Abd Allah ibn Zayd reported a dream in which somebody called the faithful to prayer from a rooftop, Mohammed followed his future successor Omar’s advice to entrust this task to a spe-

cialist. The first muezzin was the freed slave Bilal the Ethiopian. Muezzins initially did their calling from the highest roof near the mosque, then from the towers of churches and fortifications in conquered Christian areas, and within a century, from one built as part of the mosque itself (with a few exceptions in medieval Central Asia, Iran, and Iraq, where it stood apart) to serve as such a “beacon” or minaret in Arabic. The call to prayer also became more elaborate, to the point where it now goes: “God is most great. I bear witness that there is no god but the One God. I bear witness that Mohammed is the Prophet of God. Come to prayer. Come to salvation. God is most great. There is no god but the One God.” The first sentence is intoned four times, and the last one but once—except by Shiites, who say it twice, as all Muslims do the ones in between.

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The specifically congregational Jum’a prayer of Friday afternoon differs from the everyday Dhur in having only two units (rakat) instead of four. It comes after the sermon (khutba) by the imam, whom the congregation has elected to lead it in prayer. The khutba is meant to be listened to with undivided attention by the worshippers, once they have praised God, blessed the Prophet Mohammed and his companions, and made a supplication for all Muslims; it will be concluded in the same way. The sermon is in two parts, divided by a short break. It may deal with current affairs, issues of concern to the Umma (the global or local community of believers), or Koranic commentary, to educate Muslims in the faith and strengthen the bond of brotherhood uniting them in it. It is therefore important to observe the Day of Assembly in a proper setting; in the absence of a mosque, a Muslim community has the duty to set up a place of worship on a stable footing with as little delay as possible. But of course, in a Muslim country, businesses will often close for a while on Friday afternoon in order to allow people to go to the mosque, in compliance with the Koran’s injunction to the believers. O you who believe! when the call is made for prayer on Friday, then hasten to the remembrance of Allah and leave off trading; that is better for you, if you know. But when the prayer is ended, then disperse abroad in the land and seek of Allah’s grace, and remember Allah much, that you may be successful. (sura 62:9–10)

powerful Creator become weary so as to need rest from labor? See also Ashura; Nineteen-Day Feast; Sabbath; Sunday References Karen Armstrong. Muhammad. A Biography of the Prophet. New York: Harper Collins, 1992. The Koran. tr. M.H. Shakir, http:// etext.virginia.edu/koran.html. Azim A. Nanji, ed. The Muslim Almanac: A Reference Work on the History, Faith, Culture, and Peoples of Islam. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1996. E. van Donzel, ed. Islamic Desk Reference, compiled from The Encyclopedia of Islam. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1994.

◗ DAY OF ATONEMENT See Yom Kippur

◗ DAY OF BLOWING THE HORN, DAY OF JUDGMENT See Rosh Hashanah

◗ DAY OF MANKIND See Sekku

◗ DAY OF ORIGIN See New Year (Japan)

◗ DAY OF THE RAT (FEAST OF THE) See Sekku

◗ DAY OF THE WREN See Christmas

This means that a Muslim is to return to the useful tasks at hand, not to take the remainder of the day off, as in the Judeo-Christian weekly day of rest. For both Sabbath and Sunday are based on the idea that God rested at the end of a week of work on the Creation, which is unacceptable to Islam because of its insistence on the omnipotence of God: how could the all-

◗ DAYS OF THE DEAD (CHINA, KOREA, JAPAN) Among days honoring the dead in the Chinese world, some have lost currency, like the Burning of Clothes Festival and Cold Food Day on the eve of Qing Ming—which on its part has

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remained central. The same goes for Chung Yuan, also known as Yu Lan Pen, marking the midpoint of the seventh month, during which the gates of Hell are open. It has taken on a Buddhist coloring in the way it focuses on relieving the sufferings as well as appeasing the envy of the hungry ghosts caught there—dead relatives in particular. Aside from gravesite and home offerings, the latter festival, like its Japanese version called Bon, is associated with the launching of floating lanterns, while kite-flying is a spring custom typical of Qing Ming, the Festival of Pure Brightness, that puts dead ancestors in a more unambiguously positive light by cleaning their graves, much as in Western days of the dead.

Lesser Festivals of the Dead Traditionally in China, six major festivals stood out above the rest. They were divided between Three for the Living (New Year, Dragon Boats, Mid-Autumn) and Three for the Dead: the Festival of Pure Brightness, or Qing Ming, the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, or Zhong Yuan Jie, and the Burning of Clothes Festival, or Shao Yi Jie, which has now become uncommon. It used to be observed on the first day of the tenth month, as a way to send winter clothes to dead ancestors. Usually held on the eve of Qing Ming—as the putting out of the old fire before the kindling of the new fire that ushers in spring renewal (now used instead to burn spirit money on gravesites so the smoke brings good fortune to the dead), Cold Food Day or Hanshi has also declined in importance. Though it probably goes back to prehistoric times before agriculture, the story goes that it was Prince Wengong of Jin (in present-day Shanxi Province) who, during the Spring and Autumn Period (770–481 B.C.E.), first ordered that no fire be lit to cook food on that day in his realm. Food was thus prepared in advance the day before, to be eaten cold. This was meant to mark the prince’s eternal gratitude for the selfless loyalty of his

most faithful companion Jie Zitui during his wilderness years, when he struggled to claim his throne from a usurper, and his regret at how badly he repaid him when he refused to come out of the forest where he had fled from honors and riches to accept the gifts and thanks of the prince. Not to be outdone, the ruler had had the forest set on fire, assuming the hermit would at least want to save his mother—who was living with him. This plan literally misfired, as they did not come out, and only their charred remains were later found clinging to a willow tree. During the Sung Dynasty (960– 1279 C.E.), there arose a custom of hanging “Zitui swallows” made from flour and dates on a willow branch in one’s doorway, which children also offered to the village god, along with boiled eggs and imitation gold and silver ingots.

Qing Ming The willows are in bud at this time of year, and have always been associated with the special atmosphere of Qing Ming, the hundred-andfifth day after the winter solstice (around April 5), when, in ancient times, everyone would go for a stroll in the countryside to “tread the green grass.” Women too for once: on the way back, they would be sure to wear willow branch crowns like the men, or at least headbands, since “the girl who does not wear willow branches on Qing Ming is sure to grow old”— prematurely, according to the proverb. Willows were a springtime symbol of eternal youth on a day that is still universally observed by Chinese people to sweep the tombs of their dead relatives. This custom became prevalent in the form of a festival under the Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.), on the basis of a story about Emperor Kao Tsu, founder of the Han Dynasty in 206 B.C.E. Sorry that his parents could not see him and rejoice in his good fortune, he went back to his hometown to seek out their resting place. However, it proved impossible to locate it in a graveyard that had been a battleground during the years of civil war. Until, that is,

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Family members honor the dead by cleaning graves and burning offerings during the Qing Ming Festival at the United Chinese Cemetery in Macau. (Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis)

someone came up with five-colored paper, used to write on for purposes of divination. The monarch threw a pile of these paper slips in the wind, calling onto Heaven to help him fulfill his filial wishes by marking his parents’ grave as the one on which paper would land. Indeed, the tombstone to which the paper stuck turned out upon closer inspection to be the right one. Ever since then, people who clean grave sites and put flowers on them on Qing Ming (as most Chinese have continued doing even through the harshest antireligious repression) make sure they also place five-colored paper on them, to show they have paid their respects in prayers and offerings. The latter include glutinous red “grave cakes” as well as spring rolls—originally designed to hold the leftovers from Cold Food Day, and they are eaten there afterwards in memory of the deceased. In order to ensure a

man’s material welfare in the beyond, his children also used to burn gold and silver ingots, servants, horses, sedan-chairs—in paper effigy, of course, like the special paper money used for the same purpose today. These seasonal stories reflect the family values of the Former Han Period (202 B.C.E.–8 C.E.) of imperial formation, when Confucianism became the State creed. The name Qing Ming is said to go back to the same time, and to refer to the “clear and pure” weather of the third lunar month. It changes later, when the wind direction becomes unsteady, so that Qing Ming is the last and best time of the year to fly kites. They were invented during the Spring and Autumn Period for the purposes of military topography, as a way to survey enemy territory from a distance. During the Five Dynasties Period (907–960 C.E.), a certain Li Ye equipped a paper hawk with a bam-

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boo tube and a silk ribbon. As it soared and glided in the sky, the wind made it sound like a zheng, a zither-like musical instrument; hence the name of this type of kite, feng zheng. Over the centuries, designs have come to include mythological figures, characters from classic plays, butterflies, goldfish, larks, dragonflies, eagles, bats, frogs, centipedes, and the like. Techniques have even been developed to make these kites fly in group-formations. Kite-flying is but the most aesthetic and spectacular feature of Qing Ming (though it is now practiced throughout the year—weather permitting); among other favorite outdoor activities on this day are swings, ballgames, cock fights, and dog races. However, many of the social preconditions for the observance of Qing Ming as part of the ancestor-worship that was the cornerstone of traditional Chinese culture have been swept away by the Communist regime of mainland China. No productive land may be used for burials, and cremation is compulsory (with some exceptions for Muslim minorities) so as to limit land use even in public graveyards, where ashes are stored for no more than five years.

Chung Yuan The Chung Yuan Festival, in the middle of the seventh month, is not just one of Three for the Dead, but also one of the Three Yuan, before Xia Yuan on the fifteenth day of the tenth month, and after Shang Yuan or Yuan Xiao on the fifteenth day of the first month, the Festival of Lanterns, and the last day of the New Year season. While the latter ushers in the half of the year that is dedicated to Heaven (like the first and fifteenth of each month), Chung Yuan opens the half dedicated to Earth (as are the second and sixteenth day of every month). While it lasts, the Chinese have always believed that the dead come back from the underworld; and this time, not just deceased relatives who demand to be revered with incense and fed from special banquet tables, but also the lonely hungry ghosts who do not have living descendents to

care for them, and so roam the earth seething with frustration. That is why the fifteenth was sometimes called the Festival of Devils—Guijie. The judge of Hell is also inspecting the human realm on this occasion to keep track of people’s good and bad deeds for future reference—whenever they fall under his jurisdiction. Since the sixth century, the day has therefore been set aside for remembrance of the ancestors, to make sure their post-mortem trials are kept to a minimum and they can rest in peace. Still, no one wants to take any chances during this whole late summer Ghost Month (from August 9 to September 8 in 2002) when the dead mix with the living, and may even be spotted by looking at their feet—which do not touch the ground. Weddings should not be celebrated while it lasts (as was also the case in the West for the same reason during its taboo month of May), and business deals should likewise be postponed to a more auspicious time. In Taiwan, most people try to refrain from risky activities like swimming, driving, and going outside after sundown, wary of the heavy traffic of souls out and about. To entertain the dead, operas are performed nonstop in Taoist temples while they can spiritually dine on offerings of meat (above all a sacrificed hog roasted on a spit), as well as fish, vegetables, canned food, and alcoholic drinks, dedicated to them by a Taoist or Buddhist priest, and which the living proceed to consume on the tables set up in front of the temple for this “General Salvation meal.” Neighboring communities take turns hosting each other due to the vast quantities of food to be prepared, which contemporary governments, seeing this only as “waste” (the same reason invoked across the Pacific to suppress the Native American potlatch as a similar way to maintain bonds between communities), have tried to discourage by either limiting the event to a single day—thus making it impossible—or by banning it altogether. When it is held, the premises are left cluttered with tou teng —rice containers topped with symbolic objects like knives, um-

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brellas, and mirrors, that are known to ward off evil. Though the origins of Ghost Month are obscure, Taoists account for Chung Yuan as the birthday of Yenlo Wang, the Demon King. Yet Chung Yuan took on a Buddhist flavor when it spread among the people in its current form in the first half of the sixth century, through the sponsorship of the Southern Liang Emperor Wu Ti (502–549 C.E.), a devout follower of the newly introduced Indian religion. It then became known as General Salvation— Pudu, or as the Festival of Yu Lan Pen—a name that has long been assumed to be a transcription of the Sanskrit word Ullambana, meaning “to be suspended upside down.” However, the French scholar Jean Przyluski (1885–1944) has argued that it is more likely to be derived from another Buddhist term: Avalambana, which in India referred to certain offerings to all living beings but whose merits could also benefit the dead. It is mostly for this purpose that a Yu Lan Pen Society is set up in every Buddhist temple: putting fruits of every variety in basins to offer them in the ten directions—above, below, and the eight compass points. The sutras that are read all day in order to guide lost souls (guhun) out of Hell relate the story from the Buddhist canon on which a number of Chung Yuan practices are based. It is that of Maudgalyayana, a disciple of the Buddha known in Chinese as Mulian, who had a vision of his departed mother in Hell, fighting with hungry ghosts for food. The rice he spiritually sent her to appease her hunger turned into burning coals when it reached her. Turning to his master for advice, he was instructed to do these Yu Lan Pen offerings every year; they would go to feed the hungry ghosts and allow some relief to people’s dead relatives who were caught in their realm. This answered to the priority always given to family ties in traditional Chinese culture, only in terms of Buddhism; for this imported religion’s emphasis on indiscriminate universal compassion must otherwise have been a bewildering challenge to it.

Chung Yuan thus became another favorite occasion for displays of filial piety (as in the even more staunchly Confucian culture of Korea on its equivalent Jungwon or Baekjung— which entails serving a hundred different things on the table for a memorial service, aside from a ceremonial feast for farm laborers on this day off from harvesting). People who could afford it would evoke their forebears up to seven generations back by means of sutra readings in their homes, done by Buddhist monks and nuns. They gave them alms and gave charity to the poor as signs of gratitude and virtue. Joss sticks were lit and offerings were done on home altars, while sacrifices were also performed on ancestors’ graves, including the burning of tin foil shaped to represent silver ingots, as a way to transfer wealth to their account, now done using mostly fake paper money. These and similar practices are still observed today on both Qing Ming and Chung Yuan in Chinese homes and grave sites all over the world. But paper lanterns (at times houseshaped—not unlike the floating “Lucy houses” of Fürstenfeldbrück, Bavaria, on December 13) are specifically associated with Chung Yuan as a way to represent wandering souls and thereby try to do something to rescue them. They are launched onto a river or directly into the sea, so that unsettled spirits can easily spot them and grab a hold of them to find their way out of Hell and get to be reborn in a better place.

Japan’s Bon Festival This is one of the many customs of Chung Yuan that are also associated with its Japanese version, Urabon (from Urabon-kyo, the Japanese title of the Avalambana-sutra), also known as Obon or Bon for short. The latter also happens to be the word for “tray,” and it is on trays that offerings of food are made to the different categories of ancestors on temporary home altars built in bamboo a week early to welcome the ancient ones who then move into the top sec-

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tion, in hopes of getting their protection. The recently departed have to be appeased earlier still, as they are even more dangerous than the vindictive homeless dead. In modern Japan, the festival is most often moved from its traditional date on the full moon of the seventh lunar month to begin on the thirteenth of July (or August in some places like Kyoto) with welcoming fires (mukaebi) to greet the ancestors, and end on the sixteenth with seeing-off fires (okuribi), such as the giant multiple one tracing the Chinese character for “Great” (in honor of the Buddha) on the slopes of Mount Nyoigadake overlooking Kyoto. Joyful public dance parties take place outdoors along with fireworks displays on the nights of the fourteenth and fifteenth. Living elders also get food offerings at the end of this festive period in Japan. As for children who have died without getting to know the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and who are therefore condemned to build and rebuild small stone towers on the edge of the River of Hell as demons keep tearing them down (a bittersweet fate that is reminiscent of that of unbaptized infants in limbo in Catholic doctrine), they have their own Bon festival on August 24. On this Bon of Jizô—a bodhisattva or compassionate saint who intercedes to bring them some relief, living children paint his effigy (as a bald old monk) on small stone slabs to invoke his protection and thank him for his care for their unfortunate peers. See also Days of the Dead (West); Dragon Boat Festival; Lantern Festival; May Day; Midautumn; New Fire Ceremony; New Year (China, Korea); Potlatch; Saint Lucy; Samhain References Jan Chozen Bays. Jizo Bodhisattva: Guardian of Children, Travelers, and Other Voyagers. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2003. Catherine Lang. O-Bon in Chimunesu. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1996. Stephen F. Teiser. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Judy Van Zile. The Japanese Bon Dance in Hawaii. Kalilua, HI: Press Pacifica, 1982.

◗ DAYS OF THE DEAD (INDIA) See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ DAYS OF THE DEAD (WEST) Throughout the Western world, it is now mostly around November 1 that the living interact with the dead in the context of a public festival, because this is All Saints’ Day for the Roman and Anglican Churches. If Englishspeaking peoples are haunted by the dead the night before on October 31 (All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween), Spanish-speaking peoples tend to favor the following day of All Souls (hallowed or not) to visit their dead—or as in Mexico to be visited by them—on November 2. Yet these were not always the days of the dead in the Western Church, nor in the pagan cultures of classical antiquity previously; and the Eastern Church today also has a different set of days of the dead.

The Greek World In ancient Greece, the three days before the last one of each month were devoted to the dead and to the gods of the underworld; while they lasted, criminal tribunals could not sit and no death sentence could be carried out. In Athens, the great yearly festival of the dead was the Nemesia. Named after the nymph Nemesis who saw to the “due enactment” (as her name translates) of the ritual death of sacred kings in order to ensure fertility, this ceremony to appease the angry dead took place toward September, on the fifth day of the month of Boedromion, concurrently with the festival of Genesia. This private commemoration of somebody’s death on its anniversary, “known to all the Greeks” according to the historian Herodotus, had been set on this fixed date as a public remembrance day of all the dead as part of Solon’s reform of the religious calendar

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in the sixth century B.C.E. At the end of the campaigning season in early winter, there was also an annual ceremony for the war dead, well known from a description by the historian Thucydides. The soldiers’ bones were taken in a wagon procession in coffins—including an empty one for those whose bodies could not be recovered (comparable to the tomb of the unknown soldier, holding unidentified bones, that is wreathed in some of the Allied countries on Remembrance Day as the anniversary of their victory in World War I on November 11, 1918). The Dionysian festival of Anthesteria, toward the end of February, was devoted both to fertility and to the dead—more specifically the restless shades that then came out to haunt the living. Greeks still commonly believe they do during the first of three weeks of the Carnival season preceding Lent, and therefore dedicate the festive Sunday meal that concludes it with the prayer: “May God forgive the souls of the dead.” In the Greek Orthodox Church, there is no one special date set aside to honor the dead. Common days for commemorating the departed are scattered over the entire year, most of them on Saturdays, corresponding to the time when Jesus, after his crucifixion on the original Good Friday, was among the dead before his resurrection on Easter Sunday. For this reason, the Greek Church frowns upon the Russian custom of commemorating individual departed souls right after Sunday liturgy, the weekly feast of the Resurrection. Nevertheless, throughout Orthodox Christianity, the first Sunday after Pentecost is devoted to All Saints following the ancient Antiochian custom of commemorating martyrs on this day, recorded by the fourth-century Church Father Saint John Chrysostom. Otherwise, aside from Joyday, the second Tuesday following Easter (plus a certain day in the interval in some Greek localities), the other days when the souls of the dead are commemorated are all Saturdays: the first Saturday of Lent along with the preceding two Saturdays, as well

as the last three Saturdays of Advent, the Saturdays of the two-week fast before the Dormition of the Mother of God on August 15, the Soul Saturday of Saint Demetrius toward the third week of October, Holy and Great Saturday on the eve of Easter, and All Souls on the eve of Pentecost. In all cases, the priest celebrates the commemorative service after the liturgy next to a table set with candles among the faithful. He blesses the consecrated bread and special cakes on the table. These colybes are made with boiled rice or wheat, sugar or honey, raisins, and ground nuts. They may be related to the panspermia that were once distributed on the third and final day of Anthesteria, around the same time of year as the pre-Lent Soul Saturdays. Friends and relatives of the deceased, who bring these dishes, can consume them after the service, at church, at home, or on that person’s grave. In the latter case, the priest will put the first share under the cross and some wine will be poured on the tombstone before a festive meal is partaken of on the premises. The role of wheat in these rites recalls age-old Greek agrarian precedents and the Eleusinian Mysteries of death and rebirth, initiation, and personal salvation, derived from them in late antiquity.

The Roman World Testifying on behalf of the Latin Church in the early third century already that “as often as the anniversary comes round, we make offerings for the dead as birthday honours,” Tertullian noted: “If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, and faith as their observer” “The Chaplet, or De Corona,” ch. III and IV). Yet in pagan Rome too, modest offerings of wheat, wine, salt, and flowers—along with prayers—were brought to the graves of dead relatives during the Parentalia. The nineday commemoration, which had been extended

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over time to the dead in general, was opened in the name of the state with a funeral sacrifice by the great vestal at noon on February 13. It ended with the private festival of Feralia on February 21, when gifts were placed at the graves and the anniversary of the funeral feast was celebrated. During this period, temples would be closed and home fires would be put out, because the gods from heaven were to remain hidden while the shades of the dead came up from the underworld to consume the offerings on their graves. No weddings were to be performed during these unclean days when the dead roamed, as their souls might take over newly conceived bodies; it was therefore no time for a new human life to begin. A trace of this ancient prohibition on weddings, initially aimed at widows and virgins alike, could be observed down even to the end of the nineteenth century as part of the customs of the famous Nice Carnival, held on about the same dates. Officially abolished in 1721, the charavilh (a local equivalent of the French charivari) was a way for the Abbots of Fools, who oversaw Carnival celebrations with full discretionary powers, to collect a tax from newly remarried widowers or betrothed widows; their unions were thus discouraged as being of doubtful fertility. This was done by making lots of racket in front of their house with various musical instruments and metal implements until they paid up, since there was no escape from all the noise and offensive singing: the doors were first blocked either with a fishing boat or with mock mortuary trappings, complete with bones and candles. In a related mock haunting practice imitated for a while in the late nineteenth century by the Nice Carnival, the Renaissance Roman Carnival used to culminate on Shrove Tuesday with a candlelight procession where everyone would try to put out the others’ candles to the cry of “Death to him who has no candle!” Over two thousand years, the benign presence of the family dead during the Roman Parentalia seems to have evolved into the play-

ful evocation of the hereafter under the disguise of Carnival masks, wherever Rome left the legacy of mid-February memorials of the departed, mixing with the living. But the atmosphere was long very different during the other major series of days of the dead in ancient Rome (if we neglect the Compitalia and little known Larentalia). Older than the nine relatively auspicious days of Parentalia according to Ovid, the Lemuria were three decidedly inauspicious days in May: the ninth, the eleventh, and the thirteenth. If the parentes were honored ancestors that people were glad to visit at their graves, the lemures were anonymous hungry ghosts floating through the air, whose visits to the living’s homes were feared. To drive them out of the house, a man would have to get up in the middle of the night barefoot, do an obscene gesture with the thumb and fingers (still called “making the fig” in Italian), wash his hands, and throw beans over his shoulder nine times, which the restless spirit supposedly picked up behind him. This is how it was led out of the house, where the noise of a bronze utensil was enough to chase it away. The householder could safely turn back and sleep soundly. However, if any of the beans used germinated and if a woman ate the new beans from the plant, it was feared she would get pregnant with a wandering soul. It was probably due to such concerns about the interference of ghosts in human reproduction that, while the temples remained closed for the three days of Lemuria as they did for the novena of Parentalia, the taboo on weddings extended to the entire month of May. It survived until recently in some former Roman provinces like Provence in Southern France, where people were reluctant to get married in May till the twentieth century, for fear of misfortune and death.

All Saints’ Day and Halloween The Western feast of All Saints started out as the annual commemoration of the dedication

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by Pope Saint Boniface IV (608–615) of the Roman Pantheon as a church in honor of the Blessed Virgin and all martyrs. (This may be why the Greek word for a “temple of all the gods” gave the Spanish word panteón for a family vault in a cemetery—or for the cemetery itself in Mexico, Central America, and Andean countries.) The commemoration took place on May 13, 609, and was probably based on the original Eastern feast of all martyrs —eventually All Saints—on the first Sunday after Pentecost, known from the mid-fourth century when the Roman Empire became Christian. Yet May 13 had also happened to be the last day of the Roman Lemuria for lost souls. Nevertheless, the dead still used to be widely commemorated toward the spring equinox in late March (or mid-April in Ireland) even a couple of centuries after Gregory III, who was Pope from 731 to 741, decided to start observing the relevant rites on November 1, the date on which he consecrated an oratory at Old Saint Peter’s Basilica to All Saints, known and unknown, living and dead, and so no longer just martyrs. Pope Gregory IV kept this widened scope for the feast: that is, the communion of all Christians beyond time, when he made the switch universal in 837. The fact that outside of Rome, in areas of Europe where Celtic influence was still strong, the memory of this date of November 1 as that of the New Year lived on, might have been a reason why it was now made into that of a minor Christian festival. This day—called Samhain in Ireland—used to be a time when the boundaries between the Other World and the everyday world faded, so that all kinds of supernatural entities of pagan religion could manifest themselves to mortals. They were all lumped together as evil by the church, so that this now became a time of communication with the underworld, when demons lurked, and the dead also came into contact with the living. Hence the macabre, sinister trappings of Halloween, drawn from the Celtic heritage of Irish immigrants to the

United States. Albeit reduced to mere fun and games, they are currently spreading all over the world as stock imagery under the irresistible marketing pressure of American popular culture—just as its version of Christmas customs did decades ago, on an increasingly comparable scale. In France especially, with the active encouragement of English teachers, newfangled Halloween observances were spreading for a while at the turn of the century, albeit with interesting small departures from their American model, such as an exclusive focus on lurid imagery as opposed to “cute” or merely fanciful disguises, and the invention of a special pumpkin-shaped Halloween cake lit from inside by a candle, called samain after the old Celtic term for the feast: Samhain.

All Souls’ Day and Día de Muertos The actual Day of the Dead—All Souls—was set on November 2, to follow All Saints (and perhaps in contrast to the nocturnal focus of “All Hallows’ Eve”—Halloween) around the turn of the last millennium. Its observance was first spread by way of the monasteries by Saint Odilo (962–1049). This abbot of Cluny (the great Burgundian monastery spearheading the Gregorian Reform that recast the Western Church around the centralized authority of the Papacy) was supposed to have instituted the celebration of All Souls after hearing from a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land about the torments endured by the deceased in a volcanic place. By the end of the thirteenth century, this festival fulfilled a newly pressing need in most of Western Christendom to supplicate for the departed souls of the faithful. For their plight had become at once more dreadful and more open to negotiation due to another Catholic innovation going back to Saint Odilo: Purgatory (that is, the concept of an actual place where the souls of those who were not damned to Hell nonetheless suffered some of its pains for the length of measurable time necessary to purify them of theirs sins, so that God

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Participants in a Día de Muertos pageant march in a mock funeral procession toward Mexico City’s main square as part of celebrations honoring the dead that culminate on November 2, the feast of All Souls. (Reuters/Corbis)

would one day consider them fit to enter Paradise). It was even said that the restless souls burst out laughing with joy when they heard the tinkling of coins being collected for masses to shorten and alleviate their punishment on Halloween in Brittany. There, some parishioners would be appointed for this purpose and go from door to door all night as the church bells tolled, waking people up so they would pray for the dead and contribute for their repose. On that night, the dead might also expect to find the doors and windows of their former homes open to welcome them for a meal laid out for them inside on a white tablecloth, next to a fire in the hearth—so they could take in its warmth for the coming year. By now though, it is only in the Black Mountains of Armor that some families still set aside the “bread of the souls” (barec an anaon) on the dead’s one night

out, though this used to be common practice throughout the Celtic areas of Western Europe. Both All Saints and All Souls are devoted to communion with the dead in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. In these three countries, the cemeteries are then crowded with people who have come to offer their prayers and candles to dead relatives. In Spain and its former colonies, poor people also go from tomb to tomb offering to pray for the dead in exchange for food. Sharing food on their graves is a common way to associate them for a while with the activities of the living, which they are assumed to miss. Chestnuts play a special role, be it as honey and nut cakes made to look like them in Southern Italy, and called pabassine, or as actual chestnuts at the castañadas (“chestnut parties”) seen throughout Spain, where cream-filled doughnuts called buñuelos are eaten too. Chestnut-shaped almond

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pastries called panellets are specific to Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, while in Aragon, Castille, and Navarra, people eat almond paste huesos de santos (“saints’ bones”) with yellow cream filling to represent the marrow. The Spaniards brought their Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) from Europe to Mexico. There, the descendants of the Aztecs, already notorious for their casual familiarity with death in all its forms, embraced the feast’s customs and expanded upon them with a vengeance. By early November in Mexico, all bakeries display panes de muerto—sugar-coated round breads decorated with shinbones and other symbols of death, cakes in which a tiny skeleton is hidden (like the lucky bean in the Epiphany “twelfth cake” in England and France), and all sorts of bone-shaped candies. But the most typical food of the season in Mexico is the calavera, a sugar (or more often nowadays a chocolate) skull, often decorated with chocolate and icing. The universal favorite is the actualsize variety—with the name of the person to whom it is offered written in sugar on a silver foil band on its forehead. Children especially look forward to theirs, among other gifts. In the pre-Conquest calendar of Mexican Aztecs, the “Great Feast of the Dead”— Hueymiccaihuitl—was immediately preceded around mid-August by a “Lesser Feast of the Dead” (Miccailhuitontli) in honor of dead children (and immediately followed by the “Falling of Fruit”—Xocotl Huetzi). Since Spanish missionaries shifted the dates of these observances to the Christian feasts of All Souls and All Saints respectively, the latter is set aside on November 1 for dead little children (presumably more saintly—not having had time to commit any sin), as the Día de Muertitos, especially in small towns and Indian communities. Flower-decorated home altars set up to welcome them back hold as many candles as the family can remember muertitos (“dead little ones”) or angelitos (“little angels”), along with their favorite foods and toys, plus the seasonal

toys that living children also get: tiny plastic bones, little coffins with a miniature skeleton as a jack-in-the-box, and the like. The word calavera is also used for all the sweets or change children ask of passersby (though this form of begging is being increasingly displaced by American-style Halloween trick-or-treating), as well as to refer to illustrated satirical pamphlets issued on this day to lampoon some of the more powerful figures among the living by depicting them as skeletons in the name of equalizing death—following in the footsteps of the graphic artist José Guadalupe Posada (1851–1913), creator of the genre and initiator of a lot of classic Muertos imagery. A lot of pointed social criticism gets to circulate freely under this carnival guise, as it never could to this extent in everyday life. If political dissent surfaces in such urban practices, religious dissent is a feature of the widespread rural worship of Santa Muerte–— “Saint Death,” clearly of Spanish Catholic derivation, but which the Church disapproves of. In the countryside, certain rites recur in endless local variations, especially in Indian villages. There, the dead may be called in the graveyards to the sound of guitars and accordions played by villagers in colonial-style costumes, not to mention church bells pealing on October 31, as they will again on November 2, to invite them to leave their living relatives’ homes and go back to their resting places. Throughout Mexico on November 1, crowds start streaming toward the nation’s cemeteries to the cheerful, lively tunes of mariachi bands (who may offer to sing one for a departed person for a fee from the family), amid the loud bursts of firecrackers and fireworks, and the ghostly dances of people disguised as the roaming dead. If the descendants of the Spaniards, like their European cousins, bring mounds of flowers to their dead relatives’ resting places, the scene in the graveyards of predominantly Indian communities is somewhat different—especially in urban contexts (as opposed to the more serious

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and contemplative atmosphere of many country celebrations, more in tune with the pre-Hispanic origins of these celebrations). There, it is mostly food that is offered to the dead, being consumed by the living on the spot, with lots of strong drink (though a clay dog or dog-shaped bread is frequently put on the altar at home or at the cemetery—recalling the originally Mayan custom of killing a black dog and incinerating it with the body of the deceased so it could help his or her soul cross the river of death to heaven). Relatives and friends make macabre jokes, sing humorous songs, and may even dance among the graves. This merry party often degenerates into drunken confrontations where tempers flare, fights erupt, and accounts are settled. Many Mexicans die this way every year, adding to the numbers of the dead being celebrated on their own special day for fun and partying. But the major difference between the Mexican and European Days of the Dead is not so much that one is tinged with sadness and the other exuberantly happy. In Mexico, the living do not just visit the dead at their current residence; they above all expect them to come over from their graves to visit their former homes. The paths leading home from the cemetery are marked with cempazuchitl petals (from the orange marigold known as “Indian rose” used in funerals in Mexico since Aztec times—as white chrysanthemums are in Europe), so the ghosts do not get lost on the way they take only once a year. It is a privilege for the living that they even bother to return at all, since as a popular saying goes, they must be better off “over there” in the beyond than “here” on earth; otherwise, they would come back for good. That is why they are induced to stay for a few hours of celebrations with an Altar of the Dead, especially set up in the home as a kind of landing pad for returning spirits. It is covered with an often richly embroidered cloth and decorated with cempazuchiles, tissue paper garlands of different symbolic colors (often cut to represent flowers,

birds, and cavorting skeletons), candlesticks, and incense burners—used to spread clouds of copal, so the pungent odor of this pine resin will guide departed spirits home like a beacon even as it wards off evil spirits. The returning dead also recognize themselves in family photographs, in sugar skulls bearing their name in icing, and in the hand-crafted skeletons called calacas representing their former occupations and hobbies on the three-tiered pyramidal altar. The wall behind the altar is frequently covered with pictures depicting various saints, among which the Virgin of Guadalupe has a place of honor. They may range from tacky color prints cut out from magazines to precious works of art handed down from generation to generation as family heirlooms. In the middle of these religious objects, the offerings for the dead are placed: cups and plates holding their favorite foods, beer bottles, cigars, their favorite objects—like a hat, a guitar, a deck of cards, along with glasses of water, because the dead are said to be always thirsty, as well as bread and salt—also offered as a sign of hospitality to the living in Rumanian folklore. And much as a white towel was used to welcome guests in a Karelian (Eastern Finnish) home, a washbasin, soap, towel, mirror, and comb are put at the disposal of a Mexican family’s departed, so they can clean up when they come back home to visit those they have left behind, for twentyfour hours from around three in the afternoon on their appointed day—sometimes a special one set before the actual Día de Muertos. To the sound of all the church bells, dead relatives come to the parties awaiting them at home in a precise order: a hierarchy based on factors like “reverse seniority.” Thus in Oaxaca, known for its authentic Muertos observances, October 28 is set aside for people who died in accidents, took their own life, drowned, burned to death, or had any other kind of violent death, in that order. October 29 is for the unbaptized, and October 30 for other restless, lonely souls, before baptized children come

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home on November 1. From two o’clock the next day, the rank-and-file of adults who have died of old age, disease, and natural causes are first remembered at their graves before being entertained at home later that night—except for those who lost their life over the last year. This may be to ensure that surviving relatives have taken enough distance from the deceased, so that they do not feel the grief of the loss of someone only recently still present among them so much as the joy of having a chance to reunite with a family member who has gone off to another, better place. But aside from this exception that confirms the rule, in today’s Mexico just as in the Europe of old, there is an underlying assumption that bad things can happen if the living fail to give the dead what is their due, in the form of prayers, food, or entertainment. Furthermore, tampering with the celebration of ancestral ties puts collective identity in jeopardy; this is why altars are also being put up in the public spaces of Mexico on Los Muertos, in schools, offices, and many supermarkets, as a statement of national pride and identity against the marketing onslaught of standardized Halloween customs, costumes, novelties, and paraphernalia from the United States.

The Huron Feast of the Dead Further north in America, the great Feast of the Dead once observed mostly among the Hurons by early French missionaries also had a vital political dimension, insofar as it cemented a nation’s inner peace as well as its foreign alliances. This was accomplished through lavish feasts and extravagant gifts comparable to those of the Northwestern potlatch, except that their main focus was the remains of the dead from natural causes. They were brought from all village cemeteries inside precious pelts for reburial in a central ossuary pit every decade or so, or else after a migration, toward May. The mixing of their bones (in which the sensitive as opposed to the rational souls of friends and rela-

tives still dwelled) around some broken kettles (hence the feast’s Huron name: Yandatsa for “kettle”), placed in their midst so the objects’ “souls” would serve them in the beyond, fostered the parallel intermingling of the living in an indissoluble unity. This might include Algonkian neighbors, like such Ojibwa groups as the Nipissing, trading partners of the Hurons who imported their Feast of the Dead. It was also a pivotal institution in the life of other Iroquoian peoples: the Tionontatés, the Neutrals (though they insisted on distinct individual burials in the common pit), and probably the Eries and Wenros. This great ten-day ritual is unique to the Ontario region, where it evolved from about 300 B.C.E. to its apogee and collapse upon European contact in the mid-seventeenth century. “It sums up the whole of Wendat [Huron] thinking, and by analogy, the thinking of all the peoples belonging to the social and spiritual universe of the Northeast, with Wendake [Huronia] as its geopolitical heartland” (Sioui 1999, p. 146). See also Argei; Assumption; Beautiful Festival of the Valley; Caristia; Carnival; Christmas; Dionysia; Easter; Eleusinian Mysteries; Epiphany; Holy Week; Lent; May Day; Navaratra and Dusshera; Potlatch; Samhain; Sunday; Whitsuntide References Catherine Chambers. All Saints, All Souls, and Halloween. Austin, TX: Raintree SteckVaughn, 1997. Franz Cumont. Lux Perpetua. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987. Jack Santino, ed. Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. Chloë Sayer, ed. The Mexican Day of the Dead: An Anthology. Boston: Shambhala Redstone Editions, 1994. Georges E. Sioui. Huron Wendat. The Heritage of the Circle. Rev. Ed., Tr. J. Brierley. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press and East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999.

100 | d i o n y s i a Tertcillian. “The Chaplet, or De Corona.” Tr. Rev. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, www.ccel.org.

◗ DEACONS’ DAY See Christmas

◗ DECENNIAL GAMES See Games (Rome)

◗ DECLARATION OF BAHÁ’ULLAH’S MISSION, DECLARATION OF THE BAB’S MISSION See Ridván

◗ DEDICATION (FESTIVAL OF THE) See Elevation of the Cross, Hanukkah

◗ DEEPAWALI See Divali

◗ DELIA See Thargelia

◗ DEPOSITION OF THE MOST PURE VEIL OF THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD OF BLACHERNES See Protection of the Mother of God

◗ DÉSALPE See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ DEVILS (FESTIVAL OF) See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ DHANTERAS See Divali

◗ DÍA DE LOS TRES REYES See Epiphany

◗ DÍA DE MUERTITOS, DÍA DE MUERTOS See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ DIES NATALIS See Caristia

◗ DIONYSIA (GREECE AND ROME) In Greco-Roman religion, the many festivals of the ambiguous and lascivious wine god Dionysus could be referred to as Dionysia. They began as crude fertility rituals and later evolved into widespread mystery cults in answer to new spiritual needs and social conditions, since they favored ecstatic personal communion with the seemingly “foreign” god of all that could not be placed within the fixed scheme of things as they were soberly defined in ancient Greece and Rome. The best known of Greek Dionysia are those of Attica, such as Oschophoria, Lenaea, Anthesteria, the Lesser or Country Dionysia, and the Greater or City Dionysia, as part of which the theater developed. There were wilder Dionysia elsewhere in the Greek world, since this cult spread to its furthest reaches under a multitude of guises. Bacchanalia were first met with hostility in Rome, but would gain wide acceptance under the Empire. Dionysian feasts also left their mark on several Christian ones.

Winter Festivals for a Dark Olympian In ancient Greece, many festivals of the cold season were devoted to Dionysus early on. The freedom from agricultural labor and the ready availability of its harvested fruits over this period made it well suited for the kind of heavy partying they often involved. At a deeper symbolic level, this was also the dark half of the year, the night of the cosmic cycle, when order, structure, and hierarchy gave way to elemental chaos and the powers of the underworld of shadows and instinctual drives. Likewise, the earth’s recesses were the dark womb of springtime’s abundant plant life, which Dionysus embodied. And yet, the name Dionysus was sometimes held to mean “twice the son of

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Zeus”—the sky god by whose full revelation his mortal mother Semele (a name possibly related to z’emlya—the Russian word for “earth”) was literally thunderstruck. Zeus then took their child from her charred remains and implanted him in his own thigh to carry him to term. Dionysus was thus born twice—once of a dead mortal, then as an Olympian god, fusing in himself heaven and earth. His divinity was unique in blurring all distinctions between the plant, animal, human, and divine realms.

Oschophoria The first of his festivals in Athens was actually devoted to his half-sister Athena as well in the deme—or country district—of Phalera during the month of Pyanepsion, that is around midOctober. Organized by the genos or clan of the Salaminioi, the Oschophoria were the “Carrying of the Grape Clusters” on their vines from the temple of Dionysus to the shrine of Athena Skiras by a singing procession of twenty wellborn adolescent boys or ephebes (led by two in drag), representing the ten tribes of Attica. They would also race along the same course holding these oschoi for the prize of the first taste of pentaploa—a special brew of five ingredients: wine, honey, barley, oil, and cheese. (Minus the latter and plus figs, they were also those displayed on the eiresionai branch at festivals such as the Panathenaea, Pyanopsia, and Thargelia.) At a banquet involving female “dinner-bearers” (deiplophoroi) in honor of the three daughters of Cecrops—the half-man, half-snake ancestral culture hero of Athenians to whom their civilized customs were traced, the young men would dance and make sacrifices and libations (wine offerings) to the liturgical cry of Eleleu iou iou!—strangely mixing joy in the first part (reminiscent of the Hebrew Alleluia!) and grief in the second part, in a way that was as typical of the spirit of Dionysian worship as the mixing of gender roles at the ambivalent common root of comedy and tragedy.

Two masked comedians marching. Terracotta figurines (second half of the first century B.C.E.), from Myrina, Isle of Lemnos, Greece. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource)

Country Dionysia Country Dionysia were held at different times in all demes or villages throughout Greece (over the month of Poseideon or December in Attica), as a cheerful vintage thanksgiving holiday— whether or not they grew wine. It unfolded publicly along the lines of the private family celebration described in the earliest of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies: Acharnians, performed in Athens in 425 B.C.E. at the Greater Dionysia—as opposed to which this festival, first called Theoinia, came to be known as the Lesser Dionysia. In this poetic account, it starts with prayer and a procession to the sacrifice, with the daughter as basket-bearer (kanêphoros) for the offerings such as cakes she carries on her head, followed by a slave carrying a large-size phallus effigy meant to stimulate the fertility of the fields and the wombs, while the master of the house sings a merry phallic song, and his wife looks at

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the procession from the rooftop. Slaves would also take part in such processions where the whole family—covered in foliage, smeared with wine, joking around—went about in carts with wine vases and fruit baskets to lead a goat to be sacrificed at the shrine of Dionysus. There, a choir would stand around the altar to sing the god’s praises and tell the story of his birth, sufferings, and death—at the roots of the dithyramb genre, which originally mimicked the dismembering and devouring of a bull in a dance-like trance of frenetic gestures, while its name refers to “him who entered life by a double door.” In the seasonal game of askoliasmos, young men would hop with one foot at a time on greased wine goatskins while others tried to push them off. The fall of each contestant was greeted with general laughter, and the last one standing won the wine skin with its contents. Noisy bands of masked, disguised young men roamed country roads and village streets singing and dancing to the tune of flutes, and making obscene jokes at the expense of all they came across. Two of them would have mock quarrels as part of interludes called komoi—out of which the comedy genre evolved. From the fifth century B.C.E. onward, wandering actors toured the countryside to put on plays in wealthier demes on makeshift outdoor stages, drawing them from the established repertoire of larger towns. The older Country Dionysia only gradually made their way into the cities, but in time they would themselves almost altogether give way to the newer urban festivals of Dionysus.

Lenaea Thus, the festival of Lenaea, held at first over two days, and eventually up to four from about the twelfth of Gamelion in late January or early February, seems to have been little more than the Country Dionysia transferred to the urban setting of Athens—or more precisely the suburban one of Limnae, where the Lenaeon temple was located. Possibly owing its name to the wine-

press (lenos in Greek), it was the destination of a procession with sacrificial animals, where a torch-bearer of Eleusis would tell the crowd to “call the god,” whereupon it shouted “Iacchus, Son of Semele, giver of riches!”—as at the Eleusinian Mysteries. “Jokes from the car” in the parade on this occasion became proverbial. On this first day, there were also wild dances by the—maenads (“mad ones”) or Lenai —ecstatic female devotees of Dionysus after which this shrine and the festival may have been named. Part or all of this festival was also referred to as Ambrosia in honor of the drink of the gods, no doubt because plenty of wine was drunk on this as on all feasts of its god Dionysus, at a great banquet at public expense. A yearly bull representing him was cut into nine pieces in sacrifice to his mother Semele: one was burned and the others eaten raw by the worshippers. The priestly king archon provided actors and the city made seats available at a wooden theater built every year next to the Lenaion, until it crumbled during a performance in which the tragic playwright Aeschyles was involved in 478 B.C.E., to be replaced by a permanent stone theater of Dionysus in the heart of Athens under the administration of the statesman Lycurgus (338–326 B.C.E.). No less than fifty performers were involved in the dancing performance of dithyrambs—hymns to Dionysus by a choir of satyrs. Though they took on literary forms and dramatic structure over time, they remained popular spectacles, using ritual exclamations and hypnotic rhythms to draw everyone into the trance of collective enthusiasm. The latter word was first used in Greek to refer to “possession by the god,” namely Dionysus, often induced in his devotees—female Bacchae and male Bacchi— by chewing ivy as the other plant in which he dwelled, aside from the vine. An ivy wreath and an incense tripod rewarded the best performance in contests called agones—involving dithyrambs only at first, until tragedies were added in the middle of the sixth century B.C.E.,

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as were comedies by the middle of the fifth century B.C.E.

Anthesteria Another Dionysian festival of rustic origins was held in Athens (the oldest one there according to the Greek historian Thucydides) over three days from the eleventh or twelfth of the month of Anthesterion (February–March), to mark the start of spring and taste the wine stored the previous fall. The fermentation of the juice of crushed grapes seemed to distill the essence of the mysterious process of transformation of wintertime’s dead nature into the flower of its springtime rebirth. The Anthesteria were thus a “Feast of Flowers” celebrating nature’s revival. The first day was a family festival called the “cask opening”—Pithoigia—offering the firstfruits of the wine harvest to Dionysus to dispel the danger inherent in all new things, and to turn the potential poison into a blessed source of pleasure and a wholesome pharmakon. Servants brought in the casks of the new wine to be used at the next day’s banquet, opened them, poured it into vessels, and could taste it along with their masters, hence the saying: “Get out, slaves! The Anthesteria are over.” Their first two days were also school holidays for children, who were crowned with flowers and received gifts such as miniature wine jugs (some of which have been found in the graves of infants who died well before Anthesteria age). On the first day, the wooden statue of Dionysus Eleutheros (originally from the Boeotian village of Eleutherai) was taken out of the temple of Dionysus Limnaeos—that is “of the marsh” south of the city. To symbolize this god’s “foreignness” to Greek order and measure, he was brought from the seaside on a boat-shaped cart decorated with grape clusters and leaves to a chapel in the outer Ceramicus. This was the starting point of its solemn entry into the city as part of the procession of the following day— though it actually began at sunset, like all Greek festivals.

On this Feast of the Pitchers or Choai, children aged three and older also figured in this boisterous costumed procession with torches around the cart of Dionysus. As part of the various rites observed along the way, the wife of the king archon of Athens had to sit beside the god’s statue as his bride for a day. The basilinna would first have sworn in—in the only rite ever performed inside the Marsh shrine—the erairai or ladies of honor appointed by the king archon, in view of secret ceremonies involving various offerings and the manipulation of sacred objects or hiera inside baskets. They culminated in the bukoleion or “ox stall”—the old royal residence (and home of Dionysus as sacrificial bull?) southeast of Athens’ civic square or agora, with the sacred marriage of the figurehead “queen” to the god, symbolized by the statue. The king himself may have initially stood in for him to literally consummate his union with the city as “giver of riches.” This attested the integration into Athenian civic order of the god of irrational transgression that had long been kept at its margins. The merriment that went on outside all the while was but a foretaste of that of the Pitcher Feast itself the next day. It owed its name to the wine containers for which the State gave each citizen a fixed sum, as well as for the food of the great banquet it sponsored in the theater of the Lenaeon, though the head priest of Dionysus had to supply tables and seats. An unusual silence was to be observed between partakers in the peculiar “banquet” where people had to bring their own food on this “day of impurity” (miara hemera), due to the evil spirits and wandering souls that then roamed the earth. Still, there was a drinking contest where the king archon would reward with a wine skin, a cake, or a wreath the first person to silently empty a five-liter pitcher of wine at the signal given by a trumpet. Many of these containers have been found; miniature ones were given to children as toys. These choai are also often decorated with pictures of small children playing with toys and

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wreaths of foliage such as those they would especially wear the next day, as human embodiments of springtime renewal. There were also private parties, such as those of the Sophists— late-fifth-century B.C.E. professional philosophers who, on this occasion, received presents and fees for the rhetoric training they offered. When night had fallen, guests would take their pitchers and the wreaths of fresh flowers they had been wearing in the procession to the shrine of Dionysus Eleutheros, where a priestess would take the wreath and the remaining wine was poured as a libation. During the Anthesteria, all shrines except that of the Marsh were encircled with a red rope to preserve their ritual purity from the souls of the dead freed from the underworld on these days. People smeared their own doors with tar and chewed rhamnos—whitethorn leaves (an aphrodisiac)—to keep the dead at bay. The third day was more specifically devoted to the dead, let out of Hades along with its nefarious spirits, the Keres. It was called the “Feast of Pots” or Khitroi after the earthen containers used for offerings to the dead and to the netherworld deity Hermes Chthonios, consisting mainly in panspermia: a hodgepodge of various plant seeds cooked together and also eaten as a meal, since no meat was allowed. The living and the dead thus partook in the same banquet to encourage the powers of the underworld to also give out their riches as abundant crops. To further stimulate the forces of life, there were seasonal games like boxing, a race with torches, drinking contests, or music competitions. Young girls and sometimes children played a game of swings—called aiora. Their movement echoed that of the Athenian maidens who hanged themselves in imitation of Erigone. She had first called the curse of this wave of suicides on her land for as long as her father’s death remained unavenged. Icarius had been killed and buried under a pine tree (like Attis in the myth at the basis of the Spring Festival of Cybele—

which this cult seems to echo) by the shepherds to whom he had given the first trial jarful of a new drink the vine god Dionysus had taught him how to make. Unused to wine, they had thought themselves bewitched when they began to see double, and had turned on him. The story of the hanged girls probably derived from the seasonal appearance of the masks of the long-haired and effeminate Dionysus that were hung on a pine tree in the middle of a vineyard, so the wind would make them look upon all sides of it in turn in blessing. As for the swings also tied to its branches for girls to stand on, they were meant to dispel the mortal curses and bad omens they evoked. They were often placed above lidless jars buried in the ground as the gaping womb of the earth, so humans could capture its fertile power, which they in turn encouraged with their swinging motions. In the latter sense, similar swing games are also part of Holi celebrations around this time of year in India, as well as of several Chinese and Korean festivals. For Athens, the libations and other rites in honor of Icarus and Erigone took place in the village of Icaria on the northern slope of Mount Pentelicus, in a valley that is still called the place of Dionysus today, since this is where the “foreign” god was first welcomed in Attica. The swing game is best known from this region, but is also attested as far away as the Greek colony of Massalia—present-day Marseille in southern France. There were also variants of Anthesteria in other colonies in Asia Minor, often involving the expulsion of evils with a human scapegoat.

City Dionysia It was also Icarius who was said to have introduced in Athens the sacrifice to Dionysus of a goat—the latter being his enemy, since it eats the vine plants, the Roman poet Virgil reasoned. Icarians were the first to dance around the slain beast and compete in hopping on the wine bottle made from goatskin. Dionysian dancers and musicians would come down from

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Icaria for the Greater Dionysia (Megala Dionysia) of Athens, a springtime festival of the flowering vine held in March from the eighth to the fourteenth of the month of Elaphebolion. The sea was then safe enough to allow pilgrims to come from all over Greece—on a scale comparable to the influx for the Panathenaea. Vital like them as an affirmation of civic identity and political awareness, these relatively secularized City Dionysia still opened with a sacrifice for public health to the healing god Asclepios, and the official announcement at the odeon—or music theater—of the contestants in dramatic competitions to be held from the third day to the fifth and last day. In the meantime, there would be processions of the newer gold and ivory statue of Dionysus Eleutheros between the marsh shrine and the theater of Dionysus, with kanêphoroi (as at the Panathenaea) bearing the tributes of allies, as well as sacrificial animals and dancers in animal skins and masks like those from Icaria. When the tyrant Pisistrates refounded the festival (some time between 534 and 531 B.C.E.), the Icarian head performer Thespis first played an articulate human character distinct from the rest of his troupe with its chanting of choral lyrics. Actors are therefore also known as thespians after him, since his innovation marked the birth of tragedy—a Greek word referring to the “song of the goat” which the tragic hero (either masked or chalk-faced—like the ancestral heroic spirits he evoked) replaced as a fictional human scapegoat. The prize for the best tragedy was even a goat (whereas a tripod rewarded the best dithyramb and a basket of figs with a wine amphora went to the best comedy). This is what allowed Aristotle to speak of the cathartic—that is, purifying—effect of watching heroes get torn apart by a tragic fate before dying on stage at the theater of Dionysus. No doubt as part of that collective process of dealing with life’s traumas, the sons of actual heroes who had fallen in battle were paraded in full armor in the theatre prior to the performances.

The plays were shown under the direction of the head priest of Dionysus and organized long in advance by religious and secular officials along with designated private sponsors as part of Dionysian festivals, where poor citizens were given a special subsidy to pay their entrance at the theater. At the Greater Dionysia, three poets wrote, produced, and probably acted in three tragedies on a single theme, also providing comic relief in a satyr-play that handled heroic subject matter in a burlesque fashion (like the only surviving complete example: Euripides’ Cyclops). The latter genre was introduced at this festival shortly after tragedy in the last third of the sixth century B.C.E. in order to deal with some of the original Dionysian content neglected by tragic authors as they treated other material. It was likewise developed from the dithyramb as a dramatic choral hymn to Dionysus by performers dressed as satyrs (goatfooted followers of the god), of which each of the city’s ten tribes provided one chorus for the men’s competition and one for the boys’. The god could just as well be represented by the goat as the animal that was slashed to pieces in his name and in imitation of his own fate as a boy at the hands of the Titans. He had then been revived and later temporarily transformed into a kid or a ram after Zeus’s wife Hera, goddess of marriage, drove his foster father King Athamas mad, and had him kill his own son Learchus when he mistook him for a stag. The Greater Dionysia took place during the deerhunting season, at a time when wine stock stumps looked like budding antlers or horns that needed the blood of the animals they called to mind to grow to maturity. Several elements in the costume of the hypokrites (the actor as “speaker from beneath” the mask—and the play of appearances) recalled the original animal victim he supplanted. The dramatic contests of Athens prompted a widespread demand for the founding of theaters, so Dionysian festivals could be held in this domesticated form in cities scattered across the

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Mediterranean basin. Yet wilder versions kept featuring bloody rites.

Agrionia On the island of Tenedos off the coast of western Anatolia, the victim was a male calf, and its mother was treated as a woman while it gave birth to this incarnation of the god, which was given to wear the same high-platform shoes or cothurni that actors would wear on stage later on. Along with the islands of Chios and Lesbos, Tenedos sacrificed a fawn to Dionysus Omadios—“the Raw-flesh-eater.” Such omophagia (a Greek term for the eating of a sacrificial victim’s raw flesh) also characterized the offering of a kid or a piglet to Dionysus Scyllitas (“the Ripper”) on the island of Cos. Yet it was not known for human sacrifice, as were the other islands just mentioned, along with Crete and Patras, or Potniae near Thebes, where a child was eventually replaced by a goat. The most notorious Dionysian festival of this kind was the Agrionia (from agrios for “wild” or “savage”), best known from its celebration at Orchomenus in Boeotia every other year well into the Common Era. The three daughters of Arcadia’s King Minyas preferred to keep on doing housework rather than join other women in one of them, and, like many other legendary figures who tried to stand in the way of the sacred mania of Dionysian festivals, incurred the god’s wrath in the guise of a fit of his brand of madness, in which one of them ate her own son. This is why it was originally the custom at this festival for the priest of Dionysus to pursue women of the accursed Minyan royal clan at night with a sword and slay any he caught. Similar Agrania were held on the basis of other versions of this story in two major centers of the enthusiastic cult of Dionysus: Argos and his native city of Thebes.

Trieterides These were foremost among the many places in Greece where Trieterides were held in winter

every couple of years. On such occasions, wearing fawn skins and ivy wreaths and waving thyrsoi (ivy-tipped fennel wands bound with vine leaves), female Bacchants would run and dance with torches through the hills at night, shouting “Euoi!” with wild motions in a state of trance induced by the rhythm of flutes and kettledrums, which endowed them with the ability to charm snakes, suckle beasts or tear them to pieces with their bare hands to eat them raw. In Delphi, home of the Panhellenic oracle of Apollo—god of light and order, these devotees of his nocturnal counterpart Dionysus, called Thyiads (“rushing distraught ones”), were joined on the slopes of Mount Parnassus by a delegation of their colleagues from Athens. A sacrifice was offered each winter at his grave near the tripod of Apollo’s oracle at the exact moment when, on the Parnassus, the Thyiads awoke Dionysus Liknites—the “Cradle-child” which their namesake nymphs had been entrusted with there. This echoed his rebirth after having been put to death and laid out in the temple of Apollo, which symbolized the winter death and spring rebirth of vegetation. At the Thyia festival of Elis, women invoked him in the shape of a bull. Various festivals of Dionysus were observed in every corner of the Peloponnese, as in all islands of the Aegean Sea, and in over 150 cities in Asia Minor.

Hellenistic Heyday To the north of Greece, Thrace and Macedonia were hotbeds of the cult of Dionysus, and Alexander’s conquests favored its spread (sometimes as a compulsory state religion) from there to all of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, where it melded with many local fertility and mystery cults. From the second third of the fourth century B.C.E., Alexander and his descendants grounded their divine kingship in their frequent claim to be a “New Dionysus”—that is, a violent, invincible god of insatiable appetites, whose conquest of the known world up to India dovetailed with

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the evangelistic zeal of the thyasi—religious societies that were open to all devotees of Dionysus regardless of gender, class, or ethnic background. For the ecstasy he brought was also a liberation from the strictures of social order for those otherwise confined to the bottom of the ladder, such as women and slaves. In an increasingly cosmopolitan and urban setting where uprooted groups of foreigners and freed slaves contributed to a demand for social moorings that traditional local allegiances could no longer provide, voluntary associations in view of personal salvation through transgressive experiences provided an answer to a widespread spiritual malaise. This revolutionary power could now be harnessed and channeled through Dionysian festivals by charismatic leaders for their empire-building purposes, rather than remain in latent conflict with the rigid rationality of ancient republics. In these Hellenistic kingdoms, the frenzied whirling and tossing around of ecstatic maenads and thyiads could now move from the margins of civic life to center stage on public squares. In the port of Miletus in Asia Minor, according to an inscription from 276 B.C.E., private and public thyasi existed side by side, their clergy and functions were largely interchangeable, and the priestess performed rites such as omophagia on behalf of the city—leaving a mouthful of raw meat in a sacred basket to symbolize the older human sacrifice. This official status as part of civic life was remarkable for a secret cult of personal initiation into orgiastic mysteries. In the Hellenistic era, theaters became central institutions as they spread apace with the popularity of Dionysia. It was there that, during these festivals, the public benefactors (evergetes) who helped put them on were honored. The Dionysian space of the theater could even replace the public forum of the agora for political assemblies, like the ones held regularly in the theater of Megalopolis by the cities of Arcadia. Many cities that held Dionysian festivals had their own actors’ guilds,

which also traveled to other cities to offer their services for the local versions of these theatrical events. This allowed Greek literature to provide common points of reference for all the countries that were hellenized as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great. In this way, the Dionysia were instrumental in laying the foundations of Western culture in the ancient world.

Bacchanalia and Backlash And yet the backlash they provoked in Rome probably slowed their expansion for a couple of centuries. Known there under the name of Bacchus (meaning “bough”) used mostly by tragic poets at the theater, Dionysus was like a Greek import—though he borrowed some traits of his more sedate local counterpart Liber Pater. His cult came to Rome from both the Greek colonies of southern Italy and the neighboring areas of Campania and Etruria. Until about 200 B.C.E., following the tradition of Boeotian Trieterides, the Roman Bacchanalia were celebrated in broad daylight three times a year with only respectable matrons as priestesses. Then a priestess of Campanian background, Paculla Annia, secretly changed the rites to hold them at night up to five times a month and admit men, with a twenty-year age limit for initiation. Ten days of sexual abstinence closed by a meal and a purifying bath preceded clandestine meetings and orgies involving collective delirium with wild contortions, loud cries, entranced prophecy, mad races to the Tiber River to plunge torches in it (though they remained miraculously lit), and taking initiates into caves in imitation of the descent of Dionysus into Hades to take Semele back to life. These practices are well known from the Dionysian festivals of Asia Minor, but there is no proof they also included human sacrifice as Roman prosecutors alleged. They created a scandal upon their chance discovery in 186 B.C.E. and were seen by authorities as highly subversive of the stability and security of the Republic, threatening the unity of the citizenry along with its austere public morality.

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The repression was swift and brutal throughout Italy, with 7,000 initiates facing execution— such a vast number that only active participants in secret rituals were actually put to death and the others were put in jail. There were uprisings in certain rural areas, and the Bacchanalia partly went underground, while their public manifestations were strictly limited and severely regulated. This campaign provided a model for the later persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, once it had taken over the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Near East and the cult of Dionysus was resurfacing everywhere—from the underclass to the Emperor as “New Dionysus” on the model of Alexander—as one of a number of Oriental religions competing to quench the spiritual thirst and address the social unrest of Mediterranean peoples in late antiquity. Having developed a rich theology of the wine-press in which the god was torn to pieces and yielded his blood as wine for humans to partake in his immortal life, it was the last of these new religions to give way before triumphant Christianity, which borrowed some of its symbolism. It also survived several centuries in covert forms, especially in wine-growing areas from Germany to Algeria. Traces of it abound in European folklore, be it on the Feast of Saint Vincent as patron of the vintage on January 22 (on the Lenaea) or above all during Carnival with its unleashing of carnal instincts and suspension of social order in the shadow of death (around the Anthesteria).

Dionysian Survivals in Modern Greece Northern Greek Carnival folklore is particularly rich in Dionysian survivals. Many villages of the east and north of Thrace have bawdy processions and plays by mummers called Kalogheroi (or Kukeri across the border in Bulgaria) who dress like wild men in animal skins, carry a phallic rod, and sometimes act out a premature birth like that of Dionysus Liknites. Another offshoot of the ancient cult of the god

Dionysus is still to be found in the same areas of Greece on the May 21 feast of Saints Constantine and Helena—favorite patrons of countless churches. Throughout the country, processions and folk dancing honor them on this occasion, and rams or bulls are often sacrificed to obtain their favor, before a feast that ends in games and dances. In the north, though, a number of small communities have strayed far enough from orthodoxy in celebrating pre-Christian rituals under the cover of venerating Constantine and Helena that they have been excommunicated by ecclesiastical authorities. They still follow annual firewalking dance ceremonies called Anastenaria that now attract a steady flow of tourists, and which clearly owe more to Dionysius than they do to Christ. They originated in eastern Thrace, a former center of the orgiastic cult of this god in present-day Bulgaria, from which the populations exchanged with Greece after the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century spread it to their areas of resettlement in the Greek portion of Macedonia, another ancient Dionysian center. Prior to this, the most perfect form of the Anastenaria rites was to be found in the small Thracian village of Kosti, where the icons of Constantine and Helena (a son and mother like Dionysus and Semele—who perished by fire) were rescued from a burning church in the Middle Ages. This gave rise to the practice of dancing with these icons on burning coals, that may now be witnessed chiefly in the village of Aghia Eleni (Saint Helena) near Serres, and in the nearby ones of Meliki-of-Verres, Mavrolefki-of-Drama, and Langada-of-Salonica. Yet such pyrobasia was already associated in ancient times with the cult of Dionysus, while its brotherhoods of trance specialists are also replicated in that of modern-day Anastenarides— from anastenazo: “to sigh,” as they do with short, loud gasps when they lead the increasingly rapid dance around the fire with the icons. During the three to eight days of the festival, the portable icons of Saints Constantine and Helena danc-

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ing together are kept in the meeting hall of the brotherhood, where the sacred drum, flute, bagpipe, and one-stringed fiddle are permanently stored, along with the sacred axe, knife, and chopping block used to kill the sacred bull. As at any Dionysian ritual, wine and spirits flow, helping people to work themselves into a trance, so that some can walk barefoot or in their socks on the burning embers of the fire, and even trample them for several minutes at a time, while holding up the icon. It is the icon that summons those who are clean to walk on the fire and remain unhurt. A dancer who has been chosen in this way may then become possessed by the spirit of Emperor Constantine (as a “New Dionysius”?), and after some inarticulate cries, start shouting: “Make your vows to the Saint!” and “Restore justice, lest the Saint destroy you!” The villagers obey these commands by pledging gifts to the church and by trying to recall any offense they might have given to another, so as to try and make up for it. Thus, the firewalking ceremony of the Anastenaria functions as a kind of group therapy where people sort out their relational problems and, like ancient priestesses of Dionysius, women can exceptionally assume a position of authority as channels for this healing spirit. If they are called to walk on the fire, they too can become Anastenarides, and get to ask the icon of Constantine to forecast the future by talking through them (as Dionysus used to do at Thracian oracles). The new Anastenarides who are inducted in this ordeal by fire can henceforth hang a lantern at their front door to show that they belong to the chosen few. The dancing of the Anastenarides goes on well into the night as they leave the square and, preceded by the musicians with their drums and flutes, take the saints’ icon on the mountain roads in a torch-lit procession to visit its “brothers,” the icons of Constantine and Helena in other villages. Following an all-night service in honor of Saints Constantine and Helena at the church, the priest blesses the sacred bull and other ani-

mal victims the next morning. The Head Anastenaris then waves the saints’ icon over the head of the bull in the sign of the Cross before slaughtering the beast in such a way that its blood splashes onto the church’s foundations. The raw meat is shared among the villagers, while the leather is cut into strips that will be made into sandals, each household getting a new pair every year. Except for the sacrifice, the same routine is followed every day of the feast’s octave over the following week. But on the feast itself, as in the most archaic dithyrambs of Dionysus, omophagia comes at the climax of his sacrifice as a bull following manic dances and mystic trances. See also Argei; Carnival; Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan); Days of the Dead (West); Dragon Boat Festival; Eleusinian Mysteries; Games (Greece); Games (Rome); Holi; Liberalia; Midautumn; New Year (China, Korea); Panathenaea; Saturnalia; Thaipusam; Thargelia; Whitsuntide; Yom Kippur References J. K. Cowan. Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Lewis Richard Farnell. The Cults of the Greek States. Vol. V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. Martin Persson Nilsson. The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age. New York: Arno Press, 1975. Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge. The Dramatic Festivals of Athens. Revised 2nd Ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

◗ DIVALI (HINDUISM, JAINISM, SIKHISM) The word Divali is a common contraction of Deepawali, from Sanskrit awali for “string, line” and deepa for small earthenware oil lamps. The latter are placed in rows in front of temples and houses and set adrift on streams and rivers on what is one of the year’s major festivals for Hindus as well as for Jains and Sikhs all over the

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An Indian girl lights a deepa oil lamp on the eve of Divali, the Hindu festival of lights, when Hindus in India and around the world light lamps in their homes to symbolize the victory of good over evil. (Reuters/Corbis)

world. The lights commemorate the return of Rama, whom Hindus see as the seventh incarnation of the god Vishnu (the Preserver in the Hindu triad), to Ayodhya, to be enthroned after fourteen years of exile in Sri Lanka. A number of different religious observances are featured in turn over the five days of Divali, which occurs in late October or early November, from the thirteenth day of the dark half of the Hindu month of Ashvina to the second day of the light half (from new to full moon) of the month of Karttika. The festival has special significance for the Vaishya caste of merchants be-

cause it also honors Vishnu’s wife Lakshmi, goddess of wealth.

First Day: Dhanteras Divali celebrations are ushered in by Dhantrayodashi, from dhan for wealth and trayodashi for the “thirteenth day” of Ashvina. More commonly known as the festival of Dhanteras, this is a day when people clean their houses and draw elaborate rangoli designs on the floor with powders of different colors. New utensils are also bought, as well as crackers, candles, toyshaped candies, and small idols of Ganesha and

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Lakshmi for the evening service or puja in honor of the goddess of wealth, marking the official start of Divali with the lighting of new diyas (the modern word for deepa lamps). The markets selling the prescribed items are brightly decorated, while, at home, women prepare pungent or sweet seasonal foods. All this is meant to invite the goddess into the house for the duration of Divali. This day also marks the triumphant return of Rama to the capital of his ideal kingdom Ayodhya—long identified as a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh that has been the focus of bitter Muslim-Hindu strife ever since Rama’s shrine was replaced by Babur’s Mosque under this Moghul ruler in 1528. Hindus believe that Rama had previously rescued his wife Sita from the demon Ravana’s kingdom of Lanka and defeated it with the help of his brother Lakshman and Hanuman’s army of monkeys. They celebrate this victory of good over evil every year with fireworks, the bursting of crackers, and the lighting of lamps all over their houses. Practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine joyfully celebrate this day as the one when its patron deity Dhanvantari first emerged from the churning of the primordial ocean with a container of the amrita drink of immortality. In southern India, the common observance of this day has been absorbed by the celebrations of the next, which now include consuming a preparation of dry ginger and jaggery (unrefined sugar) after that morning’s special prebath massage with oil, flour, and turmeric. This concoction used to be offered to Dhanvantari on his birthday. There is also a tradition of praying to Yama, Lord of Death, on this day to win his favors for long life. For it was on a thirteenth of Ashvina that Yama’s servant once asked him to be spared from taking mortals away in the bloom of life, and he decreed that from that day on, anyone who observed the five-day festival of light would not die an untimely death. The Nepalese equivalent of Divali, Tihar, is therefore also known as Panchak Yama, the

“Five Days of Yama.” His messenger is worshipped on the first of them as Kag Bali, the “Day of the Crow,” when people set out offerings in dishes of sewn leaves to appease this bird of ill omen. Among the Tamils of southern India, Divali lights are supposed to guide the spirits of the dead who return to earth during this festival back to the realm of Yama.

Second Day: Narak Chaturdashi The second day of Tihar is Swan or Sho Puja, when every dog in Nepal is worshipped as the guardian of hell’s gates and is thus in a position to ease the soul’s passage on its way to judgment by Yama. Children are warned to deal kindly with dogs, for though they are usually treated with disdain as scavengers, each one is now fed like a king for a day, garlanded with flowers, and decorated with a red tika mark of blessing on its forehead. In most of India, this is the “Small Divali” or Chhoti Diwali. The eve of Divali proper is actually called Narak Chaturdashi—after the Sanskrit word for the “fourteenth day” and narak for “hell” and refers to the demonic, powerhungry king of Prag-Jyotishpur whom Krishna’s wife Satyabhama killed on this day, when fasting paves the way to heaven. Satyabhama represents the role of women in the struggle against evil, having liberated Narak’s 16,000 woman prisoners, who expressed their joy by lighting lamps and drawing rangoli in their homes. All Hindus celebrate the joyous entry of the rightful king by doing the same after an early bath. In Bengal, where it is known as Kali Chaudas, this day is allotted to the worship of the great goddess Kali, as the aspect of spiritual power that is used for God’s work.

Third Day: Lakshmi Puja The next day is that of the new moon (amavashya) of Ashvina. In Nepal, it begins with Goru Puja: morning worship of the sacred

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cow as the visible form of the goddess of wealth Lakshmi, who is often replaced by money in offerings to priests, so that the three are actually interchangeable. People then take off the protective thread that friends or sisters (in the case of men) had put on their wrists on Rakhi Bandhan, which occurs on the full moon of Shravana (July–August), to tie it around the tail of a sacred cow as they pray to Goddess Lakshmi’s animal to assist their souls to heaven when the hour of death comes. At midnight on this day when it is believed Vishnu’s fifth avatar Vamana defeated King Bali, who had taken over the world and enslaved Lakshmi, she herself makes her annual round of inspection of the entire globe. But she only visits those homes that have prepared for her visit by cleaning and decorating every corner, throwing open all windows and doors, and laying a path for her with diyas from the road to the front entrance and with rangolis from there to the treasure box, so she can protect the household’s wealth. She is even asked to increase the extra nest egg that is placed in the box as part of the worship of her flower-decked image (which a gold or silver coin may stand for) in front of it. During Lakshmi Puja, shopkeepers and merchants also worship their merchandise and their account books, closing the old ones and opening new ones afterwards to pray for renewed success.

Fourth Day: Navu Varsh The fourth day (Divali proper) ushers in the New Year of the Vikram calendar. It is called Navu Varsh. As in other New Year customs in East and West, illuminations and fireworks signify the victory of divine forces over those of wickedness, as people make New Year resolutions, visit each other, exchange gifts, feast, and wear new clothes to the temple. There, they greet relatives and acquaintances at the service, if they do not give their wishes for happiness, health, and prosperity over the coming year by

phone or e-mail or on colorful Divali greeting cards. Amid general rejoicing, villagers in Himachal Pradesh forget all grudges and embrace in the streets, having often run through them with torches and sparklers and gathered around a bonfire—to dance and sing satirical songs. There, they may do the same exactly a month later over the three days of Buri Diali—or Hill Divali. In the Buddhist Lahaula tribe’s version of this Himalayan variant of the Hindu Festival of Lights, held on the full moon of Magha toward February, villagers instead have a lucky snowball fight around their bonfire on what is called there Sad-halda (“Searchlight of the Gods”). Across the border in Nepal, women and children carol from door to door on the night of the third day, and men do the same on the night of the fourth day. In the morning, bulls are worshiped as were cows the day before, to ensure their health and safety over the year. It is then that devotees of Krishna everywhere celebrate Gobhardan Puja to recall how, as a child cowherd, the incarnate supreme Godhead lifted Gobhardan Hill on his little finger and told his people to take their cattle and find shelter under this giant umbrella when the lesser god Indra tried to drown them with massive rainfall. He had been trying to teach them a lesson because they had refrained from making him their usual offerings for rain, following Krishna’s instructions to worship him instead in the guise of the holy hill, as the ultimate source of all bounty—a point that was not lost on Indra, who eventually relented and repented before Krishna. Pilgrims now circumambulate Gobhardan Hill on this occasion, while Krishna’s devotees around the world do the same in their temples using a small-scale model embellished with sacred scenes and surrounded by (and largely made from) sweets they will share out in the ensuing festive meal. Nepalese women fashion the sacred mountain and the god lying on it out of cow dung before their men file before it to pay their

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respects—much as they also do before ordinary dung heaps, since this precious fertilizer and fuel also purifies the home. That night, household utensils, gardening tools, and farming implements are also blessed during the ancient and purifying household rites of Mha Puja—“Worship of One’s Person” as divine—along with all other beings and objects ultimately. More specifically, Yama and his messenger Yamadut are thanked for allowing life to be and asked to grant every family member as much of it as possible. This calls for the father to draw a row of mandalas (mystical geometric designs) on the floor—one for each member and for both deities. Everyone sits in his or her mandala and has a long ceremony performed by another family member in a specific order. This ceremony involves heaps of grains and foods (annakoot) that are also used in India on this merchants’ New Year to convey affluence and freedom from debt, before feeding the poor on a large scale. In Nepal, the traditional New Year of the Newars (who consistute a majority of the population) goes back to this date in 880 C.E., when it is said that a man who had come by heaps of magical sand that had turned to gold came to the king of Kathmandu with an offer to pay every debt in the land if a new calendar era was started. In India, when the deposed universal ruler Bali was made king of the lower regions, Vamana promised him that he would be remembered on the first Pratipada of Karttika. On this auspicious first day of the New Year, people thus take the name of Bali, worship his picture along with that of his wife Vindhyavati, and wave lamps before his idol as they sing: “Let suffering go and let Bali’s kingdom come.” By this is meant his happy earthly kingdom, which gods thought would make men less mindful of them. This is reminiscent of end-ofyear Saturnalia in the West, which also bring back the freedom and abundance of Saturn’s golden age kingdom before Jupiter overthrew him and took his place as king of the gods.

Fifth Day: Bhai Bij The fifth and last day of Divali, Bhai Bij, also called Bhai Tika, is the Feast of the Brother, also called Bhratri Dwitiya (“Brother’s Second Day”) and Yama Dwitiya (or the “second day of Yama”), because on this day Yama went to visit his sister Yami, and they waved a lamp to each other as a sign of mutual love and respect. Likewise on Bhai Bij, sisters wave a lamp to their brothers, and brothers offer gifts to their sisters. In addition, married sisters invite their brothers for meals and wish them a long life as well as health, prosperity, and happiness over the coming year. Similar rites for brothers’ longevity are observed around the same time of year—on the fifth of Shravana (around August) with the tying of an amulet or red thread around a brother’s wrist. In southern India, these are known as Garuda Panchami and, in the north as Raksha Bandhan. The rites ensure the brother will long be able to perform the ancestor-worship rites needed to keep parents out of hell on their death anniversary, the new moon, and during Pitripaksha. In Nepal, it is so important for every man and boy to get this blessing at the close of Divali that, when one is without a sister, a close female relative or friend is asked to give it instead, in a ceremony similar to the previous day’s Mha Puja, with the man sitting in his mandala. The king of Nepal thus receives a yellow tika mark of blessing from his sisters, while a thirty-one gun salute echoes through the Valley of Kathmandu. Throughout his realm, a lunchtime feast soon follows, and the rest of the day is spent in family gambling games.

Holiday Activities Normally proscribed, gambling was legal in Nepal before 1940 during the five days of Tihar, because it is thought to please Goddess Lakshmi, especially when cowrie shells—her favorite plaything and an ancient currency— are used. On the other hand, she forbids all

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other transactions such as loans and commerce at the risk of being reborn as a mole. Gambling is encouraged in India, too, on Divali, but there it is in remembrance of Shiva and Parvati playing dice at their seat on Mount Kailash. Either way, such games of chance are— as often elsewhere—a New Year custom aimed at attracting good fortune. There is plenty of time to play them over the two-to-five day period that government offices, schools, and many businesses remain closed for Divali. About 50 percent Indian, the Pacific archipelago of Fiji also has Divali as a public holiday. In South Africa, several Hindu organizations have recently called for Divali to be declared one there too, since many of the country’s one million Hindus still risk their job if they miss work to observe the feast.

Divali’s Meaning to Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs Beyond the original need to chase the evil spirits of darkness out of the home while the moon is obscured at the end of a year, the deeper meaning of the Hindu Festival of Lights is that hearts need to be enlightened with goodwill in view of peaceful coexistence with all creatures. Such enlightenment depends on one’s ability to become open to the light of knowledge, which alone can dispel spiritual ignorance. Similarly, among Jains, the lighting of the lamps on Divali is explained as a material substitute for the light of sacred knowledge that passed away with Jainism’s founder Mahavira on this day in 527 B.C.E. in Pava, Bihar. Crowds of followers of this religion now appropriately go to Pava on pilgrimage on Divali, the special holiday of their merchant caste, which closes the Jain ritual year. Also well represented among traders, Sikhs likewise incorporated this ancient Hindu festival in their own calendar in the midsixteenth century after their third Guru Amar Das asked them to gather at the seat of the gurus (then

Goindval, Punjab) on both Vaisakhi and Divali. To commemorate the return to Amritsar of the sixth Guru Hargobind from captivity in Gwalior on Divali in 1619, the great early apostle of Sikhism Baba Buddha established the practice of illuminating its holy city on that festival. All Sikh homes and temples around the world are then also made bright with the lights of the season. See also Navaratra and Dusshera; New Year (China, Korea), New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Saturnalia; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References Divali Lights: Enchanting Stories and Songs Celebrating the Festival of Lights. (Video; five short films of ten minutes each.) London: BBC, 1994. Anita Ganeri. Celebrations: Divali. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books—Library Divion, 2001. James Laidlaw. Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society Among the Jains. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Mian Goverdhan Singh. Festivals, Fairs, and Customs of Himachal Pradesh. New Edition. New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, 1992.

◗ DJUNGGAWON See Kunapipi

◗ DODECAHEMERON See Christmas

◗ DOG DAYS See Assumption

◗ DOLA PURNIMA, DOLAYATRA See Holi

◗ DOLL FESTIVAL See Sekku

◗ DOMINION DAY See Midsummer, Powwow

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◗ DONG ZHI (CHINA) The twenty-second of the twenty-four periods of China’s moon-based agricultural calendar is called Dong Zhi, after the day of the winter solstice. As in many other cultures in the Northern Hemisphere, this turning point of the year is marked by family reunions around festive meals of seasonal dishes, as a contrast to the cold.

An Old-Time Winter Family Gathering This used to be a time when Chinese peasants were struggling against the frost, and many people would even freeze to death near the time of the year’s longest night. So the day of Dong Zhi became an occasion for families to gather indoors and enjoy a seasonal meal of glutinous flour balls called tuan yuan, that symbolized harmony (the word yuan meaning “round” or “complete,” while tuan means “gathering”). Both Dong Zhi and New Year celebrations have been national festivals in China since the second century B.C.E. In those ancient times, the festive atmosphere of Dong Zhi was just like that of the New Year a few weeks later, with mutual visits, offerings of incense at daybreak, and businesses closing for the day in some places.

Honoring a Cook’s Contribution Nowadays, certain foods are still associated with Dong Zhi by people in southern China on the basis of the story they like to tell about an imperial visit to the construction site of a new sacrificial terrace. Impressed by the fine craftsmanship it displayed, the monarch conferred the title of “master” on the foreman. The head of the carpenters then raised his voice to claim the credit for the special woodwork, and the emperor agreed to give carpenters too the title of “masters.” However, the masons then protested that they also deserved it, and then the blacksmiths, the tinsmiths, the goldsmiths, and so on. Seeing this, the generous sovereign

decided to give all artisans the title of “masters.” When they heard what was happening, the cooks ran to join the workers and be recognized as masters too, but the others protested that their new title would not be worth much if it was given for such an unskilled job. So that they would be better appreciated, the insulted cooks went on strike, leaving the craftsmen to prepare their own meals. Only then did they come to realize that all they could do was mill about helplessly around the supply of uncooked grain. Alerted to the new development among his workforce, the emperor pointed out to the craftsmen that if with all their skill they were incapable of preparing a simple meal, then cooking must be a special skill after all. Feeling the pangs of hunger already, they were quick to agree. But by then, the head cook was no longer content with being just a master like all the others; arguing that, masters though they were, the latter had no clue about preparing food, and she claimed a title superior to theirs. So she obtained a special distinction above the rest. To prove her worth, she then started to cook tuan yuan, won ton, dumplings, and red bean porridge for the whole crew’s Dong Zhi party the next day. This menu has remained the standard fare at southern Chinese people’s Dong Zhi dinner ever since. See also New Year (China, Korea); New Year (West) References Goh Pei Ki. Origins of Chinese Festivals. Singapore: Asiapac Books, 1997. Qi Xing. Folk Customs at Traditional Chinese Festivities. Tr. Ren Jiazhen. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1988.

◗ DORMITION OF THE MOTHER OF GOD See Assumption

◗ DOUBLE FIVE See Dragon Boat Festival

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◗ DOUBLE NINE (CHINA, KOREA) The festival of Chong Yang is called thus on account of the doubly auspicious yang quality of the ninth day of the ninth month, also called Chongjiu, meaning Double Nine. This autumn festival is meant to cultivate good health through such activities as hill climbing, carrying dogwood, gazing at displays of chrysanthemums, and drinking them in infusion.

Averting Pestilence Double Nine’s customs go back to the later Han Dynasty (25–220 C.E.) according to the chronicler Wu Jun. It was at that time that a certain Huan Jing was told by his Taoist spiritual master Fei Zhangfang that on the ninth of the ninth, the God of Plague of Ru River would come out to devastate his native Runan. To escape fatal illness, the villagers were each supposed to carry a little red gauze bag of dogwood attached to their arms and should all take refuge in the mountains to drink chrysanthemum wine until the ominous day was over. They followed the wise man’s instructions as transmitted by Huan Jing and were very glad they did. When they came back down to their village, they found their poultry, pigs, and dogs all dead from pestilence. This was the result of autumnal decay, which is said to occur when the wet yin principle begins to overtake the dry yang principle after the latter’s yearly apogee. However, this seasonal hazard is considerably less of a threat on heights, away from human habitation. In addition, dogwood leaves can cure cholera, while dogwood roots repel insects that carry disease. As for the chrysanthemums that blossom that late in the year, drinking their essence in a wine infusion lowers tension, prevents dizziness, and improves eyesight. Koreans also eat chrysanthemum leaves in pancakes in their version of this festival, which they call Junggu.

Chrysanthemum Gazing While Koreans go picnicking in green valleys, these benefits give the Chinese good reasons to climb hills and drink wine while gazing at a scenery filled with chrysanthemums in bloom. There, they also compose verses in praise of the chrysanthemum—a favorite Double Nine custom, dear to emperors and poets from the time of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.). Under the Ch’ing Dynasty (1644–1912), there were even special chrysanthemum exhibitions around this date every three, five, or ten years, though the major ones came at the turn of every sixty-year cycle. Such chrysanthemum festivals are still popular in certain parts of China on Double Nine, especially in the south, as in Yunnan Province for instance. It remains as ever a fine time to chase away the diseases and depressions of the fall season in the fresh air and fair colors of temperate weather under clear skies. See also Chiao; Dragon Boat Festival; Midsummer; Sekku References Goh Pei Ki. Origins of Chinese Festivals. Singapore: Asiapac Books, 1997. Qi Xing. Folk Customs at Traditional Chinese Festivities. Tr. Ren Jiazhen. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1988.

◗ DOUBLE SEVEN (CHINA, KOREA, JAPAN) See Cowherd and Weaving Maid

◗ DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL (CHINA, KOREA) The Festival of the Fifth Moon takes place on the fifth day of that month in the Chinese calendar, toward the summer solstice. It is known as the Dragon Boat Festival after the dragonshaped rowboats competing in regattas in Chinese communities and beyond—both as an invocation for rain and in memory of the na-

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tional poet-hero Chu Yuan. In Chinese, the Festival of Dragon Boats is called Duanwu or Duanyang (Double Five or Upright Sun—a reference to the summer solstice). The same festival is known as Dano in Korea, where it used to mark the end of the sowing season. On this peasants’ holiday that now only survives in a few areas of the Korean countryside, women used to wash their hair in a boiled iris concoction to drive away bad luck. They would also play on a swing while the men wrestled in the traditional sireum style. But in China’s lunar calendar, this festival remains prominent as one of Three for the Living (as opposed to Three for the Dead), the other two being the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Like them, it is also known simply as the Summer Festival, after the season when it occurs.

Invoking the Dragon for Summer Rain The festival goes back to ancient tribal sacrifices designed to win the Dragon’s favors so that it would rain properly. In some places, if it happened to rain on this day, the water would be collected as a blessing from the Celestial Dragon, to protect the community from disaster and disease. Even today, a Taoist or Buddhist monk awakens the Dragon and makes it present by lighting incense, firecrackers, and spirit money, before painting its eyes on the famous dragon boats that gave the festival its current name. Having spent the winter in storage, these boats are now ready to be used not just on the fifth day of the fifth month, but over half a year of competitions at sporting events also called dragon boat festivals. The shouting and bustle of the Dragon Boat Festival proper is meant to scare away the evil spirits that are believed to haunt the river and cause epidemics. This practice, first recorded in the Wu-Yue region, eventually spread all around China.

Exorcising the Evil Month In earlier times, the entire fifth month was deemed the “Evil Month” because of the hot, muggy weather that favored the spread of infectious diseases and harmful insects. In contrast to the West, where Midsummer bonfires emulate the peak of the sun’s power, in the East, this fiery, active yang energy at its apex around the summer solstice was not to be added to and driven to burning excess by human activities of the same polarity. These included visible fires, the preparation of charcoal and metal, and the handling of weapons to business and government, which therefore used to shut down. On the other hand, wells were dredged so their waters would be renewed and purified (also a concern of Western Midsummer customs), thereby strengthening yin energy at this vulnerable time. To expel the gods of plague that then took this opportunity to act up as a disruptive form of unbalanced yin, people used to hang peachwood or yellow paper strips bearing incantations and the images of animal-shaped deities. On the fifth of the month, along with these strips, many shops in Beijing would sell images of the “Great Demon-Expelling General” Zhong Kui, a scholar who had been turned down at imperial examinations on account of his ugliness, had committed suicide, and devoted his after-life to slaying the demons tormenting the living. This is how he was bestowed his title by the eighth-century Emperor Ming Huang, when the emperor recovered from a high fever after seeing Zhong Kui in a dream. On the basis of the monarch’s description, the image of Zhong Kui was designed and spread through the realm, as in a version showing him eating the “five ghosts.” People would likewise eat cakes made in the shapes of the “five poisonous creatures” (all associated with an excess of watery yin energy): scorpion, viper, centipede, lizard, and spider, which old women might also cut out of red paper, along with a tiger to imprison all these harmful creatures in-

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side a gourd. On the other hand, girls wore a “fragrant pouch” made from bits of cloth held together by threads of colored silk. These customs mostly survive in the form of certain local handicrafts. But while mugwort and calamus leaves, along with pungent vegetables like garlic, onions and old cabbages, are still sometimes hung in doorways to avert plagues, the burning of realgar (producing a foul-smelling yellow smoke) to drive away insects, and the use of realgar wine as a drink for health, as an exorcism on male children, and as an offering to the ancestors (along with wheat and fish), have all but disappeared.

Remembering the Virtues of Drowned Worthies Rationalist historical explanations have long been given to account for many of the festival’s colorful practices. Dragon boat races—called Par Lung Chow in Chinese—are now supposed to commemorate the people’s attempts to recover the body of the great poet Chu Yuan (340–278 B.C.E.), though he only began getting connected to this particular day in the second century. Chu Yuan was a councilor of King Huai who reigned from 328 to 296 B.C.E. over Chu, the largest of the Warring States after which this troubled period of Chinese history is known. Though renowned for his wisdom and loyalty, Chu Yuan was exiled from the capital city of Ying due to court intrigues. When he learned of its fall to the rival state of Chin, which wiped out the dynasty, absorbed the kingdom, and scattered its people, he could not bear to survive the ruin of all he had devoted his life to; so he jumped into the Miluo River with rocks in his sleeves. Fishermen raced in their boats to look for his body, sounding drums all the while in order to scare away the fish and other creatures that would otherwise eat it. Someone also had the idea of throwing rice into the water, so that beasts and spirits would go for it rather than defile the beloved statesman’s mortal remains.

Though the search for the body was unsuccessful, it was reenacted out of respect every year from then on. An important addition was made two hundred years later. Under the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 C.E.), a certain U Hui met a ghostly civil servant who told him to thank mortals for all their offerings, even though they all went to feed the Water Dragon dwelling at the bottom of the river and causing it to overflow its banks. To prevent this, he suggested that rice be wrapped inside leaves with multicolored threads; this way the Dragon would find them unpalatable and leave some for him. This is how preparing and eating dumplings called zhung (cooked sweet rice wrapped in bamboo leaves) became widespread as a way of honoring Chu Yuan on Duanwu. Another way to call back his soul was to hang absinthe leaves and iris flowers on doors. But it is also on that day of the year that, around the same historical period, the mandarin Cao Ding, charmed by the sound of the waves by the river’s edge, was carried away by a surging wave when the water spirit chose him as confidant. His daughter Cao-e waited seven days and seven nights by the shore for the body to reappear. By then, she was so distraught that she jumped in the river so as to at least be able to join her father. Their bodies were found together three days later, and Cao-e’s filial piety has been remembered ever since by putting her effigy on dragon boats.

Dragon Boat Races The origins of the dragon boats used today can be traced back twenty-four hundred years, though their festive use in races on the current date did not become widespread until the Tang Dynasty (618–907), and even then, mostly in southern China, where they remain most popular to this day. Less than four feet wide, dragon boats can vary in length from ten to thirtyseven meters, with twenty to a hundred paddlers per boat. The prow is shaped like a dragon’s head and the stern like its tail.

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Dragon boats are still used in less competitive, more ceremonial versions of the festival by some ethnic groups such as the Hei Miao of central and southern Guizhou Province, who hold their version on the twenty-fourth instead of the fifth day of the fifth month like the majority Han Chinese. Each Hei Miao village along the Qingshui River is represented by a boat carved from three great tree trunks with a splendid dragon’s head at its prow. Streamers and banners made of red cloth hang from its horns and maw, and offerings of live ducks and geese for the costumed oarsmen are suspended from its neck at every village where the boat stops on its stately journey, which draws over a thousand spectators on both sides of the river. In its traditional Han version, the dragon boat is made of teak and can weigh close to six hundred kilograms. The crew includes a helmsman, twenty or twenty-two oarsmen sitting two abreast, often a flag catcher with someone standing up to scan the waters for Chu Yuan’s body, and at least one drummer, sometimes with gong players too, to beat out a paddling rhythm that can reach between eighty and a hundred strokes per minute. These long war canoes race two by two over a 640-meter stretch, taking less than three minutes to cross, until a winning team is chosen by elimination. The races are still rowdy, but in the past people would even throw stones at unpopular boats, and it used to be considered good luck if a boat capsized, and somebody drowned. Such regattas are traditionally held in countless Chinese villages, as well as wherever there are sizeable Chinese communities. Since the late twentieth century, they have even spread beyond them as a fast-growing sport practiced by hundreds of thousands of people of all backgrounds, from Southeast Asia to Northern Europe, on such occasions as the International Dragon Boat Race Festivals held between May and October in dozens of North American cities and towns, with student, business, ethnic and charity teams in men’s and women’s cate-

gories. They are supposed to be introduced as a demonstration sport at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Teams already come from all over the world to compete in the International Dragon Boat Championships of Hong Kong or Taipei on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. But at nightfall, the living leave the river to the dead, as they launch paper lanterns that stand for the wandering spirits of the Buddhist Purgatory, floating downstream to the Pacific Ocean, to rest in peace there. See also Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan); Dionysia; Double Nine; Holi; Midautumn; Midsummer; New Year (China, Korea), New Year (West); Sekku; Spring Dragon; WaterSplashing Festival References Anthony F. Aveni. The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pat Barker. Dragon Boats: A Celebration. New York: Weatherhill Books, 1996. International Dragon Boat Federation: www.dragonboat.org.uk. Marie-Luise Latsch. Traditional Chinese Festivals. Singapore: Graham Brash, 1985.

◗ DREAMS (FESTIVAL OF) See Midwinter

◗ DUANWU, DUANYANG See Dragon Boat Festival

◗ DUMB WEEK See Palm Sunday

◗ DURBAR See Adae

◗ DURGA PUJA See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ DZAWUWU See New Yam Festival

E ◗ EASTER (CHRISTIANITY) Whether in terms of nature or spirit, Easter is a celebration of the victory of new life over death. For while its folklore perpetuates many pagan rites of springtime renewal, Easter (called Pascha in Greek and Latin) is the center of the Christian calendar as its oldest annual festival, celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, believed to have taken place on the third day after his Crucifixion, some time in the third decade of the Common Era. A number of moveable feasts of the church calendar are set in relation to the date of Easter, which varies from year to year as well as between the Western and Eastern Churches.

The Feast of the Resurrection of Christ In the West, Easter does not enjoy quite the central place in popular piety that it retains in the East. For, even though it is not counted as one of the Twelve Feasts of the Church, Easter to Orthodox Christians is in a class by itself as “the feast of feasts and the celebration of celebrations.” It surpasses all other festivals, as the sun exceeds the stars. This is true not only of human and earthly feasts, but also of those “belonging to Christ and celebrated for Christ,” in the words of an Easter Sermon (no. 45) by the Church Father Saint Gregory the Theologian

(Ouspensky and Lossky, 1982 p. 185), who explained that “it is the day of the Resurrection and the beginning of true life.” As such, it is the original Sunday on which the weekly liturgies of all other Sundays are based, so much so that in the Armenian Church the melodies are used on Easter as on any given Sunday. As the feast of the Resurrection of Christ, Pascha was celebrated by 120 C.E. throughout the Church, having developed from a weekly vigil service of scripture readings and psalms before the Sunday Eucharist into a solemn, annual service. This was meant to be “the foreshadowing of the feast to come,” as Pope Saint Gregory the Great maintained to the congregation of the Roman church of Saint John Lateran in a Quasimodo sermon (no. 26, 10) on the eve of the Sunday after Easter on April 21, 591 (from a French translation by the Benedictine monks of the abbey of Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux, 84330 France, at http://www.jesusmarie.com/ gregoire_le_grand_homelies_sur_evangiles .html). He explained: “This is why we celebrate it annually, so that it may lead us to that feast, which will be no longer annual but eternal. When, on a fixed date, we celebrate this feast, we remember better that we must yearn for the other one.” However, determining the date of Easter has often been problematic. Initially, different |

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springtime dates were used, which led to bitter quarrels between local churches. Even after these issues were formally resolved at the First Ecumenical (that is, universal) Council of the Church in Nicea in Asia Minor in 325, they lasted another five centuries in some places. The Council favored the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox (usually considered to be March 20), except if this paschal moon fell on the same weekend as the Jewish Passover (which Easter replaced in the Christian calendar). When Pope Gregory XIV replaced the Julian Calendar (that dated back to Julius Cesar) with the updated Gregorian Calendar in October 1582, the proviso concerning Passover was dropped. The new sequence gradually came into universal use, except in Orthodox Churches that still use the Julian calendar when it comes to the date of Easter (or even all dates in the many Old Calendar jurisdictions of these Eastern Churches that remain opposed to their partial adoption of the Gregorian calendar). There, Easter usually falls later—by one to five weeks—than in the West, where it can fall between March 22 and April 25. Following a schedule that can be traced back to the third century, the Easter vigil service normally begins late on Holy Saturday in East and West alike. (Before the practice was restored to its normal time in the 1950s, the Roman Church had fallen into the habit of celebrating the vigil even earlier on Holy Saturday —generally on Saturday morning by then.) The service is based on the stark contrast the darkened church provides for the new light from a paschal candle. The flame from this candle is spread to all the other candles in the church at a turning point of the celebrations, and people even try to take it home without letting it go out. This is a custom prevalent in Austria as well as in most Orthodox countries. In the Ukraine, the same practice applies instead to the candles held by the faithful during the Twelve Gospels service on the eve of Good Friday. There too, the aim is to light the candle

in the family’s icon corner at home and to keep that same flame burning for forty days (or so) until the end of the Easter season on Ascension—when the paschal candle is extinguished in Catholic churches. In the East, the distribution of holy fire takes place during the matins, which begin once the embroidered Epitaphios depicting Christ’s dead body has been removed from the middle of the church (where it had been laid as on a bier for Good Friday) to be put on the altar and to remain there throughout the Easter season. The Royal Doors of the sanctuary are soon thrown open by the celebrant holding the threefold candle called trikyrion in Greek (based on kyrie, the Greek word meaning “Lord,” for God understood as a Trinity by Christians), while the choir sings, “Come take light from the light without evening and glorify Christ risen from the dead.” At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built around Christ’s tomb in Jerusalem, the fire is even said to start miraculously on its own behind the shrine’s closed doors just before being distributed to the faithful. Except wherever local custom dictates a certain order based on gender, age, social, or marital status (as in Greece), the faithful then press toward the priest with their candles to take the new fire from his, spreading it from candle to candle through the crowd and the church to make the candles all shine as the one body of the risen Christ. The faithful then form a procession that will exit the church and circle it to finally gather before its closed door (standing for the fallen world subject to death) to hear the priest’s reading from the Gospel of Mark about Christ’s empty tomb and the first proclamation that “Christ is risen!” to which the congregation answers that “Indeed He is risen!”—an exchange that will be repeated countless times (and often in several languages) during the service, and as a mutual greeting on every occasion over the paschal season until the Ascension. Next, the procession enters the church to fill it with light and joy as the special matins, called

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the “Paschal Canon of Saint John of Damascus,” are sung for a couple of hours. The singing concludes when the Paschal Sermon of Saint John Chrysostom is read. It invites even latecomers to the seasonal fasting to partake of its joyful rewards at the Easter liturgy this saint composed and which follows. Unless the service is scheduled for dawn, it usually goes on well past midnight. In the West, midnight is about the time the paschal mass would begin if the Roman Catholic missal were followed. It calls for the ancient ceremony of blessing the baptismal font to start before that hour. It normally begins in a darkened church to which fire (often struck from flint as in several such new fire ceremonies in other traditions) is brought to signal the Resurrection. This usually emanates from the vestibule rather than from the sanctuary, while the blessing of the new fire, as it took shape during the early Middle Ages, occurs in the narthex instead. Similar to the Eastern trikyrion, a triple candle is lit. The priest lights each branch in a different location: one in the narthex, one in the middle of the nave, and one in the sanctuary, next to the high altar. This is also where the paschal candle is to be lit, after a cross shape has been imprinted on it with five nails of incense (previously blessed along with the fire) and once the paschal Praeconium for its blessing, as well as twelve Old Testament prophecies applying to Christ’s Resurrection, have been chanted. The acolytes then light all the other candles in the church with the flame from the paschal candle before taking it to the baptismal font, where it will be dipped into the water three times. This makes the font fit to bring regeneration to those to be baptized from it shortly and throughout the year. After some of the water has been sprinkled on the congregation, holy oils are poured over it to seal it from the air. The litanies that follow include the baptism of those who are being received into the Church at this point. Halfway through them, the ministers

leave the sanctuary to put on their white vestments for the celebration of Easter Mass. The blessing of the font remains an eloquent witness to the ancient and intimate connection between the feast of Easter and the sacrament of baptism as the initiation of new believers into the mystery of the Risen Christ. For baptism is the symbolic death in Christ that allows believers to partake of his eternal risen life as members of his body, the Church. Converts used to join the Church during Easter night to receive the Eucharist for the first time at the dawn mass. For practical reasons, baptisms came to be celebrated on other major feasts, like Christmas, Epiphany, and Pentecost, and eventually at any time of the year on a more private basis. As for those who get baptized at Easter, “having descended with Christ into the dark waters and risen again from them, they are now ready to partake of the mystery which represents their identity with the Risen Body— projected out of eternity into time as the Bread and Wine forming human flesh and blood” (Watts 1959, p. 183). The words: “You who have been baptized in Christ, you have put on Christ, Alleluia!” initially aimed at the newly baptized, now echo for all the faithful as they are sung in Eastern rite services on Easter and for all the Bright Week that follows. The mass may also begin directly at daybreak, as it does in Poland, where it is preceded by a procession of the Blessed Sacrament (a consecrated host in a monstrance as on Corpus Christi) under a canopy that circles the church three times. As at the corresponding point of Orthodox liturgies, church bells then resound, and firecrackers are set off. The latter are actually part of a pagan noisemaking ritual also known on the New Year. In northern countries on Easter, it includes gunshots as well. The noise is meant to scare off the witches and evil spirits that come out at both these turning points of the year. Similarly, as may also be seen in Tucson, Arizona every Easter, Mexico’s Catholic Yaqui Indians then burn masks like

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those of their former pagan gods to symbolize Christ’s victory over demons. Many Protestant bodies have maintained a connection between Easter and baptism. While their Easter celebrations differ only by a few prayers from the usual Sunday worship, in North America they have a custom of holding interdenominational Easter dawn services, which are often broadcast live. Unless they are derived from all-night baptismal ceremonies, these may be based on the Gospel account of how, “very early on the first day of the week,” it was “still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb” and found it empty (Jerusalem Bible 1968, John 20:1).

The Festival of Springtime Renewal The old custom, long found from France to the Ukraine, of getting up before dawn on Easter morning (as on Pentecost in Denmark) to see the sun jump up and down three times as it rose over the horizon may have underscored the point of the feast: that the dark grave of cyclical time could not contain the eternal Light of Christ. Yet it remains true that the visible sun, which emerges every morning out of the darkness of night, is likewise victorious over darkness after the spring equinox, when daytime starts having the upper hand and winter is forced to retreat. And just as in typical celebrations of the sun’s eventual triumph at the summer solstice elsewhere, every household in the eastern Dutch provinces was supposed to donate some of the wood for an Easter Sunday bonfire, so that it could compete in size and intensity with those of other neighborhoods as all joined hands to dance around them singing hymns. By virtue of the same solar symbolism, Dawn or Ostara was a goddess of spring as the morning of the year for ancient Germanic peoples—an association of ideas that may be traced across the whole range of Indo-European cultures. Likewise, the Sanskrit usra and the Latin aurora both mean “dawn”—hence the

word “orient” for its place on the horizon, just as the Latvian aust for “dawn” also sounds like “east.” So the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon chronicler-priest Bede the Venerable could report that his pagan ancestors performed sacrifices to dedicate the paschal month of April to Eostre—which resulted in the English word “Easter.” The same goddess was known as Ostara to Germans on the continent, where a prayer to Eostar as earth-mother has been preserved at the Abbey of Corvey in Westphalia, asking her to “make this field grow, expand, blossom, bear fruit,” and “protect it so the earth may rest and be fruitful as the saints who are in heaven” (de Benoist 1996). This helps explain the Easter Sunday or Monday custom, known in many parts of Germany (especially in Saxony), of ritual perambulations around fields, sometimes circling back to the point where the sun rises on Easter or the spring equinox. They used to involve hundreds of peasants and apprentices, often on horses decorated with ribbons and flowers, just like the ones associated with Rogations before Ascension at the end of Eastertide, juridical as well as magical in purpose. They have eventually been replaced in most cases with a less formal walk through the fields (for which holiday excursions and visits to relatives are current substitutes), called Emmausgehen or “Emmaus walk” in parts of Austria, since Easter Monday commemorates the Risen Christ’s apparition to two of his disciples at Emmaus. Known in Britain as the “Easter Promenade,” this rural custom found a new urban setting in North America as the Easter Parade, which began on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk in 1860. It perpetuated the widespread European practice of wearing new clothes on Easter, in keeping with springtime renewal, as old garments would spread the restrictions of winter over the coming year. Americans would likewise make a point of wearing their best finery as they walked all the way to church for the late morning services, so that this became a major social

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and fashion event, from Detroit’s Piety Hill (along a church-lined stretch of Woodward Avenue) to New York’s Fifth Avenue (starting at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral). The latter’s 1912 edition has been immortalized in the Fred Astaire musical Easter Parade (1948) with a score by Irving Berlin. Today’s Easter parades are usually much more informal, sometimes carnivallike in tone. The Easter lunch is a family meal where all the good things of the fair season—especially those that have been abstained from during Lent and were scarce over the winter—are to be freely enjoyed. Though for a dozen centuries, the main course has often been lamb in Greece, Italy, and France, this symbol of Christ as the Lamb of God sacrificed on the Cross only appears in effigy (made out of butter, cake, or plaster) as the centerpiece of the swiecone—the Polish version of the food baskets that are blessed in church after the Easter service in Eastern European cultures. In those countries that follow the Eastern rite, the lamb’s place is taken by a rich pastry called paskha, that also stands for Passover. Though the foods included in the Easter basket vary according to regional use, each item is accounted for in terms of the Christian symbolism of the feast. Still, in many cases, such Easter foods have pagan roots in springtime fertility rituals. Thus in the West, Easter hot-cross buns go back to the Saxons, who ate them in honor of Eostar as part of their moon worship. In this context, the cross stood for the four quarters of the moon, but it made it easy for the bun to gain Christian meaning while it was still used as an amulet, hung in homes and boats over the year for protection against mishaps. Likewise, the mooncakes of China’s Mid-Autumn festival on the full moon of the eighth lunar month are sometimes kept till New Year’s Eve. They honor a female moon deity who regulates fertility and whose pet rabbit is seen on the lunar disc. In Egypt too, as in many cultures across the globe, due no doubt to these nocturnal animals’

thirty-day gestation period, parallel to the phases of the moon and a woman’s menstrual cycle, the rabbit or the hare stood for fertility, new life, and the moon, as did the hare as a symbol of Eostre—whose name seems to be echoed in “estrogen”—for pagan Germans, who also saw it in the moon. The egg was another attribute of Ostara, associated as such with the hare around the first full moon of spring, in relation to which Easter was later set. Hence the German custom about the Easter Bunny (Osterhase) laying Easter eggs in nests prepared by children, as first recorded in a medical dissertation in 1682—around the time of the settlement of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country in the United States. Though the custom was not unknown in Britain, such German immigrant communities are credited with spreading it in North America—with the indigenous rabbit standing in for the European hare. Some have even managed to keep or to revive as a collectible handicraft the colorful ribbon-laced Easter Egg Tree that was developed from the custom of sticking brown eggs on branches in a bush in Germany and Switzerland. In the latter country until a century ago, it was a cuckoo that was said to lay the eggs that adults would hide through the lawns for children to find at Easter. Though the Easter bunny was largely dominant as the bringer of the season’s gifts in most of Northern and Eastern Europe, it had other regional competitors before its adoption by Americans finished displacing them. Such were the fox and the crane in Westphalia, and in Thuringia, the stork as well as the rooster, which was also present in Belgium’s French-speaking and Switzerland’s Italianspeaking areas, while the hen was favored in Tyrol and much of Bavaria. Whether they were laid by unlikely beasts or not, decorated eggs enjoyed a central role in Easter celebrations throughout Christendom long before they were recorded as presents for this occasion in sixteenth-century Germany. Indeed, though the techniques and colors em-

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ployed to make them Easter eggs vary greatly according to the region, red eggs are the most prominent overall; they even appeared in ancient Persia and China in the springtime. For the Slavs, as for many other peoples, the egg symbolized both new life and cosmic totality, with the white standing for the moon and the yoke for the sun. Once decorated, it could magically bring happiness, prosperity, health, and protection. Initially attributed to the sun god, such virtues could easily be ascribed to Christ as the Light of the world after conversion from paganism, while old customs were integrated in a Christian guise. Thus, the decorated Easter egg, on which batik techniques give a host of elaborate designs that are handed down like family heirlooms, is called pysanka from the verb for “writing,” in the same sense that icons are said to be written rather than painted. But the Ukrainian legend that the world will go on for as long as there is someone to write them is a reminder of the pagan understanding of the egg as a magic microcosm, standing for the whole. Pysankas are offered as a token of deep affection, but simple hard-boiled eggs that have been dyed red are used for the egg-tapping games that last through Easter week (especially before the Easter lunch). In these rituals, two people exchange traditional Easter greetings and take turns tapping their eggs against each other until one breaks. It is considered lucky to be the one whose egg lasts longest. Broken eggs are gladly eaten, including the first one to be cracked against a church wall after the service to signal the end of the long pre-Easter fast when eggs are forbidden. The fact that there happen to be a large supply of them at this time of year, when they stand for newly accessible seasonal plenty as well as for the abundant gifts of divine grace, has no doubt consolidated the association of eggs with Easter in Eastern-rite churches, where dietary restrictions have always been taken seriously. Since the fast comes into effect at the start of Lent after Cheesefare Sunday (when eggs are still allowed), Greeks have a

saying: “With an egg I close my mouth, with an egg I shall open it again” after the Easter liturgy (Megas 1963, p. 71).

Easter Week The egg-tapping game used to be played on Easter Monday in Holland. In Oxfordshire, the day following Easter was called “Ball Monday” on account of the many ball games held then. This was probably a variation on the theme of egg games such as “egg rolling,” in which Easter eggs were rolled down a natural slope, initially as a form of divination as well as entertainment. The egg that rolled the farthest without breaking would bring the most luck or a marriage within the year. Easter Monday is a festival devoted to such egg games in Tredozio, near Forlì, in northeastern Italy. They have also been known in Greece, Russia, Rumania, Austria, and Switzerland, as well as in parts of Germany, France, and Belgium, and in the north and west of England, in Scotland, and in Northern Ireland. The British custom found a place at the heart of American life as Washington, D.C.’s Easter Egg Roll. It was first held on the grounds of the Capitol at the invitation of the wife of President James Madison (1809–1817). And when the boisterous annual event was discontinued in 1878, the children of Washington marched to the White House in protest with their baskets full of the colorful Easter eggs they had brought, and President Rutherford B. Hayes’s wife prevailed upon him to transfer the custom to the rolling lawns of the official residence instead. Eventually, tens of thousands of eggs were provided for this game, except in wartime. It remains the largest public event held at the White House, where it takes place on its Ellipse and South Lawn. The activities (egg roll, egg race, egg hunt, and the like) are aimed mostly at children ages six and under, who receive commemorative wooden eggs. In contrast to egg hunts, egg rolling has not caught on in the United States beyond the federal capital. However, Western Slav and Hun-

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Kids participate in a rain-soaked Easter Egg Roll event on the South Lawn of the White House, 2004. (Larry Downing/Reuters/Corbis)

garian immigrants long practiced the old country custom known in Poland by the misnomer Smigus Dyngus. Dyngus originally referred to Easter trick-or-treating, although it came to be associated with the practice of boys drenching girls with water by any means available on “Wet Easter Monday.” (Girls got their revenge on boys on Easter Tuesday.) A related practice once common in western France was that of soaking clerics considered too lazy to wake up on their own that morning, or of dunking the merchants who sold the salted fish Catholics had had to eat during Lent—in humorous revenge against the people identified with Lenten restrictions that were now over. This kind of seasonal scapegoating also used to be found in Slovakia, where it focused on

Morena, the goddess of winter. She was paraded in the guise of a big white dummy that was carried on a pole by girls to be thrown away in a local stream—a symbolic banishment of cold and death ushering in springtime around Easter. As for the water-splashing custom known there as polivanja, though it has now become a free-for-all where young people soak everyone in sight, it too used to follow various genderbased rituals with a view toward ensuring fertility and prosperity (failing which a woman might remain a spinster). These might take the form of just an exchange of Easter greetings, gifts of perfume for the girls’ hair or of chocolates, painted eggs, cake, or money for the boys. It always featured some form of gentle whip-

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ping with a switch or rod usually made of willow—hence the name “Switching Day” for Easter Monday. This symbolic aggression was supposed to complete the cleansing of any residue of winter’s hindrances on health and growth with further stimulation of springtime’s regenerative powers, to protect the recipient from harm, and to give her or him vigor and skill over the coming year. Between the afternoon litany at church (following two sparsely attended morning masses) and family visits to the graves of dead relatives, little children would also strike the legs of their aunts and uncles with their own small whips as they recited a trick-or-treating poem that would normally earn them three decorated eggs and honey cakes. In the Finnish version of this custom, the switching still takes place, but it occurs on Maundy Thursday, instead of Palm Sunday, and the reward is delayed until Easter Sunday. After Easter Sunday comes “White Week” or “Bright Week” as it is called in Orthodox countries; here, the Greek word lambri for “bright” is even another name for Easter. In the past, hardly any work was done during this week. It was declared a holiday by the Roman Emperor Constantine soon after he recognized Christianity in 313 C.E. Though the official holiday was eventually limited to Easter Monday, there was a long-standing taboo in the Greek countryside on doing any work in the fields or spinning with a white distaff over White Week, as this might bring on hail— which is white. It was also thought that hair washed during White Week would turn prematurely white. Today, the usual fasting on Wednesday and Friday is suspended, since the entire week is treated as a succession of Sundays, with paschal matins and the Divine Liturgy entirely sung on a different tone every day, along with repetitions of the Easter procession around the church and the blessing of water for the faithful. In ancient times, the newly baptized among them, still wearing their white robes and carry-

ing candles (hence the many traces of this kind of light symbolism in the liturgical and folk practices of Eastertide), would get tested every day by priests to demonstrate they properly understood the dogmas of their new faith. Greeks still take advantage of these happy days to go for outings in the countryside or to visit relatives in other towns. New Monday and New Tuesday are a direct continuation of Easter celebrations. Churches are supposed to stay open day and night to represent the free access to the Holy of Holies after its curtain was torn from top to bottom at the moment of Christ’s death. Church bells can be heard all week long in the monastic communities of Mount Athos, but they refrain from announcing the first service of White Monday in the rest of Greece; there, the last parishioner who gets to church has to pay a fine, spent on a meal for the congregation. The dancing that follows often rivals Easter Sunday celebrations. In some parts of Greece, dancing takes place as part of a ritual to appease the north wind on New Thursday (Pertei) so that “it diminishes” (perti in Greek). There is always some dancing after the service and procession of New Friday, which is dedicated throughout the Orthodox world to the Mother of God as Life-Giving Font (on account of a miraculous fountain in Constantinople on which a church was built in her honor in the fifth century). In other parts of Greece, the weekend sees some continuation of ancient funerary rites such as those of the Roman festival of Rosaria or Rosalia—witness the traditional songs known as Roussalia, sung from door to door by men or children who hold a cross of flowers on a flagpole. On the following Sunday of Saint Thomas (who was not there when Jesus first appeared to the other apostles on Easter Sunday and was only convinced of his master’s Resurrection at his next apparition eight days later when he touched Christ’s wound), Greeks take all the candles left over from Easter celebrations to

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light them in front of the icons. Eastern rite Slavs take home pieces of the artos—a loaf of bread standing for eternal life that has been kept on the church’s lectern all Easter Week and has now been blessed anew by the priest, to be eaten with holy water as a remedy against disease in case of need over the year. This formal extension or anticlimax of Easter Week is known as White Sunday in Germany and as Low Sunday to English-speaking Christians, except for Catholics everywhere, who call it Quasimodo after the first words of its Latin mass—Quasimodo geniti infantes, meaning “Like newborn infants,” welcoming the newly baptized among the faithful to partake through the Church in the mystery of the Risen Christ’s eternal life as the eighth day of Creation. Next comes Low Monday or the Monday of Saint Thomas. This is a day of return to everyday routine. It is known to many Greeks as the “Spindle-Resurrection” because, in earlier times, as work in the fields would resume for the men, so the women took up their spindles again. In Athens, they would even dedicate a new spindle to the home icons. See also Ascension; Carnival; Christmas; Epiphany; Holi; Holy Week; Lent; Lupercalia; Mid-Autumn; Midsummer; Palm Sunday; Rogations; Sunday; Transfiguration; WaterSplashing Festival; Whitsuntide References J. James H. Barnett. “The Easter Festival: A Study in Cultural Change,” in American Sociological Review, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1949), pp. 62–70. Alain de Benoist. Les Traditions d’Europe. 2nd ed. Arpajon, France: Éditions du Labyrinthe, 1996. Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968. Rev. Czeslaw Krysa. Swienconka and Dyngus Day Traditions. Lewiston, ID: OCO Press, 1986. George A. Megas. Greek Calendar Customs. Athens: [s.n.], 1963. Venetia Newall. An Egg at Easter. A Folklore Study. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.

L. Ouspensky and V. Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. Alfred L. Shoemaker. Eastertide in Pennsylvania. A Folk-Cultural Study. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000. Alan W. Watts. Easter. Its Story and Meaning. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1959.

◗ EGUBERRI See Christmas

◗ EID (ISLAM) The Arabic word eid or îd (pronounced “eed”) means “festival.” It refers to the only two festivals ordained as such by the Prophet Mohammed for the Muslim religion he founded. The Minor Festival is Eid-al-Fitr (the Feast of the Break of the Fast of the month of Ramadan) and the Major Festival is Eid-al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice. On this day, a head of cattle is sacrificed by every head of a household in the Islamic world at the same time as the same sacrifice is performed by pilgrims to Mecca. The two Eids share many similar rites and customs.

Common Features of the Two Eids When the Prophet Mohammed first came to Medina after the Hegira—his escape from Mecca in 622 C.E., which officially started the Islamic era—one of the things he did to regulate the life of the emerging Muslim community (the Umma) was to ban the observance of local pagan festivals. He had just been in Medina a couple of years when he told his followers that God had prescribed only two festivals for them—the Eids. They are referred to as alEidan, using an Arabic dual number different from either singular and plural to stress that they form a pair. The Eids are an acosmic type of festival, wholly unrelated to the natural cycle

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of the seasons. They fall at every time of the year in turn, thanks to the purely lunar Islamic calendar. This ensures that the the belief in a transcendent God, free of any wordly association, remains the primary focus of Muslim celebrations. The two Eids mark the Umma’s compliance with two of the five pillars of Islam. For Eid-alAdha, on the tenth of Dhul-Hijja—the last month of the Islamic calendar—it is the completion of the spatial pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. For Eid-al-Fitr, it is the completion of the temporal pilgrimage of the fast begun over three months earlier, starting in the month of Ramadan and ending on the first day of the month of Shawwal that follows. Coming upon the fulfillment of God’s command of personal discipline and collective worship, both are joyful, yet pious, occasions, when overindulgence is out of place, and a brotherly spirit of peace and forgiveness is called for instead. Muslims take the opportunity for a fresh start afforded by the three days of each Eid to visit relatives and friends, exchange gifts and greetings, and dispel all grudges and ill feeling. Because all of the community must be included, various provisions see to it that the poor are not forgotten and that they get a fair amount of alms from everyone. This is always emphasized especially in the Eid-al-Fitr sermon, since the Zakat-ul-Fitr seasonal poor-due should have been given by the time it takes place. The breaking of the Ramadan fast is also the best time to donate the annual zakat in support of underprivileged members of the Umma—a regular act of social solidarity that is another one of the five pillars of Islam (leaving the creed and daily prayers as the remaining two). As in the Friday afternoon congregational prayer of the weekly Day of Assembly, the Eid morning prayers at the mosque should be preceded by a bath and attended with clean (often new) clothes. After breakfast, men, women, and children gather at an outdoor prayer meeting, the musallah, in front of a white wall adorned

with a niche, the mihraab pointing in the direction of Mecca (like the one in every mosque). Women are given the option of praying at home—as they mostly do the rest of the year. The prayers consist of two units (rakat) plus the six-to-sixteen additional takbir recitations of Allahu Akbar (“God is Most Great”). These set them apart from Friday prayers, as does the fact that they are followed instead of preceded by a two-part sermon (khutba). The Eid-al-Adha sermon has the added significance of coinciding with the anniversary of Mohammed’s Farewell Sermon to the Umma in Mecca on the ninth of Dhul-Hijja of year 10 of the Hegira. Furthermore, the units are not preceded and followed by the usual invocations, and there is neither a call to prayer (adhan) nor a reminder to prostrate (ikaama), but only a statement that the faithful are gathered for prayer. This points to the primitive origin of the Eids, as it makes them resemble the prayer (salaat) for rain as well as the eclipse prayer. People return home from the musallah a different way from the one they took to get there. Many local folk customs are common to the two Eids. Thus, in Central Asia, they are the occasion of a famous equestrian contest between teams from several villages, violently fighting for possession of a tied-up sheep. (A form of this sport was taken to the West as polo by British officers who had been introduced to it in India in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.) For Persian-speaking, sedentary Tajiks, as for neighboring Turkic nomads like the Kazakhs and Kirgiz, the Eids have traditionally been a good time for weddings. These have often been decided by a “Love Chase”—a horse race between a girl and her suitors where everything is set up to let her determine who will win it . . . and her.

Eid-al-Fitr, the Small Festival Eid-al-Fitr is known as the Small Festival— Eid-al-Saghi, or Küçük Bayram in Turkish— which also makes it the feast of little ones. They

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get new clothes to wear, in addition to various treats, such as little bags of sorghum grain among Swahili-speaking Muslims in East Africa. Hence its alternate name as the Feast of Sweets (Eid-el-H’lou) or the Sugar Feast (Seker Bayrami in Turkish). But it is mainly called “small” as opposed to Eid-al-Kabir, the Great Festival (Büyük Bayrami in Turkish) of Eid-alAdha. The latter has independent religious significance, while the former merely marks a well-earned release from the strain of a prolonged ascetic solemnity. Yet this contrast between the two Eids is not necessarily an accurate reflection of the scale of the celebrations involved—nor of the amount of genuine rejoicing. This enthusiasm erupts spontaneously on the aptly named Eid-al-Fitr, the festival of the breaking of the month-long Ramadan fast. Still, by then, passions have been so well trained that few unbridled excesses are in evidence at the happy family celebrations of warm community that follow or at the fairground attractions that are set up in some places (as in Turkey, where they include trained bears). Indeed, restored social harmony is on display everywhere over up to three days, with people greeting and congratulating each other in the streets as well as on afternoon visits to relatives, friends, and sick people. Many gifts are offered, particularly to the children of less fortunate families. At home, the family celebrates around a noontime festive meal of, say, mashwee (lamb) and couscous in the Maghreb, followed by treats such as sesame oil-fried griddlecakes and almond, prune, or raisin pastries with butter tea in Central Asia. Dead relatives are also remembered as their graves are visited that day.

Eid-al-Adha, the Great Festival Eid-al-Adha translates as the Feast of Sacrifice, which is also known as Eid-al-Nahr or as Bakra Eid in India and Pakistan, or in Turkish as Kurban Bayrami among the peoples of Central Asia, and even in Egypt as just Bayram. It is on this day that pilgrims to Mecca sacrifice a

sheep, a goat, or a camel to commemorate Abraham’s divinely arranged sacrifice of a ram in place of his firstborn son Ishmael, the Arab nation’s legendary ancestor, and not of his younger son Isaac, as stated in the Bible. In the Koran’s version of his story, Abraham tells the boy he had with Hagar (the servant of his elderly wife Sara) about a dream he has been having for three nights in a row about sacrificing his only son. Ishmael agrees that the dream must be a command from God, and he volunteers to submit to it. While on the way to the place of sacrifice (Mount Marwah near Mecca instead of Mount Moriah close to Jerusalem) with his father, Ishmael faces three attempts by the Devil to get him to give up his resolution to obey God’s unfathomable will at the price of his life. But Ishmael drives away the Tempter (Shaitan, in Arabic) with stones. This event is reenacted by pilgrims to Mecca on the morning of the Feast of Sacrifice, when they hurl rocks at three stone pillars marking the three stations of Ishmael’s ordeal. The point of this may be explained by the imam of any mosque in the world in his Eid-al-Adha sermon as being quite the opposite of a human sacrifice or any other kind of sacrifice in atonement for sin or to appease an angry deity. Rather than the giving up of something in order to get something else in return, it is a test from God of a human being’s willingness to submit entirely to His will, by sacrificing all self-will, down to one’s very self if ever called upon to do so. This makes of Abraham the first and exemplary Muslim, since the word islam means just that— submission to God. That is why Abraham was given the Black Stone from heaven by the angel Gabriel and set it in the Kaaba. This cubic shrine is thus held by Muslims to be the oldest monotheistic shrine in the world, as well as its very center. They pray toward it wherever they are, and they are expected to go to it on pilgrimage at least once in their lives. The greatest religious feast of the year is therefore the one when the entire Umma comes

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An Afghan man cuts the skin of a slaughtered sheep on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid alAdha in Kabul, January 20, 2005. Muslims all over the world celebrate the three-day Eid-al-Adha festival by slaughtering sheep, goats, cows, and camels to commemorate the Prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael on God’s command. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters/Corbis)

together at every mosque—either at the same time as in Mecca or on one of the following two days—to celebrate the universal reenactment of the sacrifice of Abraham. The heretical Druze sect of Lebanon and Syria also follows this practice, although it is in memory of the sacrifices of Cain and Abel. Though Turks traditionally regard blood as a forbidden substance they are reluctant to shed, every observant Muslim family head makes a point of properly performing the devotional act. Generally, either a lamb or sheep is sacrificed on behalf of each household, although an ox may be substituted for up to ten people, or a camel for seven households. In every case, the animal must be neither lame nor one-eyed.

Whatever the proportions of this annual slaughter, the Koran (22:37) insists that “it is not their meat nor their blood, that reaches Allah; it is your piety that reaches Him: He has thus made them subject to you, that ye may glorify Allah for His Guidance to you: and proclaim the good news to all who do right” (Holy Quran, 1946). The sacrifice of animals is a way to ask God for the forgiveness of sins and somehow partake of His eternity. The sanctity of life is acknowledged by invoking God’s name at the moment of taking it, to underscore that this is not an act of wanton cruelty, but a symbol of thanksgiving for the gift of food, which it is all the more meritorious to share as much as possible with fellow humans. Usually, a third of the meat is salted and put in the patio to dry for the future use of the household, one part (some theologians recommend up to two-thirds or even three-quarters) is meant to be distributed uncooked among the poor in the sacred precinct in front of the mosque by the family head after his afternoon nap, and the rest is sent as a gift to relatives and friends. The sacrifice is performed after the early morning prayer at the mosque, either by the head of the family or by a butcher, following a strict ritual. The beast must be facing in the direction of the Kaaba while its throat is being cut and the slaughterer says the invocation with which every sura (chapter) of the Koran begins: “In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful!” (Holy Quran, 1946). Having skinned and gutted the animal, the butcher then takes a bath and dresses up for the occasion of an open-air gathering to praise God. This event starts at eleven in the morning and may last several hours. In places where the division of the beast is not left to the next day, wives stay at home to start sorting and preparing the meat. Thus in the Maghreb, the housewife grills the liver and the heart and consumes them that very morning. While she eats, she enters each room in the house and throws tiny bits of meat in every corner, reciting religious

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formulas in order to drive away ghosts, genies, and the evil eye. She then gives her eldest son the gall-bladder (which is supposed to be Satan’s den) and asks him to throw it against the patio’s white wall, where it will stick and be left to dry away into dust over a few months. She often insists on going through these superstitious acts even over her husband’s disapproval as a Muslim, in order not to break with a tradition (aada) that may go back long before Islam, since it has a common root with the Jewish Passover in an ancient spring festival of Semitic nomads. Be that as it may, no one will complain about the succulent mashwee she has prepared for the lavish family luncheon. Indeed, in a relatively secularized country like Tunisia, an important segment of the population sees in Eid-el-Adha little more than a good excuse to indulge in culinary delights. The day’s feasting, singing, and dancing go on until late at night. Among other typical local customs are those observed in Tajikistan on Eid-al-Kurban. They include cleaning up the house and bleaching the walls with wheat flour; or women may greet guests by throwing a pinch of flour on their left shoulder and getting a child to take them inside while holding a sheep on a leash. All this is thought to be conducive to good health and plentiful crops. On the East African coast though, Eid-el-Adha is preceded by a nine-day period called Malimati in Swahili, during which the dead are commemorated by serving special rice meals in their honor. See also Day of Assembly; Days of the Dead (West); Passover; Ramadan References Aminah Ibrahim Ali. The Three Muslim Festivals. Chicago: IQRA International Educational Foundation, 1998. Gustave Edmund von Grünebaum. Muhammadan Festivals. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1988. Holy Quran. Tr. Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Washington, D.C., 1946. Web.umr.edu/~msnmv/Quran.

Kerena Marchant. Id-ul-Fitr. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1998. Edward Alexander Westermarck. Pagan Survivals in Mohammedan Civilization: Lectures on the Traces of Pagan Beliefs, Customs, Folklore, Practices and Rituals Surviving in the Popular Religion and Magic of Islamic Peoples. Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1973.

◗ 8 MONKEY (MAYAS) Some 200 kilometers from Guatemala City, just north of San Francisco El Alto, is a ritual center that is still of major importance for the Maya population. In the hills around Momostenango, altars are set up on mounds of pottery shards that have gathered there over the years. This is where the New Year purification ceremony known as “8 Monkey” takes place amid a general outpouring of prayer, incense, and liquor.

The New Start of an Ancient Cycle Actually, 8 Monkey is the date of the New Year in the ritual calendar used by shamans in the village of Momostenango—as in several Guatemalan highland communities, based on the tzolkin, the sacred calendar of the ancient Mayas, from which the Aztec tonalamatl or tonalpohualli calendar was also derived. It consists of a combination of twenty days, each of which is named after its own patron deity, with thirteen numbered days ruled by the divine “lords” of the thirteen heavens. Multiplied by each other, these two “weekly” cycles add up to a 260-day yearly sequence. The function of this divinatory calendar is the regulation of religious acts, which is the responsibility of religious specialists known by the same name as the earth deity: chuchkajau or “forebears,” or else as ajk’i, meaning “masters of the days” in Quiche. The initiation of these soothsayers into the secret art of assigning birthday names and interpreting life’s events according to favorable and unfavorable days takes place on the first

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and most auspicious of them all, when prayers to the earth deity have the greatest efficacy. This is Guajxaquíp Báts, which most people in Momostenango translate as “8 Yarn,” although the esoteric meaning of báts is “monkey” and refers to the transformation of Jun Chogüen and Jun Báts into monkeys by Junajpuj and Ixbalanqué. This is an episode described in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the ancient Mayas. The fact that their sacred calendar has been maintained and strictly observed so long after the fall of their great city-states in the fifteenth century and the ensuing Spanish domination in the interval is a testimony to the resilience of the oral tradition and indigenous beliefs of their descendants, since it bears no relation to the seasons and begins at all times of year in turn, relying on an accurate mathematical count of purely human conception.

Eve: Church Guajxaquíp Báts is a religious ceremony where the spirit is purified by the confession of all sins committed and thanksgiving for all the blessings received over the year. The Indians of Momostenango feel they all need to take part and thus come from afar if they happen to be away. Otherwise, they would be exposing themselves to serious illness and even death. In the afternoon of the previous day (9 Dog), they begin to fill the local parish church with their litanies and the glow of hundreds of candles amidst clouds of copal smoke, until nine at night. Then they start going home, having paid their respects to the spiritual powers brought by the Spaniards, before proceeding to honor their own gods the next morning.

Day: Small Broom For this, the Indians start gathering at dawn at a place called Chulti-mesabal, meaning “small broom,” one kilometer west of Momostenango. The town’s name was given to it by Tlaxtaltec allies of the Spanish conquistadores: it means “surrounded by oratories” in the Mexican

Nahuatl language, which goes to show the continuity of worship at these pagan altars over the centuries. With white handkerchiefs around their head as a distinctive sign, soothsayers officiate in front of groups that number up to a hundred women and twice as many men. As offerings, laypeople place pottery shards to one side of altars that similar shards have served to build from one to three meters high over the years. One or two people at a time approach the chuch kajau to be prayed for by him or her. The chuch kajau first asks their names and the particular objects of the desired prayers, be it the expiation of sins, material or moral well-being, or thanksgiving for a wish the deities have fulfilled. After being paid a symbolic amount of money, the soothsayer burns a small packet of prized kabagüil (copal) in a half-meter-wide niche formed to this effect with pottery shards in the altar and decorated with pine boughs for the occasion. The prayer he or she makes to offer the incense is called sipaj and is supposed to make the deity well-disposed toward the requests being made on behalf of the supplicants. The ceremony is very long for each of them, as the soothsayer goes through an endless series of all manner of details about their private lives. Sometimes, the soothsayer offers a cup of brandy (aguardiente) to the deity, as a way to seal the understanding and communion between them, the same way Indians do between each other. He or she knows from certain signs whether the deity has accepted the offering— which the soothsayer then consumes himself or herself. The soothsayer’s own feeling of communion with the supreme deities increases along with the amount of spirits thus absorbed over the day as he or she goes through one offering after another. All the soothsayers’ families have their own altars at a separate spot called Pajá, in the water on the edge of a brook in a depression to the east of the main altars. There are also smaller, secondary altars for the recently initiated soothsayers, whose services are less in demand.

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Night: Big Broom At dusk, the shamans go a little to the west to pray and to burn incense all night at other altars on a height called Nim-mesabal, meaning “big broom.” The broom in the name of these holy places is probably a reference to the sweeping away of sins before the New Year in the general confession that is a main feature of this festival (also found in old Japanese New Year customs), as well as a typical expression of Maya religiosity, meant to remove the spiritual cause of ailments of any kind. Laypeople mostly fall asleep around the altars as the soothsayers are absorbed in prayer, and nonIndians may wander between them unhindered, even though they may have been told they were not welcome in this sacred precinct of native religion. Temporary stands nonetheless mushroom there to provide the 20,000 or so Indian worshippers with all the food, drink, candles, and incense they need over the minimum three days these ceremonies last. See also Kukulcan; New Fire Ceremony; New Year (Japan) References Robert M. Carmack. Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiché-Mayas of Momostenango. Civilization of the American Indian Series, Vol. 215, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Garrett W. Cook. Renewing the Maya World: Expressive Culture in a Highland Town. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. Antonio Goubaud. The Guajxaquíp Báts: An Indian Ceremony of Guatemala. Lecture delivered in Spanish at the Sociedad de geografía y historia de Guatemala on May 3rd, 1935 and published in the quarterly of this institution: Anales de la Sociedad de geografía e historia de Guatemala, Vol. XII, No. 1, September 1935. Guatemala City: Centro editorial de Guatemala, 1937. Barbara Tedlock. Time and the Highland Maya. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.

◗ 8 YARN See 8 Monkey

◗ ELEUSINIA See Eleusinian Mysteries

◗ ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES (GREECE) In Eleusis, a town in Attica between Athens and Megara, agricultural festivals known as the Greater and Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries reenacted the myth of Demeter and Korê. Originally symbolizing the cycle of grain-growing, they gained added meaning for allowing Greeks of all backgrounds to be initiated in a secret cult of personal salvation through participation in renewed life beyond death.

From Tribal Belonging to Personal Freedom Throughout the Greek world from Alexandria to the Black Sea, there used to be festivals of Demeter. While many of them were derived from those of Eleusis or were even called Eleusinia (like the games celebrated in that city every odd year of the Olympiad as well as every second year out of four over four days in the middle of the month of Metageitnion toward August), the true Eleusinian Mysteries were unique to Eleusis. They started out as a local cult, when initiation in these mysteries was tribal rather than personal, as a kind or rite of passage giving male citizens full membership in the body politic. This all changed when Athens annexed the city in the late seventh century B.C.E. and made the Eleusinian Mysteries one of its major religious festivals, so that initiation lost its importance as a way of conferring civic status in Eleusis. At first, every Athenian, and then, with the emergence of an urban, even cosmopolitan, lifestyle (that loosened tribal allegiances and relativized communal roles, making room for voluntary associations and personal commitments independent of social

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background), virtually every Greek was admitted to the Eleusinian Mysteries. Free participation in such religious mysteries in responsible compliance with their rules became a prime example of the new sense of personal liberty, so that those of Eleusis may have given the Greek word for freedom: elevtheria. Still, it was partly on account of the spiritual freedom from the bonds of mortality granted by the mysteries that Eleusis (whose name meant “advent”) was identified with this cherished ideal of Greek culture.

From Local Clan to National Cult In ancient times, Eleusis was a day’s journey from Athens, since it was located some twentythree kilometers to the west in the fertile plain of Thria—now an industrial suburb called Lepsina. According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter that probably goes back before the city’s annexation by Athens, it was the goddess herself who had instituted the mysteries when she stopped at Eleusis on her search for her lost daughter Korê, who had been taken away as a bride by Hades, god of the netherworld. The people of Eleusis had built a great shrine for her, and she had taught them the sacred rites that would ease her mourning and allow grain to grow again as an embodiment of her daughter, freed to emerge from the depths of the earth for two-thirds of every year before joining her husband back underground in the winter. The entire story of Demeter and Korê was thus painstakingly reenacted in the Eleusinian Mysteries. They were originally the private cult of the noble clan of the Eumolpidae, one of two (along with the Kerikae) from which the clergy still had to be selected, while all initiates were thought of as being adopted into it, becoming sons and daughters of Demeter. The high priest or hierophant made the solemn declaration that opened the Mysteries to Greek speakers (excluding barbarians who might mispronounce the sacred formulas, unless they became citizens), as long as “their hands were not

defiled” by sacrilege or crime. Men and women, citizens and slaves (provided they were of Greek origin) might become mysts (candidates for initiation), coming under the guidance of mystagogues (initiates who led them into the mysteries) and under the surveillance of epimeletes, or overseers. The postulant who had been presented to clerical authorities by a mystagogue and accepted as a myst would then begin to undergo preparations that consisted in a whole series of practices, fasts, and group retreats at different times and in various places, while the mysts of previous years cheered on and other participants looked on.

Lesser and Greater Mysteries The candidate’s mystic journey began in earnest with the Lesser Mysteries, instituted after the annexation of Eleusis by Athens as an adaptation to the new situation and the wider constituency it created. As the first degree of initiation needed to proceed to the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis, they were held at Agrae near Athens six months in advance during that of Anthesterion, just prior to the spring equinox. Presided by the ceremonial king archon of Athens, who was assisted by the clergy and priestly clans of Eleusis, they culminated in a solemn sacrifice to Demeter and Korê, after the candidates had been purified in the waters of the river Ilissos nearby. The Greater Mysteries were announced in Attica’s neighboring states by hereditary heralds, allowing a truce to come into effect before and during them so the participants could gather freely at Eleusis. But first, they went to Athens. For it was from there that young celebrants set out for Eleusis in September—on the thirteenth of Boedromion—to fetch the hiera. These sacred objects were brought back the next day in veiled baskets called cists which only female initiates might carry, escorted by ephebes (young men) in a kanephoria, a kind of procession introduced with the annexation to Attica. It was greeted with ritual jeers called

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gephyrisms as it went over the bridge over the Cephisus on its way to bringing the hidden sacramental objects to the Eleusinion Temple in Athens. (There, a meeting of the city’s coun- was required by law on the cil, called the Boule, day after the Mysteries, by the twenty-fourth of Boedromion.) The people who met these requirements mentioned would be admitted into it after a purification on the fifteenth. This day of meeting (agyrmos) was also named after the opening proclamation (prorrhesis) made by the hierophant and the dadouchos or “torchbearer” in the Stoa Poikile—the Painted Colonnade. It was up to the mystagogues to make sure that the people present met all these conditions. The sixteenth was called Halade mustai after the cry of “To the sea, mysts!” that accompanied their march to the shore to purify themselves and the piglets they carried in the water before making a burnt offering of them to get rid of their own defilements. They went through the procedure several times over, fasting from dawn to dusk for nine days, if they happened to have particularly grave or numerous acts of wrongdoing on their consciences. The mysts wore new clothes and myrtle crowns as they came back to town in a procession for a purifying sacrifice. There was more purification and sacrifice over the next two days with the Epidauria in honor of the healing god Asclepius, when mysts who arrived late (as he apparently did from Epidaurus) could still be welcomed.

The Procession of Iacchus to Eleusis The nineteenth was the most solemn day. It saw the return of the hiera to Eleusis in a procession of many thousand people, who first assembled in various points of Athens before lining up in order on the Agora and the Ceramicus to set out from there and through the Dipylon gate on the sacred road to Eleusis. Since they would not get there before nightfall, priests, mystagogues, and mysts, decked

with myrtle and ivy leaves, would carry torches in addition to ears of corn and agricultural implements. The image of Iacchus (that is, Bacchus or Dionysus) was fetched from his shrine along with temple utensils to be placed on a cart with attendants at the head of the procession he was thought to lead in person, having composed the song for it. There were also dances, games played by torchlight (even at the fountain of Kallichoros), sacrifices, and other ceremonies along this protracted journey that stopped at several shrines along the way. Lewd jokes were customary at the festivals of the same earthy gods (like the Dionysia and Thesmophoria), especially at the Cephisus again. After the statue of Iacchus came the cart bearing the hiera, the clergy, the mysts, the citizens lined up by tribe and deme behind their magistrates, the Areopagus and the Council of the Five Hundred, and the whole crowd of those who wanted some part in the famous feast. Rich women used to ride in carriages until the statesman Lycurgus passed a law against this relaxation of traditional decorum in the fourth century B. C . E . The crowds needed some rest and refreshment once they finally reached their destination that night: the Telesterion where the god was installed alongside Demeter. Three thousand people could fill the rows of seats in this initiation hall.

Things Not to Be Revealed Here the mysteries reserved for the mysts would take place over three days. The first one was a day of fasting, which ended when the mysts and the previous year’s initiates—the only ones admitted inside to attend a solemn sacrifice to Demeter and Korê—partook of the meat offered and drank the kykeon. This mintflavored barley gruel or tonic potion was the same one with which Demeter broke her own fasting after nine days of looking for her daughter, enticed by her fellow nurse Baubo, whom she had joined in the service of King Celeus of

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Eleusis. That night, the mysts also imitated her wanderings in the area in search of Korê by running with torches in white dresses amidst the coarse jokes of female onlookers. Also known at Demeter’s other feasts (for example, Thesmophoria) as a way to dispel evil, the latter practice of aischrologia echoed the dirty limericks in the iambic meter (named after the king’s lame daughter Iambe who had tried to cheer her up with them) that now served to relieve the emotional tension at her mysteries. The mysts also got to ritually manipulate the sexually charged but still unidentified sacred objects of her cult and to sing certain sacred chants under the direction of priests of the clan of the “good cantors” (the meaning of the name of the Eumolpidae’s clan). It was only during the last night that the mysts—or perhaps those initiated the year before—got to the final ceremony of epoptia, the “beholding” of the supreme mysteries— whether they were the long hidden hiera or some mythological drama. Most likely, the first night introduced the mysts to the first level of the mysteries, having to do with plant fertility; for just as in the myth Korê was carried away to marry Hades (Death) and give birth to Plutus (Wealth), so was grain thrown into the field and buried in the earth to bring forth new life. The second night must have revealed to the new epopts the deeper meaning of a cult of personal salvation, since when a person died, he or she was buried in the earth but could still spiritually partake in the cyclical renewal of life, rather than just fumble in the horrifying shadow and choking confusion of post-mortem dissolution. As the Homeric Hymn to Demeter concluded, “Happy is he among deathly men who has seen these things! But he who is uninitiated, and has no lot in them, will never have equal lot in death beneath the murky gloom” (Willoughby 2003). For the rhetorician Themistius, “initiated and made perfect, free, and walking unrestrained, a man can celebrate the Mysteries, a crown on his head; he lives amongst pure and

holy men; he sees the crowd of noninitiates on earth, willfully plunging into filth and darkness, and dallying with evil through their very fear of death, instead of believing in the bliss of the life to come” (Flacelière 2002). Still, “Aristotle is of the opinion that the initiated learned nothing precisely, but that they received impressions and were put into a certain frame of mind” (Synesius, De Dione 10, in Willoughby 2003). Oral instructions were given only as pointers to the meaning of something that was shown in the Mysteries in order to be experienced as an inner transformation in a personal encounter with the divine. Both the words and the movements involved constituted ta aporrheta—things not to be revealed to the uninitiated on pain of death or an even worse fate afterwards. And despite all the rumors and speculations that have circulated about them, none is really authoritative, and their actual content has remained shrouded in the original mysteries, buried with them forever since they were forbidden by a decree of Emperor Theodosius the Great when he made the Roman Empire officially and exclusively Christian at the end of the fourth century. See also Dionysia; Games (Greece); Thesmophoria References Robert Flacelière. Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles. Tr. Peter Green. Troy, MI: Phoenix Press, 2002. Karl Kerényi. Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. “Bollingen Series” No. 65/4. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. George E. Mylonas. Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961. François de Polignac. Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State. Tr. Janet Lloyd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Harold R. Willoughby. Pagan Regeneration. A Study of Mystery Initiations in the GraecoRoman World. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003.

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◗ ELEVATION OF THE CROSS (CHRISTIANITY) To complement the main celebration of the Crucifixion of Jesus in the mournful context of Good Friday, another Christian festival on September 14 centers on the discovery of the Cross three centuries later by the Roman Empress Mother Helena. The Cross then symbolizes the victory of Christ, be it through the Church founded as the result of his sacrifice or through the Empire that came to acknowledge him as Lord and God. The feast’s various names—Dedication, Invention of the Holy Cross, Elevation or Raising or Universal Exaltation of the Cross—point to its many aspects.

The Festival of the Dedication The corresponding stages of development and layers of meaning can be traced by distinguishing the components of a Russian icon of the feast. The church in the background of the icon is a reminder that the feast started out as a yearly temple dedication festival of a type common in the Roman world from pagan times. A few years after giving official recognition to the Christian religion, Emperor Constantine built the Lateran basilica in Rome in 324—an event commemorated since then on November 9 by a minor feast in the Western Church, as the Festival of the Dedication. In the Eastern Church though, another Festival of the Dedication began to be celebrated soon thereafter on September 14 to commemorate that of the basilica of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, on the site of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus Christ had been buried after his crucifixion. When it was dedicated in 335 in the presence of Emperor Constantine, for the thirtieth anniversary of his reign, by the bishops who had just gathered at the Council of Tyre, there was no mention of the discovery of the Cross. But by 347, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem could write that “already the whole universe is filled with fragments of the Wood of the Cross” (Ouspensky and Lossky 1982, p. 148). At the century’s end, a nun called

either Etheria or Egeria who had come on pilgrimage from the Iberian Peninsula would note that, over eight days of processions when all churches would be decorated “as at Easter and for Epiphany,” the dedication of the ones on the Golgotha and on the Holy Sepulchre, along with that of the Temple of Solomon, was “celebrated with the highest honour because the Cross of the Lord was discovered on that day” (The Pilgrimage of Etheria, pp. 95–96). The Invention of the Cross is the official Church term for this find, the credit for which was given to Constantine’s mother Helena in most accounts from that time onward. But though she had made a famous pilgrimage to the holy sites around 326, bringing them into the limelight of imperial politics and patronage, she had already died of old age by 330. This was a few years before the dedication of basilicas on the Holy Sepulchre and on Golgotha brought with it a renewed interest in the particulars of the death of Jesus, such as its instrument. The Cross was probably discovered—without Helena—around 340; the anniversary of the Dedication was a fitting day to produce it for the first time and to venerate it every year for all time. In 395, Saint John Chrysostom described how Helena had discovered three crosses buried beneath Golgotha—the hill where Jesus Christ was crucified alongside two thieves. His cross was singled out by the trilingual inscription: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” mentioned in Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion. Sometimes depicted in the bottom half of the feast’s icon, the discovery of three crosses is omitted in the one shown in this section.

The Elevation of the Cross In the sixth century, Alexander the Monk could refer to the Festival of the Dedication and the Elevation of the Venerable Cross, but the latter was already beginning to eclipse the former. Nevertheless, the original Dedication is still commemorated by the Eastern Church

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on the eve of the September 14 feast of the Elevation. This name refers to the way the Cross was shown to the people of Jerusalem for the first time in the basilica of the Resurrection on the day following the annual commemoration of its Dedication. Saint Macarius, the bishop who supposedly had been guided by miracles to find and identify the Cross of Christ (along with Saint Helena), raised it with his outstretched arms in front of the faithful. At this triumphal moment, they started to shout “Kyrie eleison” (Greek for “Lord have mercy”) over and over again. Their cries are echoed in the sequences of a hundred kyries that now accompany the rite of the Exaltation proper (see below). This was the first Elevation of the Cross, and it was reenacted in Jerusalem from the time it was discovered there until 614, when the True Cross was seized by the invading Persians.

A Political Side: Imperial Celebration The festival also commemorates the second great Elevation around 630 in Constantinople, after the Roman Emperor Heraclius III recaptured the Cross from the Persians. Patriarch Sergius then carried it in a procession from the church of Blachernes to that of Saint Sophia, where the ceremony was reenacted on a grand scale. Now independent of its original setting in the Holy City of Jerusalem, the festival soon spread to other parts of the Christian Roman Empire. In what was left of it in the West by that time, it was first specifically mentioned in 701 in Rome, its symbolic center, in an obituary for Pope Sergius, and was also alluded to even before in outlying areas of Europe, where it was sometimes set on May 3. In the Eastern Church, the Holy Cross is also venerated in much the same way on the first of August and on the third Sunday of Lent, known (along with Palm Sunday) as Flower Sunday, on account of the flowers used to decorate the holy object, and

which the faithful can take away as a blessing. This is similar to what the Sikhs do with the marigolds that have come in contact with their holy book at a Gurpurb. The Roman Empire had initially become the bulwark of Christianity—as the temporal image of the spiritual universality that it claimed—because Constantine was led by clerical advisers to interpret in a Christian key the sign of a cross he saw in the sky before a decisive battle against a rival in 312. The following year, he put an end to the persecution of Christians and started supporting them, so that they in turn interpreted as evidence of the spreading power of the Cross of Christ his later victories and the foundation of a New Rome, Constantinople. Constantine’s sponsorship of the basilica of the Resurrection, where the Cross was first raised after having supposedly been found by his mother Helena (so that both are portrayed as saints on the left-hand side of the corresponding icon), only confirmed this association of spiritual victory and temporal order. This link is therefore celebrated in Orthodox liturgical texts for the festival of the Elevation of the Cross—as an ideal if not always as a fact. For in this view, it is the “invincible victory” of the Cross over worldly powers hostile to Christianity that is the “upholder of the universe,” as the one sure support for an order reflecting divine goodness amid the turmoil of human history. Thus, it is only by virtue of the Cross that Christian princes can keep at bay the “barbarians” of all kinds who seek to overthrow Christian civilization and can instead extend the latter’s sway throughout the world. This was what a Christianized Roman Empire purported to do—in all its varying guises, be it as the socalled Holy Roman Empire founded by Charlemagne in the West in 800 or when Russian czars as “Caesars” ruled a “Third Rome”— Moscow as successor to Constantinople after the fall of this “Second Rome” in 1453.

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The Universal Exaltation of the Life-Giving Cross This political dimension is of course only an outer application of the inner spiritual truth of the festival, summed up in the relevant reading from Paul (I Corinthians 1:25), which proclaims that “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”(Jerusalem Bible 1968). For “seeing the Cross raised by the hands of the bishop,” the Orthodox Church glorifies in the feast’s vespers that “weapon of peace and unconquerable ensign of victory” through which “the curse was abolished, incorruptible life flowered again, earthly creatures have acquired deification and the demon has been decisively overthrown” (Ouspensky and Lossky, 1982, p. 148). The matins that follow thus present Jesus Christ as the New Adam, and his Cross as the Tree of Life by virtue of which a fallen world recovers the incorruptibility of the Garden of Eden. Raised above the earth, the Cross brings heaven within human reach. The outstretched arms of Christ embrace the whole universe from the Cross with which he is raised vertically, while on a horizontal plane its branches also cover the four corners of the world, spreading grace and expelling demons everywhere. This is the meaning of the rite of the fivefold Exaltation that takes place during the Orthodox service of this day of strict fasting, known after it as the Universal Exaltation of the Venerable and Life-Giving Cross. A crucifix is adorned either with flowers or with sprigs of sweet basil, because one of these “royal” plants (fit for the King of the Universe since such is the meaning of their Greek name) is said to have sprouted on the spot where his Cross was discovered. It rests on a tray on the altar, which the priest walks around so as to venerate it with incense fumes from all four sides. He then takes the tray on his head in a procession of the clergy out of the sanctuary through the north side door (to un-

Russian icon of the Elevation of the Cross, Anonymous, 19th century. (Heritage Image Partnership)

derline God’s self-abasement as a meek man on a cross) to the front of its main Royal Door (named thus because the Emperor would use it as the only layman allowed into the sanctuary, being the image of God on earth). There, he puts the tray on a table in the midst of the people and, facing east, he makes three prostrations. The priest takes the cross with the basil branches, raising it above his head as he loudly says the first of the customary prayers for the faithful. He goes on to make the sign of the Cross with it three times before slowly bending to the ground and slowly rising again to hold it up. He then holds the crucifix at chest level as the choir reaches the end of one hundred Kyrie eleison, when he again makes the sign of the Cross with it three times. These gestures are re-

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peated four more times, facing north, west, south, and east in the Greek Church, and south, west, north, and east in the Russian Church. In the latter, bishops alone may perform the fivefold Exaltation in cathedrals and monasteries. Ordinary parishes only perform the Veneration of the Cross. In this rite, the faithful prostrate themselves twice before the cross on the table, kiss it, and then do one more prostration—the same way they would venerate any icon, even though this one is more intimately connected to Christ’s human nature. This may be why it has the healing properties evoked on the right-hand side of some icons of the feast, where a sick person is being cured, raised up along with the Cross [not illustrated here]. Though this festival is less developed in the West, the cross would traditionally be presented there to the sick, to the clergy, and to the people, who might also take part in processions. The best surviving example is probably the feast of Santa Croce in Lucca. In this Tuscan city on September 13, the faithful hold candles as they march from the basilica of San Frediano to the church of San Martino. Here, they venerate an eleventh-century crucifix known as the Volto Santo (“Holy Face”)—the palladium or protective symbol and fetish that the once proud Republic of Lucca even made its “king.” This wooden crucified Christ still wears golden regalia. A fair is held the next day on the Piazza San Michele.

An Autumn Festival Launched a thousand years ago by Benedictine monks, one of France’s largest country fairs also takes place over three days around the Holy Cross festival in Lessay, in Normandy. In the Catholic and Anglican Churches, Holy Cross Day was normally followed by one of the four Ember Weeks of prayer and fasting when the clergy used to be ordained. This is now scaled back to the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the third Sunday of September, and is no longer a fast.

In Greece, the Exaltation of the Cross has always been a turning point of the secular as well as of the religious calendar, marking the shift between two seasons in many areas of life. “On the day of the Cross, rest in harbour; on Saint George’s Day, rise and set sail again” (Megas 1963, p. 156) goes a saying among Greek seamen about the end of long maritime journeys coinciding with the end of summer. It is also time for everyone to say goodbye to fond summer habits like the midday siesta and the latenight supper: the latter is literally buried in effigy in an ancient ceremony on the Aegean island of Aegina. Peasants bring an assortment of seeds in a dish to be blessed with holy water by the priest at the day’s solemn liturgy, and later on they often mix them with the grain they will use for sowing for the following year’s crop. Likewise, their wives often prepare fresh yeast with holy water taken from the priest at the end of the service. Thus, on the island of Lemnos, the women first use whatever yeast is left the week before and then take this holy water from the Raising of the Cross to make the yeast that will allow their bread to rise over the coming year. In Ethiopia, this feast—known there as Masqal—comes after the heavy rains that make summer a cold season, and functions somewhat like a spring festival. Traditionally, each family prepares a maypole adorned with the yellow wildflowers that then cover the fields, bring it to a central clearing, and lean it against those of other families of the area over the bonfire that is going to be lit in the evening. Before it is ignited, the bonfire has to be consecrated by the priests with the requisite liturgical chants, and then each social group in the hierarchical order (local lord, clergy, lesser nobility, peasant men, women, and finally children) circles the teepee-like structure three times in honor of the Holy Trinity. At night, as the bonfire blazes, young men dance around it singing war chants and playfully throwing burning brands at each other.

e p i p h a n y | 143 See also Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Gurpurb; Holy Week; Lent; May Day; Palm Sunday; Saint Lucy; Transfiguration; Whitsuntide References Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968. Donald N. Levine. Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. George A. Megas. Greek Calendar Customs. Athens: [s.n.], 1963. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. The Pilgrimage of Etheria. Tr. M. L. McLure and C. L. Feltoe. New York: Macmillan and Ann Arbor, MI: Univeristy Microfilms International, 1978. Louis van Tongeren. Exaltation of the Cross: Towards the Origins of the Feast of the Cross and the Meaning of the Cross in Early Medieval Liturgy. Sterling, VA: Peeters, 2001. Evelyn Waugh. Helena: A Novel. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

◗ EMBER DAYS See Elevation of the Cross, Lent, Saint Lucy, Whitsuntide

◗ ENTRY OF THE MOTHER OF GOD INTO THE TEMPLE See Presentation of the Virgin Mary

◗ EPIDAURIA See Eleusinian Mysteries

◗ EPIPHANY (CHRISTIANITY) Epiphany is the final day of the Christmas season, coming soon after the beginning of the

New Year. Christmas was actually derived from the Christian festival of Epiphany, which is often interchangeable with New Year’s Day as a focus of seasonal practices of pagan origin. In the West, it commemorates the coming of the three Wise Men to offer gifts to the newborn child Jesus. Epiphany is also called Theophany in the East, where its name refers to the manifestation of God in Three Persons at the Baptism of Christ. However, there the festival also commemorates his first miracle at the Wedding in Cana.

The Twelfth Day of Christmas Epiphany was traditionally the Twelfth Day of the Christmas season, which falls on January 6. Since it is the end of the Christmas season, it is known as Loppiainen in Finland (from the Finnish word loppu meaning “end”). This is one country where Christmas trees then come down with a small celebration, involving the eating of edible decorations like apples and candies, in addition to the careful storing of permanent ones. Epiphany is a kind of second Christmas in that it sums up the volatile properties of a holiday season of transition between two yearly cycles. In Ireland, it was even called “Little Christmas” or “Old Christmas,” and people used to light twelve small candles around a large one. The candles were said to stand for Christ and his disciples. However, since the central candle was often replaced by a strange figurine called Old Meg, they more likely represented the reviving sun surrounded by the twelve months of a new year. This might explain the similar English pattern of twelve fires around a large bonfire known until the midnineteenth century in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and the western Midlands as “Twelfth Night Fires.” But in Southern German lands (Bavaria, Switzerland, Austria), der Zwölfer—the Twelfth Day—was also known as das Grosse Neujahr—

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the Great New Year’s Day. There, January 6 was originally the peasants’ New Year, and the same practices may be observed either on this date or on January 1, depending on the local tradition of a particular town or village. They include various combinations of the following: special lunchtime foods, loud torchlight processions, rowdy competitive games, lively dances and masquerades, and children trick-or-treating and caroling from door to door while carrying stars like the grownup Sternsinger (star-singers) of Switzerland. In the Netherlands, young people used to march behind a paper-lantern Star of Bethlehem. Since the fourteenth century, they would dress up as the Three Kings on the eve of their feast, in an outdoor folk version of the liturgical play performed in church since the eleventh century. Noisy activities were meant to frighten the many witches thought to be on the loose during the Twelve Days at the turn of the year. Epiphany is even called Perchtentag—the day of the fairy Berchta or Perchta, an old Germanic deity, on account of witches of her kind who love to cast their spells on spinning wheels. It is believed that these and other weaving tools should therefore be hidden away for the duration of the Twelve Days in Austria. In England, distaffs would be burned if anybody used them while they were taboo; January 6 is therefore known as “Saint Distaff Day.” Conversely, no Christmas greenery is to be kept beyond this date, when all Christmas trees are burned in a central community bonfire in some places. Whatever is left of Epiphany customs in England is nothing compared to the past revels of this feast, which were at their high point during the Elizabethan era, when William Shakespeare wrote his comedy Twelfth Night. The Italian counterpart of the German witch Berchta owes more of her traits to the Christian story of the Church festival of Epiphany, down to her very name: Befana or Pefana. Like the Babushka of Russian Christmas folklore, she was an old lady who lived close to Bethlehem when the Three Wise Men came by, asking for

directions to town. At first suspicious, she refused to answer, but then, seized with remorse, ran after them. It was too late: God punished her by making her lose her way, and she has been roaming the earth ever since in search of the place of the Messiah’s birth—rather like the Wandering Jew of European folk tales. Except for her appearance as a benevolent witch—with big teeth, black clothes, tattered shoes, and a broomstick to fly on, Befana took on for Italians many of the attributes of Saint Nicholas in Northern Europe. On January 6, she flies from roof to roof carrying a big sack on her back. It contains both gifts for good little boys and girls and black coals for those who have been bad, and whose gifts she might take back with her. Nowadays, this sobering possibility is merely hinted at in the candy or chocolate “coals” offered to all children on Epiphany, when, unseen to all, Befana goes down chimneys to deliver them. Children used to go trick-or-treating on this day, led by a youngster dressed up as Befana; this was called the Befanata. The Wise Men’s visit to the Christ Child is reenacted in typical costumes in some places, as in Tarcento near Italy’s northeastern border, where it is part of a torchlight procession up a hill to light a bonfire—the pignarul—which gives the signal for other pignarui to be lit on surrounding heights. A caravan winds its way through the streets of Madrid too, in the Cabalgata de los Reyes (the “Cavalcade of the Kings”). The Wise Men are the feast’s main focus throughout Western Europe, where, since the second-century Latin writer Tertullian, they are seen (on the basis of Psalm 72 about the messianic king’s universal empire) as three kings from Oriental lands. They also figure prominently in the customs of one of these Oriental lands: the former African kingdom of Ethiopia. They are also known as the Magi, after the Zoroastrian priests of another Oriental land: Persia; it is believed some may have come to Bethlehem looking for the Saushyant, the messianic Savior expected at the end of days in their

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ancient monotheistic religion. It was only natural for such renowned astrologers to be guided by a star to the birthplace of the “King of kings.” Persian Magi were famous as king-makers (if not as kings, as in the French rois mages for the Wise Men) because of their special ability to forecast from somebody’s astrological chart if that person was to be called to the throne. They did this on the basis of the position of the “Little King.” This is how the name of the star in question (possibly the star of Bethlehem) in the constellation of Leo translates, whether it is called Regulus in Latin or Basilikos in Greek. In Greece, January 1 happens to be the feast of Saint Basil the Great, who died on this date in 379 and is thought to visit the earth every New Year. He comes down through the chimney to help himself to the food laid out for him in the houses he has come to bless (with special attention to the animals), not unlike Befana or another fourth-century bishop from Asia Minor: Saint Nicholas. No less generous than the latter, the well-born Basil, as bishop of Caesarea, distributed his fortune among the poor, the sick, and the orphans during a famine. This is why a priest or the head of the house gets to play his role to distribute gifts to children on New Year’s Day, as well as to cut and share out (in a strict order of seniority from the saint in heaven to the poor on earth) portions of the vassilopita, the round cake of Basil, whose name means “king.” It contains a coin, and whoever gets it in his piece is the lucky winner of a special gift. As if to underscore the underlying unity of many New Year and Epiphany customs, this is the way the “King of the Bean” still gets elected in France in the secular setting of family, school, or business on January 6, which is known as the Fête des Rois. Traditionally, the “jester” of a “court” where titles were also assigned at random around the table made sure all the guests would then proclaim: “Le Roi boit!” (“The King is drinking!”), as they joined him in lifting their glasses just after he found

the bean. The first piece of cake was “God’s share,” reserved for the poor and assigned by the youngest child of a family. However, in Franche-Comté, children would dress up as the Magi and carol from door to door to claim it, while in Lower Brittany, a poor man dragging a festively decorated horse would likewise do the rounds for “the poor’s share.” The “twelfth cake” long used in British Epiphany customs is clearly the galette des Rois, brought from France by the invading Normans in the eleventh century, just when they were also taking over Greek-influenced Southern Italy—along perhaps with the vassilopita? Whether it is on January 1 or 6, the year’s orderly cycle yields to blind chance in primal chaos. As games of chance are exceptionally allowed by the Greek Church when children and adults alike gather to play cards on New Year’s Eve, social roles too get reshuffled, and a young king can arise out of nowhere to bring order to a new yearly cycle of light and dark. The same New Year symbolism of cosmic renewal from humble beginnings seems applicable both to the King of the Bean, randomly selected at Epiphany by the same method as the mock king of the Roman Saturnalia in December, and to the Christ Child, born among beasts on Christmas Night amid rumors of his future kingship, the better to confound the powers that be. Yet since the Three Kings brought their gifts of gold, myrrh, and frankincense to the Christ Child on Epiphany, it is on the Día de los Tres Reyes that Christmas gifts—especially to children—are offered in Spain, where a silver coin, a bean, or a porcelain figurine is hidden in a crown-shaped fruitcake, the rosca de reyes. In Mexican villages, though, families start bringing their small gifts to the central square in a procession called a posada ten days before Christmas. They pile up there until Epiphany, when they are stuffed into large piñatas—large and brightly colored papier-mâché or porcelain animals that are then hung up for the children to poke at until they burst and shower them

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with candies and coins—like a cornucopia, a horn of plenty evoking hopes for a prosperous New Year.

The Festival of the Three Miracles In Northern Italy at the beginning of the fifth century, January 6 was “the Festival of the Three Miracles,” namely the coming of the Wise Men to Bethlehem, the Baptism of Christ, and the first miracle of Christ’s public ministry: changing water into wine at the Wedding in Cana. If the African Bishop Saint Augustine celebrated Epiphany as the feast of the Wise Men, his master Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan, revered it as the feast of Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan, following the custom of the Eastern Churches. The festival had actually originated in the East, where it was second only to Easter as the joint celebration of the three starting points of God’s “manifestation from on high” (the meaning of the Greek name “Epiphany”) as Incarnate Word: not only the Baptism of Jesus and the miracle of Cana, but his Nativity too. Epiphany is thus older than Christmas, and was initially more important, commemorating the same event, plus those specific to itself—except for the Wise Men’s journey. These mysterious figures, enhanced by legend from sketchy Gospel allusions, rose to prominence in connection with Epiphany only after the celebration of the Nativity of Christ was detached from it and shifted to December 25. This was done by the popes in the middle of the fourth century, when January 6 first appeared as a feast day in the West. They did this in order to counteract and absorb the winter solstice festivals that were too firmly rooted to be overshadowed—let alone suppressed—by the new Christian religion. Epiphany was thus gradually demoted over the centuries in the West, to become a mere extension of Christmas as the main feast. In the Middle Ages, the celebration of Christ’s Baptism was shifted to January 13. (This date is also

the Feast of Saint Knut, to which the “Twelve Days of Christmas” have been extended in Sweden ever since 1131, when the death of King Knut Lavard on January 7 caused the postponement of the normal close of the holiday season. Then in 1972, the Roman Church, in an ecumenical gesture intended to match Protestant usage, made of Epiphany a movable feast, to be celebrated on the Sunday closest to January 6 and integrating features of both Candlemas and the Baptism of Christ. Such an evolution is unthinkable in the East. There, the celebration of Christmas on December 25 had to be imported in the Antiochian Church by Saint John Chrysostom in the last quarter of the fourth century, and even then, chiefly as a way of extending the celebration of Epiphany backward! Although Western influence may have contributed to a shift of emphasis toward Christmas over time, Epiphany retains a very special place in Eastern rites. In the Armenian Church, it still includes the Nativity of Christ; this means there is no Christmas as such, but instead Epiphany celebrations from the eve of January 6 to January 13. This is because Epiphany started out more or less as an Oriental answer to problems similar to those that called for the institution of Christmas on Western initiative. For January 6 was the entrenched winter festival in the Near East, not December 25 as in Western Europe. In Greece, this day was already the Epiphany of Dionysus. On its eve, the god manifested himself through a miraculous wine on the island of Andros. A ritual round cake was eaten, torches and bonfires were lit, and rivers and springs were blessed. In ancient Egypt, the once-dead and resurrected god Osiris, often assimilated to Dionysus, also changed the waters of the Nile into wine on the eleventh day of the month of Tybi (now January 6). This festival came on the heels of that of Khoiak—the mysteries of Osiris celebrated on December 25 as the solstice—and marked the appearance of a new sun in the dead of winter. A later Egyptian festival held on

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the same date in Alexandria celebrated the birth of Aion (the Eternal or the World itself and the counterpart of both Osiris and Dionysus) to the virgin Korê (an ancient Greek fertility goddess) in a new cosmic cycle every year. It was therefore easy for the new cult of the Sun of Righteousness (as Christ was also known) to take over from these pagan winter festivals the older symbolism of the annual return of the sun through a purifying ordeal. John’s baptism of Jesus by water likewise changed this element into a source of warmth and light. To Christians, water became the wine of Cana as well as the river Jordan at Epiphany. But around the year 130, followers of the Gnostic sect of Basilides in Alexandria claimed that Jesus was only born as Christ on the day of his baptism, when God entered his spirit upon testifying from the heavens: “Thou art my beloved Son; this day have I begotten thee!” To these heretics, January 10 (when they observed the feast) would have been the day Jesus was born as Christ—a spiritual birth through his baptism itself. Since Aion figured prominently in their cosmological speculations, they likely were the first to observe the day of a Hellenistic god’s virgin birth with Jesus in mind as Epiphany. Orthodox Christians were nevertheless also quick to read their own theology in the Gospel account of the Baptism, commemorated on this day. Assigning a different date to the Nativity, as the Roman Church had already done for her own reasons, could only help the Eastern Church underline that Jesus was both man and God from the day he was conceived, so that it was indeed Christ who came to John to get baptized.

The Manifestation of God in Three Persons As for Epiphany itself, Eastern Christians prefer to call it the Theophany or “Manifestation of God.” For not only does it celebrate the first public manifestations of Christ’s ministry—in

contrast to the secrecy of his birth in a cave outside Bethlehem, where even King Herod could not find him—above all, it re-creates the first manifestation of God in three Persons, through the two natures of Jesus Christ as Son of God, revealed by the Holy Spirit as fully human and fully divine. In the words of the troparion hymn of the feast’s Royal Hours: Our God, the Trinity, has this day revealed Himself to us indivisibly; for the Father bore witness to His Parenthood with manifest testimony, the Spirit descended from the heavens like a dove, and the Son bowed His most pure head to the Forerunner and was baptised . . . (Ouspensky and Lossky 1982, p. 164)

The First Baptism as a Feast of Lights The Theophany is thus also known as the “Feast of Lights” because Christ publicly made his appearance in the world as “Light from Light, true God from the true God” (in the words of the Nicean Creed adopted in 325), and even as an actual “great Light” that shone on the Jordan when Jesus was baptized, according to a canonical tradition recorded by Saint Justin Martyr. The trappings of the sacrament of baptism that was instituted by the same token symbolize just such “an immediate perception of God, since the ray that comes from Him invisibly kindles the soul,” as the fourteenthcentury Greek Orthodox writer Nicholas Cabasilas noted in The Life in Christ (Cabasilas 1974, pp. 99–100); for on this occasion, “all things are full of brightness: the torches, the chants, the choirs, the processions, nothing that is not radiant, with the baptismal robes all resplendent and prepared for a spectacle of light.” Still, regardless of the joyous light common to the sacrament and the feast, Saint John the Baptist (specifically commemorated on January

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7) is always portrayed as recoiling in awe before Christ’s request to get baptized in Eastern liturgical texts of the Theophany.

The Two Blessings of the Waters Thus, there is a song in which the Forerunner wonders aloud how the lamp can illuminate the Light and asks to be sanctified along with the waters, and it is intoned at the Great Blessing of the Waters, as part of a prayer almost identical to the one said over the font for the sacrament of baptism. But it then concerns a distinctive rite of the Theophany, performed first at church on January 5 (a preparatory day of strict fasting and abstinence), and then outdoors on January 6. In the First Blessing, as it is called in Greece, a basin of water is blessed after the service, and some water is sprinkled with a sprig of basil by the priest onto the faithful, who can also take some home in a bottle for their personal use. They can either drink it or sprinkle themselves with it, whenever they feel the need for this blessing from what is considered to be the very water of the river Jordan, as it miraculously stood still during the Baptism of Jesus. Bulgarians, who often refer to Epiphany as Saint Jordan’s Day, and who eat a ritual bread on its eve, also think they will be especially blessed if they stay up during the intervening night and happen to witness the skies opening up—a belief found among Orthodox Christians elsewhere about other feasts such as the Ascension. Orthodox priests visit the houses of their parishioners at this time of year to bless them with this holy water. They start right after the First Blessing in Greek villages, going from door to door and through every room with the cross, as well as to the fountains and the fields. This is thought to be the only sure way to drive away the Kallikantzaroi—evil spirits who come from underground every year at Christmas and make the waters unhallowed for all Twelve Days. During the rest of the year, they chip away with axes at the tree supporting the earth;

but just when they are about to succeed in causing the world to collapse into darkness and chaos, Christ is born and the world-tree is replenished. The furious spirits leap to the surface of the earth and try to get back in spite at its inhabitants in every way they can. Feeding on foul things like worms, frogs, and snakes, they like to go down chimneys and soil people’s food—much like the spirits of the dead did during the ancient Athenian festival of Anthesteria, when Hades opened its gates. The lower jaw of a pig is hung inside the chimney or behind the front door to keep the Kallikantzaroi at bay during the Twelve Days. But to purify the earth of their evil presence when their time is up at Epiphany, great bonfires are lit in some places, while farmers use candles from the church service to bless their house and their beasts of burden by making the sign of the cross with them. In some Greek villages, people go around wearing horrible masks and jingling bells to frighten away the Kallikantzaroi—or, conversely, to embody them and scare the children, who are often out caroling as on Christmas and New Year’s Day. The outdoor Epiphany blessing takes place on January 6 beside a body of water. This turns it into a sacramental manifestation of the waters of the river Jordan at the moment when they were transfigured into an eternal sign of salvation by Christ’s baptism, and were thus purified of the unclean nature spirits that dwelled in the river’s depths. In harsh climates, such as those of Russia or Alaska, a hole is often dug in the ice to dip a cross into the water, or crosses made of ice may be launched into a river. In milder climates—such as around the Mediterranean or, for a century now, at a bayou near Tarpon Springs, a Greek-settled spongediving center in Florida—a crucifix is thrown into the sea as doves are set free, and divers often rush into the water after it, vying for the honor and blessing of its recovery. This old Byzantine rite is also still performed in a Catholic setting in Mezzojuso near Palermo in

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Sicily. In major Greek towns, state and civic authorities and military and municipal bands are involved in solemn processions of the clergy and faithful under golden banners with the two-headed Roman imperial eagle appropriated by the Church of Constantinople, to carry the cross to the river or the harbor, where all ships have been gathered and decorated for the occasion. Their whistles then sound in unison with the guns that are fired by the warships, and the church bells rung at the moment the crosses hit the water. Only then does it become safe to put to sea again, a reflection of the ancient belief that the waters were treacherous during the Twelve Days of Christmas. There was even a belief that seawater became fresh and sweet to drink at Epiphany, when Greeks still go to the seashore to wash their farm implements and home icons. Ethiopians wash or renew in advance the white clothes they will wear for “Baptism” or Timqat, as the Theophany is called in Amharic. That evening, they escort the tabots (holy arks partaking of the sacred powers of the holy objects they are meant to contain) from the local church to a stream or pool, to which they will return after supper to spend the night singing devotional chants, sometimes killing an ox for the feast that will follow the pre-dawn service. The chief cleric then blesses the water (sometimes in a large cistern) and throws it onto the frantic faithful, who rush to get some and splash each other; many of them even bathe in it. After a morning rest, the faithful have reconvened at the site of this ritual for noontime, and the tabots are taken back to their shrines by a colorful dancing procession of all the people—the clergy with their umbrellas, the elders with their weapons, children playing with sticks, young men leaping up and down to the rhythm of their chants, and women in their best dresses on their one day of freedom of the year, so that discreet meetings

with the other sex can be arranged on the occasion of the festivities that accompany the yearly coming out of the tabots for January 19. This is when the Theophany falls when the Julian calendar is used, namely thirteen days after the Gregorian date. See also Ascension; Candlemas; Christmas; Dionysia; Easter; Khoiak and Heb-Sed; Lent; New Year (West); Saint Nicholas References Nicholas Cabasilas. The Life in Christ (2:21) Tr. Carmino J. de Catanzaro. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974. T. G. Crippen. Christmas and Christmas Lore. London: Blackie and Son, 1928. Fr. Thomas Hopko. The Winter Pascha. Readings for the Christmas-Epiphany Season. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984. Clement A. Miles. Christmas in Ritual and Tradition. London: Fisher Unwin, 1912. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. Francis Xavier Weiser. Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs: The Year of the Lord in Liturgy and Folklore. Colorado Springs, CO: Seraphim, 1999.

◗ EQUIRRIA MARTIS See Games (Rome)

◗ ETZALQUALITZLI See Rain Festivals

◗ EVANGELISMOS See Annunciation

◗ EXALTATION OF THE CROSS See Elevation of the Cross

F ◗ FALLING OF FRUIT See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ FALLING OF THE WATERS

winter festivals. It used to be celebrated on Innocents’ Day (December 28), New Year’s Day, or, to a lesser extent, on Saint Nicholas’ Day (December 6) and Epiphany (January 6).

See Rain Festivals

◗ FARJA See Ashura

◗ FASCHING See Carnival

◗ FAST OF ESTHER See Purim

◗ FAST OF THE FIRSTBORN See Passover

◗ FASTELAVN, FASTNACHT, FAT SUNDAY, FAT TUESDAY See Carnival

◗ FEAST OF FLOWERS See Dionysia

◗ FEAST OF FOOLS (CHRISTIANITY) The medieval Feast of Fools is a classic instance of the social inversion long associated with

From Biblical Account to Carnival Figure The breakdown of social barriers and the temporary reversal of established hierarchies at the end of a year make the Feast of Fools a typical New Year festival. Yet it found a niche in the Western Christian calendar in connection with December 28, the day of the Christmas cycle commemorating all the innocent male children of Bethlehem (aged two and under, and traditionally estimated to have been 14,000 in number) who were slaughtered on the orders of King Herod. For he heard from the Wise Men that a rival new king had just been born in that town: Jesus Christ (Matthew 2:16–18). Recorded as a distinct Church feast since at least the fifth century (having possibly been part of Epiphany previously), Innocents’ Day was also known as Childermas. But it eventually gave center stage not only to children and youngsters (to whom parents would even temporarily abdicate authority) but to “innocents,” in the medieval Christian sense of mentally ill or retarded people. Hence it got the name “Feast of Fools,” referring to people who act |

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like them, having taken leave of all reason. Spaniards play practical jokes on each other that day. A similar slide from biblical account to carnival figure is at the origin of the Feast of the Ass, observed mostly in France in the Middle Ages around Christmastime. It was supposed to commemorate Joseph and Mary’s flight to Egypt on an ass with the child Jesus after an angel warned them of the coming extermination of all the male babies of Bethlehem. But it was the ass who was the actual center of the church feast; honored as a prince, he was taken in procession under a canopy for a mass where the faithful would bray like asses, and the celebrants responded with their own braying noises. The braying song in honor of the ass is quite well known in the medieval repertoire that has come down to us. This was a mild form of the kind of riotous popular satire of the stiff solemnities of the high church and the nobility that was a hallmark of the Feast of Fools itself. Likely going back to pre-Christian rituals of festive inversion, it found in churches both a choice target of mockery and an ideal fixed venue at the heart of the community.

Backlash and Persistence In an early attempt at a crackdown, the ecclesiastical authorities of Nevers in France prohibited the “Feast of Fools on Innocents’ Day and New Year” in 1246 (Jones 1978, p. 303). A few years later, the Council of Cognac decreed: “As for the dances which historically take place in certain churches on the Feast of Holy Innocents, they are regularly the occasion of brawling and trouble, even during the Holy Office and at other times. We prohibit these amusements on pain of anathema. There will be no bishops created on that feast of Innocents; for it is only a pretext for laughter in the Church of God and a derision of episcopal dignity”(ibid.). The election of a provisional “Boy Bishop” by the choirboys was widespread in Europe by that time, being attested in Rouen in Normandy as

early as the eleventh century. He would be provided with episcopal vestments and a miter, could bless the crowd from a balcony, and would have his own clergy of boy chaplains, deans, deacons, and the like, who had the power to conduct levies from door to door and from various authorities in view of their Innocents’ Day statutory party. They sang the vespers and took part in church services, though masses of course continued to be said by ordained priests. Still, if the boy bishop happened to die between the sixth and the twenty-eighth of December—his last day of authority—he would be buried with all the honors due a real bishop. In monasteries and convents, the youngest monk or nun would act as abbot or abbess on Childermas. The moot services of Innocents’ Day were too often an occasion for uncontrollable revelry among the lower clergy in the middle of a serious Church holiday season. It was therefore with the aim of toning them down that the festivity had been subdivided and spread out by moving up the election of the boy bishop to Saint Nicholas’ Day on December 6. This measure had the opposite effect of extending his term of office—with the uproarious disturbances caused by his masked followers—to the intervening weeks, bridging the two festivals and making their folk practices interchangeable. There were attempts (in Germany especially) on the part of Church and municipal authorities in the late Middle Ages to limit to either a half-dozen feast days, three weeks, or a welldefined month the time when the boy bishop ruled and the Saint Nicholas processions roamed. This was because they were turning into a form of vagrancy or even of highway robbery. In 1526, the Council of Xanten decreed that “the parents of the bishop shall not be obliged to donate apples, gloves, and other small presents or to furnish meals” on December 6 (Jones 1978, p. 307). Not only that, but on December 28, the pupils had to invite their

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schoolmaster to a breakfast of herring, fruits, and nuts with beer. By then, the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther was being less conciliatory, as he thundered that “God has nothing to do with masked persons and Nicholas Bishops!” (Jones 1978, p. 305). Having severed the Church of England’s allegiance to the Roman See in 1534, King Henry VIII legislated against the installation of Boy Bishops in 1541. Then on November 13, 1554, his devoutly Catholic daughter Queen Mary I had the bishop of London issue an edict instructing the parishes of his diocese to elect a Boy Bishop again. However, she failed to appoint a “Lord of Misrule” to organize the Yuletide parties (featuring masked balls, parades, and plays) held at court. This had also been done since the late Middle Ages in the houses of great noblemen, in the law schools of the realm’s legal societies, and in many colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. At all these functions, the Lord of Misrule would normally preside over a mock court, receiving comic homage from the revelers, like the Boy Bishop from which his office was derived. Both of them soon died out in London under Queen Elizabeth I: the office of Lord of Misrule was never again revived at the English Court, and its Scottish equivalent, that of the “Abbot of Unreason,” was suppressed in 1555 by Mary Stuart, the Catholic Queen of Scots. In France too, there had been an edict against it in Dijon in 1552. Already in 1444, the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris had recommended curtailing the Feast of Fools. Nevertheless, some scholars did grant that the human spirit, like wine fermenting in a barrel, needed to vent a build-up of madness if it was to give a good quality of devotion when the time was right. Such a reasoning might have provided a rationale for the immediate replacement of Innocents’ Day and the Feast of Fools, officially cancelled in Nantes in 1539 (soon after the Breton capital became French in 1524), by a Carnival season that began on Epiphany

and lasted a couple of months until Lent. As if this were not enough, rowdy Carnival parades were eventually held on the two Sundays after Mid-Lent in this city. We may even see, as a holdover of the role of youngsters around Innocents’ Day, the fact that the first of these parades was devoted to students in 1880—a custom that was revived over a hundred years later, in 1989. Since then, this local event has become known nationally as an innocent Children’s Carnival. Also in France at the beginning of the last century, nuns would pretend to listen to schoolgirls when they sat at their desks and let them teach at the great convent of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame in Paris on Innocent’s Day. At the Franciscan monastery of Antibes on the Riviera, lay brothers would trade places with the clergy—for once confined to work in the garden while they said mass in tattered and reversed vestments. A more contentious and licentious “adult” version of the Feast of Fools on New Year’s Day, known chiefly in France between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, was banned altogether by the Council of Basel in 1434. It involved downright obscene parodies of the mass, including the “Gamblers’ Liturgy,” the “Drunkards’ Liturgy,” and the “Will of the Ass,” instead of prayers and hymns, and was led by an “Abbott of Misrule,” who would deliver a satirical sermon and give ridiculous blessings. Old shoes or even excrement would be burned as incense, and the altars would be used to eat on, while revelers wearing goat and horse masks or clown make up, in church vestments or in drag, would sing and dance lewdly inside the church and through the streets. From the thirteenth century onward, the Feast of Fools spilled over to Epiphany on January 6, when each town would use lots—in the guise of a bean—to elect its “King of Wine” or “King of Fools” or “Lord of Misrule” for a day. This custom has been echoed in a family setting in places where Epiphany is the time to elect as king for a day whoever finds the bean hidden in

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a special cake: the old English “twelfth cake” or the ever popular French galette des rois. See also Carnival; Epiphany; Lent; New Year (West); Saint Nicholas References Mikhail Bakhtin. Rabelais and His World. Tr. Hélène Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1968. Roger Caillois. Man and the Sacred. Tr. Meyer Barash. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Harvey Gallagher Cox. The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy. William Belden Noble Lectures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969. Charles William Jones. Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

◗ FEAST OF THE VEIL See Protection of the Mother of God

◗ FERALIA See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ FERIA See Games (Rome)

◗ FESTIN DEI COUGOURDON See Annunciation

◗ FESTIVAL OF COLOR See Holi

◗ FESTIVAL OF DEVILS See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ FEAST OF INDICTION See Lent

◗ FESTIVAL OF DREAMS See Midwinter

◗ FEAST OF LIGHTS See Epiphany

◗ FESTIVAL OF FREEDOM See Passover

◗ FEAST OF LOTS See Purim

◗ FESTIVAL OF HUNGRY GHOSTS See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ FEAST OF POTS See Dionysia

◗ FESTIVAL OF LANTERNS See Lantern Festival

◗ FEAST OF THE ASS See Feast of Fools

◗ FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS See Divali, Hanukkah

◗ FEAST OF THE DAY OF THE RAT See Sekku

◗ FESTIVAL OF NAKED YOUTHS See Carneia

◗ FEAST OF THE DEAD See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ FESTIVAL OF OSIRIS See Khoiak and Heb-Sed

◗ FEAST OF THE PITCHERS See Dionysia

◗ FESTIVAL OF PURE BRIGHTNESS See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ FEAST OF THE SEE OF SAINT PETER See Caristia

◗ FESTIVAL OF THE DEDICATION See Hanukkah

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◗ FESTIVAL OF THE FIFTH MOON See Dragon Boat Festival

◗ FIFTH MOON (FESTIVAL OF THE) See Dragon Boat Festival

◗ FESTIVAL OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLE See Lantern Festival

◗ FIRST DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ FESTIVAL OF THE GATE-HOUSE, FESTIVAL OF THE GREAT-HOUSE, FESTIVAL OF THE MONTH

◗ FIRST EASTER See Palm Sunday

See KI.LAM

◗ FIRST-FRUITS ◗ FESTIVAL OF THE MOUNTAINS

See Busk

See Rain Festivals

◗ FIRST FULL MOON ◗ FESTIVAL OF THE SNAKE

See Lantern Festival

See Sekku

◗ FIRST OF THE FIVE ◗ FESTIVAL OF THE SWING

See Sekku

See Holi

◗ FESTIVAL OF THE THREE MIRACLES

◗ FIRST PRINCIPLE (FESTIVAL OF THE) See Lantern Festival

See Epiphany

◗ FLAG DAY ◗ FESTIVAL OF THE WEAVER, FESTIVAL OF YOUNG HERBS

See Midsummer

See Sekku

◗ FLORALIA (ROME) ◗ FESTIVAL OF UNLEAVENED BREAD See Passover

◗ FEST-NOZ See Pardon

◗ FÊTE DES ROIS See Epiphany

◗ FÊTE-DIEU See Corpus Christi

◗ FÊTE NATIONALE See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary, Midsummer

In Antiquity, the cult of Flora was spread throughout Central Italy: the Sabines named a month after her, and the Samnites worshipped her in conjunction with Ceres, goddess of wheat. Flora had a lot in common with her, being the goddess of the flowering of vegetation, whose name comes from the Latin flos for “flower.” The games celebrated in her honor in Rome, from the original single day of her festival on April 28 until May 3, were the responsibility of the city’s plebeian ediles, just like those of Ceres held from April 12 to 19. These games were also alike in reflecting the common people’s workaday concern for adequate food supplies. Their carefree, often bawdy, festive spirit was also a feature of the Floralia.

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The People’s Games Flora had her own flamine—a priest attached especially to her service in Rome. She was also among the divinities to which the archaic priestly college of the Arval Brothers sacrificed in their yearly fertility rites of the end of May. Her cult was said to have been introduced by Titus Tatius, the Sabine king who had ruled Rome jointly with the city’s founder Romulus. But her games, the Floralia, were only instituted in either 240 or 238 B.C.E. by the city’s plebeian leaders in order to mark the successful outcome of their legal battle against rich landowners who had let their herds graze on the commons without first paying a fee to the treasury for this private use of public property—conquered land made available to the people of Rome. Following an oracle of the Sibylline Books, part of the settlement was used by the common people’s victorious representatives to build a temple to Flora near the Circus Maximus, where the sporting events of her games would be held.

Vaudeville and Vegetation As the festival was expanded and became annual by 173 B.C.E., sports only took up the final day, while the other days came to be devoted to scenic games and plays of a very light, comic, and licentious character. This made it a favorite target of diatribes by early Christian writers such as Lactantius, Saint Augustine, and Saint Cyprian. Prostitutes, who viewed this as their holiday, were hired as mimes and took off their clothes at the prompting of the rowdy audience or participated in mock gladiatorial games. According to Valerius Maximus (II, 10:8), the public applauded when the dour conservative politician Cato the Censor (234–149 B.C.E.) discreetly left the theater upon being told his presence was making the audience too shy to call on the actresses to strip. The obscene acts they would then imitate or perform were probably meant to promote the fertility of plants, in the festival’s original context of honoring its patron Flora. However, there was also the very

down-to-earth reason invoked by the poet Ovid (Fasti 5: 351–353, p. 123): “She is neither one of the glum set nor a snob; / She wants her rites open to the plebs, / and warns us to use life’s beauty as it blooms.” Fertility rites may also be discerned in the Floralia customs of having marchers throw chickpeas, beans, and lupins at the people (much as in the setsubun New Year ritual observed in Japan to this day), of lovers picking up blossoming branches along the way to decorate their houses, and of catching deer and rabbits—animals associated with fertility—in specially laid out nets. This was also the right time to wear multicolored clothing, emulating Flora’s colorful and richly varied bounty.

Nocturnal Illuminations The Floralia were known for nocturnal illuminations with torches, since their lustful revelries extended late at night, under the appropriate cover of darkness. But this carried its own risks in a big city, which was otherwise without lights and therefore quite unsafe. On the eve of his downfall in 31, the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard Lucius Aelius Sejanus (who, as the scheming and ambitious favorite of Emperor Tiberius, held sway in Rome in his master’s absence) was thus able to make himself popular with citizens who had enjoyed the Floralia until a late hour by mobilizing five thousand slaves with torches to take them safely home. See also Games (Rome); May Day; New Year (Japan); Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis References Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 2000. Valerius Maximus. Memorable Doings and Sayings, Vol. I. Tr. D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. H. H. Scullard. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.

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◗ FLOWER FESTIVAL See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ FLOWER SUNDAY See Elevation of the Cross, Palm Sunday

◗ FLOWER-VIEWING See Cherry Blossom Festival

◗ FLOWERS (FEAST OF) See Dionysia

◗ FOOLS (FEAST OF) See Feast of Fools

◗ FORDICIDIA AND PARILIA (ROME) The archaic Roman festivals of Fordicidia and Parilia came a week apart in April. Ashes from the fertility sacrifices of the former were used in the purifying rites of the latter, aimed at protecting herds from any mishaps due to the overstepping of sacred boundaries by beasts or men.

Fordicidia: Two Cow Sacrifices in One Coming in the middle of the weeklong Games of Ceres, goddess of wheat, the April 15 Roman festival of the earth-protecting goddess Tellus was called Fordicidia because it required the killing (caedo) of a pregnant (forda) cow. As the poet Ovid (43 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) explains, “the herd is now pregnant, seed impregnates the earth; / Teeming Tellus gets a teeming victim” (Fasti 4: 633–634, p. 102). Some of the victims were slaughtered on Capitol Hill, and each one of Rome’s thirty curiae or clan groupings received a cow to be sacrificed by its local priest, the curion. (The only other historically recorded festival under curial responsibility was Fornacalia on February 17.) But “when the acolytes have ripped the calves from the wombs / And dropped the sliced guts on the smoking hearths, / The eldest [Vestal] virgin cremates

the calves in the fire / To cleanse folk with this ash on Pales’ day” (Fasti 4:637–640, p. 102). This occurred on April 21, the date of Parilia. The double sacrifice of Fordicidia was said to have been inspired in a dream to Rome’s wise second king Numa Pompilius while he slept in a wood sacred to the herd god Faunus, the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Pan.

Parilia: Twin Transgressions Among Shepherds Similarly, it was Pales, the patron goddess of shepherds and their flocks, who was honored a week later at the festival of Parilia in rites going back to the very foundation of Rome—an event said to have happened on this very date, when the festival’s first known celebrant, the city’s first king, Romulus, killed his brother Remus for having overstepped the city boundary he had been tracing with a plow around Palatine Hill. Why this conjunction of an urban anniversary (alternatively known as Romaia from the second century to the demise of paganism) with the festival of the goddess of herds? “Is it because the twin brothers were still regarded as the shepherd-chiefs which they had been in their childhood? Is it because through a phonetic consonance, to which modern scholars have been more sensitive than the ancients, Pales was associated with the Palatine, the first settlement of Rome? Is it because a more archaic connection linked Pales not merely with the health of the flocks and the shepherds, but with that of the entire rural society?” Like the historian Georges Dumézil (Vol. II, p. 384), we are left to guess at the reasons for the ceremonies that were continued after the demise of the Roman monarchy, first by the great priest and then by the Vestal Virgins. On the other hand, the poet Ovid’s account of Roman festivals gives us a fairly detailed description of the practices of Parilia by the time the Empire was founded. The people of Rome would get from the temple of Vesta the prescribed ingredients for a fumigation that was

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supposed to purify all it touched. Aside from the ashes of the calves burned earlier at Fordicidia, the purifying smoke would be produced with the blood of a live horse combined with bean straw—without the beans (as though their very absence, along with whatever could cause it, was to be burned away following a principle attested in some ancient Indian rituals, as Dumézil has argued). The shepherd himself would purify his herd by splashing the floor of his sheepfold with water and sweeping it with branches, having adorned the room with foliage. Sulfur would be burned in it, along with olive wood, pinewood, Sabine juniper, and bay leaves. A basket of millet was to accompany an offering of millet cakes as the rustic goddess’s favorite meal. After sharing it with her and washing it down with lukewarm milk (the way she liked it), the jug would be offered to Pales to invoke her protection from wolves, disease, and famine until the next Parilia, as well as to wash away all the past year’s trespasses of which the shepherd and his sheep could be guilty, for having overstepped—inadvertently or due to pressing necessity—the boundaries of the sacred grounds of nature deities in brooks and bushes. Such a prayer would be said four times facing the horizon, where the sun was about to dawn. Shepherds would then wash their hands in running water before drinking some milk from a bowl, and in order to complete the process of purification, they would jump through a straw bonfire. An open-air feast concluded these observances. See also Fornacalia and Quirinalia; Games (Rome); Lupercalia; Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis; Terminalia; Vestalia References Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

◗ FORNACALIA AND QUIRINALIA (ROME) On February 17, the ancient Romans festively honored two of the oldest divinities of their pantheon: the war god Quirinus and the wheat oven goddess Fornax, in the concurrent celebrations of Quirinalia and Fornacalia. Whether this was just a coincidence or on the contrary due to some organic link between the two gods remains a matter of conjecture.

Fornacalia This date was known as the feast of fools— stulti, in the sense of stupid rather than crazy. It got to be called this because February 17 was the deadline for those happy-go-lucky citizens who did not even know which curia they belonged to to enjoy one final opportunity to honor Fornax, the goddess of ovens. By then, responsible citizens would have already looked up what day of mid-February had been set aside to do so for each of the curiae—these otherwise obsolete clan divisions of the Roman people. The dates applicable to each curia appeared on the corresponding notice-boards put up on the Forum by the Grand Curion, head of the priests of all the curiae. This was because there had originally been one oven per curia, and it was there that peasants would lightly roast grains of spelt—a primitive variety of wheat known in Latin as far, in order to remove the chaff. Since it was a delicate and hazardous process on which much depended, it was normal that early Romans found a competent deity to turn to for problem-free roasting. But by historical times, better strains and improved agricultural methods had practically removed this once vital concern. Moreover, the curia system to which it was linked had ceased to be a social reality, so that the cult of Fornax was now little more than a ritualistic legacy.

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Quirinalia The Fornacalia’s focus on food supplies was thought by Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) to fit in well with the economic function he felt able to ascribe to the very ancient god Quirinus, as the third in a triad with Jupiter and Mars (Jupiter being the god of the first, priestly function, and Mars that of the second, military function) in the threefold ideology common to all Indo-European cultures that the French historian had discerned and saw at play in Roman institutions. But there is little evidence of these supposed early agrarian attributes of Quirinus, and even of the historical rites of Quirinalia, the festival devoted to him. The Romans themselves took this god to be their Sabine neighbors’ equivalent of their own war god Mars, except that he stood more for peaceable civic life than for aggressively “martial” politics. They thought Romulus, founder of their city, who had ploughed the first furrow in its fields, was actually the son of Mars and that he was deified under the name of Quirinus after he vanished in a thunderstorm, while he was busy carrying out justice on his royal throne. It was suspected that the early senators themselves had put out this story, in order to get away with murdering the king by hiding the body and then conveniently turning him into a god. History (not to mention prehistory) is full of cases of divine kingship being derived from the murder of a founding ancestor, who was then worshipped as a deity—often by the very people who had killed him. This was because they had found the blessings of peace in the collective bond resulting from the sudden violent resolution of the internal conflicts previously fueled by their envy and fear of the father of the nation. The ancient Romans appear to have been sophisticated enough to realize this; after all, their empire had its roots in a similar kind of politicalcum-ritual murder—that of Julius Caesar in a plot by Republican opponents of his dictatorship, which backfired and made of its victim the tutelary god of the new imperial order.

Yet on February 17, the Romans were still happy enough to turn to their city’s deified founder Quirinus as war god. He was said by the historian Livy (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) to have once appeared to an ancestor of the deified father of their empire, Julius Cesar, so as to have him deliver to his fellow citizens the prophecy that “it is the will of heaven that my Rome should be the head of all the world. Let them henceforth cultivate the arts of war, and let them know assuredly, and hand down the knowledge to posterity, that no human might can withstand the arms of Rome” (Livius I, 16). A temple was dedicated to Quirinus in 293 B.C.E. on the hill to the north of ancient Rome where Sabine immigrants had established a settlement at the city’s foundation; initially called Agonus, this hill has been known ever since then as the Quirinal. The hill has given its name to the palace built on it in the sixteenth century as a summer residence for the popes. It was seized in 1870 by the first king of a unified Italy and became the royal palace until 1946, when the House of Savoy was itself expelled after the Italian Republic was proclaimed. If the Palazzo Quirinale now houses its presidents, it still rests on the age-old foundations of Rome’s sacred kingship. See also Fordicidia and Parilia; Vestalia References Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion; with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Archaic Roman Religions. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Titus Livius. The History of Rome. Tr. Rev. Canon Roberts. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1912, from Corpus Scriptorum Romanorum. A Digital Library of Latin Literature. http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/ livius/trans1.html. Adam Ziolkowski. The Temples of Mid-Republican Rome and their Historical Context. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1992.

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◗ FOURTH OF JULY See Powwow, Sun Dance

◗ FORGIVENESS SUNDAY See Lent

◗ FREEDOM (FESTIVAL OF) See Passover

◗ FRONLEICHNAM See Corpus Christi

◗ FUGARENA See Martinmas

◗ FULL MOON OF THE NEW YEAR See New Year (Japan)

G ◗ GADJARI, GADJERI See Kunapipi

◗ GAHANBAR See Naw Ruz

◗ GAMES (GREECE) The most prominent festivals in Greek civilization were games of religious origin. Four of these periodic sets of athletic and artistic contests enjoyed nationwide, panhellenic status: the Olympic Games, the Pythian Games in Delphi, the Isthmian Games at Corinth, and the Nemean Games nearby in the Peloponnese.

Panhellenic Games In ancient Greece, competitive games, usually including the performing arts along with sports, were an integral part of certain local cults. As such, they were strictly organized by religious authorities and always preceded by prayers and sacrifices along with banquets and libations. They served as an outlet for the competitive spirit or agon inherited from the old aristocracy, whose warrior ethos of honor and valor had spread to all classes even as it lost its exclusive hold on power with democratic reforms. These came along with active military service on the part of all male citizens and, like

the contemporary inventions of drama and philosophy, were shaped by the same sporting spirit. Thus, women rarely had their own sports events (such as races that appeared relatively late), except as part of the games also featuring two female choirs organized by the “Sixteen”— woman officials—every five years for the Heraia winter festival in Elis. Paradoxically, they belong to the same archaic layer from which the Olympic Games sprang within the territory of this minor but well-situated city. Its location made it an ideal setting to attract competitors from the entire Greek world, since they could gather on this relatively neutral ground without, at the same time, giving too much power to one important city compared with others. It was thus in Olympia that the records and treaties of all the Greek states were kept, while entitlement to come to the Olympic Games was what distinguished Greeks from barbarians. A similar conjunction of innocuous allegiance and central location allowed three other rural shrines to gain comparable panhellenic significance on account of their games. For there, common Greek values based on competition between cities could find a rare peaceful expression without endangering their independence or interfering in their constant struggles for power. A Sacred Truce even ensured the safe |

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An illustration of a Greek footrace after a painting by 19th-century German artist Otto Knille. (Bettmann/Corbis)

passage of competitors and visitors in the midst of ongoing warfare, thanks to an agreement not to seize persons or their property on their way to any Panhellenic Games and back. It was called a hieromeny because it originally lasted one “sacred month,” but the Pythian hieromeny actually lasted an entire year to allow all the time needed to reach outlying cities, and the hieromenies of the other Games were no doubt comparably long. The expenses involved in such travels and for equipment, as well as the leisure needed for training, helped to restrict active participation to aristocrats of birth or fortune until the fifth century B.C.E. The cities they represented then literally worshipped the winners as heroes, that is as half-gods of a kind customarily revealed by military types of exploits, and guaranteed them a fitting lifestyle. As for losers—no matter the ranking—contrary to the “neo-chivalric” ideal of sportsman-

ship animating the modern Olympic movement, they merely slinked away into shameful obscurity. Winning was truly everything, as a sign of divine favor that brought good fortune to a city; the alternative could not be contemplated with anything but horror and disgust. Before they were devoted to Olympian gods, all four Panhellenic Games had actually been founded as funerary ceremonies in honor of legendary heroes, like those organized by Achilles for his fallen friend Patroclus in the twenty-third song of Homer’s Iliad. The Dorian invaders from the north who shaped Hellenic civilization thus took over and perpetuated in adapted forms the cults celebrated at these Late Bronze Age shrines by the Ionians before their forced migration to Asia Minor. It was fitting then that both branches of the Greek people would eventually come together around them at the Panhellenic Games, on the sites of

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archaic contests held on a hero’s tomb to reactivate his spiritual energy and make its rejuvenated power available to the living. Originally, such funerary games were real fights for a nobleman’s succession and possessions, but they later became an opportunity for his designated heirs to display the power, wealth, and magnificence of their house. Public games of this kind had also been held initially at regular intervals of a king’s reign (most often every eight years) to test his fitness for office and sooner or later transfer his charge, privileges, wife, and daughters to the contender who succeeded in defeating him. In time, the focus of these games shifted to symbolizing and exerting the cardinal virtues of the Greek ethos: the striving for moral excellence and physical perfection in an ascetic struggle to overcome oneself and others so as to prove one’s worth or virtue (arete) as a man (aner). These contests later came to be called stephanitai because the only immediate visible reward of victory in this exemplary struggle was a wreath (stephanos) of branches from a sacred olive tree at the Olympic Games, of fresh celery at the Nemean Games, of dry celery at the Isthmian Games, and of bay leaves at the Pythian Games, where some apples were also thrown in. These were all signs of a glory that ennobled an athlete’s family and city—and even endowed him with a kind of immortality. For he would live on in human memory through the choral songs composed about his feats by the greatest poets—as in odes by Pindar that are still part of the literary canon—and through statues like the dozens of centuries-old portraits that the travel writer Pausanias (143–176 C.E.) saw in Olympia and in Delphi— lined up in the original hall of fame. This said, such glory did bring side benefits—like free meals at public expense for Athens’ Olympic champions. Increasingly substantial rewards for victory at the Olympiads or the Isthmian Games accompanied the gradual professionalization of sports that went hand

in hand with the democratization of Athenian society from the fourth century B.C.E. onward, opening up the games to publicly or privately sponsored athletes of all backgrounds and often modest personal means. Until the Roman Empire, however, they were reserved to Greek citizens who had not committed any major crimes, thus excluding at once slaves and all barbarians, since the practice of athletic sports in a civic gymnasium was a key feature marking off Hellenic culture from all others.

The Olympic Games Though they had long existed locally and had already gained regional prominence in the Peloponnese, the Olympic Games only became truly panhellenic in 776 B.C.E., the date at which the list of victors in the stadium race begins. Their recurrence every four years in late summer was henceforth used to express dates. We thus know that the pentathlon was introduced in 708 B.C.E., chariot races in 680 B.C.E., both riding races and pancratium (combining boxing and wrestling) in 648 B.C.E. The classic lineup of Olympic sports was then essentially fixed—for these games at any rate. An increasing number of variations on it necessitated their gradual extension from one to five days— of which the first and last were devoted to public and private sacrifices (to Zeus and from victors and their states), processions (of the sacred embassies from various Greek cities), and banquets (for the victors and their supporters). The contests at Olympia were said to go back to Pelops’s arrival to this “island” he named after himself—the Peloponnese—not knowing about the Isthmus of Corinth that actually makes it a peninsula. He was the fourteenth contender for the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of Oenomaos, in a chariot race against this king of Pisa, who rigged it because an oracle had warned him he would be killed by his son-in-law. This turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since his own daughter, tired of seeing potential husbands lose their lives in her father’s false wa-

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gers, sabotaged his chariot instead, so that the king died and was replaced by her new husband Pelops. This tale of nuptial elopement has a lot to do with fertility rites as well as the renewal of royal power, like the athletic contests for which it is meant to account. In 471 B.C.E., however, the small Greek city of Pisa was finally destroyed by its rival Elis. It took over the shrine at Olympia and refocused the worship there on a colossal gold and ivory statue of Zeus, king of the gods, in celebration of this victory, building for it the second greatest Doric temple in Greece after the Parthenon of Athens. The ten judges of a year’s Olympic Games were chosen among the Eleans—by lots in later times—and they were trained for this delicate task for the better part of each day for ten months beforehand. After the official games, public lectures and recitations would help authors promote themselves before a national audience. As at the other Panhellenic Games, merchants also took advantage of this gathering for a fair. Solemn announcements of national import were publicly made and recorded on the occasion of the Olympic Games. Women were not allowed on the premises and had to remain across the river Alpheus. Inns were built to accommodate visitors who did not bring their own tents, like the sacred envoys.

The Pythian Games Unlike other major games, the Pythian Games took place within the sacred precinct of an urban shrine—at Delphi. Even more than to the games, the city owed its panhellenic and even Mediterranean fame to its famous oracle—tied to fumes issuing from a crack in the ground next to the navel (omphalos) of the Earth. The nearby sacred brook had been guarded by the serpent Python, son of the Earth-Mother Gaia, until the sun god Apollo defeated him and took it over—as his Dorian worshippers had this aboriginal shrine. As opposed to the yearly Lesser Pythia and other festivals of that name celebrated elsewhere, the Great Pythia were

held every eight years at first and consisted exclusively of musical contests, based on a hymn to Apollo. Gymnastic and equestrian contests were added when the Pythian Games were reorganized on the quadriennial model of the Olympic Games and held midway between them by early September from 586 B.C.E. onward. That year, Delphi became the new seat of the Amphictyonic League and transferred to it the appointment of judges and superintendents along with the whole responsibility for the Pythian Games and the shrine. That was because the latter’s vast treasure was beginning to attract more attention from other states than the city could hope to be able to fend off by itself. The valuable gifts such as tripods that were originally offered were now replaced by wreaths as in Olympia—except they were made of laurel leaves, sacred to Apollo. The victors’ chariots were hung from the temple’s ceiling among other thank offerings for favors granted, before the altar on which burned the Pythian fire, “common hearth of Greece.” Dating from the fourth century B.C.E., the country’s oldest gymnasium ruins include lecture rooms for philosophers and rhetoricians, since scholarly and literary events were featured alongside sports, as in Olympia. A theater was eventually built to hold the musical contests that remained most important at Delphi, centering on the eagerly attended Pythian Nomos—a performance reenacting Apollo’s fight with the dragon Python (reminiscent of Saint George’s fight with another reptilian source guardian). It probably followed the introductory Trittyes—a threefold sacrifice to the sun god Apollo, the moon goddess Artemis, and their mother Leto, whom Python had pursued all over Greece while she was pregnant with her children by the sky god Zeus, on his jealous wife Hera’s order.

The Isthmian Games The Isthmian Games were held in the pinegrove sacred to Zeus’s brother Poseidon near

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Corinth, the “city of the two seas”—hence the pine wreaths used to crown victors in Roman times, when musical contests and rhetorical and poetical recitations were introduced beside the original athletic games. They took place in April or May every two years—the ones when there were either Olympic or Pythian Games, once they too became Panhellenic in 582 B.C.E. The first temple of Poseidon, god of the seas, running water and earthquakes, had been built in the previous century over the natural crevice in which King Sisyphus of Corinth had buried the drowned Melicertes. This was the child of Ino, who had thrown herself into the sea with him in a fit of madness induced by the goddess Hera and was deified in death as Leucothea, the “White Goddess,” watching over seamen (like the Virgin Mary as Stella Maris or China’s Matzu in later eras). Under the name of Palaemon, “the Wrestler,” Melicertes was honored in Corinth in a local cult and with funerary athletic games in an archaic stadium. Soon, the Isthmian Games were especially popular with Athenians. However, they insisted that their own hero Theseus had instituted these contests in honor of Poseidon after ridding the Isthmus belonging to this god of one of the thieves who made its single road unsafe. This is how they justified their privilege of having as many seats of honor in the stadium as could be covered by the sail of the boat that brought over their official delegation. On the other hand, the reason why Eleans were singled out among all Greeks to be altogether excluded remains unknown.

The Nemean Games The Nemean Games were the only ones held— on a national scale since 573 B.C.E.—every odd year in July, about halfway between Corinth to the north and powerful Argos to the south. The latter took them over from the small cities of Cleonae and Phlious in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E. According to ancient chronology, they had started out in 1251 B.C.E. as funerary

athletic games, instituted by the Argos-based expedition of the “Seven Against Thebes” to dispel the bad omen of the accidental death upon their arrival of the Nemean king’s son Opheltes, henceforth known as Archemoros— “he through whom fate begins.” This is why officials at the games wore mourning attire. However, the Dorians eventually attributed their foundation in honor of Zeus to the Theban hero Heracles, among whose twelve labors was the strangling of the lion of Nemea. Equestrian and musical competitions were eventually added to these games in the cypress grove of Zeus Nemeios, with a literary emphasis in the Hellenistic era, when the “Guild of Dionysian artists of the Isthmus and Nemea” gained both fame (for its art) and notoriety (for its immorality) as a travelling theater troupe. From the second century B.C.E., the Nemean Games were no longer celebrated in Nemea, but at a new shrine of Zeus Nemeios in Argos itself, so that the original one gradually fell into ruins, having never been very rich in the first place. It seems the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76–138 C.E.) may have attempted to revive the site by entrusting Argos with organizing annual winter games there.

Explosion and Decline in an Imperial Era Departures from the classic periodos or fouryear cycle of Panhellenic Games had started centuries earlier, with the onset of the Hellenistic era in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. His father King Philip II of Macedonia had already taken control of, and credit for, the Pythian Games by 346 B.C.E., so as to give legitimacy to his military presence in central Greece. In 278 B.C.E., to celebrate the repelling of a Gallic invasion by the Aetolian League and its allies, the Greek king of Egypt Ptolemy II launched the Sotiria in Delphi—in honor of his recently deceased and promptly deified father Ptolemy I Soter (“the Savior”). He had a decree passed by the Aegean League of

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the Islanders to make these new games equal in status to the Olympiads. Their panhellenic claims were asserted anew when they were reinstituted in the middle of the century by the Aetolian League, which now controlled the Delphic Amphictyony. This opened the floodgates for a wave of new biennial or quadriennial festivals vying for recognition from this and other bodies, in view of royal propaganda or in hopes of royal patronage. Down to Roman times, the praise of monarchs in verse and prose thus featured more prominently at these festivals, and their relative importance and prestige in turn became an important stake in international relations. With wreaths of gold and silver as the coveted prizes, they helped foster and maintain Greek identity in a cosmopolitan, imperial setting of relative peace that left no other outlet to the traditional military rivalries between cities, at the root of the agonistic spirit of the games. The more successful ones—above all, the four original Periodic Games—remained popular and enjoyed imperial patronage until the end of the second century, while new “sacred” games (often incorporating a fair among the “profane” portion of activities) were instituted by imperial decree but largely funded by private local sponsors. These events now included pantomime from the second century and mime from the third—reflecting their prominent place in late Roman scenic games. But even the Olympic Games may have died out over a century before they were banned by a decree of Emperor Theodosius I against pagan festivals in 393. In 426, his grandson Theodosius II ordered the burning of what was left of the temples at Olympia, and in 521, Justinian banned the Antioch Olympiads.

Passing on the Olympic Flame to Modern Times The term “Olympic Games” was still used about the local contests held in some Greek villages by the time a French educator, Baron

Pierre de Coubertin, organized the first “Olympic Games of the Modern Era” in Athens in 1896. It had already been used about other attempted revivals, as in Paris on a local scale a century before during the French Revolution, and for Scandinavia in Ramlösa in Sweden in 1834 and 1836, aside from Panhellenic Games held in 1859 and 1875—all without lasting success. The tide only turned with the “Congress for the Reestablishment of the Olympic Games.” It opened at the University of Paris on June 16, 1894, with a performance of the Hymn to Apollo just discovered in May 1893, which used to open the Pythian Games. Set to music by the composer Gabriel Fauré, it was sung against the evocative classical backdrop of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’s mural painting “The Sacred Grove” at the Sorbonne. Most of the athletic events included in the program of the recreated Olympics were modern ones—even the marathon race, whose dramatic arrival in the Greek capital’s recently excavated and especially reconstructed Panathenaic Stadium sealed the success of the new games in 1896. It had been invented by classical philologist Michel Bréal on the basis of a spurious literary account of a messenger’s race from a victorious battle at Marathon forty kilometers away. Such distance running was unknown at ancient Panhellenic Games, which were also traditionally confined to the Greek world, and in no way inclusive of other “barbarian” nations, as the modern Olympics purported to be for the first time. Their invented traditions express a need to present them as being in some sort of spiritual continuity with their ancient model, as if they were passing on the flame of classical agon and arete through time. This is why the Olympic flame (meant to recall the one that used to be kept on an altar for the duration of an ancient Olympiad) is still kindled using the sun’s rays in a historical reenactment of the rite in the ruins of Olympia’s temple of Hera. It is then relayed through space by runners to a new site every four years—often halfway

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around the globe, which cosmopolitan Western culture now encompasses, as the distant forebear it has in Hellenistic civilization did the classical Mediterranean world. See also Dionysia; Eleusinian Mysteries; Games (Rome); Matralia; Matzu’s Birthday; Panathenaia; Saint George; Terminalia References Moses I. Finley and H. W. Pleket. The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years. New York: Viking Press, 1976. Mark Golden. Sport and Society in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Stephen Miller. Arete: Ancient Writers, Papyri, and Inscriptions on the History and Ideals of Greek Athletics and Games. Chicago: Ares, 1979. Tony Perrottet. The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games. New York: Random House, 2004.

GAMES (ROME) Roman games were known as ludi, from an Etruscan word. In their two types—as scenic games of the stage and as arena and circus games involving gladiators or animals in fights and races—they were largely adaptations of ancient Etruscan practices to public festivals of a kind that multiplied with Rome’s expansion to spread its civilization and sacralize the State. Some of them could even live on in the Christian setting of the Byzantine Empire and find echoes in urban festivals of medieval Italy and early modern Spain that have remained popular to this day.

Religious Rites While Roman games were no doubt spectacles on an ever-expanding scale, they always retained some religious component from their primitive origins. Until the end of antiquity, spectators remained at some level worshippers, who therefore had to wear a formal toga. It was on their behalf that contestants—usually of low birth

and often slaves—fought in what outwardly appears to be mere spectator sports meant to please a comfortably seated audience, in contrast to the participative athletic spirit of Greek games, which were initially restricted to the sons of the aristocracy, with spectators left standing on the sidelines or sitting on the ground. Reflecting different priorities, the amphitheater is a unique Roman invention—a building designed for the sole purpose of allowing large numbers of citizens to view a spectacle by making two Greek theaters face each other and fuse in the closed ellipse of the “double theater” of its Greek name. But Roman games were still in essence ritual displays ensuring joyful communication among human beings and with gods and the world, so that originally, “the slightest offense against the ritual or the most accidental disturbance invalidated the whole performance” (Huizinga 1955, p. 74). Beside the celebrations specific to different scenic or circus games, all public games also included fairly generic religious rites, be they offerings, sacrifices, prayers, or a procession. Sacred meals were the most solemn type of offering seen at games. Both the Roman or Great Games (founded in the sixth century B.C.E. in honor of Jupiter Optimus Maximus) from September 5 to 19 and the November Plebeian Games (dating back to the fifth century B.C.E. but public since 220 B.C.E.) began with a “banquet of Jupiter” (epulum Jovis). In 196 B.C.E., this meal of the magistrates became a meal of the gods themselves, in the guise of a Greek lectistern, in which their statues, seated or reclining, took part in the sacred banquet served before the assembled people. The central location of altars in the circus and the decoration of niches around the building also reflected the ancient need to feed the gods through these games. There was no doubt a direct relationship between these circus shrines, often dedicated to Nemesis—divine personification of revenge—and the bloody gladiatorial and animal fights to the death taking place near

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them, recalling the immolation of prisoners and the suicides of soldiers at funerary games. Prayers of varying length and solemnity were recited or sung, like the one composed by the poet Horace especially for the Secular Games celebrated in 17 B.C.E. by the first Emperor Augustus Caesar, a year ahead of their 110-year cycle. Following an Etruscan method of giving the past cycle a proper burial to bring divine blessings on the coming one, they were first observed in 249 B.C.E., to dispel anxiety about the future in the midst of the First Punic War. Augustus sought instead to make them into the harbinger of the new Golden Age prophesied in various quarters about the world-empire he founded. He thus added to the original nocturnal rituals of purification in view of fertility, celebrated beginning on the evening of May 31 at the Terentum underground shrine by the Tiber in honor of the underworld deities Dis Pater and Proserpine, a new set of diurnal sacrifices to sky gods Jupiter and Juno. These sacrifices were made on the third day (after a nighttime sacrifice to Ceres as Earth Mother) to Augustus’s patron Apollo Palatine, along with his sister Diana—the sun and moon. It was during that June 3 morning procession from the Palatine to the Capitol of twenty-seven boys and as many girls whose parents still lived that they all sang Horace’s Secular Hymn. The Secular Games were next observed five years early by Domitian in 88, but they were allowed to lapse when they came due in 313, right after the Edict of Milan legalizing Christianity. This kind of procession often displayed the symbolic ordering of society. Under the reign of Augustus, the Greek historian Dionysus of Halicarnassus described the pompa circensis of the Roman Games from the Capitol to the Circus Maximus—the “Great Circus” holding 150,000 spectators (a seating capacity only equaled by the great soccer stadiums of the twentieth century). It began with young citizens on foot and on horseback, followed by the competitors—charioteers, horsemen, ath-

letes—and then dancers in different age groups doing military dances with weapons, musicians, chorists dressed in goat skins to dance like satyrs in parody of the classical dancers ahead, the carriers of sacrificial instruments, and last but not least, the statues of the gods in the order of the Greek pantheon. These were taken on chariots and stretchers around the circus and onto a ringside tribune called the pulvinar, which would later be gradually confused or amalgamated with the imperial box—since the emperor was the Roman god par excellence (even as the earthly image of Christ after Rome’s conversion). Both he and the gods showed themselves to the crowds to be venerated as such and to receive the people’s petitions, thus spiritually cementing by their charisma the political unity of Rome. The dances in the pompa all involved saltatio— jumping on the ground to shake it up so as to revive plant fertility and animal reproductive powers. If this was pleasing to the gods, laughter and buffoonery were ways of disarming the powers of envy and death as well as of stimulating creative energy—hence the intermingling of feast and farce at games.

Scenic Games According to Book Seven of Livy’s History of Rome, also written at that time, young men had imitated in free verse farces the improvised magical dances of Etruscan traveling players at a precursor of scenic games, performed in 364 B.C.E. to sway the gods in the wake of a plague. This was the kernel out of which Roman theater would grow—though it would take until 55 B.C.E. until a permanent stone theater was built on the Campus Martius. For centuries, performances were given in a circus. After initial exposure to Greek plays, one was first produced in translation by Livius Andronicus in 240 B.C.E. for the Roman Games honoring Jupiter. Livy (36:36) also maintains that the first regular scenic games started in 191 B.C.E. with the annual ludi Megalenses in honor of Cybele.

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Chariot racing in Rome’s Circus Maximus. (Bettmann/Corbis)

That year, an aging Plautus wrote and produced for them his musical Pseudolus, when Rome’s other great playwright Terence was just a child—one day to write his own groundbreaking comedies of manners for later editions. He thus staged his Phormio in 161 B.C.E. for the Apollinarian Games, first instituted in 212 B.C.E. at the behest of a soothsayer who had rightly predicted the disastrous defeat of Rome at Cannae at the hands of Hannibal’s Carthaginian army in the Second Punic War. People were to offer money donations during these games (where plays were normally free), after which two sacrifices were to be made “following the Greek rite”—an ox and two white goats for Apollo, and a cow for his mother Latona. Like many others, these games resulted from a vow publicly made in a time of need and crisis—in this case to a Romanized Apollo as bringer of victory. In 208 B.C.E., it was decided to celebrate

his games every year on July 13, and the very next year, the tide of war had started to decisively turn in Rome’s favor. By the end of the Republic, the games had been extended by a week to start on July 6. Games lengthened and multiplied apace with the Republic’s victorious expansion from then on. For this growth brought new resources to invest in them and new tensions to express through them. These tensions were mainly between the various social groups the games sometimes specifically catered to, providing them with ways to intervene in political life and the judicial process. Games took up to sixtyfive days a year by the time Julius Caesar and his successors started to take over the initiative and all the credit for them. Before long, emperors learned how to use games to forge a personal link with the masses over the heads of the traditional aristocracy, while bypassing an in-

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creasingly disenfranchised citizenry. By the second century, the six great annual games alone (Roman, Plebeian, Apollinarian, plus those dedicated to Cybele, Ceres, and Flora in April) took up fifty-nine days, and all games combined probably made up some 200 festive days spread over much of the year. Most were annual, but many only recurred every four or five years, often reflecting pre-Roman regional patterns or extra-Roman influences. Greek influences (not only music and poetry contests, but competitive athletics such as gymnastics—as opposed to Roman paramilitary sports—in addition to horse races) were decried by the old elites when they appeared at the Actian Games launched under Augustus to honor Apollo for granting him victory over Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium in 31 B.C.E.— and meant to rival the Olympics, and especially at the Neronia—another set of quinquennial games created by Nero in 60, but which was soon abandoned due to the resistance of Roman traditionalists. Yet this imported Greek model of the certamen (as opposed to the Roman ludi) would triumph at the yearly games that Domitian presided over a quarter-century later. These included the Capitolia or Agon Capitolinus, dedicated to Jupiter, for which he built on the Campus Martius Rome’s first and only stadium of the Olympic type (the oblong outline of which has been perfectly preserved in today’s Piazza Navona built over it—flanked by the baroque Church of Saint Agnes in Agone in the spot where she was martyred in 304), as well as an odeon for musical performances. The Roman Capitolia garnered the same athletic fame as the ancient Panhellenic Games in their history stretching at least to the mid-fourth century, spawning many imitations. This revival of the agonistic spirit of Greek civilization thus saw the institution of the Agon Minervae by Gordian III in 242 and of the Agon Solis by Aurelian in 274, not to mention countless agones in every corner of the Roman Empire— especially in Hellenized areas, but also in West-

ern centers like Nîmes in Gaul, where athletic associations were founded and sports installations were built for this purpose. Yet there was something peculiarly Roman about another development that troubled the cultured public: an immoderate taste for sheer spectacle on an ever-grander scale. In a letter (II, I, 182), Horace deplored the fact that even knights joined the plebs in paying less attention to the plot and phrasing of a serious literary text than to the special effects and production values deployed. For a cast of thousands crowded out character development as it marched back and forth with horses and chariots, turning a classic tragedy into a four-hour long war epic. Rome’s scenic games have tended to privilege the visually imposing depiction of heroic actions and monumental settings in a way that recalls the films of Cecil B. DeMille set in ancient times, and indeed a long line of Hollywood spectaculars, often on historical themes. These have exhibited the basic mass appeal to find a central place in the widest array of cultures and so communicate to them American tastes and habits as a universal norm through a worldwide network of multiplexes. Likewise in the ancient world, entertainment complexes of concert odeons, theaters, amphitheaters, arenas, and circuses in various combinations sprang up in all corners of the Roman Empire up to the third century. Their ruins have often survived as its longest lasting monuments, from Croatia to Tunisia and from Spain to Syria. It was at the theater that Romans became familiar with Greek myths and poetry, that the provinces learned the language and habits of the capital, and that subjugated populations assimilated the conqueror’s values to the point of developing a deeply felt solidarity with Roman civilization along with an outer allegiance to Roman institutions. Thus, in a province like Gaul, which came under Rome’s sway during the last two centuries of the Republic, the early appearance, architectural perfection, and sheer number of lo-

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cal theaters has been related by many to the intensity of the process of romanization. The large numbers of seats, even in remote and isolated towns, can only be explained by a large influx of entire surrounding rural populations to sites that, in many cases, were already high places of worship in pre-Roman times. In Gallo-Roman marketplaces and towns, there was often a close physical and functional relationship between theaters and temples, reflecting the need for processions between them on feast days. These included mystery plays. For each Gallic feast was based on an episode in the story of the god or hero whose birthday (or some other anniversary) was celebrated through gatherings, parades, and scenic representations. These different kinds of ritual movements went on simultaneously in a unique combination of the theater with an arena or amphitheater, in which the collective fervor of human beings was expressed in processions, songs, and dances in a circular ground-level area, while on stage the timeless actions of individual supernatural beings from the celestial realm or the netherworld were dramatically displayed as a focus of piety. This ritual duality of religious spectacle went back to the days of Gallic independence, like certain features of gladiatorial fights there. These were also held on the occasion of feasts, such as the mid-March Equirria Martis or “cavalcades of Mars” in Lutetia (present-day Paris), though they had first been instituted in Rome by its founder, Romulus, on the Campus Martius. The fights took place to the musical accompaniment of hydraulic organs (not unlike hockey games in North American arenas) and ended with the decapitation of losers by trinci—a type of gladiator named after the Gallic word for “cutting” or “slicing.” In the second century, many provincial theaters were designed or refitted along the lines of those found in Gaul to accommodate such armored fights as well as venationes—animal hunts and fights, which had begun in the circus in the third cen-

tury B.C.E. before moving to the morning portion of the standard program of gladiatorial games in amphitheaters. Even in Rome, these, as well as other theater performances, had come to include interludes such as wrestling and bear-baiting alongside magic shows and tightrope acts, gymnastics tournaments, and oratorical contests.

Gladiatorial Games Under Emperor Augustus, the poet Ovid reported that gladiatorial fights were featured on all but the first of the five days of the Quinquatrus festival, ending on March 23 with the purification of the trumpets of war before the military campaign season. It honored Minerva Capta, an idol taken back as a prisoner from Falerii in 241 B.C.E. after the Romans finally destroyed the major Latin center of the cult of this goddess of Etruscan origin, which even belonged to the Etruscan confederation. Gladiators are first known to have fought in Rome’s cattle market, the Forum Boarium, in 264 B.C.E., in three pairs as part of funerary games for a Brutus. These were of the kind held by such great families as a munus or “gift.” These munera likely followed the principle of Etruscan blood offerings to the dead and to underworld deities such as the demon Phersu, depicted on the tombs of Tarquinia holding a hound on a leash to attack a man. Bear-baiting was another way of shedding blood on a warrior’s grave so as to exchange some life-force with the dead, but gladiatorial fights as such were unknown in Etruria until the late fifth century B.C.E. Nevertheless, Roman generals took to putting on such fights and hunts before setting out on a campaign, hoping to boost their battle fortunes by shedding enough of the blood of victims and citizens beforehand to satisfy Nemesis, the goddess of revenge and retribution (to whom many chapels were later set aside in amphitheaters so gladiators could pay their respects before stepping into the arena). In 209 B.C.E., upon taking the Spanish port of New Carthage

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(present-day Cartagena) in the Second Punic War, the Roman general Scipio the Elder held funerary games in honor of his father and uncle, in which some of his men volunteered to fight to the death. These games were a new development, using devotio Iberica—a local way of saluting a leader’s wished for or actual victory (even a foreign one’s) by vowing to give one’s life for him—to turn traditional ancestorworship into a ritual glorifying the exceptional man revealed through victory. Gladiatorial fights could now be integrated into votive games of the kind promised to a deity if he or she deigned to grant victory in a perilous situation. They drew a following of captivated citizens away from their original religious setting in graveyards into the more secular setting of the forum, at the heart of the public life of the cities of central and southern Italy. More and more, Roman generals on distant campaigns would pledge to hold such games even without Senate approval and thus take personal credit for military victories, over against constituted political authorities, which strictly regulated them so as to limit the number of fights and of gladiators private citizens could sponsor. In 104 B.C.E., gladiatorial fights were first introduced in public games on the occasion of the triumph organized to parade and execute the renegade African king Jugurtha by the general and politician Gaius Marius. Instituted by his longtime rival, the Games of the Victory of Sulla over the renegade Greek king Mithradates were celebrated on January 27 and 28, 81 B.C.E., right after Sulla became Rome’s first dictator for life, and they were observed annually from October 27 to November 1 even after he promptly resigned in order not to create a precedent. But the stage was set for a more successful dictator to institute the annual and quadrennial Games of the Victory of Caesar over the Gauls in 45 B.C.E., completing the melding of Rome’s victory with her leader’s spirit through the blood shed on the arena, as in live battles of infantry and cavalry (including

armored elephants), even more lethal than gladiator duels and drawing on armies of untrained condemned prisoners. Adding a new twist to these all too realistic clashes, amphitheaters (like the Colosseum itself at its inauguration in 80) could now even be flooded for spectacular reenactments of historic naval battles, in which war prisoners and convicts fought each other in galleys (sometimes rigged up for special effects shipwrecks) until one side was destroyed, as in the first one given in 46 B.C.E. by Julius Caesar on an artificial lake built for the occasion on the Campus Martius. As many as a hundred ships manned by 19,000 prisoners already condemned to death were used in the naumachia organized on Lake Fucino in 52 by Emperor Claudius—whom they greeted with the famous phrase morituri te salutant (“those who are to die salute you”). This was only recorded on the one occasion and was not the standard gladiator motto it has become in the modern imagination. The naumachia (part of the games until the fifth century) was a way to appropriate the very history of conquered nations in a kind of mastery of time. A way to display in festive games the extent of Rome’s domination over nature in space was the use of animals—whether exotic beasts like the elephants and lions introduced in Roman triumphal games under Sulla’s regime, or the more familiar bulls and boars seen at ordinary provincial games, as in Africa, where these hunts were especially popular, since many of the animals used came from there. The Nile’s fauna even came to be seriously depleted by the demand for creatures such as crocodiles for live hunts in flooded theaters (also used for artistic swim shows) at Roman games. Diana, goddess of the hunt, presided over such venationes (which only disappeared in the first half of the sixth century—long after Rome’s conversion to Christianity and even its fall), as Mars, god of war, did over gladiators’ duels. The number of pairs of gladiators fighting at games in the capital had grown to between 25

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and 60 by the end of the Republic. A quantum leap then came when Julius Caesar lined up 320 pairs in silver armor for his father’s anniversary funerary games in conjunction with the Roman Games of 65 B.C.E., demonstrating that their life-giving blood conferred glorious immortality not just to Rome’s illustrious dead, but increasingly to their great living descendents. Thus, his adoptive son, Octavian (after he became the Emperor Augustus), as if to crown the process of concentration of authority in the sacred and eventually deified person of a victorious leader, would have 625 pairs on average fight at the games over which he presided (the Emperor was exempt from the legal limit applying to private sponsors). Winners were rewarded with palm branches, while the fate of the wounded long depended on the whims of the audience. It thus found itself in a position to drown in the blood of predestined human scapegoats the restless anxiety that came with living in an ever-loosening cosmopolitan community, and to forge social consensus around the imperial symbols of collective victory over the forces of death. This religious dimension, rooted in crowd psychology, was also apparent in provinces like Africa, where the games of the amphitheater were tied to the cult of Dionysus down to the third century. Women had to be banned from the arena as troublemakers by imperial decree in 200, having first appeared as gladiators under Nero in 63. However, at the Decennial Games of Septimius Severus, some of these hefty amazons (also known to have hunted wild animals—as at the Colosseum’s inauguration) had dangerously overstepped the boundaries of their role in this microcosm of Roman society by hurling insults at aristocrats in the emperor’s box.

Circus Games Whereas gladiatorial games were first held in public fora and then in amphitheaters such as Rome’s Colosseum (unsurpassed among them

with its capacity of 50,000 spectators), the games of the circus proper revolved around equestrian competitions—whose imagery of luck and triumph also found its way in funerary symbolism, especially among the landed aristocracy. Horse races went back to old agrarian and warrior rituals practiced on the Campus Martius (the “Field of Mars”). Mars was the war god to whom the right-hand, outside horse of the winning two-horse chariot in a race held on October 15 used to be sacrificed with a javelin. This has been compared to Vedic India’s complex ashvamedha, a sacrifice for the enthronement of kings in which a sacred horse was split three ways by a victorious warrior, with the back and front portions going to the war god Indra. In Rome, the people of the Sacra Via and Suburra quarters ritually fought for the head and the privilege of hanging it on each one’s most prominent building, that is respectively on the Mamilia Tower and on the wall of the Regia temple (the former royal palace). A runner also had to bring the tail fast enough for some blood to still drip on the temple’s hearth, while the head of the October horse (October equus) was strewn with loaves of bread in thanksgiving for the harvest. This would suggest its sacrifice was at least in part agricultural in nature. Chariot races had a related origin in the cult of Consus (from the Latin verb condere meaning “to hide”), the archaic “hidden” god of grain silos in which the harvest was stored. Mules and most horses could then rest and were formally crowned for their recent efforts on the occasion of the summer Consualia on August 21 (as opposed to those ushering in winter on December 15, just before the Saturnalia). Others ran in chariot and horse races instituted by Rome’s first king, Romulus. Thus, the legendary rape of the Sabine women took place during the Consualia, when they accompanied their fathers and husbands—enticed by the sporting events—but were kidnapped by Rome’s early settlers, in dire need of wives to perpetuate the new race. From the start, Rome’s

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very existence seemed tied up with circus games such as the Consualia, and Consus remained one of the main gods of the circus. His underground altar was hidden within one of the terminal posts of the Circus Maximus and was only uncovered during races, since horses clearly circled Consus as an offering to him. By stirring up subterranean energies, chariots and horses were supposed to regenerate the forces of the earth and bring humans in harmony with this realm, restoring the pax deorum when some transgression caused infectious diseases such as malaria to decimate beasts and humans, or reinforcing the desired “peace with the gods” with thanksgiving whenever they granted military victory. Though more closely tied to its original agricultural focus, this same rationale would later be found in the Rogationtide processions and Ascension cavalcades of Christian Europe. In the sixth century B.C.E., under the early Etruscan dynasty of Roman kings, Etruscan horse teams and boxers were featured in victory celebrations on the later site of the Circus Maximus and as part of the ensuing annual Roman Games. From the days of the Roman Republic, horse races figured prominently in games aimed at agrarian deities, like the Games of Ceres or Cerialia in April, tied to the awakening of nature with the return of spring. Though the common people was very fond of boxing, wrestling, and foot races, these events were held in the same circus as horse races until the late Republic, when a temporary stadium would be erected for them in the Campus Martium. Horse racing expanded considerably in the Imperial era, when its sacred character was still attested by the ritual of the procession and by the crowded spina in the middle of the circus. This marble spine served as a support for a display of altars, victory columns, and obelisks taken from Egypt, representing aspects of imperial domination and the patronage of various (mostly solar) gods. It was the centerpiece of the circus as microcosm—an image of the

world in reduction, revolving around its divine Prince. Its circuit was like that of the year; there were twelve chariots by competition—as many as months. They circled the spina as their sun seven times—as many as there were days in the emerging planetary week based on the seven celestial bodies of the solar system, and games often featured twenty-four races in a day—as many as the hours in it. The spina also represented the ocean, and the markers at each end, the rising and setting of the sun—traditionally represented as a charioteer with four horses (as in the standard circus quadriga) in Greek mythology under the name of Phoebus Apollo, whose temple overlooked the Circus Maximus as part of the imperial palace. This symbolism extended to the four colors of the different factions of supporters of rival stables, matching those of successive seasons and their dominant elements, each with its divine patron: Jupiter for the wind and winter (Whites); Venus for earth and springtime (Greens); Mars for the fire of summer (Reds); and both Neptune and Saturn for the wetness of autumn (Blues). The Blues and Greens soon overshadowed the other colors as the focus of partisan passions and social tensions, with the ruling classes supporting the former and the lower classes rooting for the latter soon after they both appeared with the foundation of the Roman Empire. This rivalry was echoed in circuses to its far reaches and reverberated long after Rome’s demise in the New Rome that was Constantinople. There, by the seventh century, a system of alliances had gradually emerged between the Reds and the Greens on one side and the Whites and the Blues on the other. But by the fifth century already, these factions or demes had gone beyond their original status as sports associations to become full-fledged political pressure groups that would weigh on the destinies of the Eastern Roman Empire for several centuries, often coming to blows in bloody clashes between Blues and Greens. These conflicts were at their worst in the sixth century.

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The escalation of a general obsession with horse races was no doubt linked to the neardisappearance of any other outlet for the agonistic competitive spirit and the sheer bloodlust of the population. Under the rising influence of Christianity, Emperor Constantine had abolished gladiatorial games in 325, though with little success, since they were abolished again by Honorius—who became the first Western Emperor in 393. They probably survived in some form until the early sixth century, when the now sole remaining Eastern Emperor Anastasius banned fighting with animals, since such fights often ended badly for their tormentors. But in Constantinople, as in Rome before, there was still an organic link between imperial authority and public games—now predominantly equestrian—and it was reflected in the direct communication between the Palace and the adjoining Hippodrome. Though there were hippodromes in every great city of the Eastern Empire, it was now only at that of the capital that they openly exhibited a religious dimension through their connection with the Emperor. Just as it was the Emperor alone who was victorious in battle through his generals, it was also his personal victory that winning chariotdrivers manifested. In a context where the Emperor was the living image of Christ on earth and the standard-bearer of Orthodoxy in the Church, it was also their victory that winning teams displayed before the world. This is why enemy prisoners were taken to the Hippodrome, so they would witness the triumph of truth over falsehood at the racetrack. The Emperor’s authorization thus had to be formally sought two days before all games, even those regularly put on in conjunction with major civic celebrations and religious feasts. On some of these occasions, as on the anniversary of the founding of Constantinople, foodstuffs would be distributed to the public present at the games. This was in the old Roman tradition of the Emperor giving the people what it wants— “bread and circuses” (panem et circenses), in the

famous phrase coined by the second-century poet Juvenal in his Satires. The Eastern Roman Emperor in full regalia would go pray from chapel to chapel, and then solemnly accept the homage of guests to his ringside box, before opening the games by making the sign of the Cross three times over the people, receiving its acclamations and those of the demes, and throwing into the arena a special embroidered cloth called the mappa. Over the centuries, the once factious demes were tamed into a pliant role in the increasingly rigid imperial cult that the games had become, so that the races paled in popular appeal before more brutal entertainments provided between them, which grew at least as important. If most went back to Roman times (mimes, jugglers, and wrestling), there was also wrangling in a kind of corrida (reminiscent of the Portuguese style devised in the eighteenth century), in which a horseman would prod and provoke animals with a poker and men on foot would try to lasso it. The people also demanded more literal displays of the Roman Empire’s domination over distant nations, along the lines of the first games arranged to present a rich array of interludes by Nicephorus II Phocas. His reign (963–969) saw a resurgence of Constantinople’s power against its new Muslim rivals, and this was reflected in exotic attractions featuring Arab jugglers, wandering actors from India, Viking dancers, and performing dogs dressed in various foreign costumes. As for chariots, they had become little more than quaint antiques, and the Hippodrome was falling into ruins by the time Constantinople fell to Western Crusaders in 1204. Even after the New Rome was taken back by its Greekspeaking citizens in 1261, ancient Roman races gave way for good to the medieval sports of European knights, such as dueling, jousts, and tournaments, which prevailed in the imperial capital’s games down to its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

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Modern Legacy: Corridas and Palii Just as horse races were on the wane in the New Rome, they took off in many a city of Northern Italy as a way for its rival quarters to square off in an annual contest, usually in conjunction with its patronal feast, in a way that recalls the obsessive partisanship of colored factions as a lively part of Roman heritage. Many of these urban festival games have survived to this day or been revived somewhere along the way. A race of this kind is normally called a palio—from the Latin word pallium for the precious embroidered cloth that is its trophy (perhaps related to the Byzantine mappa). Historical pageants, flag-tossing, and crossbow contests have overshadowed and displaced racing at some so-called palii, while others involve donkey racing, like Ferrara’s Palio di San Giorgio, Querceta’s Palio dei micci near Lucca, the Palio degli asini of Borgomanero near Novara, and that of Alba. Another name may be used for daring horse races like the July Ardia of Sedino near Oristano (commemorating Emperor Constantine’s victory over his rival Maxentius in 312) or the bareback riding contest between the quarters of Nizza Monferrato at its June Joust, which echoes the classic palii of nearby Asti in September and above all Siena on July 2 and August 16. The Palio of Siena was codified in its present form in 1729 as a contest between seventeen contrade—quasi-tribal neigborhood units, each represented by a totem animal or symbol that stands for a particular moral virtue. There are no holds barred in this wild race through city streets, where opponents may be struck with whipping crops as part of complex secret tactical alliances between teams, and victory can be earned by a horse without its fallen jockey. For, as in the Mongol Naadam cross-country race, the whole emphasis is on the horse, as seen at its church blessing beforehand, recalling the Blutritt and other Ascensiontide equestrian festivals north of the Alps. Siena is said to owe its name to Senus, son of Remus, co-founder of

Rome, and a sixth-century B.C.E. Etruscan frieze found in nearby Murlo already depicts a horse race in similar attire. But it first appears in recorded history in the Middle Ages, when local nobles raced between the Porta Romana and the cathedral on the feast of the Assumption. Merchants, craftsmen, and common people were first allowed to compete in 1581, having settled until then for ever more ambitious allegorical float parades, and before that, for ox races, and at first, a running of the bulls through the streets—so young men in teams could try to subdue them. There can be no question of doing anything but one’s best to dodge the panicked bulls and steers that are released through the streets of Pamplona, capital of Navarra, on the morning of the eight days of the July 7 feast of the martyrdom of its founding bishop Saint Fermin. His late-fifteenth-century wooden effigy is solemnly carried in a procession before mad Dionysian excess takes hold of this otherwise conservative Catholic city around the clock while it is host to a couple million tourists. But already on the eve of the feast, the formal procession from the city hall to attend vespers at San Lorenzo parish church also features papier-mâché Giants (kings of various races) and “Big Heads” (caricatures of the ruling classes) of a kind often found at Carnivals. First observed officially on October 10, 1324, this particular Spanish bull run (made famous largely thanks to Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises) was transferred to July 7 in 1591, and regulated in 1867 in the still current format. In the attempt to outrun and outlive raging bulls on their way to death in the afternoon corrida, runners who have first invoked Saint Fermin’s blessings and guidance over their stunt expose themselves to the elemental surge of life’s energy as they brush with death in the streets, and the beasts stampede toward the arena, in an 880-meter, four-minute sprint. (At this writing, there have been thirteen fatal gorings since the city started keeping statistics in 1924.) Death is even closer to the mata-

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dors (a Spanish word for “slayers”) who will face the bulls in a ritualized confrontation of the human spirit with raw animal instinct—in itself a victory over death or the fear of it. In the case of Pamplona, the bloodshed of the corrida serves to finance the Casa de la Misericordia, the senior home for the poor that owns the arena. But the religious significance of the bullfight obviously lies much deeper than this thin veneer of Christian charity. It goes back to the same roots as the combination of Etruscan funerary games and Iberian victory celebrations that Scipio the African brought back from Spain as the model for Rome’s gladiatorial games— spilling blood to commune with spirits of the beyond. Though the first depictions of bullfighting date back to ancient Crete, it was only in the middle of the second millennium that it openly became the ruling passion of all classes in Spain. It was thus part of every feast and celebration, religious or secular, so that a 1575 papal ban on attendance by the clergy—especially on Church holidays—had to be repealed. It first took the form of the encierro or Running of the Bulls typified by the Pamplona sanfermines, which is also part of the Siena Palio’s early history around the same time in northern Italy. In the encierros of many towns and villages even today, somewhat like the victorious October horse in ancient Rome, the bulls are finally killed, cut into pieces, and cooked in large cauldrons, to be eaten outdoors by the entire populace gathered on the town square. But in the early seventeenth century, young caballeros started to run after a bull on horseback and stick long darts in the thick nape of its neck, and the corrida became a favorite pastime of the nobility until a century later. For it then lost favor with the new French dynasty of Bourbon, and this “barbarous” pastime went back to the streets where it came from. This is where the current Spanish style of bullfighting on foot developed, managing to regain its standing in all walks of life in the late eighteenth century. Today, the corrida circuit extends well beyond Spain,

from the far west—Latin America, where for instance bull runs called pamplonadas significantly take place on October 31 to usher in the joyful funerary celebrations of Día de Muertos in Mexico’s Michoacan State—to the near east— Provence, whose very name bears witness to its ancient history as a Roman province. There, the blood of bulls and men (or women) still gets mingled in the sand of two of the Roman Empire’s best-preserved arenas (both modeled after the Colosseum) in Arles and Nîmes. In the latter city’s amphitheater since 1952, bullfights and cavalcades have been drawing a million people annually for a famous Whitsuntide Féria— named after the old Latin word for Rome’s religious feasts, going back to the beginning of the classical culture that shaped Western civilization. See also Ascension; Assumption; Carnival; Dionysia; Floralia; Games (Greece); Liberalia; Lupercalia; Naadam; Navaratra and Dusshera; Quinqatrus; Rogations; Saturnalia; Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis; Sunday; Whitsuntide References Dominique Aubier. Fiesta in Pamplona. New York: Universe Books, 1956. Roland Auguet. Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games. London: Routledge Publishing, 1994.s Alessandro Falassi and Giuliano Catoni. Palio, with the republication of the essay by Giovanni Cecchini, “Palio and Contrade, Historical Evolution,” 1958. Tr. Christopher Huw Evans and Elisabeth Mann Borgese. Milan: Electa, 1983. Alison Futrell. Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.

◗ GAMES OF CERES, GAMES OF THE VICTORY OF CAESAR, GAMES OF THE VICTORY OF SULLA See Games (Rome)

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A large clay statue of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha awaits immersion in the Arabian Sea in Bombay. The immersions are carried out as part of a ritual following up to ten days of prayer and festivities during the Ganesha Chaturthi festival. (Amit Bhargava/Corbis)

GANESHA CHATURTHI (HINDUISM) Possibly of ancient Dravidian origin, this festival marks the birthday of Ganesha, one of India’s most popular deities. The elephantheaded god of luck, prosperity, and wisdom is worshipped not only by devotees of his father Shiva, but also by those of the other great god Vishnu. Buddhists and Jains honor him, too.

Regional Patterns The fourth day of each of the waxing and waning halves of the lunar month is devoted to Ganesha in India and Nepal. This is done especially on behalf of a family’s favorite son— which Ganesha came to be to Shiva. Ganesha’s yearly festival is thus held on the fourth (chaturthi in Sanskrit) day of the bright half of the month of Bhadra (August–September)—

except in Uttar Pradesh, where it falls on the fourth of Magha (January–February). It is celebrated in each of the Ganesha temples to be found in every neighborhood of all the towns and villages of Nepal—where it falls in the midst of the three-to-five-day women’s fasting period called Tij. It has also been the most popular festival in Maharashtra ever since 1893, when its public celebration was first sponsored as a nationalist statement by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920), an early leader of India’s independence movement. However, it does not figure in the ritual calendars of some other Indian states—namely Assam, West Bengal, and Bihar in the northeast, Panjab, Jammu, and Kashmir in the northwest, and Kerala in the south. In Tamil Nadu, it is largely a private household ritual, where the head of the family used to ritually mould a clay image of the god.

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Idols of Ganesha Nowadays, in much of India, while student contests reward the best sculpture of Ganesha, people also buy such clay idols of all sizes to keep in their houses as divine guests and pray to for prosperity and good fortune over either one and a half, five, seven, or ten days. These effigies, be they small household models or large elaborate sculptures on a float, are then taken in great ceremony to be thrown into a body of water—well, river, or ocean, so Ganesha can go back to the divine realm. While the idol is being immersed, the people stand in the water to be purified with it, singing a prayer to Ganesha that he come again the next year. In Maharashtra, half the dense population of Bombay (recently renamed Mumbai) turns up on Chowpatty Beach to send off the city’s patron deity into the sunset in this fashion. Among the upper castes of South India, either cowdung or a paste of ginger-like turmeric spice is shaped into a cone to represent Ganesha at the very beginning of any sacred action. Ganesha is actually invoked before any Hindu deity is worshipped, as Shiva ordained for all eternity in order to make up for having unwittingly cut off his new son’s head in anger, only to replace it with that of the first animal his servant Gana found asleep with its head facing north (as only the dead are placed): a white elephant.

Moonlight Kleptomania All the more reason for the moon goddess Chandrama to express her scandal to the creator Brahma that he would fast in the name of the deformed demi-god known as Gajanan (“elephant-face”) to ensure that his own creative acts be free of mishaps. Hearing of this, Ganesha put a curse on the Moon: that anyone who caught sight of her would become a kleptomaniac. The other gods fortunately prevailed upon him to forgive the Moon as long as the curse remained in force on the day of his festival. So, people who are out on that night are as-

sumed to be robbers, since this is the most auspicious time for them, a measure of their success over the coming year. In Nepal, carrying a talisman such as a citrus fruit or a green chili pepper is thought to reduce the risk of being mistaken for a criminal if one absolutely has to go out. But the only guarantee is to remain shuttered indoors after sunset, to block any opening that moonlight may shine through, and to perform rites such as offerings of sesame, sugar, and radishes—including some aimed specifically at dispelling any criminal inclinations one might feel.

The Remover of Obstacles A great family feast is then held, after which the beloved tale is told of how Ganesha was “born”—or rather, in the Puranas’ mythological account, how he was shaped by Shiva’s consort Parvati from a ball of dead skin left from her massage, only to lose his original head by standing in the path of his unknowing and testy “father” before being properly introduced. Having overcome such odds in a spectacular reversal of fortune, whereby Shiva put him at the head of his armies as “Lord of Hosts”—Ganapati—or “army god”—Ganesha, he is thus known as the “Remover of Obstacles” (Vignaharta in Sanskrit). His devotees believe that no undertaking will succeed unless he is invoked. That is why his picture is so often found on the doors of houses or printed on wedding cards. All Hindu books have an honorary salutation to him printed on the first page, since Ganesha brings spiritual as well as material success. He is equated in the Ganapati Upanishad with the sacred syllable AUM, which stands for Brahman as the Supreme Identity of God and man—a unity of macrocosm and microcosm paralleled in the joining of a large elephant head to a small human body. At every level, if Ganesha Chaturthi goes by without incident, indicating that the moody elephant-faced god is pleased, this bodes well for the coming year—starting with

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the upcoming ten-day feast of Navaratra and Dusshera in the month of Ashvina. See also Navaratra and Dusshera References Alice Getty. Ganésa: A Monograph on the Elephant-Faced God. Introduction by Alfred Foucher. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936. K. Gnanambal. Festivals of India. Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India, Government of India, ca 1966. Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Loving Ganesa: Hinduism’s Endearing Elephant-Faced God. Kapaa, HI: Himalayan Academy, 2000.

◗ GANGING DAYS See Rogations

◗ GANJITSU, GANTAN See New Year (Japan)

◗ GANNA See Christmas

◗ GARUDA PANCHAMI See Divali

◗ GATE-HOUSE (FESTIVAL OF THE) See KI.LAM

◗ GATHERING FESTIVAL See Mid-Autumn

◗ GAURA PURNIMA See Holi

◗ GEEREWOL (WODAABE) The Geerewol ceremony is celebrated by the Wodaabe nomads of Niger when the rainy season subsides. This festival is famous as a series of dance contests that serve as beauty pageants for young men and as a great opportunity to start new love affairs.

Desert Dandies Originally from Senegal, the Fulani or Peul family of peoples, now some seven million strong, has been scattering eastward across West Africa ever since the fifteenth century, along a band stretching south of the Sahara all the way beyond Lake Chad. The tribes that went past the Niger River and have by and large managed to remain faithful to their nomadic lifestyle are called the Bororo Peuls—a term derived from the Fulfulde word mborooji for the zebu they herd and applied to them derisively by sedentarized Peuls. If they look down on the Bororos as half-heathens on account of their lax adherence to the precepts of Islam, they are also viewed by them as Fulanis who have lost their way. Bororos who have kept to their nomadic lifestyle and remained faithful to the traditional code of conduct called pullaaku (based on reserve, discernment, loyalty, and resignation) can in turn be divided into two groups of cultures on the basis of typical ceremonies. The semi-nomadic Bush Peuls practice soro—the beating of young men with sticks on a voluntary basis, as a test of endurance that earns them prestige with their peers and the admiration of girls. These rewards are gained in a more direct, more peaceable manner in the male beauty dance called geerewol that is common to the Hontorbe, the Hanagamba, and the Wodaabe—its classic exponents. The Wodaabe’s name is the Fulfulde phrase for “People of the Taboo.” Numbering about 45,000, they are among the last fully nomadic pastoralists in Africa, and they pride themselves on their strict adherence to the rules and taboos of pullaaku. For this code frames the birthright they hold from their mythical ancestors Adam and Adama: a knack for beauty and its social expression, epitomized in the Geerewol celebration. It takes place around September, at the end of the rainy season, that is at the crest of the wave of new life that has just transfigured their steppe habitat of central Niger, otherwise desolate and dry for nine months of the year.

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For seven to ten days, as many as a thousand men may then take part in a series of dance contests-cum-beauty pageants. Also central to the Greek ideal, male beauty used to be judged in contests as part of the ancient festival of Panathenaea. But among the Wodaabe, it is three of the most beautiful unmarried girls who serve as judges, while in the audience, both sexes are on the lookout for new romantic affairs or even love marriages. Called teegal, these marriages can be begun and ended at will—up to a limit of three wives between the fifteen lineages, as on occasions like markets or above all Geerewol, when lovers can meet, as long as the single permanent kobgal marriage arranged at birth between cousins within one’s own lineage is not put into question.

The Ruume Circle Dance The celebration begins with the Ruume circle dance—a dance welcoming the hundreds of guests that arrive the first two days and a dance of seduction the first night. Wearing turbans, with painted faces, the men move rhythmically counterclockwise around the old people in the middle, clapping in unison as they sing the praises of the grace and beauty of women— who amble around them admiringly with their umbrellas. One of them may respond by approaching a dancer from behind and running her fingertips along his back, which he will pretend not to notice. However, he may later wink at her upon catching a glimpse of her averted eyes. If she is indeed the right person, they are not fully downcast—as modesty requires. This furtive eye contact once established with some certainty, the man she covets will then subtly twitch the corner of his mouth to point to a bush behind which they can later meet up.

The Yakke Charm Dance Starting the late afternoon before the second night, the Yakke charm dance is a personality contest and a well-known occasion for roman-

tic affairs. In preparation for it, men spend the day wrapping the twelve-feet-long turbans they will wear under conical hats, applying the same makeup (so no one has an unfair advantage): pale yellow powder to lighten the face, black kohl borders to highlight the whiteness of teeth and eyeballs, a painted line from the chin to the shaved hairline to elongate the nose and heighten the forehead—all of which are the main ingredients of physical beauty or bodem. But even more important perhaps is charm or togu, and to enhance it, they also collect fresh maagani—the kind of medicinal potion used to cure physical and psychological conditions, for which the Wodaabe are famous throughout West Africa. They will put some in a small perfume bottle to be hidden inside their elaborately embroidered tunics as they dance, trusting the charmed fragrance will make their own charm irresistible to the female judges. They also wear leather talismans holding excerpts from the Koran as protection from evil spirits and jealousy, to be more desirable to women, and to be able to escape detection—through sheer invisibility—when eloping with another man’s wife at night. In the dance itself, they stand shoulder to shoulder in a long line as they quiver forward on tiptoe to emphasize their height and take on a variety of wildly exaggerated facial expressions to bring out their charm and personal magnetism. For instance, they pout their cheeks as they give out short puffs of breath, purse, part, and quiver their lips, flash their teeth, and roll their eyes—even one at a time if they can—which will help them stand out in the lineup and beguile the judges. For there is a Wodaabe saying that the strength of the eyes is what makes marriages. At the height of the dancing, an elder woman may run up and down the line to make fun of dancers and criticize them in order to egg them on to better performances, which she will acknowledge by dashing toward an exceptional dancer, yelling “Yeeeee hoo!” to gently butt her head on his chest.

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Wodaabe men present themselves for view at the annual Gerewol festival—in which male beauty is the subject of contests and celebrations, Sahel Desert, Niger. (Tiziana and Gianni Baldizzone/Corbis)

The Geerewol Dance Proper It is during the Geerewol dance proper, held on afternoons and evenings over five days, that the selection of the most handsome men takes place. Again, they wear similar clothes and makeup—red ochre this time—to make it easier for the judges to assess their merits fairly. But to bring out their own beauty, some dancers rely on milk-based potions of bark and grasses, which the hypnotic chant of the men as they dance shoulder to shoulder is supposed to “awaken,” causing them to “rise to the heart and show themselves in the blood.” In groups of at least fifty, the dancers bend their knees and sink down, letting their arms gracefully swing forward and turning their heads to show off the whiteness of their eyeballs and their teeth as they smile broadly. To display their strength and endurance, in addition to this, they also jump up and down frenziedly and stamp the

ground martially, for a couple of hours at a time. On the last day, the final contestants are crowned with horsetail plumes in their turbans (without conical hats this time), which they wear in the chorus line of the grand finale. The elders bring out one by one the unmarried girls they have chosen for their beauty to serve as judges. Each one kneels modestly to observe the dancers with lowered eyes, eventually rising to indicate her choice of a favorite by slowly going over to point him out with a graceful swing of the arm. The pride of victory, the admiration of their peers, and the adulation of women are prize enough for the winners who are crowned in the glow of a huge bonfire that night, as couples slink off into the darkness for many a tryst.

A Women’s Art Show: Worso Likewise, pride is the main reward of the women who put on display their elaborately

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decorated prize calabashes (as opposed to those they use everyday) during the three-day period called Worso within Geerewol celebrations. Along with the found objects mixed in with them, they have no utilitarian purpose beside their part in this brief annual exhibition, after which they are packed up for another year of nomadic wanderings. As a teenage Wodaabe girl called Jaro once explained to a researcher: Everyone must have charm and beauty. Men show their beauty in the dances. Women show their beauty by their displays of calabashes and the many beautiful things they put on them. We seek beauty everywhere. It is the Wodaabe way—grace and elegance in all things. (Maybury-Lewis 1992, p. 164) See also Panathenaea References Carol Beckwith. “Geerewol: The Art of Seduction,” in Michael Feher, ed. Fragments for a History of the Human Body. New York: Urzone/MIT Press, 1989, pp. 200–216. Carol Beckwith and Marion Van Offelen. Nomads of Niger. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983. David Maybury-Lewis. Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World. New York: Viking Penguin, 1992.

◗ GENERAL SALVATION See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ GENESIA See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ GHOST MONTH See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ GION FESTIVALS (JAPAN) Kyoto’s Gion Festival, stretching over all of July, is probably the most popular festival in Japan, where it has provided the model for a number

An ornate float is drawn through Kyoto during Gion Matsuri. (Frank Leather/Corbis)

of other local summer matsuris. Its essential feature is a parade of over thirty floats depicting scenes from ancient times.

A Typical Summer Festival The Gion Festival owes its name to the Gionsha Shrine, even though it is now based at the Yasaka Shrine. In 869, a Shinto priest from that shrine led a memorable religious procession of the people, carrying sixty-six halberds on a portable shrine to the Shinsen-en sacred pond in the center of Kyoto. There, the weapons were immersed in a purifying ritual meant to put an end to the plague that had been besetting the imperial capital, since such conventionalized phallic symbols were associated with the deities that prevent pestilence—the Sahe-no-Kami. Since this seemed to work, the Gion Festival has since then honored the spirit of the emperor (who successfully interceded with the god) by means of a parade that takes place on July 17 to commemorate the original procession. Gion

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Matsuri is actually typical of Japanese summer festivals—called natsu matsuri—in its concern for the safety and purity of the water supply. For the hot weather and long rainy season used to cause water to go bad and insects to proliferate, giving rise to epidemics and disease in people, animals, and crops.

An Extravagant Float Parade Coming in the middle of a month of street fairs and games when people eat lots of festive treats, like takoyaki (battered octopus nuggets) and tomorokoshi (ears of corn with soy sauce), the ritual procession involves—like many a matsuri —the carrying of sacred palanquins by teams of white-clad, sandal-shod men. It has gradually developed into a spectacular parade through downtown Kyoto, the Yamahoko Junko. Though its original purpose has been nearly forgotten by now, it is still clearly echoed in the very tall halberd-like poles carried by large wheeled shrine floats (up to twenty-four meters high and twelve tons in weight), along with other symbols of the kami or Shinto deities. Among these are statues and mechanical dolls, spears and precious textiles (such as centuriesold Turkish and European tapestries), in addition to countless paper lanterns and musicians playing in the special Gion-bayashi style. While these giant hoko floats are pulled with ropes by large teams of men, there are also smaller shoulder-borne wheeled floats—also known in China as yama—on which scenes from Japanese history and mythology are enacted by performers striking poses in tableaux vivants. The floats have fixed wheels and can only turn corners by being pivoted on wood blocks in a delicate maneuver.

Gion Festival Spin-Offs The thirty-two or so yamaboko (as both kinds of floats are called together) are assembled on the streets during the festival, when people may even visit them. But they are kept, maintained, and refurbished over the year by the respective

neighborhood groups sponsoring them, so they can vie with each other in the colorful designs and inventive concepts of their creations. The competitive yet civic spirit expressed in such parades of brightly decorated floats was originally referred to by the word furyu, which was later applied to certain folk performances. Being infectious, this unique festive spirit has generated yamaboko parades on the pattern of Kyoto’s elsewhere, beginning in the smaller provincial cities, where there were local branches of the Gionsha Shrine, from the seventeenth century onward. In many cases, such an event is even called “Gion Festival” too, like the one held between July 20 and 27 at the Yasaka Shrine of the small fortified city of Tsuwano in the Sanin district. Very faithful to its Gion model, it is mostly known for the graceful Heron Dance (Sagimai) learned by the Tsuwano clan in Kyoto just before it disappeared there in the seventeenth century. In 1954, it was reintroduced as part of the original Gion Festival after Tsuwano performers taught it to their Kyoto colleagues. When the sun goes down over either Gion Festival, the Heron Dancers, in their wide-spanned white paper bird costumes, silently move into position in front of Yasaka Shrine’s main sanctuary, to the sound of the flutes and drum that accompany an austere, yet elegant choreography going back over 400 years. It has recently spawned a playful offshoot in the Heron Chick Dance, conceived especially for Tsuwano’s children, who dance through the streets in flocks of about a hundred heron chicks, wearing diminutive versions of the stately Heron Dancers’ costumes. Another example of a Gion Festival spin-off is the Sugô Festival of Okazaki in Aichi Prefecture, held on July 19 and 20. There, a tall halberd, similar to the ones crowning shrine floats in Kyoto, towers over two boats coupled together with rope and adorned with hundreds of shining paper lanterns to sail up and down the river. Likewise at the Tennô Festival of Aichi

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Prefecture, held on the fourth weekend in July, such lantern-bearing boats are set afloat on a pond. They are joined on Sunday night by floating reeds, deposited there in a quiet ceremony. This ritual was originally carried out on the Tennô River itself as a purification by water that could help drive away plagues. See also Matsuri; New Year (Japan) References Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. New York: Kodansha International, 1983. Bill Logan, ed. All-Japan: The Catalogue of Everything Japanese. New York: Quarto Marketing, 1984. Sokyo Ono, with William P. Woodard. Shinto: The Kami Way. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1991.

◗ GOURD DANCE See Powwow

◗ GREAT GAMES See Games (Rome)

◗ GREAT HOSANNA See Sukkot

◗ GREAT-HOUSE (FESTIVAL OF THE) See KI.LAM

◗ GREAT NEW YEAR See Epiphany

◗ GREAT PEACE CEREMONY See Busk

◗ GION OKERA FESTIVAL See New Year (Japan)

◗ GIRLS’ DAY See Sekku

◗ GIVEAWAY See Powwow

◗ GOBHARDAN PUJA See Divali

◗ GOELAOUST See Lugnasad

◗ GOLDEN WEEK See Cherry Blossom Festival

◗ GOOD FRIDAY See Holy Week

◗ GORU BIHU See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ GOULAOUST See Lugnasad

◗ GREAT WEEK See Holy Week

◗ GREATLY PRIZED CEREMONY See Midwinter

◗ GREEN CORN CEREMONY, GREEN CORN DANCE, GREEN HARVEST FESTIVAL See Busk

◗ GREEN SUNDAY See Palm Sunday, Whitsuntide

◗ GREEN THURSDAY See Holy Week

◗ GREENERY DAY See Cherry Blossom Festival

◗ GROSSE NEUJAHR See Epiphany

◗ GROUNDHOG DAY See Candlemas

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◗ GUAJXAQUÍP BÁTS

Gurpurbs are anniversary commemorations of crucial events in the lives of the eleven successive Gurus who laid the foundations of the Sikh faith between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries in Punjab—an area now divided between India and Pakistan. These festivals are specific to Sikhism and differ in this respect from others, such as Vaisakhi, Divali, and Holi, borrowed and adapted by this monotheistic religion from the Hindu tradition. The main gurpurbs are those devoted to the births of the first Guru Nanak and of the tenth Guru Gobind Singh, and to the martyrdoms of the fifth Guru Arjan and of the ninth Guru Teg Bahadur.

1708, which was the eve of his death, commemorated on October 21) when Gobind Singh made of the Adi Granth—the “First Book” of the faith—his successor for all time as the Guru Granth Sahib. The holy book had already been installed in Amritsar’s Golden Temple in 1704 by its editor, the fifth Guru Arjan—an event now commemorated on September 1 as a Gurpurb, just like the installation of the ten human Gurus. Aside from their accession, the birth and death of particular gurus also provide obvious occasions for gurpurbs. Guru Gobind Singh’s Birthday in 1666, celebrated on January 5, is an occasion for young Sikhs of Amritsar in warrior costumes to perform the gatka dance, which is derived from an ancient martial art. The martyrdom of Guru Gobind Singh’s father Guru Teg Bahadur—for refusing to convert to Islam —is commemorated on November 24. Though widely observed elsewhere, the latter gurpurb is centered on two Delhi gurdwaras (as Sikh temples are called): Sis Ganj, which is built on the spot where Teg Bahadur’s head was cut off on November 11, 1675, and Rakab Ganj, which was erected where the rest of his body was clandestinely cremated by a disciple, who put it in his own hut and set it on fire.

Birth, Accession, and Death of Gurus

Guru Nanak’s Birthday

Counted among the eleven gurus is the Sikh holy book itself, designated by the tenth Guru as the “Eternal Guru” for future generations of Sikhs. This was done in order to prevent further disruption of the spiritual lineage of Sikhism, since human gurus had proven to be easy targets for Islam’s persecution of this indigenous creed—its rival as a nonritualistic, egalitarian alternative to Hinduism. Guru Gobind Singh had lost all four of his young sons and heirs apparent in this way; one Gurpurb commemorates the martyrdom of the elder two on December 21, and another commemorates their juniors on December 26. Yet another Gurpurb on October 20 marks the day (on October 6,

The founder of the faith Guru Nanak was born on April 15, 1469—a first of Chet in the Hindu calendar that was used by Sikhs until March 2003, when they officially replaced it with their own Nanakshahi calendar in fixed relation to the Gregorian year. It is dated from that day, so that they know the anniversary initially chosen for the calendar to come into force on March 14, 1999, as 1 Chet 1 Nanakshahi. Guru Nanak’s Birthday is celebrated on a spectacular scale in Delhi. There, Sikhs decorate the streets over fifteen kilometers on the path of their procession, itself three to four kilometers long. On the many similar gurpurb processions that take place in major Indian cities, some floats are

See 8 Monkey

◗ GUIJIE See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ GULES OF AUGUST See Lugnasad

◗ GUNABIBI See Kunapipi

◗ GURPURB (SIKHISM)

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Indian Sikhs perform Gatka, a traditional martial art, during a religious procession near the Golden Temple in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on November 25, 2004. The annual procession takes place in the region to commemorate the martyrdom of the Sikhs’ ninth Guru Teg Bahadur in 1675. (Munish Sharma/Reuters/Corbis)

decorated with garlands of marigolds that have first been put on the Granth Sahib in the gurdwara. The flowers are handed over to the faithful along the way, as a kind of blessing from the holy book as Guru.

Festive Demonstrations At some gurpurbs, the Adi Granth is itself part of a parade headed by five armed guards carrying the Sikh flag (as on Vaisakhi), that also includes bands to perform religious music, as well as marching schoolchildren. All Sikh festivals are preceded by akhand path—a continuous, complete reading of the Granth Sahib over three days at the gurdwara. Its end on the festival day marks the culmination of up to three weeks of early-morning hymn-singing processions around town; sweets and tea are offered

by pious Sikhs when such a pheris passes their homes. Houses and temples remain illuminated by countless lamps throughout the celebration. Kirtan sessions of religious singing are the centerpiece of special activities at the gurdwara, where free sweets and langar community lunches are offered to all visitors—irrespective of religious faith—by volunteers, for whom this is an act of seva (service) and bhakti (devotion). Many commercial fairs take place at such Sikh religious gatherings. Called melas, they also feature sporting and equestrian competitions, military displays, live entertainment, fireworks, and community meals.

Commemorating Martyrs The atmosphere is somewhat more sober on the gurpurb in memory of the fifth Guru Arjan

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on June 16. He is the one who first compiled the sacred scriptures of the Sikh faith and later became its first martyr on May 13, 1606, shortly after the death of the enlightened Moghul ruler Akbar Shah, whose tolerant religious policy was reversed by his fundamentalist successors. The anniversary of this event also commemorates all the Sikhs who were to suffer for their faith from then on. This gurpurb is second only to Guru Nanak’s Birthday in importance and features the distinctive practice of setting up booths called chhabil, where volunteers offer sweetened cool water to passersby. See also Divali; Elevation of the Cross; Holi; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References W. Owen Cole and Piara Singh Sambhi. The Sikhs. Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978. The Living Festivals (video series), Part 2 (Sukkot, Divali, Guru Nanak’s Birthday). Exeter, UK:

Pergamon Educational Productions in association with RMEP, 1987. Gurbachan Singh. The Sikhs—Faith, Philosophy, and Folk. New Delhi: Roli Books, 1998.

◗ GURU NANAK’S BIRTHDAY, GURU GOBIND SINGH’S BIRTHDAY See Gurpurb

◗ GUY FAWKES DAY See Samhain

◗ GWYL AWST See Lugnasad

◗ GYMNOPAIDIAI See Carneia

H ◗ HADAKA MATSURI See Naked Festivals

◗ HANSHI See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ HAG, HAG HA’ASIP See Sukkot

◗ HAG HAAVIV, HAG HAHEROUT, HAG HAMATZOT, HAG HAPOSAH See Passover

◗ HAG HA-QAZIR See Shavuot

◗ HAG HASSUKKOT See Sukkot

◗ HALLOWEEN See Days of the Dead (West), Samhain

◗ HAMESHANDAS See KI.LAM

◗ HANA MATSURI See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ HANA TAUE See Matsuri

◗ HANAMI See Cherry Blossom Festival

◗ HANUKKAH (JUDAISM) Hanukkah is a minor and relatively recent Jewish festival. As the Festival of Lights though, coming shortly before the winter solstice, it often tends to vie with Christmas nowadays, both in its customs and in relative scale. Hanukkah actually commemorates a victorious second-century B.C.E. uprising against an attempt by a Syrian ruler to assimilate the Jews forcibly into cosmopolitan Hellenistic civilization, with its pagan religion.

History Hanukkah is one of two “good days” established during the Second Temple period of Israel that have survived and even increased in festive emphasis to our day, the other being Purim. Like Purim, Hanukkah calls for a ritual narration of the miracle it celebrates, both in the Amidah prayer and the grace said after meals, as well as for the Hallel prayer in complete form, as on the pilgrim festivals of Shavuot and Sukkot. Since Sukkot is the ancient Festival of the Dedication, the part of it that involves the kindling of lights in the Temple is the direct source |

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Lighting the menorah candles during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. (Richard T. Nowitz/Corbis)

of the Lights after which Hanukkah came to also be known as Urim. This festival goes back to the rededication of the Temple after Jerusalem was won during the Jewish rebellion against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV’s hellenizing policy, which called for pagan sacrifices on its altar. It was on the third anniversary of his sacrilegious edicts, on the twenty-fifth of the month of Chislev in 164 B.C.E., that the eight-day rededication ceremony took place. It was based on King Solomon’s original dedication of the Temple, still evoked in the Torah readings for Hanukkah. It also included Sukkot’s Temple-bound observances, since the Jewish partisans away in the field had been unable to carry them out at their regular date a couple of months earlier that year. Upon restoring the kingdom of Israel, their victorious leader Judah Maccabee decreed that these eight

days of rejoicing were also to be observed by later generations on the same date. The custom of kindling lights on Hanukkah at home and in the streets spread to towns and villages outside Jerusalem. Yet it gradually fell into disuse at the Temple itself, to the point where people no longer realized that it was on its account that Hanukkah was called the Festival of Lights. By the beginning of the Common Era, facing new trials with the destruction of the Temple, the Jews made a point of kindling Hanukkah lights. However discreetly they might do it when they were in danger, this was meant to “publicize the miracle” of their earlier victory as that of the few over the many, and of the spirit against force. A pious legend was spread by the rabbis to convey this miracle as that of the Hanukkah lights themselves: the flames were said to have been fed over the eight days of

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the original celebration from a remaining supply of undefiled oil only sufficient to last for one day. To recall the makeshift candelabrum in the devastated Temple, an eight-branch menorah, the hanukkiyah, was developed to hold the lights that stand for the eight days. They are kindled at the rate of one a day, until the whole row is burning. It is considered preferable to burn olive oil.

Domestic Rites Neither the light nor the lamp may serve any utilitarian purpose—even to light one branch from another. An extra light called the shammash (Hebrew for servant) therefore has to be used to kindle each one in turn; but first blessings are said on the day that it starts—one for the light and another for the miracle, plus one more on the Hanukkah season itself. A short prayer immediately follows the lighting of the lamps. Sephardic Jews then recite Psalm 30, while Ashkenazi Jews sing a special hymn from thirteenth-century Germany, “Mighty Rock of My Salvation.” Ashkenazis often eat pancakes at this point, but doughnuts are usually preferred in Israel. Latkas are probably the most typical Hanukkah treat; they can be made from a variety of local ingredients, ranging from fruits and vegetables in Israel, to potatoes in the United States and Canada. The seasonal rationale is that the oil used to fry the food fits in well with the oil symbolism of miraculous Lights in the Temple. Hanukkah feasting has long been customary for Jews everywhere.

vergence of emphasis was favored on the one hand by the triumph of light in both Hanukkah and the pagan winter solstice, and on the other by the place of children in the two festivals. Jewish children have long received Hanukkah money and played with a seasonal top called either a dreidel or a sevivon. Books are also a traditional gift on this students’ holiday, which marks a break in the rabbinical and secular school-years. In Sephardi communities, children have even been the focus of special feasts and junior competitions. These have taken on a civic dimension in Israel, in the yearly torch relay race from Modi’in, where the Hasmonean priestly clan of the Maccabees started its revolt and now lies buried. Giant Hanukkah lamps are also lit atop Israel’s public buildings. See also Christmas; Purim; Shavuot; Sukkot References Hersh Goldwurm, with Meir Zlotowitz and Nosson Scherman. Chanukah—Its History, Observance, and Significance: A Presentation Based Upon Talmudic and Traditional Sources. Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1981. Philip Goodman, ed. The Hanukkah Anthology. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1992. Rev. Oliver Shaw Rankin. The Origins of the Festival of Hanukkah. The Jewish New-Age Festival. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1930.

◗ HARVEST FEAST See Shavuot

A Children’s Festival On this and other counts, Hanukkah has tended to emulate the general pattern of Christmas, especially in the Reform communities of places like North America where this holiday has grown into an important family celebration. Leaving aside the fact that the Hanukkah and Christmas seasons both begin on the twenty-fifth day of the first winter month of their respective calendars, this con-

◗ HARVEST MOON FESTIVAL See Midautumn

◗ HEB-SED See Khoiak and Heb-Sed

◗ HEGIRA (DAY OF THE), HIJRA NEW YEAR See New Year (Islam)

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◗ HERAIA See Games (Greece)

◗ HIDRELLEZ See May Day

◗ HILLULA DE-RABBI SHIMON BAR YOHAI See Lag ba-Omer

◗ HOL HA-MO’ED See Passover

◗ HOLA See Holi

◗ HOLI AND VASANT PANCHAMI (HINDUISM, SIKHISM) Coming in February or March on the full moon in the middle of the last month of Phalguna, Holi seems to have begun as a fertility festival in ancient times. This Hindu festival may be compared to both springtime and year-end festivals in the West. Like May Day, it features phallic maypoles and bonfires, aside from street dancing to loud drums, and horns with obscene gestures and lewd remarks, among various forms of social inversion that are reminiscent of Rome’s mid-December Saturnalia, as well as of Carnival, since there too, various substances are thrown at people. Except among some devotees of Krishna, specifically religious observances like fasting or worship tend to be absent on this day, in contrast to about forty days earlier, when the first signs of the coming spring and its festival of Holi appear on Vasant Panchami—a feast honoring the goddess Sarasvati. Its myths, rites, and customs involving the ceremonial burning of some minor deities are spread out in a way that bridges the forty-day interval between Vasant Panchami as the minor spring festival and Holi as the major spring festival, which can be seen respectively as the initiation and the consummation of a single spring festive cycle.

Indian women play with colored powder and liquid on the eve of Holi, the festival of colors, in Calcutta on March 6, 2004. Holi marks the beginning of spring and is celebrated across India by about March 7. (Heta Das/Reuters/Corbis)

Vasant Panchami as a Herald of Holi Falling on the fifth (panchami) of the month of Magha in early February, this festival is considered the first day of spring—Vasant. It is the equivalent of the Chinese New Year or even Candlemas in the West, which occurs around the same time. Hindus all over the world celebrate Vasant Panchami with gusto as Sarasvati’s birthday. Temples are full of activity when Sarasvati is dressed in yellow garments and worshipped there as well as in all educational institutions, since she is the goddess of learning. Young children (ages five and seven in Nepal) are taught to write the alphabet or their first words as an auspicious beginning to learning, while their elders clean their pens and inkwells but abstain from reading and writing. (Similar observances are typical of

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New Year customs from Rome to Japan.) People try to wear yellow clothes and prepare saffron rice as part of the yellowish sweets they offer each other, since this is the color of prosperity and love. In Nepal, Sarasvati’s shrines are filled with food offerings so she can join her worshippers in breaking the day’s fast in her honor. Her blessings are sought on this most popular day of the year for weddings so they too can start on the right foot. Spinners seek to increase their skills by adorning their shuttle with one of the balls from a cottonwool garland they have offered to the idol of Sarasvati. There is a common custom in India of putting a log in a prominent public place. On it is set a combustible image of the fireproof demoness Holika with a noncombustible image of her devout nephew Prahlada in her lap. That is because on Holi, the sister of the demon king Hiranyakasyapu will try to kill this child devotee of Vishnu by holding him as she sits on a pyre and sets it ablaze. Holika will then get burned to ashes while Prahlada remains unscathed. In the meantime, people keep throwing twigs and any combustible material on the log, which grows to sizable proportions between Vasant Panchami and the night of Holi. It is then lit as mantras from the Rig-Veda are recited to ward off all evil spirits, and coconuts and coins are thrown into the fire. The next morning, the consecrated ashes are collected and smeared on people’s limbs, and the roasted coconuts are eaten. This calls to mind the Yule log of European folklore, whose charred remains can cure beasts and humans as its ashes protect the fields. On Holi, some households eat a mixture of mango blossoms and sandalwood paste as prashad—the portion of a sacred offering that returns to humans as a blessing from its divine recipient. In this case, this comes after simple backyard worship of an image of Kamadeva (from Sanskrit kama, meaning lust), the Indian Cupid who impudently threw his flower darts

at a meditating Shiva to arouse his desire to unite with his wife Parvati and restore the earth to creativity. His awakening from deep, sleep-like absorption is celebrated on the morning after the “Great Night of Shiva”— Mahashivaratri. But Kama was instantly reduced to ashes by fire shooting out of the irate god’s third eye of inner realization beyond duality. His wife Rati pleaded with her father Shiva that Kama be allowed to live for two days a year, after which she would join him on his funeral pyre at the climax of Holi. This was granted after Rati’s severe penance of some forty days—corresponding to the interval between Vasant Panchami and Holi, and comparable in length and timing to the West’s Lenten season of ascetic repentance between Carnival and Christ’s Passion and Resurrection at Easter.

Holi as a Spring New Year Festival In southern India and many western regions, Holi is known as the “Great Festival of Kama”—Kama-Mahotsava in Sanskrit—on account of this story and focuses on the burning of Kama. Since this festival is of special importance to the shudra or peasant caste, it is acted out in a pantomime among the lower castes of some districts of the Madras area. This is followed by ten days of mourning. Then the altar erected to him in the village common is set on fire, along with sugarcanes representing this cupid’s bow. The next day, two men dressed as Kama and his wife Rati go around collecting money amid great rejoicing. Uninhibited joy and revelry characterize this festival in all classes and most regions of India. In the north and to the east, it is called Holikotsava or the “Festival of Holika,” since she is the one who gets burned in a great bonfire there. As Holika, it is mentioned in very early religious texts such as Jaimini’s Purvamimamsa-sutra and Kathaka-Grhya-sutra around 400 B.C.E. It seems to have begun as a special rite performed by married women for the happiness and well-

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being of their families in honor of the fullmoon deity Raka. In those days, the lunar month was counted from the full moon instead of the new moon as today. The full moon of Phalguna was therefore the last day of the year, and the New Year started the next day with the spring. Holika was at once New Year’s Day and Vasanta-Mahotsava—meaning the “Great Festival of Spring” in Sanskrit, or Kaman Vila—Early Spring of Kama—in Tamil. There were thus two powerful reasons for it to gradually become a festival of merrymaking, when social order dissolved with the old year and liberated chaotic irrational forces, both as a joyful harbinger of spring and as dangerous pent-up instincts. These were allowed to play themselves out for a while but were soon burned in effigy to clear the air for new beginnings—such as the rebirth of Kama as the full restoration of the fruitful tension between vital desire and an impassible godhead, regenerating the world.

A Hindu Carnival In the state of Andhra Pradesh, active preparations for the local version of Holi, called Kamana Panduga in Telugu, begin after Mahashivaratri. Though all castes are involved, brahmins, silk traders from the vaishaya, or merchant, caste and a rising segment of the peasant caste vie for prominent roles in the organization and sponsorship of the festival, under the leadership of the family of the elected member of the Legislative Assembly. They like to immortalize their young men in photographs, where they wear their silk costumes for the tableaux vivants they are cast in on the various groups’ respective floats in a Kamana procession of gods and heroes. They mostly represent the ones important to Vaishnavas, as the wealthy families that have taken on both the prestige and the responsibility of putting on this festival of Shiva are among such followers of Vishnu. It is thus held largely in temples of

this rival focus of devotion in modern Hindu piety. There, the paper idols of Kamana and Kamamma (as Kama and Rati are known locally), dressed in silk with flowers, garlands, and jewels, are not consecrated and do not receive any worship or offerings. On the first night, and again on the second, more boisterous one, when few women are seen, lower caste men, drunk on country liquor, dress up as wild animals and dance up and down between each higher caste house, until every one is given his traditional half-rupee’s due. Their own ceremonies precede the final procession of Kamana and Kamamma that sets out by two o’clock in the morning to go through merchant and brahmin quarters before returning near its point of departure to be burned in a joyful bonfire. All around town, bonfires are fed with old pots, mats, tools, old furniture and cots—which all have to be ceremonially broken first and replaced by new ones. Old people may once have been thrown along as well to make way for youth, since groups of young men now lay them in a cot they rush to throw into the fire—having dropped the startled passenger at the last moment. Holi may be said to be the year’s last, but not least parva or joint, as such festive turning points are known in the Hindu tradition. For just as the human body would be stiff and lifeless without joints to articulate its form and allow its limbs enough play for motion, so human societies would collapse if they did not have festivals as joints to articulate their cyclical unfolding in tune with the world’s seasonal energy shifts and allow social ties to be relaxed and renewed. This is why the usual restrictions of caste, gender, age, and status are suspended in this joint between two yearly cycles, when celebrations are often marked by risqué language and lewd behavior and people throw colored water and powder on each other, shouting “Holi hai!”—“It’s Holi!” Between men and women, the traditional use of large phallic syringes

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called srngas (often replaced today by pishkari, or squirt guns made out of bicycle pumps) to spurt loads of colored fluids such as musk (from the Sanskrit word muska for testicles)— when they do not smear each other with it—is an obvious expression of sexual playfulness. Yet this represents a taming of the initial practice of throwing mud, earth, and dust that long prevailed in the earlier days—among peasants especially. From these roots as a fertility ritual, it evolved into more innocuous aesthetic forms, just as in the Carnival customs of Europe, fruits, eggs, flour, and plaster were gradually displaced as projectiles by more gentle substitutes, such as confetti, which were invented in Nice for this very purpose. And as in Portuguese and Brazilian palaces and manors during such a Carnival Entrudo, Rung Khelna or playing with color used to be popular, even among the wealthy and official classes of the kingdom of Nepal, on the pattern of many ancient Indian courts. However, there, as elsewhere on the subcontinent, it has since lost some favor with the introduction of nonwashable suits and Western forms of entertainment. Laws have now been passed there to restrict the throwing of gulal (now mostly synthetic ochre, green, or vermilion powder) and colored water balloons to willing victims. If young men still boldly serenade maidens, the indiscriminate use of foul language has all but disappeared. In Nepal as in India, it used to be explained by stories where pranks and abuse were the secret weapon of children against a fiend that persecuted them—be it the ogress Dhundhi among followers of Shiva (Shaivas) or the demoness Holika for devotees of Vishnu (Vaishnavas). In Andhra Pradesh, the main object of colorthrowing is to violate respect relationships in the kin group, as exemplified in the local version of the story of Kama. For there, he is seen as the grandson of Shiva, yet tries to seduce the latter’s wife Parvati—an act equivalent to mother-son incest that causes him to be reduced to ashes by the god’s righteous wrath.

Krishna Devotion Vishnu’s beloved eighth avatar or incarnation Lord Krishna is also said to have held a Festival of Color to entertain the 16,000 milkmaids of Brindaban in Uttar Pradesh, who used red fruit from local trees to make crimson powder. It is now called Phalgun Krishna Pratipad by worshippers of Krishna, and its frivolity is considered to be in imitation of his play with these gopis in Braj Bhoomi—the land of cowherding—where he lived until age seven near Mathura in the same state. In that area, Holi is just the culmination of a week of pilgrimages, devotions, and wild fairs, where spirits are raised and tongues are loosened under the influence of hemp-based bhang—the spiced fruity drink then consumed day and night. The boys of Nandgaon, where Krishna lived, first come to Barsana, birthplace of his favorite gopi Radha, to playfully harass the women amid increasing rowdiness. Gopis get their revenge for Krishna’s brother Baldev’s improper addressing of Radha at the Lathmar Holi, in which the women of Barsana get to pummel the men of Nandgaon with lathi sticks (otherwise used mostly by the police nowadays) as the latter protect their heads with leather shields. The women can thus relentlessly beat them up until nightfall. Five or ten of them may gang up on one man amid general laughter, in stark contrast to traditional Hindu women’s customary subservience to their husbands as their gods. The men of Barsana go to Nandgaon the next day to receive the same treatment from its women, and the scene is repeated by female lynch mobs in several remote villages of the region. Children ransom processions through the countryside, as part of which boys and girls go two by two splendidly dressed up as Krishna and Radha and receive offerings of coins, candies, and flower collars. In Phalen during Holi night, a pundit who has been preparing with meditation for a month immerses himself in the sacred pond Pralad Kund before running through an eight-meter-wide flaming pyre and emerging on the other side

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unscathed. The next morning in the soon very slippery marble courtyard of the Baldev temple outside Mathura, all the colors of powders and perfumed water poured by the gallon from the terraces by the men mix together in the soggy pandemonium of a general battle of the sexes, and it escalates to the point where women tear their male opponents’ shirts off to use these wet whips against them. Marking the birth in 1485 of the mystic saint Shri Krishna Chaitanya, this day is also celebrated as Gaura Purnima in Puri in Orissa, where he died in 1533, as well as in the Vaishnava holy places of Mathura and Brindaban and throughout his native Bengal. Most of his followers there consider him an avatar of Krishna, as do the many converts this movement has recently found around the world through ISKCON—the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (which is how the name of Krishna Chaitanya translates). In this atypically devotional guise, Holi is thus observed as an important festival by the highly visible Hare Krishna sect in the West. In Bengal generally, in contrast to the wild revelry seen elsewhere in India, Holi is observed in a quiet and dignified manner as Dolayatra—the Festival of the Swing. Also known as Dola Purnima or Swing Full Moon, it actually begins the day before and lasts between three and five days. King Indradyumna of Brindaban is said to have instituted this celebration in honor of Agni—the fire god to whom grain and stalks from new fruit rites are offered there and elsewhere in north India, as well as to worship Govinda— that is, Krishna—in effigy on a swing. The fire is kindled on the first day and is to be maintained until the last day, when the decorated swinging platform is to be rocked twenty-one times to the accompaniment of special songs.

Ascetic Adaptations and Military Maneuvers In northwestern India, many people take an opium drink from each other’s palm on auspi-

cious occasions such as Holi, when the Rabari pastoral nomads of Rajasthan reel under the drug’s influence as they perform the dandi—a stick-waving dance. The austere Jains of Gujarat to the south celebrate Holi, too—as much as they might in principle frown upon the kind of unbridled excess often indulged in by their Hindu neighbors. They decorate their temples and are also supposed to fast on the full moon of Phalguna. The Sikhs of Punjab to the north also had reservations about Holi revelry, so in 1700 their tenth Guru Gobind Singh devised for them a less frivolous, more purposeful observance of the coming of spring for the next day. It is called Hola mohalla, from the Punjabi word halla meaning “attack,” hence mohalla for the place of attack—the fort of Holgarth in Anandpur, which would be attacked and defended by two renowned war chiefs while the Guru judged their performance. This was his way of preparing the Khalsa (the community of Sikh warrior-saints he had established the previous year) for the armed struggles it would keep on facing in the future, by giving his followers this opportunity to drill and hone their military skills through competitions in wrestling, archery, close combat with sword and shield, dagger play, fighting on horseback, and the like. As observed today, the Sikh festival of Hola has lost its original military function but not its martial flavor. Members of the quasimonastic military order of the Nihang Sahibs, created in the seventeenth century to fight off Muslim incursions into Sikh areas of Punjab, wear their blue and yellow military uniforms with a full array of traditional weapons as they congregate at Anandpur in colorful processions for displays of horsemanship and mockcombat—such as gatka contests to practice fighting with a mace. There, Hola is thus essentially a fair or mela with an historic military meaning and traces of the original peasant Holi such as playful mutual aspersions of red

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Dressed in costumes from the Heian Period (794–1185), participants march in the Imperial Procession during Kyoto's annual Aoi no Matsuri, or Hollyhock Festival in English. The procession begins at the Imperial Palace and ends at Shimokamo Shrine. (Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis)

powder. But this festival is also observed elsewhere in Punjab among Sikhs, albeit on a more modest scale. See also Candlemas; Carnival; Christmas; Easter; Lent; Mahashivaratri; May Day; Navaratra and Dusshera; New Year (China, Korea); New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Saturnalia; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References Leona May Anderson. Vasantotsava: The Spring Festivals of India. Texts and Traditions. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd., 1993. Jane M. Christian. “The End Is the Beginning: A Festival Chain in Andhra Pradesh,” in Guy R. Welbon and Glenn E. Yocum, Religious Festivals in South India and Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Manohar, 1982, pp. 243–267.

K. Gnanambal. Home Life among the Tamils of the Sangam Age. Madras, India: Central Press, 1947. Sunil Kumar Nag, ed. Popular Festivals of India. Calcutta: Golden Books of India, 1983.

◗ HOLLYHOCK FESTIVAL (JAPAN) The most impressive ceremony of the imperial calendar of annual events—(nenchu gyoji), the Hollyhock Festival, or Aoi no Matsuri, was often referred to simply as “the Festival” over 1,000 years ago in Japan. The use of hollyhock (Asarum caulescens) to adorn people, buildings, and carriages on the Second Day of the Bird of the fourth month was ordained by the god of the Upper Kamo Shrine in Kyoto. It is still ob-

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served today in the May 15 reenactment in Heian-period costume of the courtiers’ procession to offer the plant’s leaves at the Lower Kamo Shrine, in order to prevent thunderstorms and to promote a plentiful rice harvest. As records of the festival from 667 onward show, after ancient dances at the Emperor’s Palace in the morning, his envoys, selected from the Guard, would proceed through crowds of people and rows of ox-drawn carriages to offer his gifts to the gods at this shrine. There, Shinto ceremonies of purification and thanksgiving were performed. On the previous day, the Great Vestal would have taken part in ceremonial washing rites in the Kamo River, along whose banks the procession followed her to the Upper Shrine to carry out further rituals and sacred dances. The Great Vestal’s return on the next day called for a repeat of these observances and then for a great banquet at her palace. See also Matsuri; Vestalia References Hideo Haga. Japanese Festivals. Tr. Don Kenny. Osaka, Japan: Hoikusha Publishing Co., 1981. Ivan Morris. The World of the Shining Prince. Court Life in Ancient Japan. New York: Knopf, 1964.

◗ HOLY CROSS See Elevation of the Cross

◗ HOLY INNOCENTS (FEAST OF) See Feast of Fools

◗ HOLY WEEK (CHRISTIANITY) In the Church calendar, Holy Week is the one preceding Easter Sunday as the feast of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead after his Crucifixion on Good Friday. The events leading up to his Passion and death are evoked on the corresponding days of Holy Week as a timeless sacred drama that is to be inwardly relived by devout Christians. For in the words of an Orthodox Good Friday hymn: “God our King

from before the ages has worked our salvation in the middle of the world,” suspended between heaven and earth on the Cross on Golgotha— the “Place of the Skull” of the archetypal first man Adam in the central, holy city of Jerusalem.

Origins The term “Holy Week” is first found in the fourth century, when the Church of Jerusalem organized dramatic ceremonies during the week before Easter at the original sites of Christ’s Passion. The expression “Great Week” is also used, sometimes concurrently as in the Orthodox Church’s full name for it, which is “Holy and Great Week.” When early Christians began celebrating Easter Sunday, at first they observed only the previous Friday and Saturday as holy days. Wednesday then appeared as a day marking Judas’s plot to betray Jesus, and the three other weekdays were added by the start of the third century. By the fourth century, processions between the holy places in Jerusalem on the Sunday before commemorated the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ, with children waving palms.

Holy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Holy Week is counted as part of Lent in the West but not in the East, where the Lenten season proper ends on the eve of Lazarus Saturday before Palm Sunday. Since the Eastern Church still follows the Jewish usage of counting days from sundown to sundown, the morning service of any given day is often sung on the evening of the previous day while the evening service may be celebrated in the morning. This is why Holy Week begins in the evening of Palm Sunday in the East, with special matins known as the Service of the Bridegroom. Repeated with variations on Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday, it centers on Gospel parables and episodes calling on the soul not to fall asleep as its Lord may appear at any moment of

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the night (and will come in full power at the end of time), expecting it to be ready to serve Him as master of the house. The faithful are thus enjoined to take full advantage of the few days remaining before Easter and spare no ascetic effort to ready themselves for the coming of God in the bridal chamber of his tomb and in their own souls as the Passion of His Son unfolds during Holy Week. They also ask for mercy for their shortcomings. The Orthodox Royal Hours of the first three days include Bible readings from the Books of Ezechiel, of Exodus, and of Job that are thought to announce the way of Christ’s sufferings, death, and saving Resurrection. On Holy Monday and Holy Wednesday, they precede the evening Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts consecrated the previous Sunday, as is also done on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent in the East and on Good Friday only in the Catholic Church. There, the Passion stories according to Saint Mark and Saint Luke are read on Holy Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, while excerpts from Saint Matthew are mostly used in Orthodox services to follow the order of events leading up to Christ’s Passion. The theme of Holy Wednesday is introduced Tuesday night during the Bridegroom service in a hymn by Greek princess Saint Cassiana that contrasts, on the one hand, the repentance of a public sinner, the prostitute Mary Magdalen, pouring perfume on the head of Jesus, who took it as an anticipated embalming of his corpse, with, on the other hand, the hypocrisy of Judas, the so-called disciple who complained the perfume could have been sold for charity, when he only wanted to help himself to the proceedings and was already plotting to sell his master Jesus to his enemies. It is on account of this song in which Mary Magdalen laments being “in the night of burning lechery, in the love of dark sin,” that, in Greece’s urban centers, prostitutes make a point of attending the Holy Tuesday evening service. In seventeenthcentury Spain, there also was a Holy Tuesday

procession of prostitutes from Valladolid’s Magdalen Church as their one chance of salvation, but their pimps kept threatening them along the way to make sure they would not seize it. As for Judas, Polish youngsters enjoyed hurling his effigy from a church steeple and dragging him through the streets, beating him up along the way to the nearest body of water, into which they dumped what was left of him. By analogy with Mary Magdalen pouring perfume on the body of Christ—which is Jesus’ Greek title as the “Anointed One” of God on the model of Biblical kings, anointing with oil features prominently on Holy Wednesday. In the East, the sacrament of the Holy Unction, aimed at the sick, is administered to all, since there is no sharp distinction between bodily and spiritual sickness. This is an ideal preparation for all the faithful to receive Holy Communion the next day, when penitent sinners used to be allowed to partake of it again, or for the first time in the case of converts. In Albanian Orthodox parishes, an old lady prepares the bread for the Eucharist of Maundy Thursday from a bowl of flour in which the flask of oil for Holy Unction has been put; part of this bread is reserved to give communion to the sick over the year.

Maundy Thursday It is on Maundy Thursday that the oil used for this and other sacraments (like last rites to the dying, called the “Holy Chrism”) is blessed each year in the major church of every Catholic diocese during the Chrismal Mass. This is also done on some years in the centers of the various Orthodox Churches during Saint Basil’s Liturgy. This Maundy Thursday liturgy is the most solemn and elaborate one of the Eastern rite, since this day celebrates the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass or Divine Liturgy at the heart of Christian worship and life. This is why Lenten mourning recedes for a day: white vestments replace purple ones, and in the Catholic

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Church the “Gloria” can be sung, while bells ring out for the last time until Easter. Hence the folk belief in Latin countries, which goes back to the general implementation of this rule at the end of the twelfth century, that all the church bells flew to Rome to get the Easter eggs that would soon be found in people’s gardens. In their absence, Western European children would go through the streets with rattles, clappers, and various noisemakers, to announce the special services of the solemn triduum comprising Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Such ceremonial racket may have something to do with archaic methods of chasing away storms and other evils. The Gospel reading for the Maundy Thursday vesperal liturgy is the longest of the year in the Eastern Church. Later that evening, there follows the Good Friday reading of twelve excerpts from the Gospels of Saints Matthew, Luke, and John that relate the events surrounding Christ’s Last Supper. Before the sixth reading, in the Greek use (as opposed to the Slav use), the priest carries a large cross from the sanctuary and sets it up to be venerated by the faithful in the middle of the church, symbolically representing the middle of the world. This ceremony originated in the Syrian Church of Antioch and was only adopted by the Greek Church of Constantinople in 1824. In certain cathedrals and monasteries in East and West and in some parish churches in the West, the Maundy Thursday service proper is followed by an old, dramatic foot-washing ceremony (pedilavium), in which the bishop, abbot or priest takes the part of Christ in washing and kissing the feet of twelve priests or poor people representing Christ’s disciples. This is accompanied by the singing of the antiphon (a verse repeated during the liturgy): “A new commandment I give you: that you love one another, as I have loved you, says the Lord,” which, in the Latin translation of the Bible, begins with Mandatum novum do vobis. This is the origin of the English phrase “Maundy Thursday.” It no

doubt arose under the impact of seeing this ceremony performed by the British monarch or other dignitaries, who would often proceed to give out clothing, food, or money. All that is left of it in the United Kingdom nowadays is the distribution of Maundy money. The annual number of recipients of this symbolic gift to the poor has matched the sovereign’s age since the reign of King Henry IV (1399–1413). Special silver coins with a face value in pence equal to it were first issued in 1662. In 1689, the Glorious Revolution put Mary II on the British throne, jointly with her Dutch-born husband King William III; balking at the prospect of washing the feet of twelve elderly subjects, he delegated the unsavory task to his chaplain, and the practice eventually lapsed. The full royal foot-washing ritual was performed until the twentieth century in Austria, as well as in Spain. There, a few prisoners used to be released (as the Gospel says was the custom at Passover in Roman-occupied Jerusalem) in earlier times in Valladolid, after the Maundy Thursday prisoners’ procession with its songs to the Virgin and her suffering Son. In the Indian state of Kerala, Christian families mark Christ’s Last Supper at their own evening meals by cutting a cross-cake into pieces, each of which is dipped in sauce and handed over to every member in due order. In Greece, Maundy Thursday is known as Red Thursday, because it is the day when Easter buns are baked and Easter eggs are dyed the lucky color red, widely favored for this throughout Eastern Europe. Germans and Western Slavs also know the day as Green Thursday—a term said to derive from the early practice of giving penitents a green branch as a token of their completion of the Lenten journey of repentance. In folklore, it is mostly a day to eat greens such as spinach in specific combinations (often involving nine kinds). But the Pennsylvania Dutch (actually Deutsch for “German”) traditionally just eat a big fresh salad. Like the eggs laid that day in

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parts of Austria, these green dishes are thought to have curative properties. Western Slav homemakers vie with each other in the thoroughness of their spring cleaning on this day, since it keeps all harm at bay for the next year.

Good Friday By contrast, until the middle of the twentieth century, there were many folk taboos about housework on Good Friday, as well as about lighting fires and daily tasks such as plowing. The latter was tantamount to digging one’s own grave or was believed to make the earth bleed, like the flesh of Jesus on this day of his execution. For the Church, the commemoration of the Crucifixion makes Good Friday a day for mourning and for strict fasting. Some Greek villagers and most of Kerala’s churchgoers, in their desire to participate in spirit in the Divine Agony, go so far as to consume distasteful vinegar concoctions, in memory of the vinegarsoaked sponge Jesus Christ was offered when he complained of thirst on the Cross. In the Eastern Church, Good Friday has been beginning with the morning hours based on messianic Psalms and prophesies since the fifteenth century at the earliest. This service includes the symbolic removal of Christ’s body from the Cross. Then his funeral is celebrated at the matins of Holy Saturday following vespers (toward noon on Good Friday in the Greek practice or in the late afternoon in the Slav tradition) with a procession of the Epitaphios. The latter is a painting or goldthread embroidery on a stiff piece of cloth depicting Christ’s burial. While it is being venerated by the faithful, the clergy throws incense smoke on it continuously. Later on, rosewater is sprinkled both on it and on the people. The symbolic bier is then taken to the altar standing for Christ’s tomb, where it will remain for forty days until the Ascension. The procession often takes place outside the church—and even all around town in Orthodox countries—accompanied by a band playing funeral marches and by represen-

tatives of civil authority. This protracted and solemn service is based on the singing of Psalm 119 (the longest one in the Bible) interspersed with and followed by many other poetic texts like the Eulogies of Saint Cassiana. These texts largely deal with the Harrowing of Hell— Christ’s intrusion into the land of the dead to rescue from its shadows the righteous of all ages by granting them eternal life in communion with him as their deathless God. Orthodox Christians often pass under the Epitaphion at some point to receive its blessing. They may take the candles home as curative talismans and some of the spring flowers used in large quantities to adorn it, since these objects have thereby acquired a miraculous power to keep death and disease at bay. In Catholic Poland and Slovakia too, it is a life-size figure of the dead Christ lying in a specially made coffin that the faithful venerate on Good Friday and above all on Holy Saturday. Parishes compete in the arrangement of Passion scenes around the Blessed Sacrament (a consecrated host from the mass) draped in a filmy veil. Indeed, most religious symbols, including crosses, used to be covered on Good Friday in Catholic churches—literally shrouded in black. This transformation would have begun the previous night as part of a triduum service, which is still celebrated in monastic settings. It was also very popular with the laity in early modern France, when no other entertainment was allowed during Lent, and the music was provided by the best composers and opera singers of the age. This office is called Tenebrae (Latin for “darkness”), since the church grows darker with the blowing out in turn of fifteen candles set in two seven-branch candelabras representing the twelve disciples minus the traitor Judas plus the three Marys with a separate extra candle for their Master. It extends over the course of three nocturns of three psalms, three anthems, and three readings, interspersed with the singing of the Lamenta-

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tions of Jeremy over the Hebrews’ Babylonian captivity. Near the end of the cycle, all other lights in the church are put out, and only one last candle is left to represent Christ, deserted by his disciples and given over to the forces of darkness during the night of Good Friday. Even that single light is finally taken out and hidden behind the altar (like Jesus in the tomb and God in his humanity), leaving the church in total darkness until the strepitus (a sudden sharp noise) is heard. This is the signal for the candle to be brought back to its place on the stand. For Christians believe Jesus Christ is “a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower,” according to his beloved disciple John at the beginning of his Gospel (Jerusalem Bible 1968, 1:5), from which the Passion story is taken during the Catholic and Anglican Good Friday Mass of the Presanctified. This is the only remaining Western occurrence of a type of service still widely used during fasting periods in the Eastern Church, except for this day when no liturgy is held at all. This ancient mass has other Eastern features, like the Greek Trisagion prayer (“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy upon us!”) that has always been in daily use in Orthodoxy. Here, it punctuates the Reproaches of the Messiah to the people of Israel for failing to recognize him after all the wonders the Lord did for it in the Old Testament. This is sung after a great wooden crucifix has been gradually unveiled, and while it is being venerated by the faithful as the wood of the Cross—the Tree of Life that heals the wounds brought on by eating forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Earthly Paradise, which is said to have caused the Fall of Adam and Eve into sin, corruption, and death. But now the choir can sing the Vexilla Regis hymn praising the Cross as the triumphal banner of the King, while the host consecrated on Maundy Thursday is being taken out, and then held up for the adoration of the people by the

priest. (From the thirteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the priest was the only one to receive it, but since 1955, there is a general communion at this point.) The mass then ends in silence, with all lights extinguished. The doors of the tabernacle holding the Blessed Sacrament are thrown wide open, just as the veil of the Temple of Jerusalem was rent from top to bottom at the moment when Christ is thought to have died on the Cross around three o’clock on the afternoon of Good Friday. At that time in churches in the Rhineland, children still make lots of noise with stomping, whistles, and other instruments, to evoke the earthquake and the sudden darkness said to have simultaneously occurred in Jerusalem. After the morning Mass of the Presanctified, Catholics and Anglicans follow the interdenominational Protestant use of holding three hours of meditation on Christ’s death—from noon onward (in order to match the Gospel timing reflected in their observance in Jerusalem as early as the late fourth century), focusing on the Seven Last Words or sayings Christ uttered from the Cross. In many American cities until the last quarter of the twentieth century, most businesses would even close between noon and three o’clock. Since the Catholic Counterreformation, the fourteen Stations of the Cross have retraced meaningful incidents on the way to Golgotha, the place of execution to which Jesus was made to carry its instrument himself. They are marked by pictures around the nave of Catholic churches, so that the devout can meditate and pray in front of each in sequence. They may also be reenacted outdoors in a procession, as through the streets of Paris or Montreal, not to mention the original sites along the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem. Holy Week and especially Good Friday processions are most popular in southern France, Italy, Portugal, and above all in Spain and Latin America. The procession held every day of Holy Week in Antigua Guatemala, the most

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important one in the New World, allows women to carry the Virgen Dolorosa. But as a rule, such processions are organized and performed by lay brotherhoods that arose from the eleventh century onward for mutual help and the expiation of sins by mortification and penitence. These brotherhoods all have their distinctive colored robes, often with pointed hoods covering the head so that participants can preserve their anonymity and refrain from taking any personal credit or suffering public shame for the penance they are doing for their sins. Sometimes, this used to involve a good deal of bloodletting by self-flagellation and other means: certain Spanish processions even left a trail of blood on the streets. Such excesses have led to their toning down from the late eighteenth century onward. Likewise, the medieval “mystery plays” performed in front of churches on Holy Week disappeared in the sixteenth century, for similar reasons. Yet Passion plays soon reappeared in the context of the Catholic Counterreformation, and some fifty of them still thrive in much of Europe in secular settings, though they tend to be performed after Easter, around Pentecost. Aside from the very popular church square Passion plays called cenaculos (extreme, literal forms of participation in Christ’s Passion) persist in the Philippines; every year, many men and women volunteer to be flogged, or even crucified, on Good Friday.

Holy Saturday In Sweden and Finland, children trick-or-treat for money as Easter witches with pussy-willow wands adorned with feathers of many colors on Holy Saturday. For this is when these evil beings take advantage of the absence of Christ from earth to come out for their annual meeting with the Devil at the fairy-tale Blue Mountain. This custom spread from the western coast of Sweden in the nineteenth century but has been considerably toned down since the days young people would do pranks such as toppling

carts, knocking on the walls of houses, and throwing ashes at the windows. Though it may be an equivalent of Halloween, it is nonetheless receding due to the latter’s fashionable new arrival from the United States. Greeks think of Holy Saturday as an auspicious day to die, since the deceased are then in the company of Christ walking among the dead. Evil is then expelled in the shape of a straw dummy of the traitor Judas that is often burned in a great bonfire either Friday night or on the morning of Holy Saturday. Following a custom borrowed from the Church of Jerusalem, the day’s vespers held at the latter time are punctuated by loud, boisterous responses and the scattering of laurel leaves whenever the priest shouts, in anticipation of the Resurrection: “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered” (Jerusalem Bible 1968, Psalm 68:1). The phrase “Let God arise!” has thus become proverbial in modern Greek to denote a loud noise or a scene of uproar. The vespers are followed by the Liturgy of Saint Basil, called the “First Resurrection” by Greeks, among whom black mourning vestments make way for the white of Paschal joy. After this morning service and a meal marking the end of the day’s strict fast for Catholics and its beginning for the Orthodox, Eastern Europeans turn to the preparation of Easter festivities: women bake, and some of the men kill lambs. Holy Saturday is thus characterized by the appearance of many joyful harbingers of the next day’s Easter services, in the midst of the continuing contemplation of the awesome mystery of God’s self-abasement to share mankind’s condition in the person of Jesus, down to this extreme point of his seeming disappearance in the abyss of death and oblivion. In the Orthodox Church, this dual character of Holy Saturday is due to the long-term trend to start Easter celebrations always earlier, so that by now they usually begin in earnest late that night at the Sunday matins of the Resurrection

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with the exultant proclamation that “Christ is Risen!” See also Ascension; Ashura; Days of the Dead (West); Easter; Lent; Palm Sunday; Passover; Samhain; Whitsuntide References G. C. Barker. “Some Aspects of Penitential Processions in Spain and the American Southwest,” in Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 79, No. 276 (1957), pp. 137–142. Eileen Elizabeth Freeman, ed. The Holy Week Book. San Jose, CA: Resource Publications, 1979. Holy Week: The Greatest Week in the Life of the Church. (CD-ROM). Salisbury, MD: Regina Orthodox Press, 1999. Alexander Schmemann. Holy Week: A Liturgical Explanation of the Days of the Holy Week. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, [s.d.]. Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968.

◗ HORSES’ EASTER See Lent

◗ HOSHANA RABBA See Sukkot

◗ HOUSE OF WHISTLING See Sun Dance

◗ HUARACHICU See Inti Raymi and Huarachicu

◗ HUEYMICCAIHUITL See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ HUI See Chiao

◗ HUNGRY GHOSTS (FESTIVAL OF) See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ HYPAPANTÍ, IMBOLC See Candlemas

◗ HOMOWO See New Yam Festival

◗ HONNONOUAROIA See Midwinter

I ◗ IMMACULATE CONCEPTION See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ INDEPENDENCE DAY See Midsummer, Powwow, Sun Dance

◗ INDICTION (FEAST OF) See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ INNOCENTS’ DAY See Christmas, Feast of Fools

◗ INTERMEDIATE DAYS See Passover

◗ INTI RAYMI AND HUARACHICU (INCAS) For the Incas of Peru, Inti Raymi was a solar solstice festival that came in two versions: in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer as the greater, Capac Inti Raymi nevertheless overshadowed by the concurrent Huarachicu rites of passage of December, and in the winter as the lesser New Year festival of Inti Raymi proper in June. Though these complementary festivals both had a pastoral element consisting in llama sacrifices, they were in fact primarily agrarian festivals. The great harvest festival of the lesser Inti Raymi had a more basic and ancient claim to

Women in traditional dress carry bowls in a procession at Sacsayhuaman, where the celebration of Inti Raymi is held annually. Inti Raymi, an Incan festival, commemorates the winter solstice and honors the sun god. (Ric Ergenbright/Corbis)

Andean peasants’ allegiance than other ceremonies of the Inca Empire. It thus managed to survive the Spanish Conquest under the guise of the Catholic festival of Corpus Christi, and was even revived in a large-scale reenactment from the middle of the twentieth century onward.

Huarachicu and Capac Inti Raymi In the Inca capital Cuzco, Capac Inti Raymi was celebrated around December 22 as the summer |

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solstice: the longest day of the year, when the sun was mature and the moon full. In that city, it happened to coincide with the climax of the process of initiating boys into manhood in a Huarachicu. Held in different months according to the place, this annual ceremony can be compared to the putting on of the virile toga through which adolescents became Roman citizens on the day of the festival of Liberalia. Like its Roman equivalent, it involved leaving behind the attributes of childhood—in this case, the rutuchicu, the name every child was given upon his or her first birthday. Similarly, once girls had had their first menstruation, after fasting for three days, they underwent a family ritual known as Quicuchica, in which they were washed, were given their adult dress and sets of ceremonial clothes (consisting of the acso wraparound skirt and the liquilla square shoulder cloth), had their hair plaited, and received a new name. Because exclusively male Spanish chroniclers had no access to this February ceremony (possibly overlaid by one of the two Church feast days of the Virgin of Copacabana —the Purification of the Virgin Mary on the second of the month), much less is known about the women’s initiation that seems to have followed a largely parallel sequence to that of men’s; just as in Coricancha, the cult of the Sun was carried out side by side with that of his consort, the Moon, which was entrusted to women. In contrast to the largely domestic women’s rituals, the Huarachicu was an elaborate public festival. During the first eight days of the month of Capac Raymi, a boy’s relatives would be very busy getting his special attire ready— not only the huara breeches made from aloe fiber and the sinews of llamas that gave the festival its name, but all the other sets of ceremonial clothes corresponding to the different stages of the initiation, such as the black tunics and white cloaks they would wear on their pilgrimage to Huanacauri, where they also had their heads shaven. This mountain, whose

name means “rainbow,” about three miles from Cuzco, was where Ayar Uchu, one of the mythical founders of Inca rule, had turned to stone, making it the most venerated of huacas (sacred objects and shrines of local deities). His last request was to be honored as a father by all young noblemen who came to be initiated in a Huarachicu. That morning, the youths had first been taken to the great square of Cuzco by their relatives and were joined there by princely young maidens bearing vases of the chicha maize liquor. They all gathered around the images of the deities that were brought out before the Inca himself came forth to give the youths permission to sacrifice to Huanacauri. They then proceeded to the sacred mountain, taking a llama each to sacrifice at a sacred spot on the foothills at dawn. Still fasting, they climbed up the mountain to pray to Huanacauri that the Creator, the Sun, the Thunder, and the Inca enjoy eternal youth, committing themselves into his hands and those of the Creator. It is only then that the boys would be given their huaras. They were marched straightway to the ravine Quirirmanta, where their relatives awaited them for a severe flogging, meant to test their endurance. They would do the Huari dance that the Creator had taught Manco Capac, the eldest of the four Ayar brothers. When the young men were done, the entire party returned to Cuzco’s great square to repeat the flogging publicly. In the ceremony that followed, heralds blew through seashells, a shepherd brought the white napa (a llama draped in red cloth with golden earrings), the imperial insignia were displayed, and a dance was performed. The youths then went home with their families to feast upon the roasted meat of the llamas killed in sacrifice. The initiation continued all through the month of Capac Raymi. The next stage was a great footrace to Huanacauri from another hill two leagues from Cuzco, called Anahuarqui. In the morning, five lambs were sacrificed to the Creator and to the Sun. Several hundred run-

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ners, each holding a tupac yauri staff mounted with gold or bronze, would then stand in a row, waiting for a splendidly attired official to drop his own staff to start leaping across the plain. At the finishing line of a grueling marathon stood noble maidens with vases of chicha to quell the thirst of the exhausted runners, egging them on with the refrain, “Come quickly, youths, we are waiting for you!” (Markham 1910). Singing and flogging would conclude the event. Then all would follow the insignia and the golden llama in a grand evening procession back to Cuzco. The aspirants would spend the night two miles away from Cuzco, in Yavira, at the foot of a hill where the huaca called Raurana stood. It consisted of two falcons carved in stone and set on an altar. In the morning, its priest would offer sacrifices and prayers that they should become brave warriors, and, with faces smeared with llama blood, they would in turn swear allegiance to the Sun and to the Inca in the presence of the latter; once the haylli victory anthem had been sung, the monarch would signal the priest to present each of the youths standing in rows before him with breeches called huarayuru, golden earrings, red mantles with blue tassels, red shirts, plumed diadems called pilco cassa, and gold and silver pieces to hang around their necks. Later, on Cuzco’s Haucaypata square, the young knights, wrapped in gold-festooned puma fleeces as a sign of courage, would parade and get to do the Yaqauyra dance: they held one end of the cable huascar, while women held the other, and so they all went in circles into the night, to form and then unwind the spiral shape of a shell. After a thirty-day fast, during which their elders chanted in honor of the Sun, the young men bathed in the spring Calizpuquio in the ravine of the Huatanay, a mile behind the fortress of Cuzco. They could then come to the main square in their finest tunics, to be solemnly presented with their weapons: the sling, the club, the axe, and the shield, in a ceremony that ended with prayers and sacrifices.

Once they were back home, they were made drunk with chicha in order to have their ears pierced, which allowed them to wear the ear spools that set apart Inca nobles from the common folk; hence the word orejones (“big ears”) by which they would come to be known by the Spaniards. The next day, that of Capac Inti Raymi, the Huarachicu concluded with a public feast after a mock battle in Haucaypata, where the young men used slings to pelt each other with prickly pears. They were no longer boys, but were recognized henceforward as fully equipped noble warriors of the Inca, entitled to bear arms and to run his domain. In this capacity, at the end of one last series of fasts and sacrifices, they would be seen six months later accompanying their sovereign in various functions at the New Year and harvest festival of the winter solstice: Inti Raymi proper. Stretched between these two alternating versions of Inti Raymi, the initial stages of human life were thus closely correlated with the sun’s celestial journey.

Inti Raymi Proper The winter Inti Raymi’s high point came around June 22, in conjunction with the reappearance (after two months below the horizon) of the Pleiades, a constellation worshipped in Peru as the “Seven Kids.” This festival was meant to honor the Sun and all huacas, to give thanks for the past harvest, and to make supplication for harvests to come. In August 1550, shortly after the Spanish Conquest, in partial reenactment of these rites, the Indians were seen entering the former imperial capital Cuzco after they had gathered the harvest, carrying digging sticks and maize straw, and merrily singing their old seasonal songs. The full cycle of imperial ceremonies of the lesser Inti Raymi had been carried out for the last time in 1535. It included many instances of harvesting and plowing with golden digging sticks, beginning in a field called Sausero, a holy place near Limapampa, where the Incas sang to

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the Sun. It belonged to the mummy of Mama Huaco, the first Inca Manco Capac’s consort who, according to legend, had found arable land around Cuzco for her wandering people by throwing two golden rods into the air. The rod that sank deep into the ground where it fell down identified the site as fertile, so that the incas laid claim to it. This is why Mama Huaco’s field was the first to be harvested and plowed, followed by other sacred fields belonging to the Creator, the Sun and Moon, the Thunder, Huanacauri hill, the living Inca, and his deceased predecessors. Their crops provided for the cultic and personal needs of their respective owners. Among these needs was that for chicha, consumed on this day in Mama Huaco’s honor, and drunk by the Inca (monarch) with the other huacas; for the sun was small and weak during the winter solstice and needed to be strengthened with sacrificial chicha. Some was also given to drink to the napa, a white llama wearing the same ornaments as humans, as he represented the first llama to emerge with them after the flood at the start of the current cosmos. It was displayed on Cuzco’s Haucaypata Square for a month at the beginning of the lesser Inti Raymi, during which time it was expected to kick over the chicha vessel; the spillage became an instant sacrifice that was supposed to help the maize form grains. Once this ritualized accident had taken place, a procession would dance down the street running south to Limapampa. Llamas were burned at every stage of the main day of this solar festival, when the singing of the people, led by the monarch, varied in intensity as the sun first rose, then stood almost still overhead, and eventually set, apparently following the path marked along the mountainous northern horizon by massive stone pillars; the chanting was thus barely audible at dawn, at its height at noon, and fading away in the evening. The people made offerings of clothes and of both live sheep and their miniature gold and silver effigies to entreat the sun to

come at the appropriate time for planting, while the Inca spent much of the festival inside an elaborately carved sun-watching complex north of the city. It had its counterpart to the south in the one centered on a pair of pillars indicating the sun’s position at the summer solstice in December, so that the capital city’s twin moieties or kinship groups, divided between its southern and northern portions, could each feel responsible for encouraging the sun along half of its journey, on Capac Inti Raymi and the lesser Inti Raymi, respectively. The sites for the latter festival’s sacrifices also shifted from East to West with the sun’s course. The first sacrifice of the day was for Huanacauri, the sacred hill southeast of Cuzco, and was accompanied by the prayer: “Creator, Sun, and Thunder, may you always be young, may the peoples multiply, and may they live in peace” (Markham 1910). The people offered similar prayers for the Inca and his consort on this turning point of the Sun as his celestial counterpart, when all fires were extinguished in the capital in order to be relit later that day from the fire ignited by the sun’s rays on a piece of cotton batting; an overcast sky, requiring the kindling of the new fire by friction methods (as in many New Year festivals of the Northern Hemisphere), was therefore a bad omen. But if all went well, after the sun had reached its zenith, the Inca would reflect its rays in a golden disk all around the courtyard of his palace, the Qoricancha or “Golden Enclosure,” after being paraded around the city by the people gathered on the main square, along with mummified ancestors, dressed like him in golden finery. Among many other ceremonies of the day, 200 young women, walking in files of five, brought jars of chicha and baskets of coca leaves for the Sun that morning. At midday, a llama was sacrificed on the patio of the Qoricancha, a sacred enclosure where a crop was grown especially to be distributed throughout the empire as a sign of fellowship and communion. Llamas were also let loose in the

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streets of Cuzco for the people to help themselves and catch them. This free-for-all created a disturbance in the day’s solemnities, causing aristocratic onlookers (since the city center was ordinarily reserved for officials, nobles, and their retinues) to burst into laughter. When the sun was close to setting, however, a sad mood overtook the participants’ singing and bearing, to give way to expressions of outright grief upon its disappearance, as they meekly worshipped it. They then took down the trappings of the celebration for the night, to take them out again on each of the following eight or nine days it lasted.

Harvest Rituals Aside from the images of the Creator, the Sun and the Thunder that were placed on golden altars, the most prominent among these ceremonial trappings were sacred ancestral figures (whether they were mummies or statues is not clear) from the shrines of Cuzco. The major ones were splendidly clothed and set under elaborately worked feather awnings, attended by servants and chosen women, to line an avenue where the nobles also stood. They would accompany their lord the Inca at the end of this week that concluded the maize harvest, to initiate the plowing of the land for the next crop. For the young men newly knighted at the preceding December’s Huarachicu, this would have been their first public function in their adult estate of warriors and administrators of the Inca. They all went first to Sausero, then to other sacred fields before those of the Inca and his officials; the reaping of the fields of the common people brought the harvest to a close. As they harvested, they sang aravi—the mournful dirges of Andean villagers about absent loved ones or the hope for adequate maize supplies. When they went on to plowing with their golden digging sticks, they interspersed their aravis with hayllis—triumphal songs of conquest of the enemy or of the soil. In that spirit,

they returned to Cuzco’s main square–Haucaypata—in tunics they had won in warfare. About that time, a pilgrimage was made to various huacas, such as that of the Inca to the northeast, the direction of the rising solstice sun, to Lake Titicaca, birthplace of both the Sun and the Incas. Once the harvested maize was ready to be shelled, to conclude the celebration of the lesser Inti Raymi, the Inca led a procession to Matucalla Hill that excluded women (except for the ones who had prepared the chicha). But it did include two sacred images of women clothed in superb textiles, as well as four life-size images of llamas, two in gold and two in silver, dressed up in fine tunics and borne on the shoulders of noblemen, in memory of these animals’ common origin with humans after the cataclysm that set in motion the present cycle of time—as another was set to end it in the fullness of time. Like the mix of joyful and mournful songs during plowing, this was but one more reminder that the beginning was found in the end and the end in the beginning, in an alternation of light and darkness where the two solstices echoed each other in every respect. Hence the many common elements of Inti Raymi proper and Capac Inti Raymi, such as the role of the primordial napa llama—the object of a sacrificial procession to Huanacauri in the latter December festival.

From Underground to Revival The lesser Inti Raymi ended towards August on Mantocalla Hill after a period of feasting and rejoicing. During that time, human effigies, sculpted in the same quisshuar wood out of which digging sticks were made, were dressed in beautiful clothes before being burned. It is understandable then that Andeans would find something familiar in the religious statues brought out in procession by their Spanish conquerors around the time of Inti Raymi, on the June festival of Corpus Christi, with their naturalistic design, lifelike glass eyes, blushing

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cheeks, and bejeweled attire. This resemblance allowed them to see these figures as the huacas and mummies of the Christians, on a par with their own sacred objects, only foreign, and fit only for the Spaniards. For their own purposes of confessing and sacrificing to them so the Pleiades as “stars of disease” (Oncoiqoyllur) would spare their crops from seasonal frost, they could thus take the liberty of putting their own huacas next to images of saints. This way, they were able to revere them as was due at Inti Raymi under a thin veneer of Christian devotion. Similarly, when the people of Cuzco scattered coca leaves, flowers, and many-colored feathers on the path of the Corpus Christi procession of the consecrated host—ostensibly a triumphant display of the European Counterreformation’s social hegemony, they were reenacting the homage traditionally paid to the Inca as he returned to the capital from Mantocalla Hill, in the closing rite of the Inti Raymi festival. It had used to give the signal to irrigate the land, taking advantage of a pause in the yearly round of festivals, as had been ordained in the mid-fifteenth century by the great legislator Pachacuti for the Inca Empire. But after the latter’s demise and Spanish colonization, the festivals that endured in Andean people’s lives (however covertly) were the ones having directly to do with the success of the crops on which peasants depended, like Inti Raymi. Yet this one left such a mark that, since the middle of the twentieth century, it has been openly revived in a large-scale reenactment that is second only to the Rio Carnival as a tourist event in South America. Over 200,000 people come each year to witness the reenactment of Inti Raymi by a cast of several hundreds in gold and silver ornaments on June 24—the feast of Saint John the Baptist, who otherwise takes the place of honor once held by the Inca and his retinue. Amid the open-air eating of roasted guinea pig and drinking of pisco, countless other events surround this one, such as parades, exhibitions, and street activities in daytime and nighttime

outdoor concerts on the Plaza de Armas, the square between the legs of the puma-shaped city of Cuzco. It is at the head of the puma that the festival itself is staged, in the setting of the archeological complex of Sacsayhuamán, also called the “Sacred House of the Sun.” But it starts on the Avenida del Sol in front of the Qoricancha, also known as the Santo Domingo, after the church and monastery built on the remains of the imperial palace and Temple of the Sun. It is there that, standing on top of its perfectly shaped granite wall, the Inca and high priest give their solemn orations in Quechua—the original language of the Incas, still spoken in wide areas of the surrounding Peruvian highlands. Another highpoint of the festival, after the procession of the Inca impersonator on a replica of the emperor’s famous golden throne, is the sacrifice of the white llama at the fortress of Sacsayhuamán. Since 1997, as a result of protests, the sacrifice is only make-believe–though the heart the high priest holds up above him looks real enough. At sunset, big campfires are set all over the fortress, and people start dancing around them in honor of the god of fire. Since 1998 especially, thousands of Indians and Mestizos from all over South America also gather at the pre-Inca ruins of Tiahuanaco, outside the Bolivian capital La Paz, around the June 22 date of the Incas’ Inti Raymi, to proclaim their faith in a renewed ascendancy of the native peoples of the continent. See also Candlemas; Carnival; Christmas; Corpus Christi; Liberalia; Midsummer; New Fire Ceremony; New Year (Japan); Samhain; Situa References Anthony F. Aveni. The Book of the Year. A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003. Carolyn Dean. Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cusco, Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Nicholas Griffiths. The Cross and the Serpent. Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colonial

i z c a l l i | 211 Peru. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Sir Clements Markham. The Incas of Peru. London, UK: Smith, Elder and Co., 1910.

◗ INVENTION OF THE CROSS See Elevation of the Cross

◗ IRIS FESTIVAL See Sekku

◗ ISTHMIAN GAMES See Games (Greece)

◗ IZCALLI (AZTECS) Taking its name from the eighteenth and last month of the Aztec solar civic year (xihuitl), the Izcalli festival was poised on the cusp between continuing cosmic order and the fearful possibility of its collapse into chaos. In order to favor a positive outcome, rites of passage, ceremonial hunts, human sacrifices, and a sacred court dance were performed. The Nahuatl word izcalli means “stone house” and refers to the building where maize used to be dried and roasted at this time of year (between mid-January and mid-February). The whole month was therefore devoted to fire.

Baptism by Fire As one of the oldest deities in the Mesoamerican pantheon, the God of Fire actually looked his age, with his deep wrinkles, and his back curved under the weight of an incense burner. He was most often referred to as Huehueteotl—“the old god.” He was also known as Otontecuhtli—“the Otomi Lord,” because even before the coming of the Aztecs from the North, the ancient Otomi people of the highlands where Mexico City now stands had worshipped a primordial couple of Old Mother and Old Father. The latter deity was already identified by the Otomi both with Fire and with

the Sun. Since turquoise was a symbolic equivalent of fire for Aztec priests, they had yet another name for this god: “the Turquoise Lord”—Xiuhtecuhtli. A small fire was permanently kept alive at the sacred center of every Aztec home in honor of Xiuhtecuhtli, as the earthly representative of the Creator Ometecuhtli. This is why the ritual piercing of the ears of Aztec children when they were formally introduced to the Fire God as part of the year-end rites of Izcalli may be seen as a kind of “baptism” into the domestic service of this divine protector, as well as into the larger community of all the family groups who were bound to it.

The Lordly Dance of the Luminaries Ceremonial hunts were a regular feature of the public celebration of the Izcalli festival, along with human sacrifices. Every four years, these sacrifices took on an added dimension, as the victims were dressed up to impersonate the Fire God. Every eight years, the solar year and the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus were completed on the same day. It was feared the world might end if the sun and Venus did not start again on their respective courses. A solemn “Lordly Dance” would then be performed during Izcalli after the sacrifices. In it, the empire’s highest nobles imitated the stars, the moon, and the sun—which the other celestial bodies were always so jealous of that they tried to stop it in its tracks when it was born anew every day, so that it needed regular infusions of human blood in order to overcome all obstacles to the completion of its course. This Lordly Dance was a magical method for encouraging the heavenly bodies to go on with their usual rounds. Wearing his turquoise diadem, the emperor led his court in the dance; all participants were in full ceremonial dress, and each bore a small red-and-white stick along with a paper bag of incense. As they came out of the temple, they circled the courtyard together four times. “And when they had danced,

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they dispersed and went away, and thereupon all entered the palace in proper order,” according to the Spanish chronicler Bernardino de Sahagún (Townsend 1979, p. 47).

Extra Days of Doom and Gloom But there was no guarantee that the celestial bodies would cooperate and that the world would not collapse. This is why the five nemontemi intercalary days—“blank” days separating the last month Izcalli of one year from the first month Atlcaualo of a hypothetical new year— were considered highly inauspicious. They were spent in the shadow of doom and gloom. Most everyday pursuits ground to a halt, and all religious activity was suspended. Nothing was supposed to have its start during these extra days after Izcalli. No trip was undertaken, nor was

any marriage celebrated. It was thought that the unfortunate child who happened to be born in this in-between time was sure to have a disastrous destiny. See also Rain Festivals References Bernardino de Sahagún. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Tr. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur O. Anderson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 12 vols., 1950–1975. Richard Fraser Townsend. State and Cosmos in the Art of Tenochtitlán. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1979. Robert Wauchope, gen. ed. Handbook of Middle American Indians. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964–1976, Vol. VI (M. Nash, ed.): Social Anthropology.

J ◗ JANMASHTAMI (HINDUISM) The birthday of Lord Krishna (“the Dark One” in Sanskrit) is celebrated on the eighth day of the waning, or “dark half ” (krishnapaksha), of the lunar month of Shravana (July–August) or of that of Bhadra (August–September) in an alternate reckoning of the months, depending on the region. It remains one of the few fixed feasts to be performed at the same time throughout the Indian subcontinent as one of a number of festivals occurring around this time in the monsoon season.

Place in the Calendar Krishna’s birthday can be celebrated on one or both of two consecutive days. That is because he is said to have been born as the eighth child of Devaki while the moon was passing through the asterism (constellation segment) named after his father Vasudeva’s other wife Rohini on the eighth, which it does not do every year. If Rohini is crossed on the eighth day of the month, the festival is called Krishna Jayanti (birthday); if not, it is still held mostly on the eighth, or ashtami, and it is thus called simply Krishnashtami. Nevertheless, the name Janmashtami (from janma, which is Sanskrit for “birth”) is the one most often used in both cases for this feast honoring the eighth and most glorious of the ten numbered incarna-

tions, or avatars, of the god Vishnu, the Presever in the trimurti or Hindu triad (alongside Brahma as Creator and Shiva as Destroyer). He takes birth in this capacity whenever the cosmic law, or dharma, needs to be reaffirmed in times of confusion and corruption. In Krishna’s case, it is supposed to have occurred at midnight, so that his devotees (especially women—for this “primal male” was always known as a seducer) keep a vigil and fast twenty-four hours until that time. The image of the infant Krishna—born blue-skinned and lotus-eyed in a yellow silk robe with a crown of jewels—is then bathed in water and milk, dressed in new clothes, placed in a cradle, and worshipped with offerings of food, money, and flowers. Still, devotees of Shiva wait until sunrise on the eighth to worship the newborn avatar of Vishnu.

Krishna’s Story as Spiritual Path Regardless of sectarian preferences, this festive occasion is celebrated with classical as well as folk songs and dances all over Northern India. The state of Uttar Pradesh is especially known for the raslila (play of delight) genre of solo and group dancing combined with chanted recitation to instrumental accompaniment—with audience participation to sing refrains and mark the beat by clapping hands, reenacting |

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episodes from the life of Krishna, above all his love affair with Radha. She stands for the human soul in its playful love relationship to Krishna, as do the gopis—cowherds’ wives who joined him in amorous dances in a forest clearing. Little girls dress up as gopis to dance around a teenage Krishna in city crossroads and village squares. As for Krishna, his devotees see him as the Supreme God on the basis of the sixth book of the Bhagavad Gita. In this classic section of the vast Mahabharata epic, which is also viewed as the cream of the metaphysical wisdom of the Upanishads, Krishna reveals the secrets of His true nature and of man’s place in the scheme of things (that is, disinterestedly following God’s will in the performance of worldly duties) to his friend, the warrior-king Arjuna. This restores the latter’s resolve to face his relatives and many good people in the great battle of rival divine clans at Kurukshetra, 160 kilometers north of Delhi. It is, however, from the tenth book of the South Indian Bhagavata Purana, dealing extensively with Krishna’s childhood, that devotees draw in preparing small images of the god, human characters, and animal figures for elaborate representations of his birthplace, the North Indian kingdom of Mathura, on the banks of the river Yamuna, over which he was carried out of reach of the usurper Kansa’s massacre of innocent newborns (including all but one of Krishna’s older brothers), and of Gokul, the refuge where he grew up among cowherds.

curd, or jvari (parched grain) from a high rope or tall poles in the streets, and having young men or children climb upon one another in a human pyramid to break it with a hammer. While girls swarm and dance around the young “Krishna” who delivered the blow, the pot’s spilled contents are eaten as prashad (an offering of the god’s favor) amidst acclamations of “Govinda!”—another name for Krishna as cowherd. That is because, as a child, he was known, in the mischievous pranks he indulged in along with his cowherd playmates, to steal butter and curd from earthen pots placed beyond their reach by their mothers. At home as in the temples, shrines are decorated with leaves and flowers, and sweetmeats are offered to Krishna before being distributed as prashad to all family members. The women are thus kept busy beforehand preparing them, as well as milk products such as butter, which was Krishna’s favorite food as a child. Many different kinds of fruits are also offered on this day. All the way to Nepal, Krishna’s image is everywhere to be seen, from the effigies displayed amid flowers and jewels in shop windows to the posters on the walls of houses, bazaars, and temples that recall the many colorful stories of his adventurous life and loves. Pundits also read them to passers-by from cloth-covered benches set for them along the streets and on temple grounds.

Remembering Krishna as a Young Cowherd

The joy of these stories and that festival is in the very nature of Krishna, as the mere mention and remembrance of his divine name brings joy. Witness the converts of many backgrounds who are known for chanting it through the streets of all the great cities of the world as members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly referred to as the Hare Krishna movement. They, too, gather in their Krishna tem-

If Janmashtami is the major yearly event in all Krishna temples, it is observed with special splendor in Mathura and Vrindavan, the respective scenes of Krishna’s birth and childhood in what is now Uttar Pradesh. There, as in Maharashtra state, the celebration is also called Dahihandi, after the practice of tying an earthen pot (handi) filled with butter, milk,

Celebrating Krishna Around the World

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An Indian artisan gives finishing touches to idols of Hindu deity Lord Krishna in the northeastern Indian city of Siliguri. The idols are being prepared for Janmashtami, a Hindu festival celebrating the birthday of Lord Krishna. (Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters/Corbis)

ples (a major new one being Bhaktivedanta Manor—the stately house and gardens bequeathed to them in his will by former Beatle George Harrison in Watford, Hertfordshire) for Janmashtami celebrations that are sometimes very elaborate. These often feature traditional dance and new devotional plays before the late-night prolonged anointing (abhisheka) in milk of the small figures of Radha and Krishna, followed by flower offerings by all the guests and a countdown to midnight. In the darkened temple, the curtains of the shrine are then reopened to reveal the large images of Krishna and Radha in radiant glory, and a plate of lamps is taken from it among the faithful, who take the warmth of

the blessed flames with their hands and “wash” their faces with it. But the devotees of this highly visible sect also have further cause to extend seasonal celebrations in that Janmashtami tends to fall near the Appearance Day of Srila Prabhupada—as they like to call their guru A. C. Bhaktivedanta. Born on September 1, 1896, he brought this otherwise somewhat marginal Bengali current of enthusiastic bhakti (devotion) to Boston in 1965. It was already firmly established in the Americas and Europe by the time of his death on November 14, 1977. His movement’s “evangelical” style of Vedic fundamentalism has kept gathering new devotees for Krishna there and wherever rampant materialism has left many

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people begging for the restoration of moral law and inner joy. This is what this god has always stood for in India and what is now celebrated the world over on his birthday. See also Holi References A. C. Mukerji. Hindu Fasts and Feasts. Calcutta, India: Macmillan, 1916. Paul Michael Toomey. Food from the Mouth of Krishna: Feasts and Festivals in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre. Delhi, India: Hindustan Publication Corporation, 1994. Devi Vanamali. Sri Krishna Lila: The Complete Life of Bhagwan Sri Krishna, Taken from the Sreemad Bhagavatham, Sreemad Mahabharatam and the Wealth of Oral Tradition. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2000.

◗ JIDAI MATSURI See Matsuri

◗ JINJUTSU, JOMI, JOSHI NO SEKKU See Sekku

◗ JOYDAY See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ JUDGMENT DAY See Rosh Hashanah

◗ JUHANNUS See Midsummer

◗ JUNGGU See Double Nine

◗ JUNGWON See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

K ◗ KADJARI See Kunapipi

◗ KAG BALI, KALI CHAUDAS See Divali

◗ KARNEVAL See Carnival

◗ KARWADI See Kunapipi

◗ KALENDS OF JANUARY See Saturnalia

◗ KALI PUJA See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ KALLIGENEIA See Thesmophoria

◗ KALWADI See Kunapipi

◗ KAMA-MAHOTSAVA, KAMANA PANDUGA, KAMAN VILA See Holi

◗ KAMUI OMANTE See Bear Festival

◗ KANTO See Sekku

◗ KARNEIA See Carneia

◗ KASUGA FESTIVALS (JAPAN) On March 13 in Nara, a ceremony is held that is said to have remained unchanged since the ninth century, when Kyoto replaced that city as capital of Japan. According to the imperial court calendar of annual events (nenchu gyoji), it then took place on the Second Day of the Monkey of the second lunar month, at the Kasuga Shrine, which has given its name to a certain type of Shinto shrines.

Acknowledging the Power Behind the Throne Located in the midst of an old forest famous for its deer, the original Kasuga Shrine is dedicated to the god of the Fujiwara clan of statesmen, which was in those days becoming ever more closely allied to the throne, even by marriage— so much so that an imperial messenger would come to make offerings to this family shrine on the monarch’s behalf. The Fujiwara clan continued to provide Japan with all-powerful regents and classic writers until the twelfth cen|

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tury, when gradual encroachments on its lands by neighboring warrior families ate away at its power base. The Kasuga Festival proper is now mostly known for the ritual dance called yamato-mai, performed by eight young girls holding evergreen branches.

Revival and Pageantry around a Branch Shrine The decline of the clan did not prevent a syncretic salvation cult involving the Buddhist and Shinto gods of the Kasuga shrines from reaching its height between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. That was largely due to the fact that, at the twilight of its glory, the illustrious clan had been able to launch yet another festival, also observed to this day at a branch of Nara’s Kasuga Shrine: the Wakamiya Shrine dedicated to the clan founder’s eldest son. His spirit, symbolically held within layers of white silk cloth, is ceremonially taken to this tiny subsidiary shrine by Shinto priests late on the night of December 16. The next morning, performers form a parade to pass through the main Kasuga Shrine’s huge torii gate on their way to a stage in front of an ancient pine, which is also depicted on its backdrop. This day is mostly devoted to a program of dances, featuring Okina dances and Dengaku pogo-stick dancing. Like sword juggling, the latter is a remnant of a form of circus entertainment brought over from China and called sangaku in Japan. These performances would go well into the night and were meant as an offering to the deity. Nowadays, the Kasuga Wakamiya Grand Festival is celebrated on December 15–18. There are still performances of Japanese classical music and Noh theater, following a procession of people dressed as courtiers and warriors of the period. The Kasuga Grand Shrine holds an On-Matsuri Festival every year. The highlight is a gala procession of people masquerading as courtiers, retainers, and wrestlers of these distant medieval times.

See also Matsuri New Year (Japan) References Hideo Haga. Japanese Festivals. Tr. Don Kenny. Osaka, Japan: Hoikusha’s Color Books Series, 1981. Ivan Morris. The World of the Shining Prince. Court Life in Ancient Japan. New York: Knopf, 1964. Susan C. Tyler. The Cult of Kasuga Seen Through Its Art. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, Michigan Monographs in Japanese Studies, 1992.

◗ KATCHINA FESTIVALS See Shalako

◗ KATHINA (BUDDHISM) In Asian countries where the ancient Theravada tradition of Buddhism prevails, an annual retreat (vassa) is observed by monks during the rainy season on the recommendation of the Buddha, during which time they instruct lay followers in his doctrine of awakening, called the Dhamma (the Pali form of the Sanskrit word Dharma more generally used elsewhere in the world). It starts in June or July on the full moon of the month of Asalha and ends three months later in October, after the full-moon posadha (the monks’ bimonthly general confession to their peers), with a festival known as Kathina—after the ceremonial robe that is offered to the monks among other gifts such as food, fabrics, and clothing, in a lively procession of the people. For the laity, this is one of the best opportunities to earn spiritual merit through acts of generosity (dana).

The Festive Close of a Buddhist Lent A common feature of Kathina is the illumination of all sacred places, and even of private homes and public buildings, for as long as three consecutive nights. Since this feast closes three

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months of Lenten abstinence and privation to honor the Buddha, along with the monks during their retreat, the general population of a country like Laos comes out in droves and fills every city’s streets, tearooms, and fairgrounds. At night, people from the four districts of the former royal capital Luang Prabang march in a parade around their respective candlelit floats, made of rice paper mounted on bamboo sticks. In the current capital Vientiane, regattas are held on the Mekong River between pirogues propelled by fifty oarsmen each.

The Five Buddhas of Lake Inle On Burma’s Lake Inle, the crews of native “Sons of the Lake,” or Intha, are also fifty strong, but they stand upright on their long, ultraslim craft as they use their legs to hold the oars in a competition for cash, clothing, and silver prizes, amid generalized—if illegal—betting on the outcome. Prior to the races, the same boats tow an ornamental barge featuring a gigantic gilded prow figure of the mythical karaweik bird, emblem of Burma’s former royalty. It is the centerpiece of a spectacular boat procession in this part of the land through which the “Way of the Elders”—called Theravada in the Pali language (close to Sanskrit) of the Buddhist canon in South India—spread from its early stronghold on the island of Sri Lanka to Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. This event may serve as a fine example of the kind of popular piety and colorful folklore surrounding the close of the monks’ yearly retreat in a Southern Buddhist nation such as Burma. The Kathina festival of Phaung Daw U Temple lasts about eighteen days, from the new moon of the Burmese month going from midSeptember to mid-October to the third day of the waning moon. Its main focus consists in five foot-high wooden statues that can no longer be identified as this or that Buddha or disciple under the countless layers of gold-leaf annually laid on them by worshippers; some have grown quite abstract in the process, like

bulging butter balls. If entire families come to prostrate before them while they are on display, because female beings are thought of as ritually impure, only men may touch them to apply gold leaf—as is also the practice at Kyaik-tiyo, the famous hanging rock held on the edge of a cliff by a hair of the Buddha in Thaton, 150 kilometers southeast of Rangoon. Yet according to legend, it is a female ogre who found the wood in which the statues were carved and offered it to Alaungsithu, third king of Pagan, around 1120. She did this out of gratitude for the Dharmic monarch’s miraculous rescue of her little one, whom she had dropped in the water, transfixed as she was by the appearance of the king on his barge on Lake Inle while he was touring his kingdom with his retinue of wives, ministers, and generals. Thagyamin, king of the Nat protecting spirits, sculpted the five statues out of the odorous wood, so as to benefit all beings by spreading Buddhism. The human king then put them on the prow of his barge and took them to the foot of a mountain. Though it is more likely that he brought the sculptures from Malaya, the name of the temple now housing them is said to refer to these legendary occurrences: Phaung as the barge, Daw in honor of kings and monks, U for the prow. Thagyamin had set relics in his sculptures, and they behaved accordingly—with aweinspiring unpredictability. In most cases, a Buddhist reliquary is put on the back on an elephant that is then released into the jungle, and a temple to house it is built wherever the animal stops. In this case though, the statues were set on two rafts—since the fifth one did not fit with the others on just one raft. This Buddha went on beyond the first raft and was finally given to a village monastery, while the other four were only found in 1359 in a cave near Nyaungshwe, north of Lake Inle, by a local chieftain of the Shan hill people. All five Buddhas were only reunited in 1615 in a specially built temple, which burned down in 1771. The same thing happened in 1951 to the temple

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Festival raft with bird on prow, Inle Lake, Burma, 1986. (Christophe Loviny/Corbis)

they had finally come to in Nanhu in 1881 after decades of moving around, but it was soon rebuilt more solidly. Peril came from another direction in 1965 in the guise of a violent storm that hit the ceremonial barge carrying the four statues for Kathina, making them fall into the lake, though they were fortunately recovered in less than an hour. It had been after a series of similar misadventures that people finally gave up trying to bring along the fifth statue. In the strangest one, the barge sank in a storm, and only four statues could be found at the bottom of the lake, despite the gold covering that should also have signaled the fifth. As concern was growing that it was actually lost, somebody spotted it in its usual place in the temple—covered with mud and algae. It finally had to be admitted that the fifth Buddha—ever independent-

minded—just did not care to join the others in their procession. So, over a couple of weeks, only four statues—shaded by four white parasols with the Buddhist flag flying and a soldier on ceremonial guard—are taken through this lake country of ethnic Mon on a nineteen-stop itinerary of villages and temples by a bird-shaped silver coach overland and by a bird-shaped golden barge on water, before joining up again with the fifth statue in Phaung Daw U Temple across the lake from Nyaungshwe. To commemorate their first journey on King Alaungsithu’s barge, they are taken down the narrow channel, surrounded by a flotilla of canoes holding monks, notables, mountain people, women wearing their best longyi skirts around their waists, maidens singing from sutta scriptures (or sutras in Sanskrit) lying open on their laps as they

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kneel in rows, not to mention heaps of fruit and flower offerings. The station at Inthein is the occasion for a local fair and bazaar, full of attractions and bargains that bring down tribesmen from the surrounding mountains. There, as elsewhere, the statues are taken off the barge one by one to a chariot waiting under a portal decorated with flowers and streamers. It will slowly take them up to the temple, to be covered with gold leaf by the same crowd that presses against this vehicle to the point of appearing to lift it, showering the Buddhas with rice to the accompaniment of gongs and strident reed instruments. But at the last stop of the year in Nyaungshwe, the people are called upon to actually pull the silver coach themselves: lined up along two long ropes, they slowly progress on a petalstrewn road to the shrine for the culmination of this festival of Buddhist devotion. See also Lent; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References Alan Houghton Brodrick. Little Vehicle: Cambodia and Laos. London: Hutchinson, 1949. Manning Nash. “Ritual and Ceremonial Cycle in Upper Burma.” in Manning Nash et al., Anthropological Studies in Theravada Buddhism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966. John Powers. A Concise Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2000.

to a particular saint on his or her feast day is called a kermis, from the Dutch words kerk for “church” and mis for “mass.” It is also the occasion for a usually weeklong outdoor fair with folk entertainment—or fairground attractions nowadays.

“Let the Peasants Have Their Kermis!” Among the first depictions of the life of common people for its own sake in Western art, kermis pictures began being made by German printmakers around 1530, when the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born. He would follow their example in making the kermis a favorite subject of his paintings and engravings. He portrayed in loving detail the peasants’ boisterous merrymaking with folk dancing, games and plays, drinking, eating, and love-making, right next to the sparsely attended church flying its patron saint’s flag on his or her feast day. On such kermis images, the following legend often appeared—on the flag of an inn for instance: “Let the peasants have their kermis!” This may have been the slogan of a protest against an edict by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) limiting the kermis to a single day on account of the notorious drunken excesses associated with it—leading to sometimes fatal scuffles.

From Religious Feast to Secular Fair ◗ KATHODOS See Thesmophoria

◗ KÄYRI, KEKRI See Samhain

◗ KENPO KINEN HI See Cherry Blossom Festival

◗ KERMIS (CHRISTIANITY) In the Low Countries, the annual commemoration of a church’s consecration and dedication

In the Middle Ages, in the Low Countries as in much of Europe, merchants had soon begun to take advantage of such religious holidays as a kermis to temporarily set up shop on church grounds and sell their wares to the crowds of prospective customers temporarily gathered in one spot. It was not long before commerce overtook religion as the main attraction at these fairs—a secularization process furthered in the Netherlands by the Protestant Reformation and its banning of the cult of saints. Yet profane entertainment continued unabated at the annual, or even biannual, kermis held over

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Kermesse by David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. (Scala/Art Resource)

a week, or up to three weeks, in every Dutch town or village of any significance. Until around 1660, the most honored among kermis performers were the rederijkers, or rhetoricians. The rederijker society of one town would invite its counterpart in another town to its own kermis. The rederijker chambers from all the Low Countries (at least before the independence wars with Spain split the rebel North from the loyal South) used to gather in a different city each year for a contest called the landjuweel, or “land’s jewel,” instituted by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (1419–1467). Among the best-loved oratorical performances, both there or at a kermis, were comic morality plays known as sotties and seemingly derived from the Yule-

tide Feast of Fools, where actors played the fools before finishing their satirical or nonsense skits with music, song, and dance. See also Feast of Fools; Lent; Pardon References Svetlana Leontief Alpers. “Bruegel’s Festive Peasants,” in Simiolus—Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. VI, Nos. 3 and 4 (1972–1973), pp. 163–176. ———. “Realism as a Comic Mode: Low-Life Painting Seen Through Bredero’s Eyes,” in Simiolus—Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (1975–1976), pp. 115–144. Paul Zumthor. Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland. Tr. Simon Watson Taylor. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.

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◗ KHITROI See Dionysia

◗ KHOIAK AND HEB-SED (EGYPT) From the twelfth to the thirtieth day of the month of Khoiak (the fourth and last month— falling around November—of the season of Flood, or Akhet), as the waters of the Nile receded to expose silt-covered fields fresh for sowing, certain rites of the ancient Egyptian mystery cult of the murdered man-god Osiris celebrated him in his triple aspect: as dead— under the name of Khenti-Amentiu (Ancient Egyptian for “first of the Westerners”—that is, “chief of the departed” into the sunset); as dismembered—under the name of Osiris-Sep; and as reconstituted by the union of his scattered limbs—under the name of Sokaris. The next day was the winter New Year and would be marked after thirty years of a Pharaoh’s reign by the ancient Heb-Sed jubilee festival in honor of Sokaris and his son Horus.

The Cult of Osiris in Ancient Egypt The month of Khoiak was named by early Christian Copts after an eighteen-day sequence of festivals that had previously used to be celebrated at all the main Osiris temples in Egypt, to commemorate various episodes of the life, death, and resurrection of the god. They are best known from the account provided by the Greek historian Plutarch (who lived from about 46 until after 119 of our era) in his book On Isis and Osiris. By then, there was a central shrine of Osiris in each of the forty-two nomes, or regions, of Egypt. It was called a Serapeum, or the place where Serapis was worshipped, because Osiris Khenti-Amentiu was identified with Serapis, a dead Apis bull god immortalized as an Osiris. The variety of such aspects under which Osiris was worshipped goes to show to what extent the original attributes of the god had become blurred over time as he absorbed a number of local deities, so that he came to be

identified with the sun, the moon, the air or sky, the Nile, or with any kind of life-force manifesting the mysterious power of spontaneous selfrenewal of which he was the ultimate source. (This is conveyed in the original Ancient Egyptian form of the comparatively late Coptic word Khoiak: (ka-her-ka, meaning “sustenance-uponsustenance.”) This evolution eventually allowed him to become the focus of a mystery religion of personal salvation through initiation in divine life. At base though, common views of Osiris were still largely the same as those current when the Pyramid Texts, found in the tombs of Old Kingdom rulers from the middle of the third millennium B.C.E., were meant to ensure with magical incantations their immortality through identification with Osiris. Such beliefs and practices probably had their roots as far back as prehistoric times. A much later inscription from the Ptolemaic period (between Alexander’s conquest and that of Augustus) describes the funeral rites of Osiris, as they were observed in Khoiak at his great festival in sixteen shrines, each of them the reputed burial site of one of the sixteen members of the body of Osiris (other counts for these body parts and the corresponding reliquaries range from fourteen to forty-two— one for the Serapeum of every nome): his head, the souls of his feet, his bones, his arms, his heart, his innards, his tongue, his eye, his fist, his fingers, his back, his ears, his loins, his trunk, his (ram-faced) head, and his hair. The finding of each body part was celebrated on its own day of the festival. Engraved on the walls of the god’s temple at Dendara some sixty kilometers north of Thebes, this text also contains alternate counts of fourteen members and towns, and indications of the variations in local usage between many of them, as well as detailed instructions about the materials to be employed in the rituals. Among them were sixteen amulets: four figures of the children of Horus, one of Horus himself, one of Thoth, two bulls, two lapis lazuli utchats (the famous “Eye of Ra”

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The Serapeum at Saqqarah, Egypt, is a tomb for the holy Apis bulls, which Egyptians believed were manifestations of Osiris, god of life after death. (Roger Wood/Corbis)

or “Eye of Horus” design), and six pillars—four of lapis lazuli, two in carnelian—shaped like the hieroglyph Tet or Dad for Osiris.

Agricultural Rites On the twelfth day of Khoiak, ceremonies began with the Festival of the Ploughing of the Earth—with a black copper plowshare harnessed to two black cows by a tamarisk yoke. The chief celebrant recited the ritual chapter on the “Sowing of the Fields” while a boy scattered the seed: barley on one end of the field, flax in the middle, and spelt (an archaic variety of wheat) on the other end. There followed on the fourteenth the Great Festival of Peret—meaning “germination”; this was the name of the second of three seasons in the agricultural calendar, about to begin with the winter New Year upon the festival’s end as that of the “Flood” season of Akhet. The sixteenth of Khoiak was the Festival of Osiris Khenti-Amentiu. The dead Osiris was thus named after the local jackal god of Abydos in the lower desert, whose cult he had gradually absorbed into his own at the reputed site of his main tomb, held to contain his head. Abydos

was perhaps only rivaled by Busiris, capital of the ninth nome in the Nile Delta, as a “holy place of the cult of Osiris,” since this phrase for any shrine of the god, P-usiri, gave its name to the city where his cult may have originated in prehistoric times in that of the local god Andjty, so that he was known as “the One who dwells in Andjet,” as Busiris was also called. This was one place where, by the twentieth of Khoiak, sand and barley were put in the god’s “garden”—some kind of large flowerpot (much like the pot of basil or corn derived from the ancient “gardens of Adonis” in the Midsummer folklore of southern Italy)—in the presence of a gilded sycamore statue of the cow goddess Shenty containing a headless human figure. From then on, fresh floodwater was poured from a golden vase onto both the goddess and the “garden.” This caused the barley to grow over the ensuing weeks—as a tangible equivalent of the resurrection of Osiris after his burial in the earth, manifesting the same spontaneous and unfathomable divine power of selfrenewal. At his great shrines like Dendara and its Sacred Lake, at the eighth hour on the twenty-second of Khoiak, the images of Osiris and many other gods were made to carry out a mysterious symbolic journey in thirty-four tiny papyrus boats illuminated by 365 lights, which took until the twenty-fourth of Khoiak.

Fashioning a Dead God By that day, a half-meter-tall image of the god was fashioned in sand or top soil with an assortment of grain and some water, to which incense and finely ground precious stones were sometimes added—as they were to the sacred tar-based ointment prepared concurrently for the anointment of idols over the coming year. The image of Osiris was cast in a mold of pure gold, representing the god in the form of a mummy, with the white crown of Upper Egypt on his head—corresponding to the underworld. His face was painted yellow and his cheekbones green, and he may well have had, as

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in two paintings on the walls of his inner sanctum at Abydos, an erect phallus, to display his power to rise up from death with overflowing, self-renewing vitality (just like the obscene Adonis that was often depicted on Italian Midsummer pots of corn). This molding was the task of the “lord of the mystery”—an initiate acting out that of the god’s life-giving death, so that it was no mere mortal, but Osiris himself, who gave shape to his own image in the secrecy of a portable chapel called the “room of the bed” in the temple workshop and inner sanctum, itself known as the “Duat House” after a common name for the land of the dead. This part of a shrine was also associated with the king’s ka—his spiritual double, whose vital link with the body was loosened by death but carefully maintained through appropriate funerary rites such as mummification. Given a body in this effigy that was only outwardly manmade, once it had been exposed to the sun on a golden pedestal and aspersed with sacred water and frankincense for a few days, Osiris received just such a royal burial.

Sky Burial The first meaning of Duat is actually the night sky, which is depicted on the star-studded inside of the god’s coffin, known both as ift sheta, “mystery chest,” and itrty, “chest of the two parts of the world,” which to the Egyptians meant the north and south of the kingdom, corresponding respectively to heaven and earth. Detailed instructions are given for the making of this funeral chest, modeled on the one that had carried the god down the Nile to the papyrus swamps in its Delta. There, it had landed among the branches of a willow tree, which had grown to the point of enclosing it within its trunk. The local king was struck by this majestic tree and had it cut down to make a pillar for the roof of his house. It is this tree-trunk which is referred to by the hieroglyphic sign tet often used for Osiris in Egyptian texts. His wife Isis managed to cut the chest out of the tree and

take it back to Upper Egypt. But his murderer Seth stumbled upon it and was able to cut the god’s body into fourteen or sixteen pieces, which he scattered across the land to prevent Osiris from being revived. (To punish Seth, the ass included as a magic substitute for him in the funeral procession of Osiris—initially as Sokaris on a sacred mefekh sled taken around the walls of the old capital Memphis where the custom is first recorded for the twenty-sixth of Khoiak—was bludgeoned before being put to death by the Pharaoh himself.) Undaunted, Isis then used a papyrus boat to go and collect all the pieces in order to give them a proper burial; her prayers and those of her sister Nephthys, wife of Seth, to the gods Rê, Thoth, and Anubis, allowed her husband Osiris to live forever in the beyond as the benevolent god and king he had been on earth. In older texts, the role of Isis is interchangeably given to the sky goddess Nut, depicted as a starry dark woman stretching over an earth god lying on his back, just like the coffin’s cover over Osiris—as a dead vegetation god for Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941) or a symbol of “the concealment and disappearance of water” for Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride 366D, 20, p. 179). It was likewise after nightfall that the mulberry wood coffin was buried. At the ninth hour of the night of the twenty-fourth, the dried-up effigy that was made the previous year would be removed from its own tomb, refreshed, adorned, placed on sycamore boughs, and carried by four men standing for the four sons of Horus to a secret corner of the necropolis for its final reburial, before the newly embalmed effigy was also laid on sycamore boughs for its own “sky burial” above ground. On this occasion, as Plutarch explains (De Iside et Osiride 366E, 1–6, p. 181), “the things mourned for are four: first, the dwindling and receding of the Nile; secondly, the cessation of the north winds through the complete domination of the south winds; thirdly, the day’s getting shorter than the night; and above all the denudation of

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the earth together with the stripping of the plants which at this time lose their leaves.” For on the “divine morning” of the twenty-fifth of Khoiak, the approaching solstice (at least in early times when the unadjusted and gradually advancing official calendar was devised) marked the lowest ebb of the Nile’s water as well as of the sun’s light (so that Sokaris was called “Little Sun”), without which all plants withered in the dry desert wind of the Egyptian winter.

Earth Burial According to the Dendara text, the god would lay in state—his body slowly sprouting shoots (hence his usual depiction with green skin in a white shroud as well as the homemade versions of this “vegetating Osiris” peasants would make from the Nile’s silt and some corn if the river’s flooding had produced enough)—during the remaining week of the year, until a new spring began, that is for “the seven days of Osiris’ stay in the womb of his mother Nut, when she was pregnant with him. A day stands for a month: the sycamore boughs represent Nut” (Kristensen 1961, p. 168). Then the coffin would be taken from this “above-grave,” or “above-Duat,” in “above-Busiris” for its “earth burial” in the underground “below-Duat.” This might be a grave freshly dug under a sacred ashd tree as part of the “great mystery of the ploughing of the earth” celebrated on the first day with the slaughter of sacrificial animals. Such were perhaps the ox and ass herds with which the Pharaoh and his people are depicted circling the walls of Memphis on a tomb at Kheryaf near Thebes. “Below-Duat” could also be a permanent subterranean stone chamber under a grove of these Persea trees such as was found at all sites where parts of Osiris’s body were said to be buried, also holding his ba, or spiritual personality, in the afterlife. This replica of the underworld would have seven doors—since it had seven gods, and like the sun in its journey under the horizon from sunset to sunrise, the

pallbearers would enter it through the western door and come out through the eastern door, having reverently laid the dead god on a bed of sand. On this thirtieth and last day of the month when the divine members of Osiris were brought, his Tet or Djed pillar was raised— hidden under a cloth as depicted in the inner sanctum of Abydos: with the large royal family, helped by a priest, pulling the ropes as shown at Kheryaf, to make the pillar stand for the god’s burial among the dead and his arising in eternal life, since it is connected to the backbone of Osiris and of any deceased person in Chapter 155 of the Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Some also liken it to the nilometers used to detect and measure signs of flooding, while it also clearly symbolizes the stability, continuity, and harmonious order of a divine cosmos.

Victory Over Death This victory of life over death and of light over darkness, sometimes assimilated to the sun god Rê’s killing of Apap (the snake of chaotic primordial waters—enemy of light and order) under the ashd tree in the eastern sky, was then represented as the revenge of Osiris over his enemies, through ritual drama—often taking the form of an archaic funerary contest. The climax of the mystery plays at Abydos took place by the river, when the crowds assembled to witness them at this earliest known pilgrimage site cheered the return of the resurrected Osiris to his temple in the kind of ceremonial boat known as wetes neferu (“which holds up the beauty” of a god like the throne of his resurrection and its very power), guided by the statue of the jackal god Upuaut as demon-chaser and psychopomp, or leader of souls to the afterlife. The abovementioned Theban grave from the fifteenth century B.C.E. shows a reenactment of the cosmic struggle of Osiris by fifteen men in teams, going through the motions with sticks and their bare fists. A thousand years earlier, a text relates how the gods—played by such stand-ins—hurry over to Osiris to fight for him

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and win him eternal life. According to the Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, it is precisely when his Tet pillar is raised that Osiris becomes ma-kheru, “blessed after death,” as opposed to his hapless enemies. From around 1600 B.C.E., the “wreath of he who has been declared just over against his enemies,” like the wreath laid on mummies for the afterlife, was woven from leaves of the sacred ashd tree growing over the grave of Osiris (or even holding his coffin like the Tet or Djed in some accounts), and given to participants in the feast in a victory ceremony. For there would be no such funerary combat over their own graves; to them, victory over death was wholly a function of their partaking of the god’s own timeless victory through the mystery of this feast of resurrection. That is why, at the conclusion of this pilgrimage the Egyptians simply called the Festival of Osiris, before leaving Abydos to return home, they would give votive offerings in gratitude to the god who gave them a new lease on life beyond death, like a miniature model of his henu processional boat. Such were also the majestic temples built on this site by Pharaoh Sety I and his son Ramses II in the thirteenth century B.C.E. And yet, this was a time when the once vital pilgrimage was increasingly becoming optional, as its depiction on the walls of tombs could be given the same efficacy as the act itself with the proper charms and magic formulas, allowing the virtual representation to gradually displace the actual performance of this religious duty. A common Egyptian tombstone inscription was: “May I be among the retinue of OsirisSokaris on his great festival”—the Night of Onions, or Netjeryt (likely meaning “making divine”). First dedicated to Sokaris as the local god of Memphis when it was the capital of the Old Kingdom in the third millennium B.C.E.— during which he became assimilated to Osiris, this festival kept on being celebrated on the twenty-sixth as it then spread throughout the land. In Thebes when it was the capital of the New Kingdom of the second half of the second

millennium B.C.E., such tombstone inscriptions often mention “tying onion collars during the divine night” before that morning, in order to then “follow Sokaris with onions around the neck” or in wreaths. The onions were to be offered to this solar falcon god as his earthly, snake-repellent fertility symbols, as well as to departed relatives in connection with a festive memorial version (with family members and friends playing the parts of the various deities involved) of the funerary Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth—opening access to the afterlife in keeping with the distinctive original functions of Sokaris, and purifying the mouth of the deceased with onions, viewed as a new set of white teeth (like those of the child Horus born of dead Osiris) that brightened their faces and allowed them to regain their senses. According to the Book of Am Duat (after which the whole collection of Books of the Afterlife is named), the third hour of the night—devoted to the dead Osiris Khenti-Amentiu like the sixteenth of Khoiak—was the “fighting ground” of the god’s champions against his enemies, where he could be joined after death by his devotees as “mysterious souls.” For the time and place of the god’s murder and revenge were then one—and the same as those of his victory over death, to be shared in by the mortals who ritually went through it. Similarly, Christians have their own pillar of victory in the Cross on which their god was executed—going through the underworld only to rise again after three days so as to give them access to his own divine life through the mystery of Easter. The mysteries of Osiris too brought divine blessings in this life as well as the next. But in view of the latter, just as Christians from late Antiquity to the high Middle Ages sought to be buried ad sanctos—next to the saints who were known to be already deified, in the hope of being carried along by their spiritual energies into the resurrected life, ancient Egyptians also tried their best to be buried as close as possible to the recognized tomb of Osiris in Abydos. They

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would be taken to their own tomb nearby in the same Neshemt boat as Osiris, as it was supposed to fight for them the same good fight against the dark powers of chaos and death that was already won for him beyond time. Thousands of stelae were also set up there by those who could not afford this burial fit for a god. They are inscribed with the name of the departed and a prayer to the god. But grain-stuffed figures of Osiris have been found in graves throughout Egypt, “bandaged like mummies with patches of gilding here and there, as if in imitation of the golden mold in which the similar figures of Osiris were cast at the festival of sowing” that Sir James George Frazer mostly saw in the mysteries of Khoiak (Frazer 1935, p. 91). However, it now seems these figures and their agricultural symbolism are probably later additions to the royal myth of Osiris as slain by his rival sibling to become judge of the dead and immortal king of the netherworld.

Heb-Sed: A New Year Coronation Festival As for the living, in the person of the pharaoh, they were ruled by Horus himself as the son, alter ego, and eternal avenger of Osiris. After thirty years of rule and every three years thereafter, the divine monarch was entitled to take this occasion to secure at once his harmony with the cosmos, the unity of his kingdom, his long reign, healthy life, and glorious afterlife as an Osiris, in the Heb-Sed jubilee festival held just after the god’s eternal life had been reactivated as that of nature with the raising of his pillar on the last day of Khoiak. This was also a good opportunity for pharaohs to raise new obelisks—quadrangular pillars tipped with a golden pyramidion to recall the stone on which the sun god Rê alighted after first rising at the mythical time of origins. On this first day after the solstice (initially at least), days grew longer and plants were already sprouting as spring began with the winter New Year in the “season of coming out,” or Peret,

when Egyptians, rarely more than once or twice in a lifetime, might have the privilege to witness this grandest and oldest of festivals. Like all others, it started and ended with an imposing procession. Sculptors would have reproduced the shrines of the local deities of all the land to show the extent of the king’s authority on behalf of Osiris. As the Pharaoh renewed his ties with the gods, his officials and the country’s nobles renewed their allegiance to him in the course of ancient ceremonies that reenacted both his own coronation and the unification of Egypt as a kingdom by Menes in Memphis 5,000 years ago. A Pharaoh might also take this opportunity to enact new annual state endowments to various temples and their clergy. In later times, as a way to reassert Egypt’s claim to rule all corners of the world, the Pharaoh, acting out the part of Horus in his father’s battles, would shoot four arrows to the four directions as a way to frighten off evil powers. Many centuries after the final passing of this ancient empire, halfway around the world, a similar purification ceremony called Tsuina would also play a role in New Year customs at Japan’s Imperial Court. See also Beautiful Festival of the Valley; Christmas; Easter; Eleusinian Mysteries; Epiphany; Games (Rome); Midsummer; New Year (Japan); Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis; Thesmophoria References E. A. Wallis Budge. Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. New York: Dover Publications, 1973. Émile Chassinat. Le Mystère d’Osiris au mois de Khoïak. Cairo: Institut français d’Afrique orientale, 1966–68. Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. Part IV: Adonis Attis Osiris. Studies in the History of Oriental Religion. Vol. II. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1935. Wolfram Grajetzki and Stephen Quirke. “The Festivals of Khoiak” webpage of Digital Egypt

k i . l a m | 229 for Universities (www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/ ideology/Khoiak.html). London: University College, 2003. E. O. James. Myth and Ritual in the Ancient Near East: An Archaeological and Documentary Study. London: Thames and Hudson, 1958. W. Brede Kristensen. Symbool en werkelijkheid: Godsdiensthistorische studiën. Zeist, Netherlands: W. De Haan and Arnhem, Netherlands: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1961. Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. Tr. J. Gwyn Griffiths. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970.

◗ KI.LAM (HITTITES) One of the most accurately reconstructed festivals of the Hittite Empire, which ruled over much of Anatolia (in the Asian part of presentday Turkey) and beyond between 1700 and 1200 B.C.E., is known only by its cuneiform logogram KI.LAM.

Character and Timing The title of the main document devoted to the KI.LAM festival characterizes it as the one “When the king takes his seat three times in the gate-house.” This has been interpreted as evidence that its name means the “Festival of the Gate-House,” and that it lasted three days. In relative brevity, it compares to the three-day long Festival of the Month and two-day-long Festival of the Great House, in contrast to the twenty-one-day Nuntariyashas harvest festival, the thirty-eight-day Hameshandas (also known by its word-picture, or logogram, AN.TAH.SˇUMSˇAR) spring festival of the New Year, or the long Purulli festival of the Hattian weather-god of Nerik in honor of his slaying of a dragon as the supposed cause of springtime renewal—a seasonal ritual which took thirtytwo tablets to describe. On each of the three days of KI.LAM, a royal procession would stop at the gates of various buildings of the Hittite capital Hattusˇa, in particular those of the royal storehouses of sup-

plies from subject cities, with their respective “overseers” (a term phonetically pronounced abarakku for the logogram AGRIG) standing in front of them to pay homage to the king. (They also provided wine and beer for the celebrations.) The point of the festival may well have been precisely to reaffirm the bond between such public officials–and possibly the people at large—and their sovereign, and a fall date after the harvest would have been a good time to do this, while the storehouses were full. On the other hand, the omission of certain common features of the three-day ceremony on its second day may have been due to the need to squeeze into the proceedings an extra festival in honor of the grain goddess Halki, as mentioned in an oracle text. Her temple was also visited during the AN.TAH.SˇUMSˇAR festival, which makes it possible that KI.LAM had a spring date. It may even have been held on both dates: once in the fall as the “regular” KI.LAM festival described in one incomplete series of tablets, and again as the “great festival” evoked in the other one devoted to it, which might have been abridged on the second day to incorporate a spring festival for Halki.

Distinctive Features On the other two “standard” days of KI.LAM, the king, after preparing himself in the palace and being presented a ceremonial iron spear by the foreman of the smiths, would leave through the palace gate. So-called “comedians” greeted him at the gate of the queen’s treasurer. They provided musical entertainment as he sat on some sort of ceremonial stand to review the procession of the “masters of the words,” or wizard-priests, and the “animals of the gods” (ritual standards including golden lions, silver leopards, wolves, bears and boars—some of the latter in lapis lazuli instead), preceded by “spears” and “copper fleeces” and followed by “dog-men,” gold and silver “stags,” and unidentified ivory objects. This “animal” procession of cult images marks

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off KI.LAM from most other Hittite festivals. So does the ceremony of the AGRIG’s that follows it in the vicinity of the gate of the temple of the grain goddess (the probable “gatehouse” of this festival’s name) after the king and queen have been driven there in their respective chariots. Introduced by a herald with the native Hattic name of the town for which he was responsible, each AGRIG would offer to the king some produce brought over from its storehouse in the capital.

The Great Assembly The ritual proceeds with the offering ceremonies customary at Hittite festivals and takes place first at the temples of various deities inside the city and then outside of town at the “Great Assembly” (sˇalli asˇesˇˇsar) in a “ceremonial tent” near the huwasˇi—of the weathergod—possibly the rock sanctuary at Yazilikaya near present-day Bogazköy where the ruins of Hattusˇa are to be found. Over forty different deities—mostly Hattian—were worshipped there “sitting,” except for the deified “Day,” the weather god, who was bowed to by the king, and the sun goddess, who was not. This was done by “drinking to” them, to the accompaniment of music, dance, and recitations in Hattic, with unknown ceremonies in between these “toasts,” and wine and bread offerings afterwards. Then incense from the royal mausoleum (literally: the god’s “stone house”) was burned before the king. This meant it was time for one ceremony of the “Great Assembly” that has often been discussed: the foot race of the ten runners—one of them naked—who had earlier figured in the procession (separated from the royal chariots ahead by ceremonial oxen carts and from the “animals of the gods” behind by the priests of KAL, god of hunting). According to the longer Old Hittite account of the race, “the runner who wins takes from the hand of the king two wagada-breads and one mina of silver,” while a later version says both the winner and the runner-up receive a tunic—a much

less impressive prize. This has prompted the expert on KI.LAM to ask: “Might this not have value to scholars of the history of sports?” (Singer 1983, p. 104). It was the runners who brought in a large gold or silver vessel called kalti, or galdi, to place it by the throne, where it was filled by the “winesuppliers.” After taking a sip from it, a “comedian” said a Hattic recitation and handed it over to the king, who poured wine into the hands of the assembled dignitaries of the imperial administration’s upper echelon. Low officials, high officials, princes and princesses, SANGApriests, and the king himself would then leave the tent in that order, the reverse of that in which they had entered. The royal couple went by a number of city gates again before disappearing through that of their palace. If the standard celebrations in honor of a long list of gods were carried out on the second day as on the first and third, it is precisely those features of KI.LAM that were of a less solemn, more “secular” nature that appear to have been dropped: at least the “animal” part of the procession, the giving of a “ceremonial dress” to the “dignified dog-men” in it, the singers, the runners, and the ceremony of the kalti libation vessel. References Oliver Robert Gurney. Some Aspects of Hittite Religion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1977. Hans G. Güterbock. “Some Aspects of Hittite Festivals,” in André Finet, ed., Actes de la XVIIe Rencontre assyriologique internationale. Hamsur-Heure, Belgium: Comité belge de recherches historiques, épigraphiques et archéologiques en Mésopotamie, 1970, pp. 160–170. Itamar Singer. The Hittite KI.LAM Festival. Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, “Studien zu den Bogazköy-Texten, Heft 27,” 1983.

◗ KNEELING SUNDAY See Whitsuntide

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◗ KNUT See Epiphany, Saint Lucy

◗ KOKUZAHN (VOODOO) The Voodoo religion, with 50 million followers in West Africa alone (from whence it spread to the New World through the slave trade), owes its name to the word for “god” or “spirit” in the Fon dialect of Ewe—the language of the Ewe people that co-originated Voodoo alongside Benin’s Fon and Ghana’s Ga. Two and a half million strong, the Ewe are also found in these two countries as well as sandwiched between them in Togo. Most Ewe are devout believers in Voodoo and may therefore attend some of its great initiation festivals, held at intervals of several years. One example is Kokuzahn, which, for seven days in May every three years, draws coastal devotees to a clearing by a beach outside Aflao, near Ghana’s border with Togo, for a spectacular display of the gods’ powers in the superhuman feats performed by the mortals they then possess.

From War God to Healing God The cult of the warrior god Flimanu Koku was brought from Benin over a century ago by Ewe elders, along with his fetish, a calabash containing fourteen sacred knives, each with a small gourd filled with magic potions tied to its handle, and covered with sacrificial blood. This arrangement reflects the dual, shifting focus of the god’s action. On the one hand, he was once known for the protection—even invincibility— he brought warriors in battle, with the power to strike from a distance, as the sacred knives still do when devotees point them at a live chicken balanced (like William Tell’s apple) on a child’s head two meters away: it then gasps and collapses within seconds—to be cooked in a dry calabash that somehow does not burn in the fire. On the other hand, Koku is now better known as a healing god, for the protection he brings to bear against witchcraft and other evil

influences thought to be at the root of many diseases. The medicinal contents of the sacred calabash are thus so filled with spiritual power that believers nearly collapse under its weight as they carry it for public display—cloaked in white cloth—out of the “male” shrine where a priest guards over it. An Ewe has to carry it once in his or her lifetime before being considered a Kokushi—a devotee of Koku. The same thing happens when Azizan is taken out of the “female” shrine—being the feminine counterpart of the Koku fetish: a calabash holding pieces of termite mounds with healing powers.

Ritual Purity Believers often fall into a trance after carrying either fetish for a while and always do when they see Koku’s calabash opened before them, becoming possessed by the god. They take a concoction of ground nuts and seeds in water early in life for protection against evil spirits into old age, and Kokuzahn is supposed to boost its effects—provided one obeys the requirements of ritual purity set by the gods. Thus, for two weeks before the festival, participants must abstain from goat meat and sex, but above all, neither steal nor commit adultery, nor kill anyone, in order to have a clean heart. If any of these rules has not been strictly observed, it will show, since the gods will not fully extend their protection to people they possess. But when all the rules have been respected, the gods direct the unconscious actions of their followers and tell them what medicines to take in order to avoid being harmed by the ordeals they put them through, in order to demonstrate their power to counteract evil and inflict punishment.

Under the Spell of Voodoo Gods Generally speaking, the devotees, barefoot on the natural arena’s hallowed ground, work themselves into a trance by increasingly frenzied undulating and whirling dances to the sound of Voodoo drums and songs of rapture. They are

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protected from harm by smearing a mixture of palm oil, maize flour, and herbs, and by wearing alatsi-tree fiber skirts. Still, friends may need to intervene when a possessed devotee attempts to repeat a dangerous feat such as walking along the branch of a palm tree. But then again, they may also slam a pestle into a wooden mortar laid on a man’s chest, just so he can get up unharmed and demonstrate how he can blissfully proceed with his dancing. Similarly, women may throw sand into their own open eyes without blinking, just as men may cut their own skin with glass shards without bleeding, or else lick a red-hot knife, or swallow a burning branch without their tongue even getting red. No pain is felt by the devotees who perform these stunts, nor do they have any memory of them after they emerge from their trance, but for the utter bliss of what is to them the highest state a mortal can reach: being possessed by a deity. When they are fully under its spell, it is possible to tell which one inhabits them by the direction in which their irises have rolled behind their eyeballs to leave a telltale, ghost-white stare. For instance, their rolling upwards makes it the look of the thunder god Hebioso (alter ego of the Yoruba god Shango). By then, it is probably time to carry the stiff-limbed, half-paralyzed devotee inside the shrine, so the priest can douse him or her with a potion that allows her or him to slowly awake from these drug-free altered states. See also New Yam Festival; Òsun Festival References Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher. “The African Roots of Voodoo,” in National Geographic, Vol. 188, No. 2, August 1995, pp. 102–113. ———. African Ceremonies. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. Nadia Lovell. Cord of Blood: Possession and the Making of Voodoo. London: Pluto Press, 2002.

◗ KOSHOGATSU See New Year (Japan)

◗ KREUZMONTAG See Rogations

◗ KRISHNA JAYANTI, KRISHNA’S BIRTHDAY, KRISHNASHTAMI See Janmashtami

◗ KUKULCAN FESTIVAL (MAYAS) Before the Spanish Conquest, one of the major festivals of the Maya civilization of Central America was held by mid-December on the sixteenth day of Xul—the sixth of eighteen months of twenty days each, adding up to a 360-day solar year (plus five between each one and the next) in the agrarian haab calendar—as opposed to the tzolkin sacred calendar. On account of this celebration, the whole month was dedicated to the god Kukulcan, a feathered serpent who came to prominence in the Mayas’ Postclassic period (900–1500) as a borrowing from Mexico, where he was known as Quetzalcoatl and was the patron of Aztec rulers. The Kukulcan festival was first observed by Maya ruling families—like those claiming Toltec descent—all over the Yucatan peninsula. But after the fall of the last great Maya urban center Mayapan to the Xiu clan in 1441, it was only held in its new capital Mani, while other provinces sent their gifts—such as four or five splendid featherwork ceremonial banners.

Gifts to the Gods The many pilgrims who came to Mani for the feast of Kukulcan would have been preparing for the occasion with a period of fasting and abstinence. In the first evening, a procession set out from the house of the lord sponsoring the event to make its way to the Temple of Kukulcan. It was made up of lords, priests, commoners, and the clowns after which the festival seems to have also been “clown-named”—the meaning of the Quiche term chic kaban. The feather banners were flown atop the gaily decorated pyramid temple as people arranged their

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personal wooden and clay idols in the courtyard in front in the midst of prayers and exorcisms. Incense was burned after the kindling of a new fire. The food offerings that followed had to be unsalted and free of chili pepper, while they were accompanied by a beverage made from ground beans and squash seeds. On the fifth and final day of the festival, Kukulcan himself was thought to come down from heaven to accept the offerings made over the course of the festival. Banners and idols could then be taken back to the house of the festivities’ sponsor. However, many other worshippers actually stayed at the temple for the remainder of the month to pray, make offerings to their idols, and perform sacred dances, while the clowns made the rounds of wealthy households to entertain them with their antics and to collect gifts that were later shared between lords, priests, dancers, and the clowns themselves. It may be noted that clowns played a similar role in ancient Persia’s springtime Naw Ruz celebrations. See also 8 Monkey; Naw Ruz; New Fire Ceremony References Sylvanus G. Morley and George W. Brainerd. The Ancient Maya. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983. J. Eric S. Thompson. Maya History and Religion. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970. Alfred Marston Tozzer. Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, A Translation. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Papers, Vol. 28, 1941.

◗ KUNAPIPI (AUSTRALIA) The mother-goddess of the Aboriginal tribes of northern Australia, who gave life to all human and nonhuman creatures, is called either Kunapipi or Gunabibi (since the actual pronunciation falls somewhere in between), as is the ritual sequence held during the dry season to call on her fertilizing powers.

The New Cult of the Old Mother In the Northern Territory (particularly in Arnhem Land) as well as the southern Kimberleys of Western Australia, certain secret cults, maintained by local Aborigines to initiate young men into tribal tradition about the Dreamtime of sacred beginnings, only came to the attention of researchers in the middle of the twentieth century. They actually spread to tribe after tribe of that whole area over the course of these decades, at the same time as they came under increasing pressure from modern civilization, so that they now mostly survive as syncretistic mixtures of three basic ritual complexes that can still be made out, called Ngurlmak, Djunggawon, and Kunapipi. The latter is perhaps most representative of an emphasis on sexual symbolism and fertility rites reflecting the primacy of female Primordial Beings—a fairly recent innovation which sets them apart from the religious patterns found in central and southeastern Australia. It may be a result of Melanesian influence coming from the sea through the Gulf of Carpentaria’s coastal areas. It caught on because, in these tropical regions, life and fertility depend on the regularity of rainfall. This was already the focus of the pan-Australian myth of the bisexual Rainbow Serpent who controls it, and who now became an assistant or manifestation of Kunapipi as the “Old Mother.” Her name is also said to mean “Whistle-Cock,” with reference to the unique practice of subincision of the urethra (as opposed to the more widespread circumcision of the foreskin) of the penis, adding a uterus-like incision to the phallic image of a now bisexual snake. But Kunapipi is mostly known as “Fertility Mother” throughout the Northern Territory, where she has often absorbed the local mythology and rituals of the two Wauwalak Sisters, making them into embodiments of her power as well. If many ceremonies in the area deal with Fertility Mothers and Rainbow Snakes in a number of combinations and outer expressions, there is a recognizable cluster of them that is common—

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albeit in just as many variations—to all versions of Kunapipi proper.

Snake Swallows Sisters They of course share a belief in Kunapipi as the eternal fount of the life and reproduction of all creatures, identifiable with both the earth that supports it and the cycle of dry and wet seasons that sustains it. The ritual sequence enacting her creative mysteries thus usually takes place during the dry season, after the monsoon that ends by April, when people are reaping the benefits of previous ceremonies in the form of plentiful food. Messengers first go out to notify neighboring groups that it is about to begin. Taking anywhere between two weeks and several months to complete, it starts out in the main camp, with women dancing as the men sing the “outside” version of the Wauwalak and Kunapipi songs, as well as more secular clan songs. Then, to the accompaniment of swinging bullroarers as the thunder-like voice of the Great Serpent Yurlunggur/Julunggul (or Muit) —which the women and Kunapipi leader answer with the same cries as the Wauwalak Sisters when he/she (given its ambiguous gender) came to swallow them, the young postulants, smeared with red ochre, are taken to the triangular secret-sacred ground prepared in the bush as Kunapipi’s womb, to be swallowed up in it as an equivalent offering to this Python. Upon hearing of this from the men back in the main camp, the women lament the fate of the postulants. While the older women stand aside to call the names of foods forbidden to them at this time, the others then crouch under ngainmara conical mats and blankets as the men dance around them. They imitate Yurlunggur’s coiling around the hut built by the Wauwalak Sisters to escape the rain he spouted as he emerged from the sacred well Muruwul near the Arafura Sea, attracted by the smell of the elder sister’s blood after she gave birth to an incestuous child.

When the two sisters had first arrived by the well, all the animals they tried to cook had jumped from the fire into the well. At the sacred ground that night, men dance the part of one species each as they reenact this event by jumping into the nanggaru rectangular hole dug at one end to represent the well—some of them simulating intercourse as they do. “As the men perform the ceremonies the ‘shades’ or spirits of the natural species perform their own increase rites in the spirit world” (McCarthy 1957, p. 131). These performances may go on for weeks before a large crescent-shaped kanala trench is dug as a symbol of Kunapipi’s uterus, with an image of Yurlunggur etched on its sand walls. At some point, the novices will go down into it and be covered with bark, and intercourse will again be simulated there. One or two four-to-seven-meter high jelmalandji (or yemerlindi) poles, a python drawn in blood on each, are later erected by the edge of the sacred well, to represent either Muit with Gunabibi or a palm tree—or a couple of snakes. They are given voice by bullroarers as men dance in front of them wearing conical hats covered like the poles with white featherdown snake designs. The bark is removed from the well to allow the boys to gaze at the double Python rising from it toweringly. The snakes’ lightning will now strike them in the guise of firebrands thrown over the trench where they still lie. The dancers then reenact the swallowing of the Wauwalak Sisters in their hut— which to their way of thinking suggests both its phallic penetration by the Snake and a return to their Mother’s uterus. After sprinkling blood from their arm veins on each other and into the trench, as the blood of the devoured sisters, participants push over the jelmalandji and fill in the kanala with earth and sand, using their dancing feet. This closes the main section of the Kunapipi rituals, which may well appear in varying order or with some omissions at the totemic leaders’ discretion.

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Ceremonial Wife-Swapping The first of two concluding ritual sequences, rarely carried out in Arnhem Land, centers on the kurangara wife-swapping ceremony on the Kunapipi ground. Men bow their heads as they sing before the now sacred women, smeared in ochre and wearing feathered headbands to do the ngamamali dance. In between two sessions, they use a Kitjin—that is a post of bound paper-bark representing Yurlunggur—to strike a pole standing for a tree so that pieces of stringy bark fly off, symbolizing the lightning flashed by the Python as he/she circled the Wauwalak Sisters’ hut. Women form a dancing line before the men as they finish the ngamamali, and are approached with presents of food, string, or ochre from their assigned partners in the ritual, which they may pass on to their husbands. This is the occasion for a lot of lewd joking with obscene gestures, and some of the men and women have intercourse on their way back to camp, even though they are not supposed to until the last night in the sequence, when it follows a repeat of the other dances. But first, maidens are ritually deflowered with a galiwali boomerang, either for real or symbolically for those who are no longer actual virgins and who just get the tip introduced into their vaginas. (This counterpart for girls of what the subincision rite is to boys is absent like it in northeastern Arnhem Land.) Stimulated by days of anticipation, a woman prides herself on the number of men she has sex with. After she is finished with one, her husband will come to rub his sweat on the man’s limbs to prevent the illness that would otherwise result from such transgressive behavior, sanctioned in this exceptional ritual setting by the Primordial Beings and Kunapipi herself. This potentially perilous though light-hearted sexual activity is said to be done in imitation of the Wauwalak Sisters’ incestuous relations with men of their clan but ultimately has more to do with the life-giving symbolic fructification of

the Fertility Mother. Coming at the climax of weeks of religious activity, it offers emotional release and reinforces social bonds, being conducive to general goodwill and fellow feeling.

Snake’s Belly and Mother’s Womb The last ritual sequence begins the next morning and focuses on the djepalmandji—the Wauwalak Sisters’ hut, made from boughs hanging from a horizontal pole connecting two upright forked posts. Novices crouch under the boughs’ shelter while two men sitting face to face in the womb-shaped forks cry ritually like the Wauwalak child, since this setup refers to childbirth. Bullroarers are swung and dancing women and children call in answer, smeared in red ochre. They surround the djepalmandji and then sit together a few meters away, covered with bark and ngainmara mats, in the manner of the Wauwalak. Dancing men, who had been hiding in the bush some forty meters away, then come out in single file to surround them all in turn and prod them with spears. The dramatic exchanges between the two gender groups allude to the stealing of the sacred rituals and fertility symbols of the Wauwalak Sisters by the men, which explains their prominent role in the festival of a mother-goddess. “This is because all the Dreaming business came out of women—everything; only men take ‘pictures’ for that Julunggul. In the beginning we had nothing, because men had been doing nothing; we took these things from the women,” assuming they never got wise to the tricks played on them, as an informant candidly admitted in a “man-to-man” talk with an ethnographer (Berndt 1951, p. 55). When the djepalmandji’s covering is thrown aside, the novices emerge from it smeared in red ochre as the men call out to the women: “See those young men covered with the saliva of that Snake?” They then add what is officially supposed to be a secret to women: “but really,

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they are covered with spring blood”—that of the Wauwalak. The novices are taken to camp after the knocking down of the djepalmandji, and the men sing “outside” Kunapipi songs as they dance around the boys and lead them in single file to the sacred ground, where their handbands are removed for use in future rituals of Kunapipi. If, in the myth, the first people went straight from her womb to a “ring place,” men who enter this secret-sacred ground return to her womb and emerge from it revivified after the rites are completed. Both there and at the main camp, the Rainbow Serpent’s outline is traced in the red ochre smeared in bare outline on everybody’s back “so that you can’t see it,” as a ceremonial purification called “baptizing.” Before all decoration signs are finally washed off, it will take place on alternate nights with this singing on the pattern of the first rituals for a week or two, as a precaution against sickness in Yirrkalla near Cape Arnhem by the Gulf of Carpentaria (Berndt 1951, p. 56).

Big Sunday Other names used for the same ritual complex include Kalwadi (or Karwadi) and Kadjari (or Gadjeri). Among the Waibiri of the central west of the Northern Territory, the latter is known as Big Sunday in aboriginal-English, although its full name is Mamandabari-maliara, after that of two Dreamtime characters in the myth and the term maliara, for circumcised or Gadjari novices. Gadjari is also called Big Sunday among tribes farther north, where it was forbidden near wartime Army Settlements because such large ceremonies disrupted the normal work routine. The few that were still carried out at a safe distance away were drastically shortened and largely reduced to an occasion for sexual promiscuity for its own sake, for recreational as well as religious purposes. There were

further crackdowns on the spreading abuse of taboos to appropriate certain objects, or to secretly declare semi-public areas off-limits to women on pain of punishment unless they paid in kind, sexual favors being the preferred currency. Yet far from the capital Darwin and places where such distortions brought on State or Church repression, in North-Eastern Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve for instance, Kunapipi rites have long endured in certain outlying areas. There, “people have come together to renew their faith, to refresh themselves spiritually, and to ensure that the continuity of the seasons is maintained, as well as the continuance of the life they know and appreciate. The pervading influence of the Great Mother is, to them, a reality” (Berndt 1951, p. 207). See also Sunday References Ronald M. Berndt. Kunapipi. A Study of an Australian Aboriginal Religious Cult. New York: International Universities Press, 1951. Frederick D. McCarthy. Australia’s Aborigines. Their Life and Culture. Melbourne, Australia: Colorgravure Publications, 1957. Mircea Eliade. Australian Religions. An Introduction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973. Roger Peterson Sandall. Gunabibi—An Aboriginal Fertility Cult. (53 1⁄2-minute 16-millimeter film of phallic songs and dances from the Kunapipi initiation ceremonies of the dua and jiridja moieties at Maningrida Settlement, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory). Canberra, Australia: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1966.

KURBAN See Eid

L ◗ LABA (CHINA)

Porridge for the Buddha

Laba is an ancient Chinese harvest festival that has become mixed with some Buddhist monastic customs over the centuries, by way of seasonal offerings of a special porridge.

This has been the basic pattern of Laba for over a thousand years, ever since the Buddhist monks of China started eating this porridge of the Seven Treasures and Five Flavors after a reading of the sutras in honor of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. They thought it had taken place after he feasted upon the humble porridge that a shepherdess gave him when she found him unconscious, exhausted from his ascetic exercises and wanderings through what is now Bihar State in India. Having come to his senses and shed the excesses of mortification as being just as much of a dead end as those of indulgence, Prince Shakyamuni then bathed in a river and sat down to meditate under the Bodhi tree, (that is, the spot where he eventually became fully awakened as the Buddha). From the great monasteries of the Sung Dynasty’s capital Dongjing, the custom of eating this virtuous porridge spread to lesser ones, as well as to the Court. There, the Emperor, the Empress, and the princes would offer it to ministers, to generals, and to handmaidens, giving rice and fruits instead to the monks. The common people started to imitate this practice, to the point that under the Ch’ing Dynasty, from the middle of the seventeenth century, preparing the Laba porridge had become a regular part of the celebration of the harvest. In and

Archaic Roots of an End-of-Winter Festival On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, “when the drum beat of Laba can be heard, the grass begins to grow,” goes an old Chinese saying about this festival. This is because peasants used to drive away plagues and calamities by making lots of noise while disguised as gods. Though these come up as Buddhist deities in historical records, Laba seems to have archaic roots in a ceremonial hunt for victims to sacrifice to the ancestors for the New Year, as the word la (meaning “hunt”) in its name suggests. By the late Imperial time of the Annals of Yanjing, “on the eve of the Festival of Laba, fruits have to be peeled and washed. Then, the porridge is cooked until the next morning. Once the offerings of porridge have been made to the ancestors and the Buddha, the rest is distributed to family and friends. The distribution has to be over by noon” (Qi Xing 1987, p. 68). The more kinds of porridge there are, the better.

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around modern Beijing, however, Laba is the time for putting cloves of garlic inside glass jars filled with vinegar. They will be opened a few weeks later during New Year celebrations to provide two favorite seasonal treats for the price of one: vinegar-tasting garlic and garlictasting vinegar! See also New Year (China, Korea) References Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking as recorded in the Yen-ching Sui-shih-chi by Tun Li-ch’en. Tr. and ed. Derk Bodde. 2nd ed., rev. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965. Wolfram Eberhard. Chinese Festivals. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1958. Qi Xing. Les Fêtes traditionnelles chinoises. Beijing: Éditions en langues étrangères, 1987.

◗ LABOR DAY See May Day

◗ LAG BA-OMER (JUDAISM) The Omer period of semi-mourning is named after the offerings of barley sheaves that used to be made at the Temple of Jerusalem on the second day of Passover, at the start of this count of forty-nine days until Shavuot. But the normal mourning prohibitions are lifted on Lag ba-Omer—as the thirty-third day of counting is known in Hebrew. Falling on the eighteenth of the month of Iyyar, this minor festival sees many weddings and all kinds of entertainment. Ashkenazis may then shave and get haircuts, but Sephardis have to wait for the next day. Lag ba-Omer is held to be the day when manna first fell for the people of Israel. In the State of Israel, it is a school holiday; children light bonfires as college campuses hold Students’ Day.

Festive Relief in a Period of Trial This holiday goes back to the lively Scholars’ Festival of medieval rabbinical schools, to

mark the alleged date of the end of a plague that claimed 24,000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph (50–136). This great master of the Mishnah (the oral tradition of Jewish law) was the soul of Bar Kokhba’s revolt against the Romans. Some see this as a more likely occasion for his students’ death, and the source of the custom of children playing with bows and arrows (also symbols of the rainbow) on Lag baOmer, as if to recall their desperate armed struggle. Others suggest that the epidemic was the result of an inability to live up to the spiritual demands embodied in the journey of Omer from Passover (as the Exodus from Egypt through the desert of the Sinai) to Shavuot (as the Giving of the Torah). In the students’ case, this would have been shown by their lack of respect for one another. The potential for outer danger—rising with that for inner growth—over the Omer period is illustrated by several other sad events of Jewish history that took place at this time of year. Among them are the massacres of entire Jewish communities in Germany during the First Crusade, and then in the Ukraine in the mid-seventeenth century. This is why the Omer period has become one of semi-mourning in which weddings or festivities, as well as creature comforts like shaving and getting a haircut, would normally be out of place. But since the plague came to a halt on the thirty-third day, Lag baOmer is the exception that confirms the rule: a day of celebration in the midst of restraint, like manna falling from heaven to sustain Israel in its journey through the wasteland. What Lag ba-Omer is meant to celebrate is particularly the fact that the Torah was brought back from the brink of extinction through the death of specialists in its lore, not only to find a new beginning in a precious few survivors, but also to reach new inner depths in an esoteric reading. For after the decimation of his students, Rabbi Akiva, the last remaining master of the Torah, made his way to the rabbis of the south to give them his knowledge. On Lag ba-

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Hassidim dancing at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai during the Lag ba-Omer Festival. (David Rubinger/ Corbis)

Omer, he began to instruct these rabbis, his last five disciples. It is in their honor that bonfires are now lit all over Israel, to symbolize the new spreading of the light of the Torah throughout the land from these five sparks.

From the Light of the Torah to the Fire of the Kabbala The best of Rabbi Akiva’s students, Simeon Bar Yohai, hid in a cave for thirteen years after the martyrdom at the hands of the Romans of his master of thirteen years. He is regarded by Kabbalists as the author of their chief esoteric text: the Zohar, meaning literally “The Shining Light”—that of the hidden wisdom which he revealed to them on the day of his death and mystical ascension, thought to have taken place on the thirty-third day of Omer. To them, if the Torah is represented by light, the esoteric, hidden Torah they see in the Kabbala (a Hebrew

word for tradition or oral transmission) should be seen as an even more intense light, one that burns like the fires of Lag ba-Omer. They are all the more symbolic since the Kabbalistic practice of “releasing the sparks of holiness” present throughout Creation finds a striking analogy in fire as the conversion of matter into energy.

Pilgrimage to Meron As if to underscore the esoteric view of all material objects as nothing but temporal reflections of spiritual reality, Kabbalists even have a custom that flies in the face of the received wisdom of Jewish ethics about the avoidance of needless waste. They throw bags of clothing in the fire, especially on the big bonfire they light with leftover oil from Hanukkah lamps in the Galilean village of Meron near Safed, where Bar Yohai is said to be buried. Whether Sephardic or Hasidic, they are heavily represented among

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the tens of thousands who honor the anniversary of his death on this very spot, as Hillula de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. On this occasion, three-year old boys get their first haircut (leaving the sideburns to grow into peyes, the trademark side curls of the Hasidim worn in compliance with Leviticus 19:27), as their proud parents offer wine and sweets. There is much dancing and singing around the bonfire at night, featuring the special hymn for Bar Yohai, with its ten stanzas that correspond to the ten sefirot of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (power points corresponding to levels of the unfolding of reality out of God). On the way to the gravesites of the many Talmudic sages buried there, makeshift stands sell pastries, editions of the Zohar, or amulets offering protection against the evil eye. Inside the tombs, men and women are segregated as they turn to God, relying on proximity to the remains of the righteous (tzaddik), with the access it brings to their merit (zechut), to give an extra boost to their prayers and make the Almighty look on them with favor. It must be stressed though that they do not pray to the holy person the way Christians would, but to God alone directly. On Lag ba-Omer, Meron becomes a giant campground, where many come mainly to bask in the festive atmosphere, amid the smoke of barbecues. The devout make a point of roasting a lamb for a thanksgiving meal, called seudat hodayah in Hebrew; a makeshift butcher station is on hand for those who need a kosher slaughter in accordance with Biblical commandments. People find spots on high places hours before sunset to make sure they have a good view of the spectacular bonfire. But this is also the highpoint of the day all across the land. Children rival each other in the height and extravagant architecture of the pyres they have been preparing by collecting all kinds of objects to use both as fuel and building blocks. When flying over Israel in a plane that night, it is possible to see the myriad fires of Lag ba-Omer dotting Jewishpopulated areas of the Holy Land.

See also Easter; Hanukkah; Seven-Five-Three; Shavuot References Yehudit Chana Rosenthal, ed. We March as One: Lag B’omer Parade, 5747. Brooklyn, NY: Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, 1987. Hayyim Schauss. Jewish Festivals. A Guide to their History and Observance. Tr. Samuel Jaffe. New York: Schocken Books, 1996.

◗ LAILAT-UL-QADR See Ramadan

◗ LAKSHMI PUJA See Divali, Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ LANSARA See Midsummer

◗ LAMMAS See Lugnasad

◗ LANTERN FESTIVAL (CHINA, KOREA) The celebrations of the Chinese New Year come to a close with the full moon on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month: the day of the Festival of Lanterns. At least 3,000 years old, it is still very popular. It features the famous Dragon Dances and others about the Chinese astrological sign of the new year. The old year is burned in effigy, fireworks are launched, but above all, lanterns of all shapes, sizes, and styles are hung up and lit everywhere to evoke the light and warmth of spring. This is known as the Children’s Festival since lanterns are also meant to invite newborns into this world. It is also called the Festival of the First Principle (Shangyuan) or Night of the Principle (Yuan Xiao), when young and old eat yuanxiao (glutinous rice balls) and recall the story linking them to lanterns, which serve to guide ancestors’ spirits home for the family reunion and back to the beyond when it is over. On this day

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Sky lanterns are released to celebrate the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival on the first full moon of the Lunar New Year in Taipei, capital of Taiwan, on February 5, 2004. The lanterns are released in the belief that they will bring good luck and blessings over the coming year. (Simon Kwong/Reuters/Corbis)

they call Daeboreum, Korean families also prepare special dishes from seasonal produce to chase away bad luck and wish for a good year, as farmers pray for good harvests, and fishermen, for good catches.

Dragon Dances The Festival of Lanterns is observed with great pomp in Taiwan’s capital Taipei. The population gathers on Chiang Kai-Shek Square to witness dances evoking ancient springtime agrarian rites—first those of the island’s aborigines and then the classic ones of the mainland Han as known in every Chinese community in the world: the Dragon Dances. In these, the mythological serpent, standing for the cycle of water between earth and sky, is shown running after a ball representing the sun, so as to bring about the desired meeting of the two elements needed

for agriculture to start again. Other dances will illustrate a legend associated with the particular symbolic animal of the new year. The old year is burned in the giant effigy of its own astrological animal that night in a grand finale, just after the New Year Presidential address. (In Korea on Daeboreum Eve, a straw effigy called a jeung used to be thrown into a stream as another way to expel bad luck that also has many parallels in European folklore.) Dozens of lantern-shaped hot-air balloons are then launched from the city’s public squares into the moonlit sky. To explain the identification of the Dragon with the hydrological cycle as the origin of the main dance, there is a traditional story about a snake that had been captured near the Lingxi river to be sold as meat to a restaurant. The magistrate of Jinhua County in Zhejiang Province, which flourished thanks to his irriga-

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tion projects, noticed that the snake had tears in its eyes and bought it as a pet. Oddly, it liked to eat grain products. There was a drought that summer, and the river dried up. When the magistrate prayed Heaven for an end to the people’s suffering, it was the county’s earth deity that appeared to him in his sleep to say there would be rainfall if he put the snake in the dry riverbed. He did, and enough rain came to save the new crops. To thank the snake and to obtain another good harvest the next year, the peasants threw big sacks of grain into the river. But the weather deteriorated, and the snake appeared to the magistrate to explain that these wasteful offerings had actually offended the Jade Emperor in Heaven. If he was to relent from his planned punishment of a two-year drought, the people were to offer only pure water in the future. Unfortunately, in thanks for the returning rain, someone insisted on offering animal products. The Jade Emperor vented his wrath on the Dragon of Mount Qiling—the same one he had previously banished to earth as a snake for disobedience, and who had again let him down by failing to prevent humans from acting badly. So they suddenly noticed that the rain had turned red and then found the scattered remains of the slain dragon in the riverbed. In their remorse, they created the Dragon Dance, with each performer holding up a segment of the serpent with a stick. Together, they were able to evoke its live motion. In this way, people thought it might come to life again.

Yuanxiao This is but one typical custom of a festival that has evolved many more over its 3,000 years of history. It soon became very popular with everyone for bringing a temporary relaxation of the normative social strictures of time, space, and class. In the face of public resentment at the early breaking up of the festivities—in compliance with the strict curfew enforced from the time of the Western Chou Dynasty

(1000 B.C.E.)—later regimes exceptionally lifted it on this and other such nights. The day’s original sacrifice to the Eastern Emperor, god of the sun, had evolved into a dusk-to-dawn ceremony for the Celestial Emperor by the Han Dynasty. Emperor Wen Ti (180–157 B.C.E.) then made the popular celebrations official as the Yuan Xiao Festival, from yuan meaning “first (month)” and xiao for “night.” He had liked to join in them during his years of struggle against usurpers. The best-loved story about the origin of the feast’s Chinese name is that of a Court handmaid, called Yuanxiao. In northern China, her name stuck to her culinary specialty: the glutinous rice ball known in the South as tuan yuan. Today the yuanxiao symbolizes family harmony and union on her account—another reason the Festival of Lanterns is often called Yuan Xiao. As the story goes, Yuanxiao was saved by Dongfang Shuo, councilor to the Han Emperor Wu Ti (147–87 B.C.E.), when she was about to throw herself into a well out of desperation at not being allowed to rejoin her family for this special holiday. Taking pity on her plight, Dongfang Shuo had Yuanxiao pass for the Fire Goddess bringing a decree from the Jade Emperor, in which he declared he wanted to witness the burning of the capital Chang’an when he would come to its southern gate that evening. When Dongfang Shuo was asked for advice about this impending doom, he pointed out that the fire deity was very fond of tuan yuan, and that Yuanxiao made the best ones around. If she was ordered to make some to be sacrificed to this divinity, and all the land’s households were to do the same, it might appease the Fire Goddess. The deity might then turn back, if she was also given the impression that the city was already burning; this could be achieved by lighting lanterns and setting off fireworks everywhere. Instructions to this effect were given. Yuanxiao herself was sent to meet the fire deity by the city gates. She was followed by Dongfang Shuo, who urged her to raise the

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red lantern she was carrying with her name on it. She then heard familiar voices shout: “Sister Yuanxiao! Sister Yuanxiao!” Her loved ones had come from the provinces for the general gathering to light up the city and had seen the two characters on her lantern.

Lanterns Just as the yuanxiao rice balls now come in all sorts of regional variants, so do seasonal lanterns. They are said to have been invented by the carpenter Lu Ban while building a royal palace during the era of the Warring Kingdoms (475–221 B.C.E.). Made from all manners of materials in a vast array of shapes, colors, and sizes, they depict animal, floral, mythological, or literary designs, often combined to form charades since the third century Wei Dynasty. It is under the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589) that the custom of hanging lanterns on all buildings became widespread, as the focus of intense emulation at every level of Chinese society. In 713, the Tang Emperor Hsuan Tsung had a 60-meter-high portal erected in front of the Imperial City to bear 50,000 lanterns, as a way to invite the common people in to gaze at the lavish lantern displays of its temples and noble houses. They were entertained with song and dance by a thousand Court handmaidens, as well as young ladies of the imperial capital, who were mobilized for the duration of the three days to which the civic holiday had been extended—long the only time they were allowed to get out of the house. In classic Chinese literature, many a love story therefore begins on this day of the year’s first full moon, when the old Moon Minister of Marriage matches baby boys and girls so they will fall in love when they later meet on that night. This new formula for the public illuminations was kept, and it was even enlarged upon by the emperors of the Sung Dynasty (960–1279). As a further incentive to come and admire their ever more spectacular lantern dis-

plays, they had a cup of wine offered for free to everyone who showed up within the now fiveday holiday. Later, Hung Wu doubled its duration to ten days, in order to secure popular support for the Ming Dynasty he founded in 1368. Under his successors and the alien Manchu emperors of the last Ch’ing Dynasty, theater performances featured more prominently in the celebrations. Shadow plays put on from inside big revolving lanterns are still popular.

Seasonal Customs Other typical pastimes of the Festival of Lanterns include fireworks, swings, stilts, the dragon-lantern game, and the Boat Dance. In Chinatowns across North America, this is also a normal time for the New Year’s parade that concludes the festive season. This is the case for the oldest and largest Chinatown in San Francisco. Since its inception in 1958, the San Francisco Chinatown New Year’s parade has been held on the Saturday closest to the full moon. It now attracts millions of spectators and television viewers, especially for the 201-foot-long golden dragon called Gum Lung, its twenty-nine segments carried by a hundred men as it winds its way through the streets of San Francisco amid the crackle and smoke of firecrackers. The Festival of Lanterns also used to be called the Children’s Festival because, on that day, children would dress up and run around on the streets of towns and villages, singing and dancing. Afterwards, they would bring the magnificent lanterns especially made by their parents to school. This was so their teacher would light a candle inside each one, as an auspicious sign that the pupil holding it would also shine in his studies over the coming year—ushered in with a bang on the final day of New Year festivities. Because this is a day when the Sea Goddess accepts mortals’ wishes, Chinese people toss various offerings into rivers, such as apples (for their fragrance) to get a wife, oranges (symbolizing prosperity) to get a husband, longan fruits

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to have children, pebbles for a house, coins for treasures, and red dates for all good things. As part of their sesi seasonal customs for Daeboreum, on the morning of the fifteenth day of the first moon, Koreans used to drink wine to “clear the ear” so as to hear good news in the year just starting and “crack nuts” such as chestnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, or gingko nuts in order to prevent ulcers. To have strong legs, avoid getting footsores, and generally remain in good health, it was common on the previous evening and even afterwards to “tread on the bridge” for as many times as one had lived years. The one ahead would bring abundance if cows brayed or the weather was clear on this day and/or the lunar New Year. Comparable to Yuletide mummers’ plays or the Carnival Fastnachtspiel in the West, Korea’s more elaborate and stylized satirical mask dance-dramas would traditionally be performed on this festival of the First Full Moon, and/or on the Dano and Chuseok festivals (which correspond to China’s Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn festivals, respectively) as well as on Buddha’s Birthday on the Eighth of the Fourth Moon, in addition to state occasions and rain rituals. See also Anna Perenna; Carnival; Christmas; Dragon Boat Festival; Matzu’s Birthday; MidAutumn; New Year (China, Korea), Purim; Spring Dragon; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References Derk Bodde. Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances during the Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.–A.D. 220. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Choe Sang-su. Annual Customs of Korea: Notes on the Rites and Ceremonies of the Year. Seoul: Seomun-dang, 1983. Burton Wolf. Gatherings and Celebrations. History, Folklore, Rituals and Recipes for the Occasions that Bring People Together. New York: Doubleday, 1996.

◗ LARENTALIA See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ LAZARITSA, LAZARUS SATURDAY See Palm Sunday

◗ LEMURIA See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ LENAEA See Dionysia

◗ LENT (CHRISTIANITY) Owing its name to the Middle English word for spring, Lent is a forty-day season of fasting and penance in preparation for the central Christian festival of Easter.

Two Ancient Fasts Converge at Easter The first nucleus of Lent was the total fast observed in the second and third centuries on Holy Saturday, and often on Good Friday as well. For these were the two days of Jesus Christ’s absence from the world of the living, between his death on the Cross and his Resurrection at Easter. He had foretold this as the time when the Bridegroom would be taken away; not until then were his friends to fast (Matthew 9:15). By the middle of the third century, the fast had been extended to part, or all, of the six days preceding Easter, which however were not yet individually associated with specific stages of Christ’s Passion, as in today’s Holy Week. This Paschal Fast in preparation for the Easter Eve vigil service is not identical with Lent and is not even counted as part of Lent in the Eastern Church, though seasonal ascetic prescriptions apply all the more then. Lent is a forty-day fast that first appeared in the third century and became the general norm in the fourth as a period of intensive training and instruction for catechumens—candidates to be received in the Church through the sacrament of baptism that had by then come to be administered chiefly at Easter. (Epiphany had

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initially been favored for this as the commemoration of Christ’s own baptism, preceded by a couple of days of fasting—now down to one day of strict fast.) The baptized faithful joined them in prayer, abstinence, and special services in order to renew their own dedication to Christ on the same occasion and to collectively support them by sharing their experience as the Church—in which there is traditionally no such thing as merely “personal” salvation. Baptized Christians eventually got into the habit of doing this for its own sake, so as to be able to partake of the joy of Easter as though for the first time. For baptism is precisely an initiation into the mystery of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, originally relived as one on Easter night, instead of being spread between Friday and Sunday over a three-day Pascha. Lent as we know it was born of the natural convergence around the same end-point at Easter of the weeklong Paschal Fast and of a generalized forty-day baptismal fast.

The Meaning and Reckoning of the Forty Days The forty-day figure was meant to call to mind several Biblical precedents for this fast: Jesus Christ’s forty-day fast in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil before setting out on his ministry; Noah’s forty days adrift on his ark during the Flood; Elijah’s forty-day abstinence from food as he journeyed to Mount Horeb; and Moses’ forty-day fast on Mount Sinai before he received the Ten Commandments, as well as the forty years he spent leading the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt through the wilderness to the Promised Land. In the East, the forty days of Lent are counted continuously, but not from Easter, as they exclude Holy Week, Palm Sunday, and the preceding Lazarus Saturday. In the Roman Church, however, all these days are included except for Palm Sunday, since Sundays do not count as days of fasting; this results in six weeks of six days each, to which four extra days have

been added in order to give forty. For this reason, while in the East, Lent starts on the Monday after Forgiveness Sunday, in the West, Ash Wednesday was instituted as its beginning in the ninth century. It was created by generalizing a rite that had been performed until then to prepare grievous sinners to be accepted again for communion in the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. Having confessed their sins by the last day before Lent—Shrove Tuesday—they could then be sprinkled with ashes, following Biblical practice. Likewise, on Ash Wednesday, the faithful receive an application of the blessed ashes of the palms used on the previous year’s Palm Sunday. The priest traces the sign of the Cross on everybody’s forehead, reminding each that “dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” as the choir sings: “Let us change our garments for ashes and sackcloth: let us fast and lament before the Lord: for our God is plenteous in mercy to forgive our sins” (Watts 1959, p. 140). In some parts of France, there is an Ash Wednesday custom of baking pretzels, since their shape echoes the folded arms of penitents as they receive ashes. In the Eastern Church, the first Sunday in Lent, coming a full week into the full fasting season, is the Sunday of the Two Saints Theodore, otherwise known as Horses’ Easter among Slavs after prayers said for their health to their patron Saint Theodore Tyro, sometimes followed by horse races. More importantly, it is also the Sunday of Orthodoxy, a feast celebrating the triumph of right doctrine and practice with the final restoration of the cult of holy images at the Seventh Ecumenical (that is, universal) Council of the Christian Church in Constantinople in 842—after a century of iconoclastic agitation in the Eastern Roman Empire to ban it as idol worship. A special vesper service was then instituted, based on the public reading of the Synodikon, a lengthy liturgical text commemorating the defenders of the Orthodox Christian faith and anathematizing as heretics all those who failed to recognize all

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the teachings of the first seven ecumenical Councils of the Church (plus some later decrees of the synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople). In North America, since the end of World War II—which had given Orthodox servicemen of different ethnic backgrounds the opportunity to worship together and realize their unity in the faith—this has taken the form of Pan-Orthodox Vespers. On this occasion, for once in the year, the Orthodox faithful of different Church jurisdictions in the same city step beyond them to worship together at a church belonging to each one in turn. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the corresponding first Sunday after Ash Wednesday used to be followed by one of the four special Ember Weeks of fasting and prayer set aside over the year for the ordination of the clergy. Although it is only the thirty-sixth day of Lent counting backwards from Easter, this first Sunday is called Quadragesima (the Latin word for “fortieth”) and all of the Lenten season is named after it in Romance languages, be it as Italian Quaresima, as Spanish Cuaresma, or as French Carême. In Savoy and Burgundy, and in many other parts of Europe as well, thorns, hedge cuttings, and all the dead wood that seemed to stifle new growth would be burned on that night until the mid-twentieth century (except for a few feeble survivals to this day). Young men took firebrands and ran with them through the orchards, threatening each tree with the same fate as dead wood if it did not give fruit over the coming year, before throwing them into the air to frighten the evil spirits of winter. Trees were also protected from the frost and insects by fumigation with the Lenten fire’s smoke, and by spreading its ashes, in a pagan variation on Ash Wednesday’s penitential theme.

Pre-Lent By analogy with Quadragesima rather than by exact count, the three preceding Sundays used to be known in Latin as Quinquagesima (meaning “fiftieth”), Sexagesima (or “sixti-

eth”), and Septuagesima (“seventieth”), forming a pre-Lenten season that was abolished by the Catholic Church in 1969—soon after the end of the fasting of Ember Weeks in 1966. In Eastern Christendom though, the three Sundays before the start of seasonal fasting are still known after their respective themes as the Sunday of the Last Judgment (or Meatfare Sunday because it ends the last week when meat is allowed), the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, and the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. They were introduced in the Orthodox Church in the same reverse order of the calendar between the sixth and the eleventh centuries. Between the last two Sundays mentioned, a period considered as the first week of Carnival, no liturgy is held, nor are the regular weekly fasts observed—no doubt in order to give the faithful a break before they embark upon the long, arduous journey of Lent. No liturgies are celebrated either during Cheesefare Week—a modified pre-Lenten fast when eggs and dairy products are allowed. Cheesefare Week arose by the seventh century to accommodate the Palestinian practice of counting eight weeks of pre-Easter fasting with five fasting weekdays each, in a fifty-six day season including breaks, while the Greek Church knew only seven continuous weeks of fasting, for a total of forty-nine days. This extra week of build-up just before the actual start of Lent now culminates at the vespers of Forgiveness Sunday (or Cheesefare Sunday) in a moving practice to be seen in many Orthodox parishes. There, the faithful line up to perform a full prostration before everyone present in turn, and embrace him or her while asking for their forgiveness for any sins—whether conscious or unconscious—they may have committed against them. It is on the same occasion that a church’s liturgical ornaments and the clergy’s vestments are all changed, to leave only the mourning colors of black and purple for the duration of Lent. Such a seasonal color scheme was regulated in the Christian West under Pope

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Innocent III in the early thirteenth century, but it has also influenced Orthodox usage, above all in the Russian Church by way of Catholic Poland in the seventeenth century. Yet, if the Roman Catholic Church refrains from singing “Glory” and “Alleluia” over Lent, the Orthodox Church does not shy away from these triumphant outbursts even then, as it feels that this would be like ignoring the fact the Resurrection has already taken place.

The Rules of Fasting From Cheesefare Week on, the dietary prescriptions of Lent take effect. The ground rule still observed in the Christian East is that animal substances are forbidden, as is oil on Wednesdays and Fridays, while fish and wine are in a gray area, being allowed on certain festive occasions such as the Annunciation. However, invertebrates such as seafood and snails may be consumed, the rationale being that they hardly count as sentient creatures. For the purpose of avoiding animal foods during Lent is not only personal asceticism, but also reconciliation with the whole of God’s creation, human and nonhuman alike, as a way to make up in some way for the intrusion of predation and death in its midst as a consequence of the Fall of the first man Adam in the Garden of Eden, before time, as we know it, began. The dietary aspects of Lent are thus but one very obvious point of application of the general attitude of detachment from carnal desires, of moral penitence, and of spiritual purification to be maintained by Christians in all areas of life, so as to refocus thoughts and deeds on the person of Jesus and on his demands—as hunger and thirst for God. The Church Fathers often insisted on the value of alms in this respect. Since the Vatican II Council, the Catholic Church has echoed this message in laying special emphasis on the distribution to the needy of whatever has been saved as a result of Lenten austerity, and on humanitarian social action generally. The discipline of the early Church also prescribed mari-

tal abstinence and forbade participation in feasts or attending performances. Up until fairly recently, these recommendations had a deep, if varied, impact on the social life of Orthodox and Catholic cultures alike. In Spanish cities, where theater was a daily event by the seventeenth century, actors would suddenly find themselves out of work for nearly seven weeks—unless that is they were called upon for the Passion plays (autos) in which the lean season culminated. Through most of Spain, there would be a marked decrease in the number of weddings, but this was nothing compared to the impact on weddings and births that the Lenten and Advent seasons had in France or Poland. For Advent is another, lesser period of fasting of several weeks in preparation for Christmas. Orthodox tradition even speaks of the Great Lent before Easter, as opposed to the Christmas Lent (also known as Saint Philip’s Lent after his November 14 feast as its starting date) and two smaller “Lents”—the two-week Dormition Fast (Our Lady’s Lent) before this August 15 Marian feast and the Apostles’ Fast or Lent lasting one to six weeks before the June 29 feast of Saints Peter and Paul, depending on the date of the end of the fast-free week following Pentecost when this fast starts.

Exceptions to the Rule The same ascetic directives apply in principle to all these Lents, but aside from not performing weddings while they last, the Eastern Church has usually left it to the conscience of the believer to adapt them to his or her own personal circumstances. For one thing, it lacked the central authority that could enact detailed rules and special exemptions from them, as the Pope of Rome often did. The general rule began to be relaxed in the West in the ninth century by allowing the single meal of the day to be had at noon instead of in the evening, when a second light meal soon appeared. Eating fish became accepted in the Middle Ages, and then even

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meat—on Saturday only at first, and eventually on all weekdays but Friday, until today, when fasting and abstinence are required of Roman Catholics only on Fridays, Ash Wednesday and Holy Saturday. Still, there was strict enforcement of whatever rules applied in the Catholic world, just as there were also carefully negotiated exceptions to these rules. For instance, a medieval papal bull gave Spanish crusaders the special privilege of eating eggs and dairy products during Lent, which was later sold to private persons in the name of financing the struggle against the Muslims. Spaniards were even granted a “Meat Bull” during an eighteenth-century war against England, so that meat could be eaten four days a week. Such cash-based dietary indulgences were beyond the means of the vast majority of Spaniards, who instead ate lots of cheap fish like cod and sardines at that time of year. But there were still many who found medical excuses to escape dietary restrictions.

Mid-Lent and Saint Joseph’s Another general exception to Lent was the Mid-Lent break, when the fast used to be suspended for a day of carnival on the Thursday of the third week in Italy, Spain, France, and French Canada. Instituted by Pope Innocent III in 1216, it allowed young apprentices who had been sent away to learn their trade to go back to their families for the fourth Sunday of Lent. Not unlike the Spring Break in the North American school year of today, Mid-Lent was a time for feasting and fooling around at parties, dances, and fairs, and more specifically for float parades and dressing up—often in horse costumes. In Italy, the most famous Mid-Lent carnival surviving today is that of Forlimpopoli in Romagna, called the Segavecchia after the burning of an old witch in effigy. In Poland, the March 19 feast of Saint Joseph used to fulfill the same function as a temporary relaxation of the fast in order to allow the many people named after Mary’s hus-

band to properly celebrate their name-day. This also holds true today for the many Italian towns and quarters which have Joseph as a patron saint. For instance, in the Tuscan city of Siena, there is a float parade in the Torrita quarter and a rice fritter and toy fair in the Onda quarter on the feast of San Giuseppe.

A Secular Philanthropic Offshoot: Mothers’ Day In Great Britain, the fourth Sunday of Lent used to be Mothering Sunday, which commemorated the miraculous Feeding of the Five Thousand by Jesus with five barley loaves and two fish (John 6:1–14) by bringing loaves of bread to all mothers. In 1907, this old custom was reinvented by the Philadelphia social activist Anna Jarvis in honor of her mother Anna Reeves Jarvis, who had organized mothers’ days during the Civil War, when they would care for the wounded and call for improved sanitary conditions. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson recognized her efforts by declaring the second Sunday in May to be Mothers’ Day, in honor of all mothers, both living and dead.

Lent as Personified in Folklore At some level, while being generally observed, Lent was also resented by the population of France and Spain, judging by its common depiction in folklore: a skinny old lady made of cardboard or paper who personified winter hardships. In her Madrid version, like the “nun” calendars traditionally used by children for a Lent countdown in parts of France and Greece, she had seven legs when she triumphantly escorted King Carnival to his grave, but lost one with every week of fasting that went by, until her head was cut off on Holy Saturday. In a disturbing variant, the old lady might be replaced by a dummy (as in Greece) or an actor impersonating Judas, who would be tried, condemned, and executed during Holy Week— sometimes for real when things got out of hand; such was the power of a realistic scape-

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goating ritual known in Spain until the midtwentieth century.

Liturgical Observances By then, the Roman Catholic world was about to be dramatically changed by reforms that would, among other things, relax the observance of Lent to the point of its virtual disappearance from social life. It seemed to make little difference that liturgical reforms restored the moveable Lenten cycle of masses for each day (reflecting the fact that during Lent a socalled “stational mass” was originally supposed to be celebrated by the Pope in every church of Rome in turn) to give it prominence over the cycle of fixed feasts for saints’ days, which it had lost in the course of the Middle Ages. By contrast, the Lenten cycle was always paramount and has even tended to absorb the sanctoral calendar in the Eastern Church. Fasting also remains a cornerstone of Orthodox piety, observed in some form all year round— though with more flexibility regarding exceptional circumstances than used to be the case in the Catholic Church. Since the third century, there is fasting almost every week on Wednesday (in remembrance of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas) and Friday (to mourn for Christ’s death). During Great Lent, on those two days of the week in Slavic Churches and on Wednesday evenings only in others, the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts (taken from the previous Sunday’s Eucharist) is offered after vespers, since a full, triumphant celebration of the Eucharist would clash with the spirit of austerity to be maintained on weekdays; in this, it is like the Catholic Good Friday Mass. On Friday evenings (except in Slavic Churches) comes a recitation of part of the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God, named thus in Greek because “no sitting” is allowed while it lasts. Originally composed in the sixth and seventh centuries in order to thank Mary for saving the Eastern Roman Empire from the threats of Persians and Arabs, as well as for the March 25 fixed feast of

the Annunciation celebrating the conception of Jesus by the Blessed Virgin, this masterpiece of Greek religious poetry, attributable in part to Saint Romanos the Melodist, is now read in its entirety on the Friday (or the Saturday in the Slavic use) of the fifth week of Lent. On Wednesday or Thursday, as well as on the stricter first four days of Lent, it is the turn of the Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete, a lengthy cycle of odes contrasting human frailty with divine mercy. In Eastern rite churches, great complines are read every weekday but Friday. On Sundays, the longer Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil replaces the usual one of Saint John Chrysostom, moved to Saturdays. At evening services and at home before going to bed, the Lenten prayer of Saint Ephraim the Syrian (intercut either with prostrations on weekdays or deep bows on weekends) asks God for deliverance from idleness, discouragement, vain talk, and the urge to dominate, praying instead for the gifts of chastity, humility, patience, charity, and the grace of judging oneself instead of others. See also Annunciation; Assumption; Carnival; Christmas; Easter; Elevation of the Cross; Epiphany; Holi; Holy Week; Martinmas; Palm Sunday; Paryushana and Dashalakshana; Protection of the Mother of God; Ramadan; Saint George; Saint Lucy; Saint Nicholas; Sun Dance; Sunday; Whitsuntide References Gillian Feeley-Harnik. The Lord’s Table: The Meaning of Food in Early Judaism and Christianity. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. Hermann Franke. Lent and Easter—the Church’s Spring. Tr. Benedictines of St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN. Westminster, MA: Newman Press, 1955. A. Allan McArthur. The Evolution of the Christian Year. London: SCM Press, 1953. Jack Santino. All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

250 | l i b e r a l i a Fr. Alexander Schmemann. Great Lent: Journey to Pascha. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1969. Alan W. Watts. Myth and Ritual in Christianity. London: Thames and Hudson, 1959.

◗ LIBERALIA (ROME) The public festival of Liberalia was celebrated in Rome on March 17 in honor of Liber and Libera, an unmarried couple of ancient Italic divinities who represented procreation. The day was marked by a number of fertility rituals concerning in particular liquid forms of seed and including the boys’ coming of age ceremony: the taking of the virile toga.

Fertility Rituals With the goddess Ceres, Liber and Libera formed a Latin triad of fertility gods, which was integrated in the state religion of the Roman Republic in the early fifth century B.C.E. It was also identified early on with the Hellenic triad of gods of the underworld: Demeter corresponding to Ceres, her daughter Korê to Libera as Proserpine, and Dionysus to Liber Pater as Bacchus. Though Father Liber was originally distinct from Bacchus—a composite of Asian, Greek, and Roman divine traits—as an indigenous agrarian deity, he became specialized as the patron of wine, was thus gradually assimilated to Bacchus as the god of wine, and eventually to his Greek counterpart Dionysus— masks of whom hung on the trees during this festival, as mentioned in Virgil’s Georgics (II, 385–396). Wearing ivy crowns like Bacchus, old ladies sold honey cakes called liba on the streets on Liberalia; they would offer them in the buyer’s name on small portable altars. Liber Pater was said to have discovered honey and invented apiculture, when bees were attracted to the noise of his cymbals, and he caught them in a hollow tree. The god’s name is thought to refer to germination, birth, and growth, in the vegetable, animal, and human realms. This is

why wine was also offered in his honor; for as Saint Augustine would later explain (The City of God VII, 21), Liber had responsibility over “liquid seeds, and therefore not only over the liquors of fruits, among which wine holds, so to speak, the primacy, but also over the seeds of animals.” He was thus an object of the ancient phallic cult widespread in many forms throughout the Mediterranean basin. For during the festival of Liber this obscene member, placed on a car, was carried with great honor, first over the crossroads in the country, and then into the city. But in the town of Lavinium a whole month was devoted to Liber alone, during the days of which all the people gave themselves up to the must dissolute conversation, until that member had been carried through the forum and brought to rest in its own place; on which unseemly member it was necessary that the most honorable matron should place a wreath in the presence of all the people. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://ccel.org/fathers)

As in similar Greek processions in honor of Dionysus, this phallophoria was thought to keep away disease and other disasters that could affect crops at this time of year when they were germinating.

The Taking of the Virile Toga March 17 was also the day when boys matured into young men who could marry. Those who were seventeen would put on the toga libera or virile toga (probably named after Liber) for the first time in their lives, in an important comingof-age ceremony. Leaving behind the bulla amulet worn around the neck and the purplelined toga pretexta denoting childhood, they would go up to the temple of Jupiter on Capitol Hill and offer a sacrifice to deified youth—Iuventas. Liber too happened to be depicted as an eternally young man. Yet the main idea of putting on the virile toga on that day was that one took on

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the responsibilities of a full-grown adult and was granted the political liberties of a citizen. The idea of liberty thus became associated—however fancifully—with the name of the concurrent festival of Liberalia. The poet Ovid, who mentions this linguistic link in his Fasti, also suggests that in the distant past, peasants had used to come up to Rome for special games in honor of Liber on this occasion. But by his time, Liber was no more than a second fiddle at the April games in honor of Ceres. She had largely replaced Liber as a focus of the common people’s affection and of their interest in plentiful crops. His association with the taking of the virile toga had become so remote in the second century, when the Christian writer Tertullian denounced most Roman social customs as idolatrous, that he spared this one as a purely civil affair, that was therefore not offensive to a jealous God. See also Apaturia; Dionysia; Games (Rome); Inti Raymi and Huarachicu; Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis References Christian Classics Ethereal Library. http://ccel.org/fathers/NPNF1–02/Augustine/ cog/t37.htm#t37.htm.4. Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000. H. H. Scullard. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.

◗ LIGHTS (FEAST OF) See Epiphany

◗ LITTLE CHRISTMAS, LOPPIAINEN See Epiphany

◗ LITTLE NEW YEAR See New Year (Japan)

◗ LORD’S DAY See Sunday

◗ LOSAR See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ LOTS See Purim

◗ LOW MONDAY, LOW SUNDAY See Easter

◗ LUCIA See Saint Lucy

◗ LUDI See Games (Rome)

◗ LUDI PESCATORII See Vestalia

◗ LUGNASAD (CELTS) By early August throughout the Celtic world, an important festival marked the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Called Lammas Day in English, it is best known from its Irish version as Lugnasad. It featured agricultural fairs, competitive games, and joyous celebrations—that were nonetheless also very serious in ancient times, as all of Celtic society came together as one around the king on the site of an archaic sacrifice.

◗ LIGHTS (FESTIVAL OF) See Divali

◗ LILLE JUL, LITTLE CHRISTMAS See Saint Lucy

The Gules of August Lugnasad has given its name to the month of August in modern Irish (as lúnasa), but its local survivals go by about a hundred denomina-

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tions in either Gaelic or English, the chief one in the latter language being Lammas Day. It is a contraction of the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon expression Hláf mæsse, “from the hallowed bread [hláf—hence “loaf ”] which is hallowed on Lammas Day” (Toller 1976, p. 540), that is, at the mass of the feast of Saint Peter in Fetters (commemorating his arrest and miraculous deliverance from prison as related in Acts 12:4–20), to be offered to the four corners of the house as ffirst-fruits in thanksgiving for the ripe corn harvest. This first day of the month was called the Gules of August—from the Latin Gula Augusti for “the mouth of August,” which also gave goulaoust in French, with the variant goelaoust in Brittany, where the Breton word gouel, otherwise coming up only before the name of saints, makes this translate as “Saint August.” This would suggest that this significant date of the Celtic calendar was deliberately Christianized (in name at least) throughout Roman Gaul, especially in view of the parallel case of Gwyl Awst that subsisted in Wales until about a century ago. Gwyl Awst was a day for fairs, for hillside picnics, and for pilgrimages to Little Van Lake in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Lady of the Lake, on the first Sunday in August in modern times, but initially on August 1. In England, though it was frequently assimilated into the August 15 feast of the Assumption, Lammas used to be celebrated on the first Monday of August (still a bank holiday throughout the British Isles) in Chalford in Gloucestershire, while in other places its observance was switched to August 13—after thirteen days of the year were skipped with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in the United Kingdom and its colonies in 1752. This was the case of the York Lammas fair as well as of the Coventry Lammas riding, a horseback perambulation to the sound of band music and church bells (a frequent feature of Lammas customs), reminiscent of Rogationtide boundbeating processions. Yet the aim here was to

mark the point at which certain lands used by their owners to grow wheat and other crops were to be thrown open for common pasture and public use until the return of spring. In Colchester in Essex and in several towns around what is now the Greater London area (namely Epping, Newbury, Staines, Ware, and Watford Fields), these ancient rights of pasture usually applied to so-called “half-year lands” from Lammas on August 1 (or 13 as Old Lammas) until Candlemas on February 2, when the fences were put up again. These were also the dates when half-yearly agricultural rents were due in Westmoreland, a former county of England’s Lake District. Coming six months apart, these two dates opened the fourth and second quarters of the Celtic year, respectively, when its sacred cycle hinged on two of its four major festivals: Lugnasad and Imbolc. Yet the modern Welsh version of the Gules of August remains the closest counterpart of Ireland’s ancient Lugnasad. There, several townships at a time would celebrate the new harvest on a hilltop or a prehistoric site (initially by offering a sheaf of the new corn to Lug before burying it there and coming back after the meal to see the god’s impersonator banish the monstrous figure of famine), with song and dance, games and competitions, feasts and matchmaking, aside from produce, horse and cattle fairs, and often pilgrimages under the protection of a saint—such as Patrick himself. Ireland’s patron and early Christian saints were able to maintain these and other observances of a pagan festival because, unlike the yearly observances of Beltane (May Day) and Samhain (Halloween —the Celtic New Year), they were not as overtly religious and did not include sacrifices but undeniably had a high moral tone and a civilizing social role.

The Royal Assembly of Lug Like these other Celtic festivals however, Lugnasad (meaning the “Assembly of Lug” in his capacity as divine protector of the realm) re-

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quired the participation of every segment of the people around the king as Lug’s human agent: the druids or filid assisting him, the warriors—from whose midst these priests elevated the king to rule above all, and the craftsmen and peasants—not just as providers of the general wealth at his disposal, but as beneficiaries of his generosity. For the king was called upon to demonstrate it on this occasion by rewarding everyone according to the quality of their performance in the day’s various contests. If he was remiss in his seasonal obligations of hospitality, he failed the crucial test of fitness for his office, and it was thought he would have to suffer the consequences of his greed: overweening pride and premature aging. The monarch who neglected to celebrate Lugnasad properly was the very type of a bad king, who reduces his subjects to poverty with excessive taxes, and eschews the crucial royal function of the liberal gift—made possible at this time of the year by the harvest just brought in. This material plenty was conducive to the peace and friendship that ought to prevail at Lugnasad. Some political and legal questions having to do with the distribution of wealth and responsibilities might also be settled during the compulsory general assemblies held on this festival—from three to fifteen days before and after, depending on its importance and on its annual or triennial periodicity. But while they lasted, a strict military truce was observed, along with a ban on legal proceedings—even as oratorical contests and sporting events engaged the same competitive skills in peaceful ways. Thus, by much the same means as the North American potlatch halfway around the world, this ancient Irish fair or oenach helped to strengthen the consciousness of tribal unity and tribal connections as “various enactments were adopted or confirmed, especially in regard to the dues of various tribal chiefs” (Gwynn 1913, p. 470). No one was allowed to break away, even to take a meal; for although eating was generally far from absent, this feast of obli-

gation actually counted as a fast. It was never to be allowed to degenerate into an orgy; the desired moral propriety was enforced through formal separation of the sexes on different portions of the fairgrounds.

Games on Goddesses’ Graves The fact that the site was always adjacent to the burial mounds of mythological or pseudo-historical characters helps to account for these sober undertones of the celebration of Lugnasad. For these assemblies always originated in, and revolved around, ritual commemorations of a woman of royal blood and divine stature who ordained them, promising general prosperity as long as they were faithfully observed. But over the centuries, other Irish worthies would get buried near her so as to also be able to get their yearly share of the spiritual benefit of the collective lamentations accruing to her, and of the funerary games in her honor (which are thus closer to Roman games than to the Greek Olympiads Irish chroniclers liked to compare them to). These inviolate graves may be compared to the princely tombs left by continental Celts. What is for sure is that, like all Irish capitals—such as central Tara, the Lugnasad fairgrounds had as eponymous (name-giving) founders fairy queens who had suffered tragic deaths. If there are few details on the fairgrounds of Colman and Cruachan, this is made up by the prose and metrical Dindshenchas—the “Lore of Places”—when it comes to those at Carman and Teltown, as Tailtiu is known in English. The famous fair of Tailtiu, recorded since the sixth century, continued to be held regularly until 927—not counting sporadic attempts to revive it in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the most important fair in Ireland because it was sponsored by the king of Tara, the head of the mighty confederation of O’Neill dynasties. Based in Tailtiu, in the ancestral homeland of their northern clans, it took place on or around August 1—possibly from the first Mon-

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day of the month. It was said to have been instituted by Lug, king of the divine race of the Tuatha Dé Danann, in honor of his nurse Tailtiu, a princess of Spain (since this country was part of the Other World in ancient Ireland’s sacred geography), who had been the wife of Eochu, the last Fir Bolg king of Ireland, before becoming the wife of another Eochu from the new divine dynasty. Being a mother-figure before belonging to any particular lineage, Tailtiu thus stands for the earth as the ground of the wealth of the realm that the king commands and distributes and must not be confused with the sovereignty of Ireland, always symbolized by the king’s young bride. As for Carman, she is said to have died a hostage as the mother of invaders who had been ravaging Ireland, to guarantee that they would not return. Indeed, the remains of a young woman showing signs of having been buried alive were uncovered in 1944 at a dig in County Kildare, on a possible site of the assembly of Carman. Such a sacrifice might have been understood at some point as the price of Ireland’s peace and prosperity. Still, as related by the eleventh-century bard Fulartach, the fair broke up at the signal of a formal Christian blessing on “the fortunate ever-joyous host:/ may there be given to them, from the Lord,/the earth with her pleasant fruits!” in the name of national and regional patrons Patrick, Brigit, Caemgen, and Columcille, “the saint[s] of the compact” guaranteeing the truce— no deceitful blessing—“/above the hallowed water of Carmun, devoutly,/mass, genuflection, chanting of psalms” (Gwynn 1913, p. 23, verses 269–276).

From Lug to Caesar to Christ On the continent in Antiquity, the Assembly of the Gauls would meet in August on a site dedicated to Lug where the waters of the river Saône flowed into those of the river Rhône. It is known only in the romanized form of the Concilium Galliarum of Lugdunum, present, day Lyon. Born there in 10 B.C.E., Emperor

Claudius, who was an able historian and a skilled linguist, must have realized the political interest of promoting the conversion of a panCeltic August festival of the king’s peace into a celebration of the universal Pax Romana under the aegis of an imperial dynasty founded by a divus Augustus. But before very long, a further conversion—turning the focus upward still from a divinized universal monarch to a God made man as heavenly Prince of Peace—was destined to have a more lasting impact on the ancient seat of the continental Assembly of Lug; also born there, the French Church is headed to this day by the bishop of Lyon as Primate of the Gauls. See also Assumption; Busk; Candlemas; Games (Greece); Games (Rome); May Day; Midsummer; Potlatch; Rogations; Samhain References D. A. Binchy. “The Fair of Tailtiu and the Feast of Tara,” in Ériu, Vol. XVIII (1958), pp. 113–138. Anna Franklin and Paul Mason. Lammas: Celebrating Fruits of the First Harvest. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2001. Edward Gwynn, ed. The Metrical Dindsenchas, Part III. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis and Co., “Todd Lecture Series” Vol. X, 1913 (reprint Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1991). Ronald Hutton. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1992. Máire MacNeill. The Festival of Lughnasa. A Study of the Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of Harvest. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. T. Northcote Toller, ed. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898, reprint 1976.

◗ LUPERCALIA (ROME) Tracing its roots to the very origins of Rome, the February 15 festival of Lupercalia proved to be the city’s most resilient one. It survived the fall of the Empire long enough for Pope Gela-

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sius I to have to crack down on attempts at a full-fledged revival at the end of the fifth century. He thus instituted both Candlemas on February 2 and the yearly commemoration of Roman cleric Saint Valentine’s martyrdom on February 14, 269. By contrast to the sentimental affair the latter festival has become, the ancient Lupercalia of February 15 were an unromantic—if colorful—fertility ritual, involving a race in which women were slapped by the runners with leather strips to purify them of obstacles to childbirth.

Dead Ancestors and Future Descendents The Lupercalia fell toward the beginning of Parentalia, an end-of-year novena (nine-day religious observance) to appease dead relatives. The Luperci, or wolf-priests, may have stood in for the dead and acted as advocates for the living. They gave the blessing of new life to the women they met on their race around Palatine Hill, who offered their backs and limbs to be slapped with strips of skin from billy goats just sacrificed. These strips were known as februa for their purifying properties. The month of February was named after them.

Romulus and Remus Everyone on the way was slapped with these sacred whips by the two groups of runners— young boys from the Quinctii and Fabii families, descended from Romulus and Remus respectively. They came from the Lupercal, the cave to the southwest of the Palatine where the city’s twin founders were said to have been suckled by a she-wolf, after they were abandoned at birth on the orders of a usurper uncle. Once the goats had been sacrificed there, as if to celebrate the fact that Romulus and Remus had been fed with milk instead of being just eaten up like stray sheep, two boys—one from each noble clan—were brought to the Lupercal to play the part of their mythical ancestors. Some priests would touch their foreheads with the

bloody knife used for sacrificing the animals, and other priests immediately wiped them with milk-soaked wool. The two boys, like miraculously rescued victims, were supposed to laugh out loud on the spot, as if to dispel the thought of the peril just averted. They could now join the race of the Luperci, wearing only goatskin loincloths. It was as one of them that, in 44 B.C.E., Mark Antony took this opportunity to offer a royal diadem to Julius Caesar, which he turned down—though the incident still fuelled rumors he wanted to restore the monarchy and become king himself.

Lupercus: the Faun as Wolf God “A peculiarity of this festival is that the Luperci sacrifice a dog also,” adds the Greek chronicler Plutarch (50?–125?, in Romulus XXI, 6), who points out its name “has the meaning of the Greek ‘Lycaea’ or feast of wolves, which makes it seem of great antiquity” and Arcadian origin (XXI, 3, in Plutarch’s Lives, Vol. I, pp. 156–159). The dog probably stood in for the wolves that the wolf god Lupercus was supposed to keep at bay as a protector of herds. The poet Ovid (43–17) knew this god only as Faunus, whose name means “the strangler.” He identified him with the goat-footed Greek god Pan; hence the panic running of the naked Luperci. Ovid (Fasti 2:424, p. 39) was aware though that under this name of Pan, “Lycaean Faunus has Arcadian shrines” in Greece, where the equivalent of the Luperci was named after Mount Lykaios—that is, “wolf-mountain.” All this points to the identification in a single divine figure of the threat of canine predators and of the herds of sheep requiring protection from them. Human beings, in the form of Luperci, could relate to the wolves and to the sheep, both as victims and as victors, like the defenseless babies Romulus and Remus adopted by a she-wolf as her own cubs.

Rumina’s Fig Tree The spot of this miracle was known as the original site of the fig tree Ruminalis (moved since

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by another miracle), sacred to Rumina, goddess of suckling. This function, along with a similarsounding name, caused her to be associated with Romulus and his legend. Such a link between milk-feeding—both animal and human—and the infant twins who, against all odds, would grow up to found Rome, may well explain why the race of the Luperci promoted childbirth, through the women’s contact with the goat-leather whips wielded by youths who had just received aspersions of milk from a piece of raw wool.

From Juno Lucina to Saint Valentine But the reason Ovid (Fasti 2:441, p. 40) gives to account for the Lupercalia’s focus on women’s fertility is the following command issued by the goddess Juno Lucina from her sacred grove— lucus—on Esquiline Hill: “The sacred goat must penetrate Italy’s mothers.” These words were reportedly heard coming out of the bush a little after Rome was founded in 753 B.C.E., when the kidnapping of Sabine women by Romulus as wives for his subjects failed to have the desired effect on the fledgling settlement’s birthrate. A temple was dedicated to Juno as goddess of childbirth on the Esquiline in 375 B.C.E. on the first of March. Two weeks after Lupercalia, this date (which had long been that of the New Year until the religious reforms attributed to Romulus’ son King Numa Pompilius) would henceforward be celebrated as the festival of Matronalia, in honor of the institution of marriage as well as of the peace secured by the early marriages between Roman men and Sabine women.

But it was on the former eve of Lupercalia — Saint Valentines—that Juno, the goddess of marriage, would keep on being honored for centuries by the drawing of the names of girls from lots by boys (and eventually vice versa), sometimes pairing them as friends until Easter, for a year, or even for life as spouses. Hence the custom of picking Valentines on the feast of a saint known for performing secret weddings for young men who sent him notes stating they would rather make love than war (since Emperor Claudius II had temporarily outlawed marriage as a ground for avoiding the draft). The old pagan association of this date with fertile unions was reinforced by its medieval interpretation as the start of mating season for birds, when swallows made their appearance as the first harbingers of spring—not unlike groundhogs on Candlemas twelve days earlier. See also Candlemas; Days of the Dead (West); Easter; Games (Rome); Matronalia; New Year (West) References Alberta Mildred Franklin. The Lupercalia. New York: [s.n.], 1921. A. W. J. Holleman. Pope Gelasius I and the Lupercalia. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1974. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 2000. Plutarch’s Lives in Eleven Volumes. Tr. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948.

M ◗ MADONNA DEL PONTE See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ MAHALAYA AMAVASHYA, MAHANAVAMI See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ MAHASHIVARATRI (HINDUISM) Shivaratri is the Sanskrit word for the “Night of Shiva”—that of the fourteenth lunar day (tithi) of the waning or “dark half ” (krishnapaksha) of every lunar month. Though both this time of day and this time of the month are the most inauspicious as the darkest, they are also the most sacred to Shiva in another sense. Especially auspicious is the last Shivaratri of the year—either in the month of Magha (January–February) or in that of Phalguna (February–March), depending on whether the months are counted from the new moon or the full moon in a particular region of the Indian subcontinent. For this is Mahashivaratri—the “Great Night of Shiva”—the year’s major festival for every shaiva or devotee of Mahadeva— the “Great God” Shiva. Followers of other deities often mark it, too, especially the Smarta brahmins of South India and Gujarat State, who make a point of embracing all Hindu gods.

The Darkest Night When All Are Equal Before God The night is the best time to worship Shiva because this is when he walks the earth and meditates at midnight in charnel grounds and crematoria—his favorite haunts—where ghosts, ghouls, and other fiends are his friends. The last night of the lunar cycle is particularly dark and has added meaning around New Year’s Eve and the end of winter, when the established order of the old year breaks down into chaos at its lowest point before being reinstated on a clean slate. Thus, “all persons of whatever birth or station may celebrate Shivaratri on the fourteenth tithi, even low caste people and women,” as the Ishanasamhita points out. It goes on to say that “when, after observing a fast on that day, Shiva is worshipped with bilva leaves, and a vigil for the whole night is observed, Shiva saves man from hell and bestows enjoyment of happiness and liberation (moksha), and a man becomes like Shiva himself. Gifts, sacrifices, austerities, pilgrimages, and observances of vows are not equal to even one ten-millionth part of Shivaratri” (Kane 1930–1962, Vol. V, Part 1, p. 229). This ritual may therefore have been devised by Hindu leaders over a thousand years ago to give the populace easy access to heavenly rewards, as an incentive not to be swayed |

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Hindu devotees light candles during the Mahashivaratri festival at the Shiva temple in Trakeshawar, 75 kilometers (46 miles) west of Calcutta, February 18, 2004. (Jayanta Shaw/Reuters/Corbis)

by the competing egalitarian and atheistic teachings of Jainism and Buddhism.

Unwitting Devotion and Boundless Merit This was done by circulating different versions of the story of a cruel huntsman of low caste with bad karma who got lost in a forest and found refuge in a tree overnight. Unbeknownst to him, the bilva (wood-apple) tree was sacred to Shiva, and it was the night of the fourteenth that he spent without food or sleep in it, shaking leaves and water onto the god’s phallic idol or linga below, and involuntarily getting all the merit of these timely offerings—as did his wife just by being kept awake by worry all night. The next day, his heart had inexplicably softened,

and they were soon both taken from this life to Shiva’s realm and/or royal human births. The god’s consort Parvati spread their story and the fame of the extraordinary redemptive efficacy of Shivaratri (as Mahashivaratri is commonly referred to), a ritual so powerful it could work even when people accidentally went through the motions. But in the words of the Garuda Purana (I:124), “if one worships the linga in this way, knowingly and willfully, then the merit accrued therefrom will be limitless and inexhaustible.” This merit can translate into any of the following benefits, in order of importance: (i) worldly happiness and wish-fulfillment in terms of long life, power, family, fame, and fortune; (ii) safe passage across hell; (iii) liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth; (iv) becom-

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ing an attendant of Shiva; (v) becoming one of his companions in his heaven on Mount Kailash in the Himalayas; (vi) taking the same form as Shiva; or (vii) becoming completely one with him.

Communal Feast or Personal Vow? If these blessings and rewards make Shivaratri desirable though optional (kamya), it is also obligatory (nitya) because its rites need to be performed every year if one is not to succumb to certain sins and their dire consequences. In this, despite the prominence of song, dance, drama, and popular fairs in places such as West Bengal, they represent less a cyclical community festival (utsava) than a voluntary personal vow (vrata)—one of well over a thousand known in Hinduism. The performance of this one happens to be expected of all faithful devotees of Shiva, to reaffirm the mutual interdependence of earthly and divine realms. For the divine realm is sustained by humans’ physical and spiritual discipline, offerings of cooked food, and hymns of praise, while the earthly realm receives from it physical and spiritual well-being. It is in turn incumbent upon humans to redistribute to all creatures and gods the material goods and inner strength that allow them to perform such religious duties in the first place. Among the latter, the main three that constitute Shivaratri are fasting for the whole lunar day, holding a vigil, and worshipping the linga overnight with offerings of flowers, leaves, foods, precious objects, its anointing (abhisheka) with a variety of substances (ranging from sugar water to cow excrements) and the muttering (japa) of mantras. The pattern remains the same whether the rites are performed in a temple or at home, though it is reversed in some places where the fast (upavasa) and vigil (jagara) take place at night, and the worship (puja) in daytime. They can also last between a day and a day and a half, depending on the extent of the ritual used in a particular setting. In most cases

today, people do not go through all the rites described in ancient texts but stick to the three basic elements (svarupa) and also listen to stories of Shiva’s deeds, which brings great merit too. In parts of India, people still drink bhang, Shiva’s favorite beverage: rosewater that has first been filtered through hemp leaves and is later mixed with opium and sprinkled with almonds and other ingredients.

Some Local Observances Thousands of pilgrims come from India to the great Pashupatinath Temple near Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal—a Himalayan kingdom so wholly devoted to Shiva that many Buddhists too celebrate Shivaratri. All day, military gun salutes are heard crackling from Kathmandu’s Tundikhel parade ground, and in the evening, the royal family comes with gifts to pay homage to Lord Pashupati—“Protector of Animals,” as Shiva is known in this holy place. This is but one of the god’s many names, which the fasting devotees who throng the surrounding slopes chant around campfires throughout the night, while many ritually bathe in the river below and return to temple grounds every three hours to shower countless lingas with flowers and holy water. Throughout Kathmandu Valley, at all crossroads and in each courtyard in town and country, relatives gather to praise Shiva around bonfires fed with wood collected by boys who have gone door to door chanting: Two sticks of firewood we beg of you, For Mahadev is feeling cold. In the neighboring Indian state of Himachal Pradesh that day, groups of children go from door to door decorating each one with branches and often getting grain as a reward for singing: The doors have been decked with thorny bush and wild cherry, Therefore, oh witch, run away to the peak.

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That night, the whole family sings and dances in honor of Shiva around a mandala checkerboard pattern traced on the floor with flour paste, in which a cowdung linga and a rice Parvati have been placed along with three breads and the many fried cakes prepared during the day. They are eaten when the fast is broken at four in the morning, as the idols are placed in the middle of a field. The priest gets one of the loaves, while remaining cakes are taken to absent relatives. In Kerala State at the other end of India, people smear their bodies with ashes (an attribute of Shiva as a naked ascetic) after bathing near temples where the puja or service lasts all night and a strict vigil is kept until a final bath the next morning, marking the end of Shiva’s meditation. Several thousand pilgrims from all castes and of all persuasions especially gather on the vast sandbank of Periyar River where the linga is erected near the Shiva temple of Aluva. Merchants sell their wares in row upon row of booths, while an array of performances attracts sightseers and helps the pilgrims keep awake all night. Most of them also make offerings to their ancestors the next morning. The rest of the day is celebrated with feasting and fairs, in commemoration of Shiva’s rescue of the world from annihilation—either by mediating between the Creator, Brahma and the Sustainer, Vishnu, or by swallowing the poison released by the snake with which the gods churned the milk-ocean of early Creation so it would not contaminate the amrita elixir of immortality they were trying to recover from the bottom. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, special foods are offered to the gods around one in the afternoon and are then eaten by the whole family, before portions are taken to relatives and friends to renew social ties as a conclusion to the festival. Over the previous night, when all temples remain open, nearly everyone would have visited several of them. Many begin the evening by going to watch devotional films—of which there are three showings on Mahashivaratri. For

some, this is even a substitute for going to the temple, as crowds offer flowers and break hundreds of coconuts under the screen in the middle of a showing. This appears to be a development of the seasonal practice of temple storytelling by a “straight” narrator who keeps on being interrupted by a sidekick’s gibes. Though the goal of his jokes and horseplay is to keep people awake during a long night vigil, they also ensure the festival’s popularity among children. Members of the South Indian Lingayat sect of iconoclastic “linga-wearers,” also called ViraShaivas as “virile” spiritual heroes (though men and women of all castes wear these phallic symbols in place of the sacred thread of highercaste Hindu men), give gifts to their guru or spiritual master on the day after the Great Night of Shiva. See also Holi References P. V. Kane. History of Dharma´sastra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law). Poona, India: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1930–1962, Vol. V, Part 1, pp. 225–236. ´ Festival of Bruce Long. “Maha´sivaratri: The Saiva Repentance,” in Guy R. Welbon and Glenn E. Yocum. Religious Festivals in South India and Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Manohar, 1982, pp. 189–217. Swami Shivananda. Hindu Fasts and Festivals and Their Philosophy. Rishikesh, India: The Shivananda Publication League, 1947.

◗ MAHAVIRA’S BIRTHDAY See Paryushana and Dashalakshana

◗ MAIKRAHV See May Day

◗ MAIMUNA See Passover

◗ MAMANDABARI-MALIARA See Kunapipi

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◗ MANKIND (DAY OF) See Sekku

◗ MARDI GRAS See Carnival

◗ MARTINMAS (CHRISTIANITY) Martinmas is the November 11 feast of Saint Martin, who was buried on this day in 397. He has thus become the focus of rich and varied European folklore, because the date of his commemoration can serve both as a late Thanksgiving festival—bringing an end to the harvest season, or as an early winter solstice festival— anticipating the Christmas season in some of the same ways as the feast of Saint Nicholas on December 6. The feast of Saint Eligius on December 1 bridges those of Saint Nicholas and Saint Martin.

Martin, Eligius and Nicholas At the height of his popularity in the Middle Ages, Saint Martin was often depicted as a young Roman officer on horseback who, upon encountering a beggar, cut his own cloak in two with his sword to give half of it to him, in literal obedience to the Gospel command. (He is thus known by this clothing attribute in German folklore as Pelzmärtel—“Pelt Marty,” a kind of “wild” version of Saint Nicholas.) Since he pioneered the evangelization of Gaul’s peasantry as bishop of Tours, Martin would become the first patron saint of France under the early medieval Merovingian kings. Still famous today from an old French children’s song, Saint Eligius was an influential councillor to one of them—le bon roi Dagobert, the “Good King Dagobert” of its title. The December 1 feast of his passing in 659 complements in France (where it is known as SaintÉloi) those of Saint Nicholas on December 6 and Saint Martin on November 11, with a seasonal blessing of horses, using a hammer—the animal and the tool being attributes of this former blacksmith (or goldsmith, depending on

the tradition, since both trades claim him as their patron saint). In Belgian Luxembourg, the Fête de Saint-Éloi is celebrated on the first Sunday of December in Bouillon with an early morning procession, carrying around town on stretchers loads of cakes to be given out after a special mass. A traditional story from French Flanders links all three saints to account for the origin of the Martinmas lantern procession—formerly using hollowed out vegetables (such as beets), called “death’s heads” on the northern coast of France, in Belgium, and in Holland. (Nowadays, however, paper lanterns made in school are used in the latter country as in Luxembourg and Germany, and as far away as in long German-dominated Estonia.) The story goes that Saint Nicholas once stopped to pray at a chapel dedicated to Saint Eligius in Dunkirk (though he never left Asia Minor and died there three centuries before the French saint!). Meanwhile, his donkey—or Saint Martin’s in some accounts—wandered off; hence the “donkey’s droppings” (volaeren)—round raisin cakes left overnight on either December 5 or most often November 10, in remembrance of the local children who went and looked for the beast through the dunes and fields all night, carrying lanterns (although naughty children might get real droppings instead, or even get caned!). This was given as the reason why masked children go from door to door on Martinmas, singing and dancing in expectation of a reward. Money and candies have come to replace apples and nuts in this trick-or-treating quest of a kind to be found on various dates in different parts of Europe until the Twelfth Night of Christmas.

Between Halloween and Christmas Like related Christmas customs, this continental equivalent of Halloween often involved the use as musical accompaniment of a Rummelpott (German for “rumble pot”), built like a drum with a swine’s bladder through which a stick moves up and down, to produce a low,

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grating, vaguely obscene, and distinctly comical, noise. In Düsseldorf, the children’s Martinmas trick-or-treating song seems to announce the still-distant lengthening of daylight with the winter solstice—the return of the sun as king: “I am a little king, don’t give me too little/Don’t leave me waiting too long for my journey’s still long.” Looking forward to Christmas rather than back to Halloween, as well as recalling the saint’s famous charitable act (as in German parades led by a Roman soldier on horseback who mimes the saint’s gift of his cloak), many local traditions of Northern Europe grant to Saint Martin the role of bringer of gifts to children, attributed elsewhere to Saint Nicholas. Likewise, just as there are Saint Nicholas cookies, there are also “Saint Martin’s horns”: cakes baked in the shape of the saint with his arms arched to touch his hips like the ears of a pot—or the circle of the sun waxing and waning over the course of the year. In the West, the Advent season of fasting before Christmas was first known as “Saint Martin’s Lent,” because it was instituted by Perpetuus, a late fifth-century successor of Martin as bishop of Tours who set it to begin on the local saint’s November 11 feast, with fasting rules applicable only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Saint Martin’s Lent was adopted by other Frankish churches at the Council of Mâcon in 583, though it was later superseded by the standard Roman use for Advent.

A Harvest Festival If Martinmas remained entrenched in rural custom, it was mostly due to its significance in the agricultural year, coming at its effective end with the onset of the cold—even though a belated return of fair weather was sometimes called “Saint Martin’s summer,” and was explained as a favor granted to the saint by God so his donkey could graze. It was at this time that the contracts of apprentices and seasonal workers came to an end, and they were let off

with the gift of a goose, before getting hired for a new contract until Midsummer or the next Martinmas. There is a story that Saint Martin was once annoyed by a goose and had it served for dinner, to account for the sacrifice of “Martin’s goose” on his feast in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden—though chicken as well as goose is eaten in Estonia. In Scotland, Martinmas is also a day when quarterly payments and yearly rents are due. Throughout Great Britain, Martinmas used to be the time for hiring servants, as well as for slaughtering the cattle to be salted for the winter, as was also the case on the Continent. There, the cattle might not be yoked on the feast of Saint Martin as the patron of plowmen, as he was known in some French provinces such as Touraine and Alsace on account of a story that he once used his cloak to cross a river with his cattle while he was plowing a field. The inflexibly regular fate of farm animals was the source of a quaint English expression of hope that people we have reason to dislike will eventually get their comeuppance: “His Martinmas will come as it does to every hog.” For pigs were to be killed on this day in order to become the centerpiece of the Christmas meal they used to provide before turkeys came along, as they still do in many parts of Europe. In Estonia, old folk songs testify that sausages used to be made in order to be handed out to maskers going from door to door on Martinmas Eve. Happy to have their pay in hand, farm employees could partake of the new wine that would be tried on this occasion of its cellaring, often at evening parties following the children’s lantern procession and preceding the lighting of Martinmas bonfires. From Portugal to the Rhineland, these fires were kindled to clear the air; baskets of nuts and fruits were shaken over them in the Low Countries. Saint Martin was sometimes popularly known as the patron of drinkers—or even of drunkards, on account of excesses clerical authorities could hardly con-

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Gothic painting of Saint Martin of Tours sharing his cloak with the poor. Anonymous, fifteenth century, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest. (Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis)

done on his feast, when, aside from wine, revellers might drink a potent seasonal liqueur made from its must, called Martinsminne in Germany; in the Netherlands, the Calvinist clergy long vainly tried to ban it along with Martin’s goose. The custom of getting drunk that night prevailed from Western Germany to Northern France, where it has given rise to typical expressions such as “Martinmas sickness”—a hangover.

In Sigillo near Perugia, chestnuts are offered to the public along with the new wine on Martinmas. But elsewhere in Italy, harvest festivals equivalent to Martinmas, complete with blessings of farm produce and bonfires, are held on slightly different dates, like the Feast of San Rocco on November 16 in Roccanova near Potenza, and the Fugarena on November 19 in Terra del Sole near Forlì. Throughout much of Europe, many products of the year’s harvest

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are also first consumed on Martinmas, as a kind of thanksgiving offering of their firstfruits to Saint Martin. Yet this festival is now somewhat overshadowed by Armistice Day— the civic day of the war dead its date has become (under this name in France, Belgium, and Britain, and that of Remembrance Day in Canada and Australia, while it was renamed Veterans Day by the U.S. Congress in 1954), in commemoration of the armistice that put an end to the slaughter of the First World War in 1918, coming into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In Rhineland towns down to southern Holland, this just happens to be the traditional moment when a council of eleven citizens begins preparations for the coming Carnival: at eleven past eleven on Martinmas, because eleven is the number symbolizing fools, who will then rule supreme for a few days. See also Carnival; Christmas; Days of the Dead (West); Epiphany; Lent; Midsummer; Saint Nicholas References Dien est Amour (Remes, France: Librarie Pierre Téqui), No. 15, “Saint Martin,” October 1979. H. Pomeroy Brewster. Saints and Festivals of the Christian Church. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1990. Jennifer M. Russ. German Festivals and Customs. London: O. Wolff, 1982. Simon Schama. The Embarrassment of Riches. An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Knopf, 1987.

◗ MARTYRDOM OF GURUS See Gurpurb

◗ MARTYRDOM OF THE BAB See Ridván

◗ MASQAL See Elevation of the Cross

◗ MATRALIA (ROME) It is on June 11 that Servius Tullius (578–534 B.C.E.), the sixth king of Rome, was said to have dedicated the temples of Fortuna and of Mater Matuta on the city’s cattle market—the Forum Boarium. The latter goddess, “Mother Dawn,” was henceforth honored at dawn every June 11 by the good mothers of Rome, provided they had been married only once. Mater Matuta forbade servants access to her temple; yet they were deliberately taken inside by their mistresses, so they could be slapped, beaten with sticks, and thrown out, as part of the rites of Matralia.

Why Dawn Frowns on Slaves and Shines on Nephews Ovid accounted for the hostility of the Italic goddess Matuta toward slaves in terms of her identification with the Theban princess Ino of Greek mythology. For Ino’s husband, King Athamas of Boeotia, slept with one of her servants and thus heard about a vital part of his wife’s plot to get him to kill his children from a previous marriage. Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) thought it more likely that the slaves stood in for the dark shadows that Dawn chases away every morning. The French historian went even further afield than the Roman poet to try to explain another enigmatic feature of her festival: the fact that, in Ovid’s words, “no pious mother should pray to her for her child;/She seemed not the happiest of parents” (Fasti 6:559–560, p. 155). According to Ovid, Ino had cast herself into the sea with her son Melicertes after her other son Learchus had been killed by Athamas. She did this in a fit of madness induced by Juno, who wanted to get back at Ino for saving her sister Semele’s child by Jupiter. The Nereids (Greek sea deities who helped sailors in distress) then took Ino to the mouth of the River Tiber. “You will do better to give her another’s child/She aided Bacchus more than her children” (Fasti 6:561–562, p. 155), when she took

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care of this orphan god. His father Jupiter’s full glory as the god of thunder and lightning had consumed Semele when she had insisted on seeing her lover as he really was. Semele was following the deceptive advice of Jupiter’s jealous wife Juno, who had come to her disguised as an old neighbor. For Ovid, Ino’s care for her sister Semele’s son Bacchus was the reason why, on Matralia, Roman matrons took their sisters’ children, never their own, to commend them to Ino as Mater Matuta. Taking seriously her ancient identification with Dawn—all the way to common Indo-European roots—Dumézil maintained that “at her festival the Roman ladies mime her mythic actions, in the hope of making her perform them when she makes her brief appearance every day of the year. These actions are the driving out of the shades and the attentive, affectionate welcoming of the sun, the child of night—according to Vedic mythology, her sister’s child” (Dumézil 1996, Vol. 2, p. 388). In this interpretation, when mothers prayed to Mater Matuta for their nephews and nieces, they were assisting Dawn in cherishing the Sun as a newborn child of departed Night—her own sister.

How a Pair of Greek Suicides Became Roman Sea Deities But this is a modern reconstruction of the hypothetical archaic origins of the rites of Matralia. By Ovid’s time, Matuta was taken to be the name by which Ino was known to the Romans as a sea goddess; while to the Greeks she was Leucothea, the “White Goddess” worshipped in a wide range of initiatory festivals featuring social inversion and ritual trangressions of morality. (Hence perhaps her identification with Ino, who for a while raised Bacchus as a girl and also founded a contest for boys in Miletus.) For the Greeks, Melicertes had been deified as Palaemon, meaning the same as Portunus, as the Romans called him, since he had been given power over ports. This was believed to have happened once mother and son had found refuge on Italy’s

shores after their miraculous rescue from drowning in the Tiber’s waters. The temple of Portunus was therefore built only a stone’s throw away from the Tiber on the Forum Boarium, like the temple of his mother Matuta. The blessing of these new divine identities had been prophesied to Ino soon after their arrival by the goddess Carmentis, who had offered them the hospitality of her hearth. She even went so far as to hurriedly bake some cakes on it with her own hands for the hungry mother and child. Tradition held this to be the origin of the crunchy golden cakes that were specially baked by Rome’s mothers in earthenware vessels to please Matuta on the festival of Matralia. For in her hour of direst need, “rustic kindness delights her more than art,” as Ovid wrote in his Fasti (6:534, p. 154). See also Carmentalia; Dionysia References Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Robert Graves. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin Books, 1960. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

◗ MATRONALIA (ROME) As their name indicates, the Matronalia or Matronales Feriae constituted a private festival concerning only married women—the matrons of Rome. At home, they prayed for marital bliss and put on a feast for their female slaves, while their husbands would give them presents and pocket money at the calends of March. As on the new moon of every month, public sacrifices were also offered to Juno.

Sacred Groves for Deities of Childbirth The difference was a question of emphasis and specialization. For March 1, aside from having

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long been the first day of the year until the religious reforms attributed to King Numa (715–673 B.C.E.), marked the anniversary of the dedication in 375 B.C.E. of the temple of Juno Lucina, protectress of childbirth, on her ancient sacred grove (lucus) on Esquiline Hill in an outlying area to the east of Rome. This cult and festival were said to have been established by Latin women under Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines and joint ruler of the city with its own founding king Romulus. The Matronalia therefore symbolized the peace that was sealed between the two founding peoples by their women’s intercession after the crisis caused by the abduction and rape of the Sabine women by the first Romans, desperate for a boost to their demographics. The prayer that Ovid attributes to the matrons who went in a procession to worship Juno as the goddess of childbirth at her temple on the Esquiline points to another possible etymology for her name Lucina in this capacity: “You have given us the light (lucem), oh Lucina,” they would say as they brought her flowers, wearing them as garlands as well, because she loved blooming plants (Fasti 3:255, p. 61). They would also say: “Be present for the prayers of birth”(Fasti 3:256, p. 61). But an expectant mother had to make sure to let her hair loose before she prayed, so that Juno might in turn gently release the fruit of her womb by a simple application of sympathetic magic; any tie on the mother would be a hindrance to a smooth delivery of her child. By the same principle, when Ovid proceeded to tell the story of another sacred grove: that of Nemi where Diana too was worshipped as patron goddess of pregnant women and young mothers (who left many ex-votos there to thank her), he did so as a poet to invoke the power of the muse Egeria. She was the goddess of the brook that came out of the grove, and she could draw the proper words and expressions out of him in the same way that she favored the delivery of the children expected by the women who

came to offer her sacrifices. With a name that the ancients liked to relate to egero, “to cause to come out,” the nymph Egeria of the brook of Nemi could confer her blessings on both the literal and the literary act of giving birth.

Man’s Genius and Woman’s Juno Meet at Nemi The grove of Nemi in the Alban mountains is mostly famous as an archaic testing ground of manhood: for it had as a sacred king the man who succeeded in killing the previous one, until he himself was in time inevitably overcome by a stronger contender. The muse of the brook of Nemi may have inspired Ovid’s odd insistence on a meaningful connection between the festival of Juno and the month of Mars, which was unconvincing except in this parallel: “Latin mothers rightly observe the fertile times;/ Childbirth embraces soldiery and prayer” (Fasti 3:243–244, p. 61). Labor could be seen as the female equivalent of combat, as it was in many ancient cultures from India to Mexico. The comparison went so far as to grant death in childbirth a heroic and supernatural postmortem status parallel to that of death on the battlefield. That was probably where a man’s spirit would become most clearly manifest as something “larger than life”—a genius or personal deity of both familial generation and individual fortune hovering protectively about him. If such a genius was most evident in Caesar and his kin and was, as such, the object of a public cult on Caristia, every man in Rome possessed and privately honored his own genius. In the same way, Romans eventually came to feel that every woman too had the equivalent of a genius in her own personal Juno, which became manifest in a woman’s ultimate experience: risking her life by giving birth. It may then seem fitting after all that the Juno specific to childbirth was honored in Rome in temporal conjunction with the start of the month of the god of war Mars, as the other goddesses of childbirth—Diana and Egeria—were

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worshipped in spatial conjunction with the old religious center of the confederate Latin tribes at Nemi. For their foundational violence was long kept alive there, at a safe distance from civilization up in the hills, in a bloody contest between fugitive slaves under cover of the woods. See also Caristia; Lupercalia; May Day; New Year (West) References Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. One-Volume Abridged Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. Sir James George Frazer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.

◗ MATSURI (JAPAN) A matsuri is a religious and/or civic festival, usually rooted in Japan’s indigenous Shinto nature-worship. A number of matsuris have been included in the national calendar of “annual events”—nenchu gyoji, going back over a thousand years to the Heian period, and incorporating Asian (and more recently Western) celebrations of relevance to the State, that then trickled down to Japanese society at large. But there are almost as many matsuris as there are sacred spots in Japan, as these festivals are essentially shrine-based, local in character, and archaic in origin, although the larger ones attract visitors from outside the community. This often results in the prevalence of business and entertainment concerns, to the point where some new matsuris have arisen solely in order to draw crowds for such secular festive purposes.

Marking Off the Sacred from the Profane The sometimes boisterous celebration of human fellowship within a community of what-

ever scale has always been a vital part of the matsuri. But originally, it was never divorced from its ultimate purpose, defined by the pioneering folklorist Kunio Yanagita (1875–1962) as “man’s attending to and living in the company of the gods” (Ito 1983, p. 253). This entailed above all offering them food; the verb matsuru for this also meant “to rule” in the eighth century, because such was the Emperor’s chief priestly function. Today still, the term matsuri-goto, which literally means “affairs of religious festivals,” also means “government” in everyday speech. This is because the supervision of the religious ceremonies of Shinto was long a key concern of the State, in a context where public as well as private life called for petitions and reports to the gods. As a focus of extraordinary attention at a particular place, a god or kami is offered special foods on special occasions by people wearing particular clothing: all these things, places, and times have as a common denominator the outof-the-ordinary, “sacred” character of hare, as opposed to ke, the mundane everyday or “profane” realm. The “turning point” (oribe) or “day marking change” (sechibi) from one to the other is in itself hare, whether it be a birthday or a wedding for a family, New Year’s Day, or some other matsuri for a local community or ujiko. The latter will itself be purified for the occasion, with a sacred area set apart for the main rituals by a sacred straw rope called a shimenawa. The signal used to alert the gods that a matsuri is ready to start in their honor is also hare, whether it be a white flag with their name or the shrine’s name on it, or streamers on tall poles like the sasatake seen on the streets during the Festival of the Weaver on July 7, or the pine and bamboo kadomatsu decorations hanging in front of every home and business during the New Year festive season. Members of an ujiko have their own ujigami shrine where a select few will assist the Shinto clergy in preparing and carrying out the matsuri. Ritual contact with the divine is usually

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the exclusive province of Shinto priests, who therefore remain in their own specially prepared quarters within shrine grounds for the duration of the festival—watching their diet and avoiding forbidden acts. However, the heads or toya of the exclusive miyaza lay brotherhoods of the Kyoto area must undergo the same austerities in order to represent the people in the ceremonies. Before modern times, certain purifying monoimi rites were a prerequisite for participation in a matsuri, but they have since been considerably relaxed. Depending on the place and the occasion, they formerly might have included washing oneself often or not washing one’s hair or clothes at all, refraining from everyday tasks or from the use of sharp objects, or cooking food over a special fire. The priests of Sada Shrine in the Shimane Peninsula must light such a fire by rubbing a wooden stick against a board during the week of seclusion that precedes for them the end-of-September seat-changing rite of the local kami, or Gozakae Matsuri. Imoni Matsuri and Amazake Matsuri are named after the main offerings they call for—respectively, boiled taro roots and a sweet malted wine made from glutinous mochi rice, the hare food par excellence that is synonymous with festivals in Japan as it is in China. This is because rice was eaten only on special occasions in pre-modern times when millet was the staple crop. It was then that most matsuris were developed in relation to the growing cycle of rice. Thus, the most important matsuris are held in the spring, when the rice god goes from the houses or the hills to dwell in the paddies and is welcomed there to ensure plentiful crops, and in the fall, when he goes back to his home and is sent off with thanksgiving for a plentiful harvest. In between, during the month of June, comes another agricultural rite: the Rice-Transplanting Festival, called Hana Taue. A fine example of its traditions is now preserved by the government as a “folk-culture asset” in Chiyoda, where local residents of this valley town of the southern

mountains revived it in 1930 independently of the feudal system it reflected until the land reforms of 1900. Crews of female peasants can therefore still be seen singing traditional tunes to the beat of male drummers to summon the rice spirit to the paddies as they ceremonially put the seedlings in their new homes. Summer matsuris are often celebrated in the countryside in order to protect the crops from natural disasters. Yet they have grown in importance along with Japanese cities from the late medieval Muromachi Period, at first to ward off the urban hazards of plague and pestilence, and lately as colorful popular entertainment featuring parades of brightly decorated floats. This recent resurgence has generated new voluntary associations to put up festivities that had previously been the responsibility of the traditional ujiko “parishes” one was born into. While these local religious communities have been considerably undermined by increasing social mobility and secularization, liquor-store owners, rice dealers, and other merchants with a distinct economic interest in the continuation and development of street celebrations have taken over from them by banding together in syndicates to organize urban matsuris.

Communicating with the Kami Whatever the setting or the season, the better part of a matsuri is always taken by actual communication with the kami, once it has descended into its festive object of temporary residence—shintai. But first, the shrine’s inner doors have been opened while a drum, bells or music were sounding and the priest made an eerie “oo” call. Next, the food offerings (shinsen) are presented, sometimes as well as other offerings called heihaku, which means “cloth,” though nowadays the term also covers paper, jewels, weapons, money, and utensils. The head priest says prayers (norito) asking for prosperity in the form of local seasonal staples, or giving thanks for them. They can also take the form of feasting with the deity for its plea-

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sure and the humans’ nourishment, with sake rice-wine often playing a central role, whether it is formally sipped or unabashedly guzzled, depending on the matsuri. To entertain the deity, ceremonial music (gagaku) and dance (bugaku) is performed. Individual worshippers also present offerings of sacred tamaguchi branches. For the community at large, a procession is the main opportunity for coming into contact with the deity. The Japanese word translates as an “august divine-going” through the ujiko or parish, taking the kami to or from its special shrine or favorite place and at the same time blessing the homes and people it passes on the way. For the procession, the kami is taken from the shrine’s inner sanctum and transferred to an ornate and gilded palanquin serving as its portable shrine or mikoshi. Not that the object within which the kami resides is physically removed from its permanent seat; instead, it is symbolically transferred to a substitute object like a sacred mirror or shinkyo. Most often, as at the famous Asakusa Shrine Festival or Sanja Matsuri held in Tokyo in mid-May, the palanquin is carried by sturdy local youths in ritual white hanten (short kimonos) and fundoshi loincloths who zigzag down the crowded road with it. They shout: “wassho, wassho!”—supposedly to cheer the kami; but this is a fairly modern innovation, and some shrines have stuck to the original solemn style of procession. Others though, like Tokyo’s Yushima Tenjin Shrine, have recently gone so far as to introduce female teams of mikoshi carriers. Ordinary parishioners often join in such processions with palanquins they have built to carry a symbolic token of the kami: a piece of paper with its name on it. There are even small palanquins for the children, and often floats (dashi) shaped like mountains, shrines, and the like are drawn or carried by men or by oxen. Also walking in this parade are priests in full ceremonial dress, delegations of parishioners, musicians, and dancers in traditional costumes.

In other cases, all these rites have come to lose much of their original significance and are held on to largely as a pretext for magnificent costume pageantry. For instance, the May 15 Hollyhock Festival (Aoi Matsuri) is a reenactment in Heian period costume of a courtiers’ procession to offer leaves of this plant at Kyoto’s Lower Kamo Shrine in order to secure good conditions for the rice harvest. It started out as a seasonal propitiatory ritual before the seventh century. Today, it is much closer to the Period Festival (Jidai Matsuri) held at Heian Shrine in Gion on October 22 since 1895 as a showcase of the history of national costumes. Yet Aoi Matsuri remains the best example of a type of procession to be found in many other Shinto festivals that annually retraces the steps of imperial messengers (chokushi) or feudal lords who came to a particular shrine on some historic occasion, or in a fondly remembered era. A matsuri’s special events now often look like sports competitions; nonetheless, even in such forms, like the ancient games of Greece and Rome, they have sacred origins, either as entertainment for the gods or as a way for them to express their will by choosing the winner. This is as true of the teams of young men bearing on their shoulders the heavy mikoshi as it is of tug-of-war contests or tsunahiki, and of horse and boat races, which arose from medieval times onwards as a way to forecast disasters such as crop failures. As for sumo wrestling, though nowadays it is more often found in sports arenas than in shrine compounds, its Shinto roots are still in evidence in its rules. Thus, the referees, who are actually shrine priests, will stop the match at the slightest hint of a nosebleed, because blood is taboo around consecrated areas, and the sumo wrestling mat counts as one. Similarly, if the kagura ceremonial dances are now done just as a performance in honor of the gods, they used to be a way to induce an ecstatic trance in the dancer who, once possessed by one, would start uttering oracles as its temporary embodiment.

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Communion and Send-Off A more general communion with the gods is still possible, though, in many festivals, by partaking of the food offered to them in their shrine, in what is called the naorai. This term is sometimes used more loosely to include the eating of these offerings outside the matsuri site after the festival. The monoimi rites were meant to detach the participants from the daily realm of ke so as to usher them into a different one marked off as hare—a special realm delimited in space by sacred ropes or evergreen branches and delimited in time by elaborate rites. Conversely, a genuine naorai is intended as a formal transition from the sacred spatial and temporal confines of the matsuri back into the everyday world, at once linking and distinguishing the two sides of Japanese life. The matsuri is formally closed when the offerings are withdrawn from the kami’s presence in the shrine. Before going through procedures similar to the ones used to welcome it, like shutting the sanctuary’s door, the kami is politely asked to go back to its customary otherworldly dwelling place among or beyond the natural elements. For it would be impossible to keep it at ease on the human plane for more than short festive periods—let alone permanently—due to the difficulty of maintaining ritual purity, as well as the impossibility of providing such an honored guest with non-stop entertainment. See also Games (Greece); Games (Rome); Hollyhock Festival; New Year (Japan); Sekku References Mikiharo Ito. “Festivals,” in Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. New York: Kodansha: International, 1983, Vol. 2. Yoshida Mitsukuni and Sesoko Tsune, eds. Naorai—Communion of the Table. Tr. Lynne E. Riggs and Takechi Manabu. Hiroshima, Japan: Mazda Motor Corp., 1989. Inoue Nobutaka, ed. Matsuri: Festival and Rite in Japanese Life. Tokyo: Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University, 1988.

Kunio Yanagita. About Our Ancestors: The Japanese Family System. Tr. Fanny Hagin Mayer and Ishiwara Yasuyo. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.

◗ MATZU’S BIRTHDAY (CHINA) A pai-pai (pronounced “bye-bye”) is a Chinese community festival celebrating the birthday of a deity, or some other important date. The rituals it involves differ little according to which one is being honored, whether it be the sages Confucius and Lao-Tzu, the female bodhisattva of compassion Kuan Yin, deified folk heroes like the third-century warrior Kuan Kung, or the tenth-century saintly maiden Matzu. The latter’s birthday on the twenty-third day of the third lunar month being both typical and the most popular today—as the major festival of seafarers. It will serve as an example of a paipai, in the way it is observed in one of the many Taiwanese centers of her cult, native to southeastern China.

The Cult of Matzu, China’s Stella Maris Like that of other deified heroes (or of the saints of various religions), the cult of Matzu has its roots in wonders performed in her lifetime, but which also continued whenever people turned to her in times of crisis after her death. This proven and ongoing wonder-working efficacy is what turned her into a deity. She is called “Holy Mother up in Heaven” or “Queen of Heaven” (Tienkou) for the story goes that she went straight up to heaven after her death at the age of twenty-eight. It relates that she was born in 960 under the name of Lin Moliang (meaning “silent girl”) near Meizhou Bay on the coast of the mainland province of Fujien, after her mother had a dream about being given medicine by the merciful Buddhist female deity Kuan Yin—who would later visit Matzu in person, and therefore remain associ-

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ated with her cult. At sixteen, Matzu gained extraordinary powers upon miraculously coming out of a well into which she had fallen. At twenty, at the height of a terrible drought, she was thus asked by the people to perform a ritual for getting rain, which proved remarkably successful. Another time, Matzu did not hesitate to put fire to the family home so that it would serve as a beacon to fishermen, upon sensing that they were caught in a sudden and violent storm. There is also a story that though she was asleep when her father and two brothers were caught in a typhoon while fishing, her spirit left her body to fly to them. She then took a brother in each hand and her father in her teeth but dropped the latter when, back home, her mother induced her to talk in her sleep. Thereafter, she would often appear out of the clouds to sailors in peril at sea to extend a helping hand and even still the storm—rather like her Western counterparts the Virgin Mary (another “Queen of Heaven” whose main festival is celebrated on the twenty-fifth day of the third month as the Annunciation) in her capacity as Stella Maris (Star of the Sea), or Saint Nicholas as patron of sailors. As in the latter’s case, her cult was widely diffused by the twelfth century largely by virtue of becoming a patron of sailors (officially entering as such the Taoist liturgy due to a heavenly revelation after many petitions earned her various titles and dignities from the Emperor), whom all Chinese emigrants would eventually turn to for divine insurance against the perils of sea journeys. They thus took her cult to all the coasts of Southeast Asia, well beyond those of China, where the name of the former Portuguese colony of Macao is derived from that of a famous old temple of Matzu by the harbor, and it spread to the entire country—wherever it has survived decades of official State repression of popular religion. For when Matzu’s pious parents tried to arrange a marriage for her, she refused, insisting that she had dedicated her life to the

poor and suffering of the whole world. She thus saved many lives during a plague by going to the mountains to gather healing herbs. Matzu has proved able to dispel all manners of harmful spirits at the root of situations of distress ranging from shipwreck to disease. Her protection of a Chinese diplomatic mission to Korea earned Matzu the special plaque an imperial decree ordered to be put in the temple at her birthplace in Meizhou, where a local medium cult of her spirit was first centered around her embalmed body. Likewise, she was promoted “Queen of Heaven” in 1683 for having assisted the Chinese invasion fleet that conquered Taiwan. Since her cult was brought to the island by the mainland settlers who followed and felt indebted to her for a safe crossing, Matzu has been the most worshipped deity there, with some five hundred temples currently.

A Pai-Pai in Taiwan In the port of Beigang on the west coast of Taiwan, a parade is held on Matzu birthday on the twenty-third of the third month (around April), with floats depicting scenes from Chinese history and literature, acted out by women in beautiful traditional dresses and men wielding ancient weapons, as well as children who thus make their parents proud. In its wake, men run with palanquins containing images of Matzu, brought from local shrines in order to be annually recharged with her blessings from contact with the one in her main temple. Firecrackers are thrown on their way so as to promote the transfer of auspicious energies to every home being passed and to all bystanders. Each village delegation of about forty people is admitted to the temple in turn to solemnly hand over to attendants their image of Matzu, wrapped in a bundle of pennants and flowers. It is taken over a series of altars all the way to the main one at the back of the temple courtyard. While it is placed in front of the temple’s Matzu altar, bowing and chanting goes on around it for a few minutes. Then the bundle is

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handed back across the other altars to the people who brought it. They can now break their expectant silence with a shout of joy, holding the powerfully rededicated bundle aloft in triumph as they leave the temple, while another group of villagers comes in with its own image, to have it recharged following the same procedure. All these images are carried back through the streets on palanquins, again amid firecracker smoke so thick it has to be dispersed with bellows by assistants to the carriers—who are already wearing masks, since they may have trouble breathing. Of all the processions from local temples to Beigang, the most famous is that from the hundred-year-old one of Tachia in Taichung county, a 280-kilometer journey known as chin-hsiang (“carrying the incense”) through some thirty villages and towns and fifty-nine temples, lasting eight days and seven nights. However, due to a dispute between the two temples over the ranking of their respective deities, the destination was changed from Beigang to the nearby Worshipping Heaven Taoist Hall of Hsinkang near Chiayi in 1987, and the journey back and forth has become a blessing-imparting procession through a series of local towns. The precise date of the procession is decided each year three months before in Chenlan Taoist Hall at the Lantern Festival by casting lots. Scriptures for a peaceful journey are chanted before the Matzu image is taken from the inner hall and placed in her palanquin between two attendants—one named Chien-li Yen (“thousand-mile vision”), and the other, Hsun-feng Erh (“listening-on-the-winds hearing”). The flags of different temple organizations open the procession of the religious floats, palanquin, and incense burner. The ashes from the latter, like the tea offered to Tachia Matzu as “Rain Mother” or “Crossingthe-Waters Mother,” have curative powers, so the procession is greeted everywhere by enthusiastic crowds lining up to get small red bags of incense ashes and other amulets, aside from

burning spirit money or prostrating under the passing palanquin. Taking part—on foot or on wheels—is the most reliable way to receive the blessings of the goddess—and transfer them to the home altar Matzu idol many take along, so that tens of thousands of people (many of them physically or mentally handicapped) join the chin-hsiang journey each year, plodding day and night in a line that stretches miles, with only five hours of sleep a night, as a matter of personal discipline and reverence for the surrounding nature. This does not prevent them from leaving an endless garbage trail in its wake, and it is far from being just a solemn affair; for it is accompanied by loud fireworks and acrobatic martial arts displays, with many entertainment floats on trucks for ongoing puppet-shows, karaoke, and dancing girls— often scantily clad or even stark naked. On the Beigang temple grounds themselves, hundreds of people will mill about through the ceremonial of a pai-pai, going from one attraction to another. In their midst may be found individuals who have a special connection to the spirit world, be it a woman diviner in a trance as she writes messages from there in a tray of sand, or a man piercing his back with long brass skewers with weights attached, yet feeling no pain in his own trance-like state. Visitors hardly pay any attention to the Buddhist priest in yellow robes as he chants sutras (sacred scriptures) so as to bring another set of blessings to the occasion. But they do light joss sticks and bow before ancestral plaques and other images displayed in the Matzu temple’s secondary shrines. Some go on making such offerings in other temples and at the home shrines of their ancestors as the evening winds down—though it long keeps buzzing with the wild festive spirit of the pai-pai. See also Annunciation; Chiao; Games (Greece); Lantern Festival; Saint Nicholas; Thaipusam References Richard C. Bush. Religion in China. Niles, IL: Argus Communications, 1977.

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Muslims gather in a small square for celebrations on Mawlid-an-Nabi, the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed in I-n-Gall, Niger. (Tiziana and Gianni Baldizzone/Corbis)

Mary Flanangan. Matzu Interactive World. Peitou, Taiwan: National Institute of the Arts, 1999 (www.maryflanagan.com/Matsu). Michael R. Saso. Taiwan Feasts and Customs. A Handbook of the Principal Feasts and Customs of the Lunar Calendar on Taiwan. Hsinchu, Taiwan: Chabanel Language Institute, 1966. Kristofer Schipper. The Taoist Body. Tr. Karen Duval. Foreword by Norman Girardot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

◗ MAUNDY THURSDAY See Holy Week

◗ MAWLID (ISLAM) The Arabic word mawlid refers to the time, the place, and the festival associated with the memory of a holy person. For Muslims, Mawlid anNabi marks the Nativity of the Prophet—in the early hours of Monday, August 20, 570. Cele-

brated on 12 Rabi’ I, a date held to also be that of Mohammed’s death in 623, it is a late addition to the list of Islamic celebrations. Though it has an ambivalent status in terms of religious orthodoxy, it is firmly entrenched in mystical devotion and popular piety in most Muslim countries.

Evolution Many Muslim saints even have their own mawlids, often taking the form of annual pilgrimages, as to the seat of the Sufi contemplative order they may have founded. For instance, pilgrims come from far and wide each year for the largest such mawlid in East Africa, laying flowers and saying a brief prayer at the tomb of Lamu Sayyid Salih bin Abdallah-al-Aidrus and gathering to sing hymns by the illuminated mosque of Aidrus from ten at night to three in the morning—not so much on the anniversary of his death in 1935 as on the birthday of Mohammed, the Prophet’s and the saint’s mawlids having merged.

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As for the Prophet Mohammed, the term “Mawlid an-Nabi” was first applied to the house where he was born in Mecca. It was only recorded two centuries later, when the humble dwelling had been transformed into a house of prayer by the mother of Haroun al-Raschid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, who appears in the Arabian Nights. The cult of the Prophet’s person had just begun to develop, extending to his belongings and to his grave in Medina. It was thus only natural that pilgrims to Mecca would also make a point of visiting his birthplace, both to express their reverence and to take in its blessings. But it was only in the twelfth century that a special date was set aside for visits to the mawlid house, when it would be open all day to receive more visitors. The ceremonies they carried out did not initially differ from the ones surrounding the cult of any Muslim saint. It was only later that the cult of the Prophet evolved special forms that raised it above the cult of other holy persons, to give it the typical, universal features of the mawlid. Under the Fatimid dynasty based in Egypt, it was still limited there to a discrete observance by temporal and religious court officials, consisting in solemn daytime processions and three sermons in front of the Caliph. It took place six times a year, commemorating alongside the Prophet, and with mawlids of their own, members of his family like Ali and Fatima—eponymous ancestor of the ruling Caliph, whose birthday was therefore also observed in similar fashion. The last Shiite Fatimid Caliph was deposed in 1171 by the Sunni Sultan Saladin when he took over Egypt; he would also take Jerusalem from the Western Christian Crusaders in 1187. It was his brotherin-law, Prince Al-Malik Muzaffar al-Din Kokburi, who celebrated the first public Mawlid an-Nabi recognized by Sunnis at the beginning of the thirteenth century in Irbil, near Mosul in Iraq. Scholars and jurists, poets and mystics from far and wide started gathering two

months in advance, followed within a month by all kinds of entertainers, who warmed up the venue for the actual anniversary. Two days prior to it, countless camels, sheep, and oxen were sacrificed, and on its eve, a torchlight procession across town was held. On the morning of the celebration, after the outdoor sermon for a mass audience and the military in full array, religious dignitaries received special robes as ceremonial gifts, and then all the people present were free to enjoy the party that the prince was throwing. Future mawlids would normally follow the same general outline (though not always on this lavish scale). It owed a lot to the celebration of the Nativity of Christ (the Arabic word for Christmas is Milaad—a form of mawlid), that many Muslims would have been familiar with and even regularly joined in, as well as to the mystical devotion of the Sufis. The broadly based international Sufi brotherhoods were actually responsible for popularizing this festival throughout the Islamic world, over the objections of many orthodox religious leaders. The latter were weary of any focus of devotion aside from the transcendent One God who had chosen Mohammed as His Messenger. This is still an issue for the rigorist Wahhabite brotherhood, which is dead set against the cult of saints in general and Mawlid an-Nabi in particular, and which has long been allied with the Saudi dynasty ruling over Mohammed’s native Arabia since 1925. Nevertheless, the celebration of Mohammed’s birthday has been officially set on the twelfth day, a Monday, of the third month—Rabi’ alAwwal—since 1292; this took place more than seven centuries after the event itself, and independently of authentic tradition. It therefore has more of the character of a civic observance. Indeed, the Young Turks made the day into a national holiday in 1910, after they took control of the Ottoman Empire, and it was kept as such by the secular Turkish Republic that soon succeeded it.

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Popular Piety Regardless of its official status with civic and religious authorities, Mawlid remains above all a tremendous outpouring of popular piety, stretching over the entire “birth month” of the Prophet. On the eve of Mawlid, and often on the previous days of the month as well, the faithful gather in Koranic schools, shrines and mosques, as much as a display of Islamic solidarity as to hear lectures on the Prophet’s life, and then prayerful poems in his praise—appropriately called mawlids. This abundant literary genre is central to the festival as a flamboyant expression of devotion to Mohammed and is also popular over the year on other occasions. For instance, mawlids may be recited to commemorate departed relatives. This is largely in imitation of one of the most famous, among the earliest Turkish poems that is still widely known, which Süleyman Çelebi—or Dede— concluded in 1409 with a moving account of the Prophet’s encounter with the Angel of Death. A festive meal follows the yearly recitation of such poems on Mawlid an-Nabi. Then the children go out in the streets, singing as they hold candles to evoke the souls of the dead, or dressed up in clown masks to make fun of Bu Shikha—“the Humpback,” who is a kind of Arab bogeyman. Great bonfires are lit, as people dance and munch candies. The city of Cairo, founded by the Fatimids as their capital, and where Mawlid an-Nabi first caught on, is spectacularly illuminated on the eve of the festival, as if to give a sense of the dazzling light that is said to have filled the whole world on the night the Prophet was born. In some parts of India, the night may be spent in large-scale feeding of the poor, and non-Muslims often listen alongside believers to speeches in praise of the Prophet at public gatherings where a town’s faithful converge in several prayerful processions, like the ones seen in Islamic countries. In Ghana’s Upper West Region, people of all traditions and ethnic backgrounds join in the

tribal Damba celebrations derived from Mawlid, but which have now taken on the character of a seasonal New Yam festival toward August. It is spread between Somba Damba, Mawlid proper, which is set on the first day of the month in the local lunar calendar, and Naa Damba, which commemorates the Naming of the Prophet on the seventeenth day. The latter, more than the first, centers on joyful displays of loyalty to tribal chiefs in song and dance, after general feasting upon a cow that has been led around by some attendants reading verses from the Koran. The finale is a procession out of town with the dance troupe after the next day’s “horse display”—when everybody who owns one adorns it to visit friends and notables. In Tunisia, Mawlid actually ranks first among religious observances—rather like its European counterpart Christmas. For it is a reminder of the enduring miracle of Creation, as well as of the birth of the Prophet as the channel of God’s grace upon all creatures. To Muslims, this makes Mawlid an-Nabi the anniversary of the most important event of all time, because the Koran (21:107) describes the Seal of the Prophets as “Mercy for all creatures.” (Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation, 1946). As Süleyman Dede wrote for the occasion, alluding to the angels who threw shooting stars at the demons (as they peered from the sublunar regions of the heavens to see what was going on among men down on earth) and to other phenomena (such as the sacred fires of Zoroastrian temples going out in Persia): On this night the sun of the world was born . . . On this night they sounded prophecy’s drum, on this night they cast the Devil out of the heavens. How many idol houses, heathen temples, fetishes were torn down, to the infidels’ chagrin! (Freely translated from the German version in Engelke 1926)

276 | m ay d ay See also Christmas; New Yam Festival References Tarek Atia. Mulid! Carnivals of Faith. Photos by Sherif Sonbol. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999. Irmgard Engelke. Sülejman Tschelebi’s Lobgedicht auf die Geburt des Propheten (Menlid-I-Serif). (Dissertation for the University of Kiel.) Halle (Saale), Germany 1926. N. J. G. Kaptein. Muhammad’s Birthday Festival: Early History in the Central Muslim Lands and Development in the Muslim West until the Tenth/Sixteenth Century. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993. J. W. McPherson. The Moulids of Egypt. Cairo: 1941.

◗ MAY DAY (WEST) Throughout Europe, the month of May, and its first day more specifically, is the focus of abundant and lively folklore symbolizing the struggle of the forces of the coming summer and the retreating winter, fighting the latter with fire and promoting growth with flowers, trees, and greenery, while celebrating young love over against its untimely marital fulfillment.

Beltane Fires Though the sources of May Day folklore are too varied and archaic to be traced precisely in every case, a good portion of it could well be derived from an ancient Celtic festival known in the British Isles as Beltane. As the polar opposite of Samhain, it originally marked the end of the dark half of the year and the start of the bright half—since, as in many ancient cultures (such as those of Mesopotamia), the year was divided between two seasons or half-years. The name refers to “the fire of Bel”—a light principle identifiable with the Gauls’ god Belenus and even the Greek Apollo. As at Samhain and many another such New Fire Ceremony, the druids would light this sacred fire by a special method using wood friction. Every fire in the land would then be rekindled from its embers

after having been extinguished the night before this ceremony, in which the cattle was driven between two bonfires to protect it from disease over the coming year. These practices were carried out by country people until fairly recently—long after Saint Patrick successfully challenged the druids with a fire of his own on a May Day. This had always been the day for the coming of new divine generations to Ireland, be it the Tuatha Dé Danann or the early settler Partholón, who also died on a Beltane Monday. He would not be the last, for the custom of the Beltane cake (known in Scotland as bannock) that was shared out at the end of an evening of song and dance around the May fire makes it clear that the person who would get a specially marked piece originally used to be thrown into the fire as a scapegoat. He would be treated as such, and even as dead, for up to a year after the evening when the community went through the motions of this former sacrifice. Julius Caesar was able to observe the actual sacrifice on a mass scale in Gaul, where criminals, war prisoners, even innocent people— should other victims be in short supply— would be burned alive inside giant wickerwork dummies (like the hapless protagonist of the 1974 British horror film The Wicker Man) to bring its sponsors health.

The Witches of Walpurgis Night Coming six months after Halloween, May Day was another perilous time when witches roamed. In Ireland and the Isle of Man, people thought witches took the shape of hares, and they would kill the hares they found among their cattle that day for fear they might spoil their butter. A woman who fetched fire on May Day was also accounted a witch. One even used to be burned in effigy in the all-night May fire in some places in Bohemia. There, as in the other Czech lands of Moravia and Silesia, brooms are now favored when it comes to “burning the witches” as part of these recently revived May Day customs that also involve

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leaping over the flames or running through the embers. As in the German lands of Saxony, Tyrol, and Alsace, this took place on the eve of May Day, the famous Walpurgis Night of Gothic novels, named after a niece of the English missionary Saint Boniface, Apostle of Germany—where she followed him. For the Church, her main feast day is February 25, the day of her death in 779 at the abbey she ran in Heidenheim. And yet, the commemoration of the transfer of her remains to Eichstätt on a May 1 close to a hundred years later has been much more widely observed, no doubt in order to bring to bear against the witches the powers displayed during her lifetime in the struggle against pagan gods. For her relics caused a miracle working oil to exude from the stone of her new tomb at the church of the Holy Cross in Eichstätt (just like those of Saint Nicholas, as related in a popular liturgy in honor of his December 6 feast day that provided a model for many other saints’ miracle stories—and happened to be composed by a bishop of the same Bavarian town in the tenth century). This oil was sold as a cure against all sorts of ailments, so that it might have seemed only natural to invoke the holy woman’s powers against those unleashed by the witches on this night, and that ill-intentioned people might channel against others through spells on fields, cattle, and humans. Like the other nations of the Balkans, Greeks believe such curses to be especially effective in bringing harm to their home, fortune, and children at the start of this month, whose name sounds like their word for magic— ma(g)ia. On May 3, the feast of Saint Mavra— whose name means “black”—women also fear that they will get black spots on their hands if they do any handwork like cutting or sewing and that cloth bleached on that day will turn out black. All these evils of May Day were the demonized form of the pagan spirits of winter fighting their yearly losing—but all the more ferocious—battle against those of summer,

reenacted in contrasting seasonal costumes by opposing teams of young men on horseback in German and Swedish villages until the eighteenth century. In central and northwestern Europe, the forces of winter took their last stand on the hilltops, where people still kindle fires in order to “drive away the witches.” As in Ireland, a special method (albeit a different one using flint stones) was called for to light them in Sweden—the only Scandinavian country to have bonfires on that evening and to this day. Old folks in rural areas used to be able to tell by the northerly or southerly angle of the flames in the wind which way the battle of seasonal forces was going and whether the spring would be cold or gentle as a result. Even in a Swedish university town like Uppsala, on Walpurgismas Eve, the students still gather by the river Fyris to simulate the ritual destruction of their old (winter) caps and then party all night before getting new (spring) caps on May Day. In once Swedish-ruled Finland too, a sure sign of spring and the triumph of light over the bleak darkness of Nordic winters is the appearance on city streets of these brand-new black-rimmed white velvet caps on the heads of all the students who successfully passed their comprehensive language, history, or math exams come May Day. In Helsinki, they all converge on South Harbor for Vappu (the local form of Walpurgis) to place a white cap on Havis Amanda (the nude maiden on that square’s fountain), before forming a parade to go lay on the tomb of the unknown soldier the armfuls of flowers given by their loved ones. They can then proceed with their partying, around the special Vappu treats of tippaleipä (“drop bread”) and sima (homemade yeast-fermented lemonade)—not to mention stronger drinks.

May Prince and May Princess At some point during the month across the Gulf of Finland in Tallinn, Estonians lovingly reenact a typical example of seasonal customs once known throughout Northern and Central

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Europe. They were brought in the fourteenth century by the city’s German overlords, who would only allow the natives the part of onlookers in the Middle Ages, until the Swedish conquest and the Reformation put an end to these customs in the sixteenth century. Still, in Germany and Scandinavia well into the Renaissance, the May King was often escorted from the forest to the town (during Whitsuntide instead in some places) by armed men, as though going into battle against the forces of winter in the kind of mock combat which certain knightly competitive games long perpetuated. Today, it is thus dressed as the Baltic barons of old that the Estonians themselves put on the feast of the Maikrahv—competing in medieval sports and jousts for the honor of becoming the Earl of May (German Maigraf), and of getting to choose the Countess of May from the finalists in a pageant of the city’s finest young girls, who also compete in parallel demonstrations of womanly skills, poise, and graces. The May Prince then takes his Princess on his horse, and the whole company of young knights, fair maidens, dignified burghers, and beautiful ladies proceed behind them in wagons from the fortifications of the upper city down its winding streets all the way to the Town Square. There, the couple is crowned by the mayor and given an official parchment letter with the keys of Tallinn, to recall the degree of sovereign power once granted them. The first criminal who threw himself at their mercy that day would be pardoned. The previous year’s Maigraf would then throw a “Ladies’ Ball” at the Great Guildhall as the final act of his tenure. The new Earl of May would also soon throw a ball—outdoors during Whitsuntide—to honor the ladies who made the heavy candles for the upcoming Corpus Christi procession and the men who would carry them along with him. He would entertain them all again afterwards as a fitting conclusion to his brief springtime reign. While Greeks are familiar with the procession of the May Boy, wreathed with flowers,

who sometimes impersonates the Peppertree as vegetation spirit, elsewhere in Europe it is more common for girls between the ages of four and fifteen to embody Spring on May Day. During the Renaissance, the French Court physician and famous seer Nostradamus could describe the very old custom of his native Provence of “choosing the neighborhood’s most beautiful young girls, to gorgeously attire them with crowns of flowers, garlands, jewels and silk accoutrements, on elevated thrones, in the guise of young goddesses put in niches commonly called mayes to which all passers by, at least those of honest standing, are invited and obliged to contribute with a few silver pieces in return for a kiss” (de Benoist 1996, G/T 22, p. 11). As though to echo the ancient cult of the nymph Maia—one of the Pleiades who, according to legend, had saved Marseille soon after its foundation by Greek colonists around 600 B.C.E., this belle de Mai could be seen on the month’s first Sunday enthroned on the city’s squares or by its thoroughfares, until the early twentieth century. In Madrid since the seventeenth century, men have done the rounds of all the city’s neighborhoods to appraise the charms of the mayas or majas (as in Goya’s famous paintings on that theme) chosen in every parish to preside over popular balls, covered with garlands. In the valleys of the Pyrenees, there even used to be more down-to-earth “girl fairs” where young men who were ready to settle down went to “buy a wife” in May. Elsewhere in northern Spain, there were more subtle ways for boys to express romantic interest, usually involving flowers. In Asturias, for example, a boy would wait outside the church to which the girl he had his eye on had brought flowers for the Virgin Mary (who was honored this way all through that month), and he would offer her a flower as she came out.

The Maypole and the Green Man From France (since at least 1207) to Hungary, there is a custom—now revived in certain

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places such as the Czech Republic—calling for young men to put a bunch of flowers, a bough, or most often a tree in front of girls’ houses, using plant symbolism that varies from one region to the next to express their interest—of whatever kind. Thus, birch might stand for love and be left all month, but a cherry-tree signifying fickleness would soon get removed, as would a crooked trunk or one hung with filthy rags. (In parts of France, boys would even jokingly remove anything left outside a town’s houses—bikes, lawn ornaments, and the like— and gather it all in a big pile on a public square, like triumphant springtime sweeping away all the odds and ends left over by retreating winter.) More serious “honor mays” were also put up (generally for the month) in front of inns or the houses of notables—such as elected officials in the few areas where this is still done. In colonial French Canada, peasants would put up a stripped spruce tree in front of the landlord’s house and shoot at the crown on top before being treated to wine. In Nice, a pine used to be planted in front of the palace of this Provençal county’s governors until Piedmont ceded it to France in 1860. There, the custom of “turning the may” has endured without interruption, and is carried out every Sunday of the month by folk dancers who circle a maypole ringed with ribbons in the gardens of the Roman arenas in the hills of Cimiez. Among other ruins of former Cemenelum, evidence has been found of the ancient brotherhood of tree-bearers who brought the pine of Attis for the spring rites of Cybele reenacting their ill-fated love. To this day, in the Greek island of Corfu’s towns, young workers dressed in white with a red belt and scarf still carry a maypole through the streets. It is from Southern Europe that children’s ribbon dances around short maypoles were introduced to England by the art critic John Ruskin in 1888—as the “Morris dances” had allegedly been by the fourteenth-century regent John of Gaunt, according to the first mentions of these “Moorish” dances under Henry VIII,

when they took the highly ritualized forms still observed in today’s Morris Clubs. With the riding of hobby-horses and dragons and the continual swinging of handkerchiefs to the playing of pipes, the beating of drums, and the ringing of bells, many folk dances in the Morris repertoire revolve around the legendary figures of Maid Marian and Robin Hood—another version of the Green Man known on Saint George’s Day as Green George and on May Day as Jack-in-the-Green. This man disguised as a shrubbery still figures prominently in such seasonal events as the Royal Festival May Day of Knutsford in Cheshire. He finds an echo in the May Bear made of branches and ribbons that ends up in a river in Switzerland and Germany, like Green George in Austria. England’s typical tall, permanent maypoles, first recorded in 1216, also have their equivalents in Germany, where they appear by 1225. In Bavaria, maypoles decorated with figurines representing different professional guilds embody civic pride and elicit intense competition between villages about their height and beauty—witness the frequent attempts to steal one another’s poles as the new ones are being prepared in secret every year (a bit like Whitsuntide flagpoles in Rumania). In Great Britain, along with other May Day customs, maypoles were banned as heathen in 1644 by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan republic, to come back with a vengeance after the Restoration of the Stuart kings. Solemnly erected in London in 1661, a 130-feet “tall May-pole once o’erlook’d the Strand” (Pope, Dunciad 2:24, 1963, p. 99)— until 1718, when Sir Isaac Newton bought it as a support for the 124-feet telescope the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens had offered him years before, then the largest one in the world. There used to be singing and dancing around a maypole in American colleges and city schools—especially in New York, though often later in the month so as to avoid bad weather. At first suspicious of maypoles, the French Revolution rationalized them as part of its propa-

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Merrymakers dance around the flower-decked maypole in Elizabethan England in an engraving from J. Nash. (Bettman/Corbis)

ganda as early as 1790, as rootless “Trees of Freedom” topped with headless Phrygian bonnets. Even Louis XVI then planted one in the garden of the Tuileries royal palace in Paris, but it was later torn down by revolutionary authorities as “withered by despotism.” “Trees of Freedom” were used as a Republican symbol to defy other regimes well into the nineteenth century. In 1890, the International Workers’ Congress in Berlin adopted May Day as the workers’ annual holiday, commemorating the Haymarket Square massacre that occurred on May 1, 1886, when mostly German-born anarchist workers were involved in a bloody confrontation with the police as they were holding a May Day fair in Chicago. In a transition partly engineered by labor activists such as the pioneering French folklorist Arnold Van Gennep (1873–1957), this traditional date for the end of hiring contracts took on a new dimension, as agricultural, seasonal symbolism was replaced by industrial, political allegory, and images of the coming re-

newal of the fertile forces of Nature as part of her ever-recurring cycles were overlaid by those of the coming Revolution of the productive forces of society as the end-point of historical progress. In contrast to the more moderate American and Canadian version of Labor Day on the first Monday in September (also initiated in the United States by the labor movement from 1882, but ratified by Congress in 1894 and endorsed by Presbyterian bodies in 1905), the initial association of International Labor Day with secular left-wing radicalism impelled the Catholic Church to find a less polarizing, nonconfrontational, and properly Christian alternative to its widespread observance. It therefore declared May 1 the feast of Saint Joseph the Craftsman—when the Pope still receives delegations from labor unions and employers’ associations.

May Love and Its Taboos The same method had been used early on by the Church to absorb rival pagan festivals that could not be suppressed, down to the early eighteenth century, when the entire month of May was placed under the patronage of the Virgin Mary. (In the Coptic Churches of Egypt and Ethiopia, May 1 had always been the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, celebrated elsewhere on September 8, when the sun is in the middle of the constellation of Virgo.) The Queen of Heaven took over the role of the May Queen and her symbol, the rose, along with other seasonal practices. Among them was an age-old taboo on marriage during the month of May, rooted in the yearly visitations of the evil dead in pagan Rome. They used to be placated at the Lemuria of the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth and expelled during Argei on the fourteenth. Their noxious presence cast its gloomy shadow over many activities, especially those of a sexual nature, in which they might interfere by taking the place of the living. This was now explained in terms of Mary’s virginity but had been attributed earlier still to the

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somewhat ominous commemoration with which the month used to begin: the May 3 feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on which Jesus Christ was executed, later moved to September 14. Yet in ancient Rome already, the month of May was also chastely devoted to Maia, the Bona Dea (“Good Goddess”), a fertile virgin who stood for the fecund power of love. She was depicted as such during the Renaissance in Sandro Botticelli’s allegorical painting of Spring, with Eros flying above her and the May Queen at her side throwing roses from a bouquet, crowned and garlanded with flowers. It used to be only from May Day onward (or from Saint George’s Day one week before in Slavic countries) that making bouquets of cut flowers was allowed; cutting them earlier would have undercut the awakening vitality of vegetation. On the eve of May Day in Greece, towndwellers go to the gardens to gather the flowers used for making the wreaths to be nailed over their front doors in order to welcome May—or buy them ready-made from the florists in the larger cities. Country people use green plants and fruits to make theirs, always adding garlic against the evil eye and thistle against enemies. They also renew all household articles, especially the jugs that hold life-giving water, which is then sprinkled around the house with a green twig, much as it is for Epiphany blessings on January 6. In Portugal, boats as well as houses are decorated with a bouquet called a maio. In many parts of France until the 1930s, branches were tied together crosswise into small blessed croisettes that were planted in the fields at the beginning of the month to ensure their owners’ prosperity, giving rise to celebrations both on that occasion and when they were later found during the harvest. Just as it would be unwise to cut and weave together young plants into wreaths prematurely, for humans the month of May holds out the promise of love and yet forbids its consummation. The latter is still reserved for the May

Prince and the May Princess as the symbolic primordial couple of the plant and water spirits respectively. It is already found in early Rome in the sacred marriage of King Numa to the birthfavoring water nymph Egeria, and among the ancient Germans, as the union of the sky god Odin with the fertility goddess Freya, from which Lenz (Spring) was born on the night of May Day. Likewise, the pre-Islamic Turkish festival of Hidrellez over the night from May 5 to May 6 celebrates the meeting of Hizir and Ilyas—a couple symbolizing earth and water. This is a time to make wishes, especially for young people of marriageable age, who leave small pouches containing rings or coins hanging on tree branches until morning, so they will find the right partner and a prosperous life. Tree weddings are celebrated in May in parts of Italy, where the trunks are made to perform a love dance. Humans, too, express erotic interest, and even serious commitments, in the often elaborate plant symbolism used in folklore to convey these tender feelings. However, acting them out in full carnal union would be premature at the delicate moment when the contrary life-giving and life-threatening forces of Nature are at the peak of their yearly struggle. A fall of tension and a collapse into fusion would hinder the clean separation of energies that is the precondition for their fruitful union. To prepare the ground, they are allowed to play themselves out and against each other in amorous battles of the sexes, as well as in peer emulation in gender-based competitions. The charged, yet innocent, atmosphere of May love—a spring awakening consonant with sublimated adolescent stirrings—has provided the setting for much of the medieval poetry celebrating a largely Platonic kind of courtly love, that was spread by the troubadours of Provence (such as Raimbault de Vaqueyras in his best-known verse Kalenda Maya). From this sweet bud of May, romantic love would eventually blossom as the West’s ruling passion, as Swiss writer Denis de

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Rougemont contended in his famous 1939 book on Love in the Western World. See also Akitu; Argei; Assumption; Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Corpus Christi; Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan); Days of the Dead (West); Elevation of the Cross; Epiphany; Matronalia; Midsummer; New Fire Ceremony; Saint George; Saint Nicholas; Samhain; Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis; Whitsuntide References Doleta Chapru. A Festival of the English May. Dodgeville, WI: Folklore Village Farm, 1991. Alain de Benoist. Les Traditions d’Europe. 2nd ed. Arpajon, France: Labyrinthe, 1996. Denis de Rougemont. Love in the Western World. Translated by Montgomery Belgion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Sinikka Grönberg Garcia. Suomi Specialties. Finnish Celebrations, Recipes and Traditions. Iowa City, IA: Penfield Press, 1998. Ronald Hutton. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1992. Morris Ring. www.themorrisring.org. Helen Philbrook Patten. The Year’s Festivals. Boston: Dana Estes and Company, 1903. Alexander Pope. Dunciad. Twickenham Edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963.

◗ MEATFARE SUNDAY See Lent

◗ MEATFARE WEEK See Carnival

◗ MEETING OF OUR LORD See Candlemas

◗ MEMORIAL DAY See Midsummer

◗ MICCAILHUITONTLI See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ MICHAELMAS See Saint George, Samhain

◗ MID-AUTUMN (CHINA, KOREA, JAPAN) Known in Japan as Tsukimi after the local adaptation of its Moon Viewing custom, and in Korea as Chuseok or Thanksgiving—an even bigger festival than New Year’s Day, Mid-Autumn or Chung Ch’iu is first of all a major Chinese harvest festival. Traditionally held toward on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month around the autumn equinox, it actually marks the halfway point of the fall season in the Chinese reckoning (as in the ancient Celtic one). It is also called the Gathering Festival, to refer to family gatherings, as symbolized by the full moon that shines brightest and closest to the earth on post-harvest feasts celebrating the unity of gods and men amid plentiful food and weather that is still fine. Certain tales are then told about the moon to account for the customs of this festival, though few modern Chinese people still follow them all strictly on this ordinary workday.

Mid-Autumn Activities Chinese families have a five-, seven- or ninecourse dinner (since these are lucky yang numbers), often including snails, served with wine and closing with a late dessert by the moonlight on any night between the thirteenth and the seventeenth of the eighth month, the official season for Mid-Autumn celebrations of the harvest moon as established by the powerful Empress Dowager Cixi or Tz’u Hsi (1835– 1908). Other typical Chinese Mid-Autumn activities may include playing on a swing, eating lotus seeds and water chestnuts, singing folksongs, and dancing with the brightly colored lanterns that decorate shops and streets during the festival. In addition, Koreans used to wrestle—traditional ssireum style, do circle dances, or play the cow game or the turtle game. Today, on an even larger scale than Americans on

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their Thanksgiving, they flock from far and wide to their native areas on the three-day holiday of this Harvest Moon Festival, when everything is closed, highways are clogged, and train and plane tickets are booked months in advance. Koreans use grains and fruits from the new harvest in annual memorial services on the graves of their ancestors from the fifth generation and up. Their maintenance and the management of other common property is often discussed in annual clan conferences held on the occasion of these very extended family gatherings that every member is sure to attend. That night, Chinese children are allowed to stay up late and go to high places with their families to light lanterns of many shapes (which also decorate homes) and eat cakes as they watch the moonrise shine on laurel flowers. This custom goes back to the earliest records of the Mid-Autumn festival, under the Western Han Dynasty Emperor Wu Di (156–87 B.C.E.), who made it a three-day celebration featuring banquets and moon viewing on the Toad Terrace—named after the mythical Lady Chang’e, who became a three-legged toad upon finding her new abode on the moon. In Japan, the Great Moon Viewing (called there Chushu Kangetsu) was introduced from China at the Imperial Court in 897. The habit of gazing at the full moon eventually spread from the aristocracy to the populace under the name of Tsukimi—“Moon Viewing.” In mid-September, Japanese people eat red rice and sweet potatoes as they throw moon viewing parties, centering on an ancient offering of dumplings, pampas grass, and fruits. Like many Chinese communities, lovers of Japanese culture abroad (in Hawaii, for instance) may organize elaborate showcases of traditional arts and crafts on the occasion of the Moon Viewing and the Mid-Autumn season. Among the Chinese, it is crucial that the woman of the house preside over offerings to the moon, because both represent the wet “feminine” or yin principle in their respective

spheres, and it will only increase with the coming cold season; hence the saying that “men do not bow to the moon, women do not sacrifice to the kitchen gods.” Thus, elder sisters, mothers, and grandmothers buy all kinds of round fruits (their shape evoking both the moon and family unity)—such as crabapples, grapes, honey peaches, melons, and pomegranates (as universal symbols of fertility), so they can prepare special altar plates in honor of the Moon Lady Chang’e and set them up at night in the courtyard. They used to also offer her beans or beanpods as the favorite foods of the Moon Rabbit she holds, as well as thirteen seasonal mooncakes to stand for the thirteen months of the full lunar year. In addition, the ritual can include pouring wine cups, burning incense, spirit money, and finally images of the moon legends on which these rites are based. Elders may tell children these stories after the family has then had dinner—partaking of the food offerings, among other things. In villages, adults may give children a burning incense stick for a game that allows them to become the actual mouthpieces of minor spirits of the yin realm. They form a circle around one or more of their playmates who sit with their faces hidden in their arms while they sing “Frog, Frog, Mother Frog! This is the fifteenth of the eighth month! Appear!” The children in the middle soon fall into a trance, jumping and croaking like the frogs that possess them (not unlike Aztec priests at the Etzalqualitzli festival), unless possessed by other water creatures like crayfish and shrimp. They become as wet and cold as these, so that the incense sticks can be put out on their skin without hurting them, while the adults ask the Little Frog Mother (comparable to the Moon Lady) about the rains of the coming fall season. Lifting the children from the ground—where yin forces dwell—brings their trance to an end.

How the Moon Got Its Own Goddess Chinese theater originated on temple grounds as another way for the gods to become manifest

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through humans. Thus, the Moon goddess appears at Mid-Autumn when the four-thousand-year-old legend of Chang’e is the theme of shadow puppet plays and operas performed in marketplaces. The story goes that in the mythical time of Emperor Yao, there were ten suns taking turns shining on the earth—until one day they decided it would be more fun to appear simultaneously in the human realm, even though this spelled disaster for its inhabitants. The god of Heaven ordered his best archer Hou Yi to rein them in. Yet he shot down the nine extra suns instead. Both Hou Yi and his beautiful wife Chang’e were banished to earth, where the people made the archer king over them in gratitude and awe. There, too, he ignored all limits to his “masculine” or yang drive, as he took advantage of his position to oppress the people. To preempt any rebellion and become like a god again among ordinary mortals, he went to Mount Kunlun and secured an elixir of immortality from the Queen Mother of the West. Hou Yi had meant for both he and his wife to become immortal, but before he could drink the elixir, Chang’e drank it all up herself so as to foil his evil plan. As Hou Yi was being assassinated by a disciple he had trained in archery, the double dose of elixir caused his wife to fly up in the sky—along with her pet rabbit. Thinking of the moon she loved to gaze at, Chang’e was instantly taken to its palace, where she joined the old alchemist Wu Gang. His own quest for immortality had taken him there due to a mistake, which the Jade Emperor of Taoist cosmology condemned him to expiate by vainly trying to cut down a cassia tree of immortality for all eternity. Like him, Chang’e, as the goddess of beauty, may be seen in the moon ever since that time, holding the misty white Jade Rabbit (sometimes seen as a form assumed by the pill of immortality she spat out) as it pounds cinnamon cloves in a pestle, vainly trying to prepare a new dose of the elixir of life for his mistress. As in many other cultures beyond

China’s, the rabbit happens to be a fertility symbol, so that in the lunar calendar ruling women’s fertility, as well as the earth’s, along the vital cycles of yin and yang, the MidAutumn moon has traditionally been a choice occasion to celebrate marriages. Girls dream of love and turn to Chang’e as a powerful intercessor who knows all their secret wishes. In versions of her story where she appears as imprudent and her husband in a more benign role, Hou Yi pursues her in the sky with his magic arrows, which Chang’e wards off from her moon palace, and he settles in a palace of his own he builds in a grove of cinnamon trees on the sun. As perfect celestial symbols of yin and yang respectively, Chang’e and Hou Yi now see each other only on the fifteenth of each month, when the sun shines brightest on the full moon.

Mooncakes “The crusty small cake so sweet is as round as the full moon,” wrote the great Taoist poet Su Tung-p’o (1036–1101) of the yuebing, which appeared under the Tang Dynasty (618–907), but only became popular under the Sung emperors who succeeded it. The Annals of Yanjing record that at Mid-Autumn, as it is an offering, the yuebing is sold everywhere. On top of the cake, there are drawings depicting the moon palace, the rabbit and such. The biggest yuebing can reach a foot in diameter. Some eat the yuebing after the sacrifice, others keep it until lunar New Year’s Eve”(Qi Xing 1987, p. 60). These widespread seasonal customs allegedly made it possible to use the yuebing to hide the tracts giving the signal for Han leader Liu Fu Tong’s uprising against the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in the fourteenth century, and this clever trick has been commemorated on Mid-Autumn ever since (not to mention its literal use during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion against Western exploiters to once more convey the simple message to “kill the foreigners”). The mooncakes have kept evolving over the centuries into a number of regional varieties, with many different fillings

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A baker makes moon cakes to be sold for the Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong. He is filling them with cooked duck egg yolks, but there are several varieties of the seasonal cakes. (Earl and Nazima Kowall/Corbis)

(aside from duck egg yolk symbolizing the moon) to recall this secret message of resistance against oppression—a meaning also conveyed by the pictures on the outside evoking Chang’e’s self-sacrifice. The Jade Rabbit and other classic folktale designs as well as floral motifs are also often imprinted on them with special wooden molds. Under the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), yuebings were offered with wishes for family harmony. This is the lesson to be learned from the story behind the custom of gazing at the moon until the fourth watch in the hope of seeing the dragon boat in which immortals leave the moon palace on Mid-Autumn. In the same way that Greek village-women stay up all night on Christmas Eve in order to be granted any wish they make if they can see the heavens open in glory, a Chinese person who sees the heavenly

dragon boat on the night of Mid-Autumn will have everything he or she touches turn into gold. For this is supposed to be what happened to the loom of Sixth Sister Yao when she was forced by her mother-in-law to weave seven jin of cotton into cloth overnight or get beaten. Mrs. Yang relented when she realized her daughter-in-law had been blessed with a heavenly visitation from compassionate immortals and promised not to mistreat her anymore. In Korea on the night before Chuseok, the whole family would sit around within sight of the full moon to make songpyeon, a version of the moon-shaped rice cake that is filled with fruits of the new harvest like sesame seeds, beans, chestnuts, or Chinese dates, and steamed over pine needles. Unmarried young people had an incentive to make theirs as nice as possible; it was thought their future spouses would

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only be as good-looking as the songpyeons they produced. See also Christmas; Dionysia; Easter; Holi; New Year (China, Korea); Rain Festivals References Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking as recorded in the Yen-ching Sui-shih-chi by Tun Li-ch’en. Tr. and ed. Derk Bodde. 2nd ed., rev. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965. Choe Sang-su. Annual Customs of Korea: Notes on the Rites and Ceremonies of the Year. Seoul: Seomun-dang, 1983. Kunio Ekiguchi and Ruth S. McCreery. A Japanese Touch for the Seasons. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1987. William C. Hu. The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival: Foods and Folklore. Ann Arbor, MI: Ars Ceramica, 1990. Qi Xing. Les Fêtes traditionnelles chinoises. Beijing: Éditions en langues étrangères, 1987.

◗ MID-LENT See Lent

◗ MIDORI NO HI See Cherry Blossom Festival

◗ MID-PENTECOST See Whitsuntide

◗ MIDSÖMMER See Midsummer

◗ MIDSUMMER (WEST) Throughout Europe and the Arabic-speaking countries of North Africa, Midsummer fire festivals are celebrated in connection with the summer solstice, which falls on June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere. This date now marks the beginning of summer rather than its midpoint, as late June did when the term “Midsummer” was attached to it by the eighth cen-

tury in Saxon Britain, due to the continuing influence of the Celtic calendar organized around the four midpoints between solstices and equinoxes, such as May Day and Lammas Day (August 1). Yet the June 24 Christian feast of Saint John the Baptist is widely favored for these pagan celebrations of solar light and growth at their annual high point—which may be a reason why French Canadians made it their national holiday. It was no doubt set on this date by the early Church in an attempt to “baptize” seasonal observances, possibly relying on the important role that water plays in Midsummer rites.

Solstice Symbolism and Magic The North African bishop Saint Augustine of Hippo, however, already underlined the scriptural basis for linking the summer solstice with the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, who is unique among the saints in having his birthday celebrated like Christ and Mary, in addition to the August 29 date of his death. Like the sun when it reaches highest above the horizon and the days are about to get shorter, John could say of his master upon baptizing him at the start of his public ministry: “He must grow greater, I must grow smaller.” (John 3:30). For, as Christ told his disciples, “of all the children born of woman, there is no one greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he is” (Luke 7:28), as the eternal “Sun of Justice” invisibly outshines the waxing and waning visible sun. While Christ’s lowly human birth happened six months later than that of Saint John as his Forerunner, the latter’s witness on behalf of the expected Messiah was the glorious final culmination of Biblical prophecy. The major feast of the Nativity of Christ is quietly celebrated indoors in the dead of night and the darkest of winter after the winter solstice on December 25—around the modest fire of the family hearth, from which the ashes of the Yule log will be taken to protect home and fields against disease and bad weather. Conversely,

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the minor feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist is boisterously celebrated outdoors after the longest day that is the summer solstice—in a public place or on a height around a great bonfire, whose flames and remains also serve to dispel the same perils at this other turning point of the year and over its second half. Midsummer customs follow the same remarkably widespread patterns, whether they are attached to the feast of Saint John on June 24 or alternatively to that of Saint Peter on June 29 as in Belgium and parts of Russia—or even to both as in Cornwall. They are always about the solstice as that time when the sun (sol in Latin) appears to stay (stare in Latin) its course—in this case, at its maximum height, the apex of its growth. So the height a bonfire’s flames grow, or people can jump over them, or a Midsummer maypole reaches above them frequently gets correlated to how tall the harvest is going to get that year. To translate the sun’s growth energy from the fire to fields, orchards, beasts, and humans, people might run through the fields with torches (as on the first Sunday of Lent), or jump over the fire, which was often an occasion for young couples to declare themselves publicly. They might also swing flaming wheels on heights, to reflect the sun’s circular motion, or roll them downhill into the water to mirror its imminent decline.

Purifying Water These flaming wheels were likened to fiery dragons when they were thrown into the air from a hill in sixteenth-century Würzburg. Still, according to a medieval writer, such displays of fire and smoke (long produced by burning animal bones—hence the word bonfire) were actually meant to drive away the foul dragons that mated in midsummer skies. For their noxious seed was thought to spread pestilence on the earth by poisoning rivers and wells when it fell into them. In parts of France, the brands from the bonfire were thrown into

wells and fountains to keep the water pure and prevent it from drying up. In Würzburg as in a number of other German or Czech towns, this was done to keep the plague as well as eye ailments at bay. There, people also wore chaplets of mugwort and vervain as they jumped over the fire and stared at it through bunches of larkspur. (Mugwort was also one of the ingredients used to keep away the gods of plague during the Dragon Boat Festival around the summer solstice in China—though conspicuous fires were traditionally proscribed there at that time of year; dogwood was used for the same purpose at the Double Nine festival in the fall, as was chrysanthemum to preserve eyesight.) Many such herbs would be collected for use in medicine, divination, or magic at a special time before sunrise, breakfast, or lunch, having imbibed the magical properties of dew on that day. People might therefore roll in the grass, if they did not take a purifying bath in a spring, a pond, or the sea, or else simply drink that auspicious Midsummer water and give it to their beasts. Thus in Sweden, sick people would go to certain holy springs to take advantage of the healing virtues they acquired on Saint John’s Eve—which the Christian Church could quite naturally attribute to the Baptist’s association with the blessed waters of the Jordan in the midst of the desert’s scorching heat. In Goa, until 1961 a colony of Portugal in India, São João is the festa of the filling up of wells and rivers by the rain upon the welcome start of the monsoon. Catholics then march to them with foliage on their heads to the sound of drums and trumpets around a newlywed couple whose crowns boys vie to remove and to whom fruits will later be offered. Many men jump in twice (as Saint John supposedly jumped twice inside Elizabeth’s womb upon sensing the presence of Jesus in that of her newly pregnant cousin Mary) to fish for their prize: bottles of a local high-alcohol toddy— cashew or coconut feni, so spirits get higher as the day wears on.

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Ancient Rome’s plebeians and slaves would also get drunk on Midsummer as a counterpart of the winter Saturnalia, in a festival of the goddess Fortuna, when races were held both on foot and between some of the flowerdecked boats carrying young revelers on the Tiber river. In Russia, peasants would throw pails of water on each other or even push one another into the river, as they also threw in it the figures of two Slavic gods: Kupalo (from kupat’sya, meaning “to swim”), made from straw with women’s clothes and a floral crown and necklace, and Morena (meaning “winter” or “death”), represented by a tree with ribbons. The latter is reminiscent of the maypole central to Swedish Midsummer customs ever since German immigrants thus postponed their May Day customs to adapt them to Scandinavia’s later blossoms. If Slovaks also dunked Morena after Easter, Russians used to bathe along with Kupalo on the feast of Saint John, with whom Kupalo was sometimes identified. On Midsummer’s Eve, as they jumped over the fire in couples, they would carry either Kupalo’s effigy or a birch branch—a Midsummer symbol of growth that is still displayed everywhere from church altars to city buses in neighboring Finland.

The Golden Bough For Russians as for many Europeans all the way to Britain, the night before Midsummer had magical properties. It was the time when ferns released their golden spores that could lead those who picked them to hidden gold, being a magical emanation of the sun’s golden fire— witness the German tale about the hunter who shot at the Midsummer sun at its noontime height and caught three drops of its blood in a white cloth, which turned out to be fern seed. Likewise in Wales and Shropshire, the Golden Bough that the mistletoe was seen as was collected by maidens on that night, the same way the ancient Celtic druids did: by spreading a white cloth under an oak. Placing the mistletoe

under their pillow would guide them in their dreams to their future husbands, just as divining rods made from it would guide Swedes to buried treasure on Midsummer Eve. Throughout Western Europe, mistletoe (or else “the oil of Saint John” found on oak leaves in northwestern Italy) was collected on Midsummer Eve or morning to make decoctions that were used against either all ailments or specific ones. Among the latter was the “falling sickness” of epilepsy, since mistletoe plants do not fall from the high oak branches on which they take root. Like the sun, they have their home far above the ground, and their white blossoms also become golden as they dry after being cut. This is why the mistletoe was treated as a magical emanation of the solar fire by the Celts, and as its common substitute the fern seed, was likely collected on the great solar dates of the summer and winter solstices. This in turn gave rise to its role at Christmastime. Another instance of this principle may be seen in the June 24 custom of Rumanian girls of collecting certain yellow flowers (Galium verum), popularly called either dragaica or sînziene—the names of fairies active at Midsummer.

Cleansing Fires The earthly fire of Midsummer also had health benefits, besides promoting marriage and fertility. Thus, older Bretons held their backs to it so they would not hurt when they worked on the coming harvest. After a formal dance before civic authorities, Basque villagers jump over the flames in turn, with younger ones taking the leap once the fire has grown small. In Bohemia at this point, each couple would hold hands as they leaped over it three times. The fire was supposed to be as high as the flax would grow. It was believed that both sweethearts would be safe from marsh fever over the year, and by the end of the year, a girl was sure to be married if she saw nine different fires that night. The same belief was found in the French provinces of Berry and Brittany; in the latter, a girl was disap-

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pointed if the boys forgot to catch her and swing her nine times over the embers (a practice known as ober ar wakel in Breton). As a protection from illness, babies too were rocked three times over the embers. Their naked bodies were stroked with branches instead in Manacor on the Baleraric island of Mallorca, and cattle was driven through the fires at night, as in the Ukraine. If this was done the next morning in Prussia and Lithuania, most often, separate small fires were made on convenient sites—like crossroads, fields, or courtyards—to fumigate cattle on the previous day. Midsummer’s Eve was therefore known in various parts of France as “the beasts’ Saint John’s.” Unlike “people’s Saint John’s” on his public feast, when the fire was sometimes blessed by the priest and would usually be sanctioned by the presence of civic authorities who might officially light it, “the beasts’ Saint John’s” was private and almost secretive, since it was long discouraged as irredeemably pagan. This unofficial “profane” fire was, however, fit to be used on beasts, as opposed to the “sacred” official fire, reserved to the baptized—even though it was never the parish that put it on, but the neighborhood, in friendly competition with others in the vicinity for the nicest one. Among the Muslim peoples of the Maghreb— be they Arabs or native Berbers—this distinction does not exist. They use the same smoke for the fumigation of people, cattle, fruit trees, and fields alike on lansara, as they call Midsummer, observing its ancient rite on June 24 of the Julian calendar they have kept from Roman times in addition to the lunar Islamic one, in which solstices have no place. As the smoke was brought to the useful animals to protect them from witches and demons, these were often burned in the fire in the guise of the evil animals embodying them: toads, snakes, foxes, and cats. The latter were stuffed in a cage or a bag atop a pole in the middle of the bonfire in many French villages and cities right until the Revolution. In Aus-

tria, witches are still burned in effigy, and unmarried young men parade decorated poles— because these once served to avert a plague, it is said. In the village of Ciudadela on the Balearic island of Minorca by contrast, some fifty horses are trained year-round for Midsummer cavalcades in between which they are lifted up by the crowds.

Community-Building In Sardinia and southern Italy, “sweethearts of Saint John’s” exchange pots of basil, corn, or other plants that have been grown forty or more days in advance by the girls, much like the “gardens of Adonis” previously made by women at this time of year in honor of the feast of the death and resurrection of this ancient pagan god of vegetation. An obscene image of Adonis sometimes used to appear in defiance of clerical authorities on these public tokens of romantic commitment and covert symbols of natural fertility. If this was an occasion for formal, if playful, socialization for all young people, the lighting of the official Midsummer bonfire has often been a solemn ceremony. For this show of unity called for the participation of every member of the community, from providing fuel to collecting the ashes after the all-night dance around the fire. Like the sacred fires of the ancient Celts at other times of the year, it might even be kindled by archaic friction methods as in Hungary, or the Ukraine, or French Canada (where a priest might strike stones together to make the sparks), and the fire might be taken home to rekindle the purposely extinguished hearth, as in Upper Bavaria. Even the dead (the anaon) were invited to warm up on flat stones or benches set just for them near the glowing embers in Brittany. There, as in the neighboring Vendée region, deceased relatives were called by sliding one’s fingers around the lubricated edge of a copper basin half-filled with water. This produced an otherworldly plaintive sound not unlike the more comical sound of

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the rumble-pots and other festive instruments used for a similar purpose around New Year’s Eve, during Carnival or on Martinmas—all times of the year when the dead draw near. The war dead may also come to mind during the patriotic songs and speeches that are part of the celebration of Juhannus as Finland’s Flag Day; the white-and-blue banner then flies all through this clearest night when the sun hardly sets, if at all. While Midsummer folklore usually featured wedding divination in European folklore, and the entire month of June is still wedding month throughout the West, it is also on the occasion of this civic holiday that the most weddings are celebrated in that Nordic country, namely on the Saturday between June 20 and 26. Midsömmer has been observed on the one closest to June 24 across the Baltic Sea in Sweden since 1950. There, the traditional Midsömmer meal is matjesill—a kind of marinated herring in sweet sauce with dill potatoes, followed by strawberries with whipped cream as a dessert. More beer is drunk then than on any other day of the year, though it is also the custom in Sweden to drink a lot on the winter solstice and near the equinoxes on Easter and Michaelmas. In Denmark too, people sing patriotic songs around the bonfires that “burn away witches” at beachside balls on Sankthans-aften—Saint John’s Eve— though it is not a holiday. June 24 was chosen as the national holiday of French Canadians in 1834, when a banquet was held on that day by the group soon to be known as the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste. This nationalist organization still puts on a big parade each year in Montreal, derived from an earlier religious procession in honor of Saint John the Baptist going back to French colonial times. Midsummer was then marked with fireworks and cannon shot—as in Paris when the king lit the bonfire. The feast day still starts with a mass said by the archbishop of Montreal in the historic Saint-Jean Baptiste Church. The street celebrations that follow are more secular and inclusive on the official civic holiday that is

the Fête Nationale in the Province of Quebec. It comes one week before Canada Day—the nationwide holiday in honor of the Confederation of British colonies that gave birth to the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867. In addition, June 21 was declared National Aboriginal Day by Canada’s Governor General Roméo A. LeBlanc in a royal proclamation of June 13, 1996, in honor of Indians, Inuit, and Métis, and on account of the summer solstice’s “important symbolism within their cultures.” Though this symbolism is no less important for the cultures of the Old World, there, industrialization initially brought about a marked decline in Midsummer practices, except perhaps in Scandinavian countries, where people were always eager to celebrate the brief but spectacular Nordic summer around bonfires. As for the United States, it has been said by their foremost expert on comparative calendrics that “our inherited puritanical mind-set, traceable all the way back to Oliver Cromwell’s England, is as responsible as anything else for dousing the fires and purging the pagan rites from the summer calendar,” so that “contemporary summertime ritual is remarkably free of communal holidays that even remotely resemble those our ancestors once vigorously celebrated. The days we mark in the seasonal quarter that follows the Christmas to Easter crescendo are all civic and patriotic in nature: Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day—not a one of them has roots that tap very deeply into old tradition” (Aveni 2003, p. 104). Yet Midsummer fires at least have also started to make a comeback elsewhere, thanks for instance to the campaigns of the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies in their former English stronghold since the 1930s. But there remains a big difference between traditional and revived Midsummer celebrations. If the former reinforced solidarity within small-scale agrarian communities when it was most vital—right before the collective effort of harvest-time, they were recently rekindled largely as an affirma-

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tion of local identity within a larger society in response to the challenges and opportunities of increased leisure time, social mobility, and mass tourism. And then there are also the reconstructed Midsummer rituals observed on a mass scale in a neo-pagan or New Age spirit in such ancient sites as Chartres in France and above all Stonehenge in England. Around this prehistoric stone calendar aligned with the solstice, thousands now join self-styled “druids” to welcome the summer sun with song and dance to the beating of drums.

displayed through the burnt offering of a white dog to the Creator. Its symbolism centers on the struggle between Sky-Holder and his destructive younger brother on the cusp between the old and the new years and involves both thanksgiving for past blessings and wishes for the future. It is also known as a “Festival of Dreams” or Honnonouaroia, like the ones that used to be celebrated on special occasions by the Hurons—cousins of the Iroquois in the Eastern forests of North America.

See also Annunciation; Carnival; Christmas; Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Double Nine; Dragon Boat Festival; Easter; Inti Raymi and Huarachicu; Lent; Lugnasad; Martinmas; May Day; New Year (West); Powwow; Samhain; Saturnalia; Sun Dance References Anthony F. Aveni. The Book of the Year. A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Anna Franklin. Midsummer: Magical Celebrations of the Summer Solstice. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2002. Ronald Hutton. Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. http:// www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/nad/ggp_e.html. Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968. John Matthews. The Summer Solstice: Celebrating the Journey of the Sun from May Day to Harvest. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2002. A. R. Wright. British Calendar Customs. England. Vol. III: Fixed Festivals -June-December, Inclusive. London: The Folk-Lore Society, 1940.

With variations in ritual between different tribes and Longhouses, as the traditional Iroquois religious centers are called, Midwinter celebrations could take several weeks in the past. More recently, they have lasted six to eight days around late January or early February. Their beginning depends on both the appearance of the Pleiades directly overhead at dusk and the first new moon after the winter solstice. On the first morning of the Midwinter Festival, as on that of the Green Corn Ceremony in August, there is a partial recitation of the Gaiwiio or “good word” of Gä-no-waú-ges or “Handsome Lake.” It is the formal record of the dreams and visions through which, from 1799 to his death in 1815, this sachem or chief of the Seneca nation and prophet to the Iroquois received the revelation at the basis of the traditionalist revival known as the Longhouse religion. Now followed by at least a quarter of the 20,000 or so Iroquois living on reservations in Ontario, Quebec, and New York State, this religion stresses the rigorous observance of the seasonal festivals of thanksgiving for the bounty of the earth, as it was maintained before European contact disrupted this culture’s traditional ways.

A Longhouse Festival

◗ MIDWINTER (IROQUOIS)

Hunter-Gatherer Rites

The Midwinter Festival is the “Greatly Prized Ceremony” of the Iroquois ritual calendar. It is also called “Most Excellent Faith” after that

The first part of the rites observed at the Midwinter Festival is oldest in origin, being rooted in the symbolic complex of hunter-gatherer so-

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cieties and their shamanistic practices. In the nineteenth century, rites of general confession of each person’s sins of the last year might take up to three days in the Longhouse in advance of the appointed date of the New Year, in order to clear the air and secure auspicious beginnings. Two “keepers of the faith” (ho-nun-dé-unt), swathed in bear skins or buffalo hides and with their faces made up or masked, would go into each house twice: first in the morning, to ask that it be prepared by taking out any rubbish or impure animals and any hindrances to the coming observances, for the duration of which any mourning would have to be postponed; and then in the afternoon, to inform residents that the festival had now begun and to enjoin everyone to observe it, in compliance with the will of the Great Spirit. Your first duty will be to prepare your wooden blades (Ga-ger-we-sä) with which to stir up the ashes upon your neighbors’ hearths. Then return to the Great Spirit your individual thanks for the return of this season, and for the enjoyment of this privilege. (Morgan 1901, p. 201)

The keepers of the faith thus again visit every house on the second day to carry out this ashstirring rite first, followed by all the neighbors, before the residents can perform it themselves. The fire is later rekindled, as in the New Year customs of many other cultures. When the ashes are stirred in the hearth, the Iroquois burn tobacco to invoke “Sky-Holder who lives in the sky,” “the nocturnal Orb of Light, our Grandmother,” and “the Stars on the sky in many places,” asking them to ensure the fertility of the earth in the coming year. On the third and fourth days, small dancing parties, each with their own repertoire, would visit every house in turn. So would a “thieving party” of “Laughing Beggars” with an old woman carrying a large basket to collect materials for the fifth day’s evening feast. If they felt

someone was not being generous enough, they were entitled to take whatever they could get away with unnoticed. When caught redhanded, they had to give back the article on the spot, but if they had already left with it, it was considered theirs, and it could only be bought back from a public display at the end of the collection by substituting it with something of equal value. Over the first four days, celebrations thus took place at home rather than in the common ceremonial setting of the Longhouse. They included social dances at night, after the seasonal Snow-snake game, in which people betted heavily on the slithering progress of a two-meter-long polished hickory stick in the snow for up to half a kilometer.

Dreamguessing It is also at this stage of Midwinter celebrations that the False Face medicine society performs many of its curing ceremonies, both for its own members and for the community in the Longhouse. This favorite society of the Iroquois probably owes its typical practices to the Hurons, among whom they were observed in the eighteenth century. Sometimes also observed on a basis of individual need, these include blowing ashes, handling hot coals, imitating hunchbacks, carrying sticks, and, most closely associated with Midwinter, the renewal of dreams. Those who have been cured by the medicine society over the past year sponsor dances for the members to whom they owe their recovery. The lessons and healings of past dreams are “renewed” through expression in song and dance, carrying out the guidance received through them, or acting out those they do not yet understand and seek to interpret. As the dreamguessing Ceremony of the Great Riddle begins, experts in dream interpretation are consulted in each moiety, or half-tribe, about the meaning of the dream, and the entire tribe may join in with intuitions and ideas from the public. If the dreamer finds a certain interpre-

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tation useful, the person who came up with it will get some gift or favor in return, thus creating a bond of friendship between the two parties. Once a subconscious need has thus been clarified, the tribe helps the person get her or his “dream wish.” Someone who, having guessed right, is then asked to help fulfill a dream, does not see this as an obligation so much as both an honor and a vital contribution to tribal harmony and spiritual continuity. If the dream wish turns out to be antisocial or excessively unrealistic, it may still be fulfilled through symbolic gifts or psychodramas, where people play roles in each other’s dreams. This kind of group therapy can also include confronting real people who have appeared in a dream in a negative role, to try to sort out and resolve any outstanding interpersonal issues this may reveal. Beyond its serious spiritual purpose, such “dreamguessing” also has a playful side, as people vie to get attention—and satisfaction— for their own dreams by shouting, singing, and dancing. In some tribes, moieties compete against each other to guess a person’s dream first, while in others, people go door to door insisting the residents “guess” what they have dreamed of on the basis of hints such as a pantomime. “Guessing” here can include interpreting, resolving, or even fulfilling the dream. In the past, once you were targeted for a riddle, this was the only way of putting a stop to the harassment of any of the temporarily demented trick-or-treaters who ran naked or in wild costumes through the streets and houses of a village, smashing or throwing down everything in sight, and throwing cold water and all manner of fluids, or else ashes and burning coals, on their victims. Old scores might then be settled under cover of the suspension of liability for this collectively sanctioned lapse of sanity into raving hysteria and unbridled license. The personal subconscious was given a free reign by society at this turning point of the year, so pent-

up energies could be released and the air was cleared for auspicious new beginnings.

The Sacrifice of the White Dog There could be no better way to begin the year than the sacrifice of a white dog to the Creator. For this animal was the faithful hunting companion of the Iroquois, and its spirit was best suited to convey to the Great Spirit their own steadfast faith in him. It was in this sense a medium of communication with the divine realm, like the smoke of tobacco offerings. An animal’s whiteness already marked it as consecrated to the Great Spirit. To preserve the dog’s purity from any blemish, it was strangled on the first day of the festival, taking care not to shed its blood or break its bones. Only then was it spotted with red paint and ornamented with feathers—or more recently ribbons of many colors—until the sacrifice was dropped within the last century or so. It had begun to lapse in some nations like the Oneida before being revived along with all other traditional observances with the spread of the new dispensation of Handsome Lake at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The sacrifice of a dog—usually white—was also part of the ceremonies of many other Algonquian and even Siouan cultures (not to mention Paleo-Siberian shamanistic cultures), including its hanging on a pole. In some Iroquois tribes, two dogs might be sacrificed at once—one for each moiety. But most often, only one would be left hanging for four days until it was taken down on the morning of the fifth day of Midwinter, to be burned on a pyre near the Longhouse by the keepers of the faith. One of these would invoke the Great Spirit and give him thanks for all his blessings, proceeding to do the same with a number of secondary spirits, from Mother Earth to the “Three Sisters”—squash, maize, and beans—as “Our Sustenance,” which is also the name of one of the later dances of this festival.

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The Four Sacred Rituals of Agricultural Cycles After this long thanksgiving prayer, people would attend the Great Feather Dance—the first of “four sacred rituals” given by the Creator, separated by social dances from the evening feast that also belonged to the second part of the festival, that is to a more recent layer reflecting the agricultural concerns of a farming village society. The second of these “four sacred rituals” modeled after ceremonies in the sky world is the Skin or Drum Dance. A Thanksgiving Dance is introduced during the Longhouse religious meetings of the sixth day, and Husk Faces burst in to announce they are going to the other side of the world to till the crops. Like the False Faces, they are known for curing by blowing ashes and handling hot coals. The third sacred ritual consists in personal thanksgiving chants named after the next morning’s Ah-dó-weh council at the Longhouse, where they conclude the short speeches delivered by everyone in turn to thank a variety of beings—living or (to the modern mind) inanimate. This can take a couple of hours until everyone is done expressing gratitude for all kinds of personal and public matters. This is clearly meant to seal social harmony in order to start the New Year on the right foot. People can then turn to the fourth and last sacred ritual, concluding the festival (though it could also take place on the fourth day): the Peach-stone board game instituted by the Great Spirit himself, in which six of these fruit pits are thrown like dice in a wooden bowl as a ritual symbolizing human life and ethics. The small articles used for stakes are collected the day before from house to house by moiety appointees as a kind of sacrifice; they are then paired into prize packets of two items of equivalent value—one from each moiety, so that people from the winning side get back their property and double it with that of the losing side. As the Cayuga sachem Deskáheh could explain: “The same may be applied to life; one must give something to receive something,

whereupon one goes to ‘heaven’ provided that in the game of life he plays straight and right. If he does not play straight he will lose all . . . The game is sacred, for it is the Great Spirit’s game. It represents life, to some extent. The sacrifice, playing straight to win the reward, and the danger of losing—all teach the lesson of love, of sacrifice, and ‘good’ with the fun of a wholesome game” (Speck 1949, pp. 142–143). This is contrasted with the spreading addiction to secular gambling, which the Iroquois (among other North American Indian cultures) were already succumbing to when Handsome Lake tried to restrict it to its original sacred setting as part of Midwinter rites. The privileged place of betting in traditional Iroquois culture may then partly account for the rise of casinos as the most prosperous businesses on reservations in the northeastern states.

A Tuscarora Variant: Nu Yah The traditionalist elements among five of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy—Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Onondagas—observe the old festivals such as Midwinter, while, as a rule, the Christians in these tribes keep aloof from the Longhouse— especially on such ceremonial occasions. The Tuscaroras as a nation did away long ago with their Longhouse and adopted Christianity from Baptist missionaries, who largely succeeded in counteracting Handsome Lake’s traditionalist revival. As a result, they do not have the traditional ceremonies still observed by the other nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, with the exception of the raising of a chief. Otherwise, there is only one major festivity during the year that shows remnants of traditionalist elements: the New Year celebration that has taken over from Midwinter under the name of Nu Yah. Beginning three days before January 1, the festival, as it is presently observed among the New York Tuscaroras, includes a visit to each house on the reserve to collect food for a feast, a competitive hunt for game for the latter between

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“old” men (that is, all fathers) and “young” (that is, childless) men, the New Year morning visitation of as many houses as possible—entering them without knocking but shouting “Nu Yah!,” the offering to these (mostly young) callers of a cookie, a doughnut or a piece of cake, pie, or fruit at each house, and the lunchtime feast and evening meeting sponsored by the Tuscarora Temperance Society. From the second third of the nineteenth century, this initially mixed body of Christians and traditionalists took over the role of the traditional keepers of the faith and was instrumental in developing this acculturated alternative to Midwinter observances, in which Tuscaroras of all persuasions could overlook their customary rivalries and join in harmony and good cheer as one nation for a change. Traditional customs had existed side by side with those of the New Year after the Tuscaroras had to leave their North Carolina homeland as a result of military defeats. When they settled for a while in Pennsylvania during this eighteenth-century migration northward, they found that their German neighbors would go visiting each other on Neujahr, receiving little cakes or Festkuchen at each house. They liked the custom and adopted it, just as New York merchants at the same time used the Saint Nicholas koekjes that were still imported from the Netherlands as part of their own British New Year visitation customs. As these original cookies bore the image of the patron of sailors, so Tuscarora women baked their own version of German New Year cookies in the shape of the animal spirit protector of their particular clan. If these clan cookies are no longer made, Nu Yah endures as a hybrid festivity which promises to last as long as the Tuscarora nation does. Its form is much the same today as it was in the early years, except that, with the dissolution of the Temperance Band, there is no longer a parade and musical entertainment on New Year’s Day. The hunt preserves a trace of the greater role it used to play until about a century ago among other Iroquois in preparation for

the Midwinter Festival. Yet in contrast to them, Nu Yah sees no burning of tobacco, curing rites, or any other religious ceremony, and remains a secular affair, but for the grace said before the feast—now a Christian thanksgiving prayer. See also Busk; New Year (West); New Fire Ceremony; Saint Nicholas References Harold Blau. “The Iroquois White Dog Sacrifice: Its Evolution and Symbolism,” in Ethnohistory, Vol. XI (1964), No. 2, pp. 97–119. Barbara Graymont. “The Tuscarora New Year Festival,” in New York History, Vol. L (1969), No. 2, pp. 142–163. Lewis H. Morgan. League of the Ho-De-No-SauNee or Iroquois. Vol. I. New York, 1901 (reprint New York: Burt Franklin, 1967). Frank Gouldsmith Speck. Midwinter Rites of the Cayuga Long House. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949 (reprint Ohsweken, Ontario: Iroqrafts, 1987). Elisabeth Tooker. The Iroquois Ceremonial of Midwinter. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

◗ MILAAD See Mawlid

◗ MIMOUNA See Passover

◗ MI’RAJ (ISLAM) Coming after four and a half months without any festival, the night of the twenty-seventh to the twenty-eighth of the month of Rajab is marked by pious Muslims with Koran readings and supererogatory prayers, in honor of the night of that date (in most accounts) in the year before the Hegira when the obligatory five daily prayers were ordained by God as a pillar of Islam, and forgiveness was promised to repentant sinners. For it was on the Night of the

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Journey and of the Ascension (Lailat al-Isra wa al-Mi’raj in Arabic) that Mohammed was taken through the seven heavens to the throne of God to receive moral commandments, along with his highest mystical vision.

The Nocturnal Journey This happened in the summer of 620, during Umra—the Lesser Pilgrimage to Mecca, when Mohammed was in the tenth year and the darkest hour of his prophetic mission. He had lost both his first wife and first disciple Khadija and his uncle and only political supporter Abu Talib within a couple of days of each other in the previous “Year of Sorrow” (am-el-Huzn), and had just been expelled from his own clan after declaring that all its pagan ancestors— even Abu Talib—were burning in hell. This was tantamount to negating the very source of all the temporal and spiritual laws of Mecca’s tribal Arab society. It thus in turn negated Mohammed by making him an outcast—that is, literally a nonperson without identity or rights of any sort, at the mercy of escalating persecution, including attempts on his life. It was at this moment that the One God who put him at loggerheads with all of human society came to his aid by granting him an inner vision that clarified the scope of the Prophet’s mission to create a new society in submission (islam) to Him alone, and gave him renewed strength to do just that against all odds. Strictly speaking, only one line in the entire Koran explicitly refers to the event in question. It is the one with which sura 17 begins, giving glory to the One “who did take His Servant for a Journey by night (isra) from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque” (Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation 1946). A tradition going back to Mohammed’s wife Aisha would suggest that this was a purely spiritual inner journey, accomplished while the Prophet was sleeping— though “his heart was awake.” But by the time it was recorded by his biographer Ibn Ishak, who died in Baghdad in 767, the Ummayad Caliphs

of Damascus were anxious to have a major holy place they could control closer to home than Mecca. So, while identifying the latter’s Ka’aba with the “Sacred Mosque” (al-masjid alharam), they promoted a belief that placed the “Farthest Mosque” (al-masjid al-aqsa) in the ruins of the Temple of Jerusalem, where the alAqsa Mosque had already been built by Caliph al-Walid I in the late seventh century. From the twelfth century onward, Jerusalem thus came to be regarded as Islam’s third holy city, right after Medina. To explain how the Prophet Mohammed could travel from Mecca to Jerusalem and back in the space of a single night, a winged creature called Burak (variously described as being white, halfway between an ass and a donkey, and with a woman’s head and/or a peacock’s tail) had been introduced into the story. The Prophet was said to have flown the whole distance on its back. Muslims have given the creature’s name to the Western Wall of the Temple of Jerusalem, where they say it was tethered that night. Yet they also came to credit Burak, as the mount of prophets, with Mohammed’s ascension to heaven. At the Dome of the Rock—Islam’s oldest surviving monument as a shrine built for pilgrims by Caliph alWalid I between 685 and 691, they thus point to the mark of a hoof on the Temple’s stone floor on the spot where it struck the ground with supernatural force as she took a great leap, propelling Mohammed skyward. In this account, the Koran’s “nocturnal journey”—Isra—is the physical one, airborne on Burak from Mecca to Jerusalem, while Mohammed’s “ascension” is Mi’raj proper. (A belief peculiar to Shiites is that, on his way back from Jerusalem to Mecca, the Prophet made a stop in Qom—an important pilgrimage site south of Tehran. Iranians thus celebrate this day as Ghadir Khomm, and it is the traditional time to marry orphans off.)

The Ascension The term mi’raj also refers to the angelic ladder of spiritual progress through which the Prophet

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Mohammed’s nocturnal journey to heaven. From a Persian manuscript representing the Prophet’s ascent to heaven, his face being masked with a veil to hide his glory. (Bettman/Corbis)

was led most of the way by the angel Gabriel. Its degrees are then called ma’arij, each corresponding to a particular prophet: Adam to the First, Jesus and John the Baptist to the Second, Joseph to the Third, Idris (that is most likely Enoch) to the Fourth, Aaron to the Fifth, Moses to the Sixth, and Abraham to the Seventh—at the threshold of the unknowable Godhead, where Mohammed even led them all in prayer. God encouraged Mohammed in his mission as the Seal of the Prophets by reminding him that his predecessors had endured similar or worse tribulations than the ones he had already known, or than the exodus of his own he would soon face with the Hegira the next year, leading

his people through the desert to freedom. In view of this and of the decisive times ahead, it is said that God gave Mohammed twelve commandments for his people to follow, along the lines of the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai for the Jews. On his way back down, Mohammed was asked by Moses about what had transpired. When he mentioned that God required fifty daily prayers of the Muslims, Moses insisted that Mohammed go back up to God to get this figure lowered, on the basis of his own experience trying to get the Jewish people to observe ten commandments. Mohammed dared to plead with God for a more merciful daily regimen of prayers, but

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Moses made him go back several times because he always thought the number of prayers was too high. It was finally fixed at five a day when Mohammed was just too embarrassed to go and bother God with such requests anymore.

Mystical Interpretations Yet he had also been there at some other time, says the Koran (53:14) about this summit of the human experience of ultimate reality that it calls “the Lote-Tree beyond which none may pass” (Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation 1946). According to the mystical Sufi tradition, the boundary in question is that of the Prophet’s being. It holds that, seeing the Lotus-Tree as “one of the greatest signs of His Lord,” he could gaze beyond it into “the Garden of the Refuge” as his own inner paradise; did he not after all once say that “he who knows himself, knows his Lord”? It would then be his own personal angel that the Prophet saw in the Archangel Gabriel— that is an epiphany of what can be revealed of an unknowable God to His creature, called to meet Him in mystical union at its own limit, on the very edge of the limitless. But this whole question of the vision of a transcendent God has always been highly controversial in Islamic theology, where established orthodox opinion has often denied its very possibility. This is why Mi’raj largely remains just a popular festival without much official backing. For it is based on the stuff of legend: an apocryphal story that has become a favorite object of both mystical speculation and popular piety, in a literary genre of its own that has developed across a variety of local traditions throughout the Islamic world, from Morocco to Indonesia, largely in view of readings for the festival of Mohammed’s ascension. It even seems to have provided a model for the classic poetic account of the medieval West’s cosmology in terms of Roman Catholic spirituality: Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. See also Ascension

References Miguel Asín Palacios. Islam and the Divine Comedy. Tr., abr. Harold Sutherland. London: J. Murray, 1926 (reprint London: Cass, 1968). Sophie Pommier. Muhammad’s Night Journey. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 1998. The Prophet of Islam in Old French: the Romance of Muhammad (1258) and the Book of Muhammad’s Ladder (1264). Tr., intr. Reginald Hyatte. Leiden, Holland: Brill, 1997. Qassim al-Samarrai. The Theme of Ascension in Mystical Writings; a Studay [sic] of the Theme in Islamic and Non-Islamic Mystical Writings. Baghdad: National Printing and Publishing Company, 1968.

◗ MISCHIEF NIGHT See Samhain

◗ MONDAY OF SAINT THOMAS See Easter

◗ MOON VIEWING See Mid-Autumn

◗ MONTH (FESTIVAL OF THE) See KI.LAM

◗ MOST EXCELLENT FAITH See Midwinter

◗ MOTHERING DAY, MOTHERING SUNDAY See Annunciation, Lent

◗ MOTHERS’ DAY See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary, Lent

◗ MUERTOS (LOS) See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ MULID See Mawlid

N ◗ NAADAM (MONGOLIA) The Mongolian word naadam means “manly game or entertainment.” This is still the focus of the great Mongol festival of Naadam, whatever its other religious and economic functions. It even used to play an important ceremonial role in the political life of foreign dynasties of the Chinese Empire. Now, though, pastoral nomads compete over a couple of days in the traditional “three manly games”—wrestling, archery, and horseracing, in both Inner Mongolia (within Chinese territory) and independent Outer Mongolia (where Naadam is held near the capital, Ulaanbaatar, as the national holiday on July 11).

History For 2,000 years, these three sports were not just entertainment, but a vital part of military training for the nomadic tribes of the steppes between Siberia and China. A thousand years ago, they became the main activities of the Naadam Festival, and winners soon began to receive prizes in money and other gifts. After Gengis Khan unified the Mongol tribes under his leadership in 1206, these sports were featured on the celebrations for the enthronement of khans, the triumphal return of victorious armies, and the conferring of powers onto generals in wartime.

It was Gengis Khan who put wrestling on the program of examinations which soldiers and generals alike had to undergo in Mongol armies. The expression “three manly games” first comes up under the Yuan or Mongol Dynasty established in China in 1271 by Kublai Khan, grandson of Gengis Khan. Under the Ch’ing Dynasty (the last one to rule over the Chinese Empire from the time Manchu tribes related to the Mongols took it over from the latter’s indigenous Ming Dynasty successors in the seventeenth century), the word naadam came to refer to the banquet offered at the Imperial Court before the gathering of the Eight Banners—an organ of government derived from the military units that had allowed the Manchus to follow in the Mongols’ footsteps in China after first conquering them. Chinese civil servants used to be promoted on this occasion, until the Republic of China was proclaimed in 1911, while Outer Mongolia became an autonomous monarchy under a lama, the “Living Buddha.” The Mongols’ eventual conversion to a Tibetan form of Buddhism had given some religious coloring to Naadam. Although this aspect would have to recede under the Communist regimes of Mongolia and China, the festival also provided the setting for a great fair. It thus served as a temporary market for nomadic herdsmen, who otherwise had limited opportu|

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nities to engage in trade or meet people from other clans on a national scale. Naadam’s July 11 opening date was thus set as the national holiday of Mongolia in 1922 by the revolutionary leader Damdiny Sühbaatar, who thus meant to commemorate both the taking of the capital Urga on July 6, 1921, and the formation soon thereafter (on July 10) of a new independent government that would rename it Ulaanbaatar in honor of this “Red Hero” a few months after he died on February 23, 1923. The largest Naadam is now held there by the river Tuul in Nairamdal Park with its sports stadium. Gengis Khan (whose very name used to be outlawed under the Communist regime) is the wildly popular national hero—now played by an actor—who comes out on the stadium amid epic pomp and fanfare to lend his prestige to this festival of Mongol pride that he helped shape at the height of his people’s golden age. It is also more modestly held at some crossroads of Inner Mongolia, where nomads raise their tents, often after weeks of trekking over vast distances for the occasion. The steppe then suddenly mushrooms with makeshift shops, restaurants, photo studios, bookstands, libraries, and drugstores—like a small town in the middle of nowhere, full of lights, bustle, and music until late at night.

Three Manly Games The first of the “three manly games” that visiting families can attend at Naadam is the wrestling competition, which takes place in a solemn atmosphere. The wrestlers wear colorful copper (or silver) studded leather shorts, hats, and boleros as they enter the ring (which may be either outdoors or under a big tent) in a special dance, loudly singing: “Bring on your valiant wrestler!” The rule of the match is that whoever touches the ground with a part of his body above the knee other than the hands loses. As for the winner, he gets a colored piece of cloth pinned on his chest. The champion who is able to remain standing for the majority of

nine rounds on all three days of Naadam (in Ulaanbaatar) is called an “eagle”; he is loudly acclaimed by the public, having earned the enduring respect of a far-flung nomadic community for excelling at its national sport. Both sexes can take part (with different rules) in the second “manly game” of archery, dressed in beautiful traditional costumes. The red targets are painted on 360 half-meter-high leather cubes aligned along a little wall, which reflects the evolution of this game from the hunt for marmots on the steppe. The essential hunting skills of archery were at the base of the art of war that allowed the Mongols to conquer much of the known world on their famous little horses. Indeed, archery and horseracing were both natural developments of their pastoral lifestyle. Something of the Mongol people’s past glory lives on at the crowning event of Naadam, in which participants from all walks of life may hope to excel. As the third “manly game,” horse races may be mostly for boys, but the horses are the real stars. A peculiar Mongol style of race calls for horses to trot instead of gallop, while the riders stand very erect; yet they can run just as fast as a galloping horse. However, this is not the standard style of Naadam races. For weeks in advance, the horses have been put on a diet to lower their weight, and they are trained to run faster. Prior to the competition, they practice in qualifying races. Five of these, from five to thirty kilometers each in distance, are held in the steppe by the airport in Ulaanbaatar. The greater the distance, the lighter the jockey has to be, which means that contestants retire by the age of twelve. Appearance is also important; thus, a horse’s mane and tail will be especially woven into braids. On the appointed day, vodka flows freely as Mongols loosen up in an informal setting that contrasts with that of the stadium used in the capital for the other games. Fathers see to the last details of preparing the horses, which the children riding them encourage with songs in-

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Two Mongolian wrestlers at Naadam, a festival made up of three competitions: wrestling, horse racing, and archery. (The Cover Story/Corbis)

voking their strength and resilience as they ride in a ritual circle in front of the judges’ elevated stand. The whole family then goes to the meeting place at the finishing line. From there, the competitors proceed way out into the steppe directly to the distant starting line, while their parents may lie on the ground eating and smoking. The jockeys, wearing multicolored turbans, bow just before the signal is given. Elders then bring each rider a silver bowl filled with fresh milk, and offer him a white scarf—a form of homage also known in the related shamanistic and Buddhist culture of Tibet. They sing words of praise both for the rider and for his horse. The hymns to the horses go on during the race to encourage the horsemen and continue after the race to celebrate the winners, as well as to cheer up the losers. There are no stands at the finishing line, where the families remain; they watch from

atop their own horses to see when the horses they have entered in the competition will come in, and if their sons will still be on them. If a son has fallen off in exhaustion, the horse is still in the race and can even win it without him, since it is the horse’s performance that is being assessed. This is precisely why children aged six to ten, who can barely guide a horse, are sent to ride their families’ choice mounts, so that the animals’ own merit can shine through with minimal human input. Many races take place over Naadam, arranged according to the horses’ ages, with a fifteen-kilometer race for two-year olds and a seventy-kilometer race for older animals. At Ulaanbaatar, as many as 200 horses at a time may be racing across the plain in a cloud of dust (preceded by the jeeps of reporters and VIPs), as the youngsters who ride them (often without saddles) relentlessly spur them on with

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their whips. The top winners and bottom losers of every category perform the same ritual when they get off their horses: they sprinkle their head and hindquarters with vodka before gulping it from the bottle themselves—over and over again. Later on in Nairamdal Stadium, the champion will have the honor of bowing at the feet of the President of Mongolia. See also Games (Rome) References Henry Field, ed. Mongolia Today: A Traveler’s Guide—Geography, Nature, Hunting, Museums, Monuments, Customs, Tourism. Coconut Grove, FL: Field Research Projects, 1978. Qi Xing. Traditional Chinese Festivals. Beijing: Foreign Language Publications, 1987. Ya. Yunden. G. Zorig, and Ch. Erdene. This is Mongolia. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 1991.

◗ NAA DAMBA See Mawlid

◗ NAKED FESTIVALS (JAPAN) In many areas of Japan, there are so-called Naked Festivals (Hadaka Matsuri). The two best known take place on Honshu Island, in the cities of Inazawa and Okayama, where, some time in February, throngs of men stripped to a loincloth compete to touch or to possess a sacred object. In all such festivals, washing and splashing each other with cold water, in a playful version of the Shinto purification rite called mizugori, plays a prominent part and contributes to the high spirits, even in the middle of winter.

Inazawa: The Naked Man as Scapegoat The Naked Festival of Inazawa, a suburb of Nagoya, is held annually on February 5 and goes back at least 1,200 years. Having already gotten drunk on sake rice wine—at once to commune with the gods, fight the cold, and

have a good time—some 10,000 men wearing only loincloths and sandals race in gangs to carry their towns’ written prayers (tied to long bundles of bamboo) to Kounomiya Shrine. The countless thousands of spectators cheering them on along the streets also push and shove to get a chance to touch these phallic objects, as this is supposed to bring them good luck over the coming year. The practice is reminiscent in this of ancient Rome’s Lupercalia race of men in loincloths in mid-February. Six hours into the event, all the runners have reached the shrine’s precinct, where they continuously get splashed with freezing water. They are waiting for the arrival of the man of the day: the Naked Man (Shin-Otoko). He is the only one considered to be truly worthy of the title, since he has been selected to shave off all the hair on his body in a purification rite before setting out alone on the same itinerary—stark naked. The crowd roars as he approaches the shrine, for it is once he enters it that his ordeal truly begins: this man has to run, tumble, and crawl to the other side of the sea of men it contains. They in turn are all out to chase him, jump on him, and pummel him in their frantic attempts to touch him, so as to transfer onto him the evils of their community and draw from him some luck for the coming year (since he is to them what their own bamboo bundles were to the crowd outside). When the Naked Man somehow makes it in one piece past the courtyard into the sanctuary of Kounomiya Shrine, he pays his respects to the gods, puts on some clothes, and gets symbolically banished from town, from which he takes all the evil away with him. This makes him an exact counterpart of the pharmakon—the human scapegoat at the center of the ancient Greek festival of Thargelia.

Okayama: Sheer Naked Aggression Also commonly called Hadaka Matsuri, the folk festival Saidaiji Eyo is held on the third

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Saturday of February of every year at Okayama’s Saidaiji Kan’nonin Temple. This regular date was set fairly recently to accommodate the crowds of tourists. The festival originally took place on the day of the first Full Moon (Koshogatsu)—that is on the fifteenth day of the first month. It was also called Little New Year, or even Women’s New Year, since women would perform domestic rites of aggression with phallic rods to capture the first month’s male energies and give birth to boys. Likewise, the paper amulets the priests of that temple of Kannon (China’s Kuam Yon, female bodhisattva of compassion), started distributing to the faithful on that day at the beginning of the sixteenth century became so popular that they had to throw them into the crowd, and eventually replaced them with a more sturdy pair of wooden rods. The word shingi for these “sacred rods” of the gods used to be written with the characters for “true” and for “wood,” but the first one was eventually replaced by the character for “treasure,” which best describes the value ascribed to these talismans and the lengths young men will go to get them. Today, the event begins at 7:20 on Saturday evening with a children’s version of the Naked Festival, first for boys from the first and second grades competing for mochi rice cakes, then for boys from the third and fourth grades competing for an octagonal treasure tube, and finally for boys from the fifth and sixth grades competing for a rounded treasure tube. At 9:00 P.M., the Eyo Winter Fireworks are launched on the banks of the Yoshii River, while temple grounds already echo with the powerful rumble of an all-women taiko ensemble (since beating drums is a common way to welcome gods and call worshippers at a matsuri). Around 11:00 P.M., up to 10,000 men wearing only the traditional fundoshi loincloth begin to crowd the temple’s main sanctuary. They get instructions on how to use water to purify their bodies before running around the temple precincts and paying their respects to the deities Senju

Kan’non and Go’ousho Daigongen. Only then are they allowed to press onto the grounds, where they will splash themselves and each other with cold water to become ritually pure. This routine is repeated several times, until around 2:00 in the morning, when all the doors are closed and the lights are turned off as the head priest throws the shingi rods from a window into the crowd. Then pandemonium erupts as the compact mass of sweaty male bodies is convulsed by the fierce struggle for possession of the sacred symbols of Senju Kan’non and Go’ousho Daigongen. But the combination of luck, skill, and strategy that decides the outcome of the competition ultimately depends on the will of these two deities, that is on whom they favor to win their wooden passports to yearlong happiness. This Naked Festival thus provides an excellent illustration of the principle behind the competitive sports and games associated with Japanese festivals: they are meant to test human beings in a way that allows the gods to have a clear and direct say in their affairs. See also Anna Perenna; Games (Greece); Lupercalia; Matsuri; New Year (Japan); Thargelia; Yom Kippur References Hideo Haga. Japanese Festivals. Tr. Don Kenny. Osaka, Japan: Hoikusha Publishing Co., 1981. Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. New York: Kodansha International, 1983. Tamotsu Yato, ed. Naked Festival. A Photo-Essay. Intr. Yukio Mishima. Phot. Gan Hosoya. Tr. Meredith Weatherby and Sachiko Teshima. New York: Walker/Weatherhill, 1969.

◗ NAKED YOUTHS (FESTIVAL OF) See Carneia

◗ NAMAHAGE See New Year (Japan)

◗ NAMING OF THE PROPHET See Mawlid

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◗ NANAKUSA NO SEKKU See Sekku

◗ NARAK CHATURDASHI See Divali

◗ NATALIS SOLI INVICTI See Christmas

◗ NATIONAL ABORIGINAL DAY See Midsummer

◗ NATIVITY (OF CHRIST) See Christmas

◗ NATIVITY OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST See Midsummer, Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ NATIVITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ NATIVITY OF THE PROPHET See Mawlid

◗ NAVARATRA AND DUSSHERA (HINDUISM) Among Hindus (and to some extent Jains), the festival of the “nine nights” (that is, Navaratra) starts on the new moon of Ashvina (September–October) right after the Pitripaksha fortnight devoted to departed spirits. It honors the Mother Goddess Durga in her many forms as Divine Power or Shakti. As Durga Puja, it is therefore particularly important for Shaktas— devotees of Shiva the Destroyer who emphasize his consort or feminine energy as supreme, as well as for other Shaivas. It is also observed by Vaishnavas (devotees of Vishnu the Sustainer) but with a different emphasis on her more peaceable manifestations. However, the first

three days still begin with Kali, as goddess of strength, for protection and valor, before shifting to Lakshmi, as goddess of wealth, for the next three, and ending with Sarasvati, as goddess of knowledge, on the last three days. Vaishnavas then celebrate the victory of Vishnu’s avatar Rama over the demon Ravana, for which they say he called on the power of Durga—often even ascribing to him the goddess’s victory over the “Buffalo Demon” Mahishasura, that Shaivas too celebrate as that of good over evil on the tenth day of Dusshera. The “Great Tenth Day of Victory” is also called Vijay Dashami, or Dasain in Nepal.

Pitripaksha: Hindu Days of the Dead But just before this novena begins with the new moon of Ashvina, the waning or “dark half ” (krishna paksha) of the month that leads up to it (which is part of Ashvina or Bhadrapada depending on the calendar used) is set aside to honor the ghostly spirits of departed ancestors or pitris. When performed over the two weeks of this Pitripaksha, because of a special grace of Yama, Lord of Death, the water oblation called Tarpan-Arghya that orthodox Hindus normally make for their dead relatives of many generations on every new moon, as well as the Shraddha ceremony they carry out every year on the anniversary of a relative’s death, can both reach the pitris more immediately, and even indiscriminately. Not only can relatives who are not in the offerer’s direct line of descent benefit from these rites, but all departed souls, even those without living descendants to perform them, or who suffer the consequences of a lack of charitable deeds to their credit, or whose death anniversary cannot be observed because it is not clear just when they died, or whose life was unnaturally cut short by accident or violence. Like the lemures on the ancient Roman Lemuria, such restless pitris who cannot normally be reached by standard funerary offerings during the rest

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Devotees immerse an idol of the Hindu goddess Durga into the Hooghly River during Durga Puja, or Dusshera, as the culmination of Navaratra, and the biggest festival of Bengali Hindus, in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, October 23, 2004. (Jayanta Shaw/Reuters/Corbis).

of the year can be appeased on Pitripaksha, except that it is by having their wishes fulfilled along with those of honored ancestors. For Yama allows all of them to come down to the homes of their descendants at the climax of Pitripaksha, devoted to “all ancestors” and therefore called Sarvapitri Amavashya. (Similarly, dead Mexicans make their way back home once a year on All Souls as the Día de Muertos.) On this great concluding new moon day, also called Mahalaya Amavashya, devout Hindus who have followed strict ritual rules over the two weeks of Pitripaksha (such as bathing three times a day and partial fasting) do the full array of funerary rites and give plenty of charity to help secure the object of their prayers: the propitiation of departed spirits so they may rest in peace over the coming year.

Ritual Readings Then the fight against the demon begins on the first day of the Navaratra novena (unless the extra holy month of Adhik Maas happens to be inserted between it and Pitripaksha—as in 2001 and 2020), to last until he is defeated on the ninth day. The tale is told in the “seven hundred verses” of the Gatha Saptashati or Chandi (one of Durga’s many names) culled from the Markandiya Purana, and said to date back to 1400 B.C.E., which must be recited from beginning to end (as Rama is thought to have done when he vanquished Ravana). For if this kind of Tantric ritual or esoteric practice peculiar to Shaivas (and certain Mahayana Buddhists) is incompletely or improperly carried out, the spiritual energies it is meant to harness may be unleashed in a harmful way. In Bengal, where Shaktism is most influential, on the first day of

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Navaratra, a rite is celebrated in honor of the goddess of learning, Sarasvati, in which she is worshipped together with the sacred books of the house. Selected passages of the Chandi are then recited at an auspicious time determined by the almanac.

The Effigy of the Goddess By then, an image of Durga—carved out of wood or sculpted in metal elsewhere—will have been skillfully crafted out of clay from the Ganges in Bengal. On the evening of Shasti (the Sixth Day), this protima is installed in front of a betel plant (Piper betle) in a pandal—a colorful covered enclosure that is erected in every locality. Pandals number in the hundreds in Delhi and in the thousands in Bengal’s capital Calcutta, a city named after Kali. This divine Shakti or power is invoked in everyone present during the initial Bodhana or “awakening” ceremony, as the people say: “O Mother, we awaken thee for the good of the world; join us, O Mother, in our autumn festival,” and the priest says the Pranpratishtan mantra as he touches the pupils of the protima’s eyes to awaken her to life. During the day, people will come to pay their respects to the goddess, surrounded under the same dais by the other deities which were initially installed along with her a thousand years ago by Bengal’s King Bijoy Sen in thanksgiving for his successes against neighboring kingdoms, as part of a Hindu revival in the wake of Muslim invasions and the collapse of Buddhism in India. Among these deities are Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Kartik (god of valor), Ganesha (god of success), and his wife Kola Bou (the banana bride). Portrayed by a young banana plant with nine leaves, wrapped in a white sari with a red border and also called Navapatrika, she stands for the end of the rainy season and the beginning of autumn.

Holy Water and Sacred Dances This plant symbolism takes center stage on the Seventh Day (Saptami) when the actual Durga

Puja begins with the worship of an earthen vessel filled with water and covered with a bunch of five mango leaves with a tender green coconut on top, adorned with the image of the goddess or with a swastika and placed on a yantra—a mystical geometric design traced on the ground. There follows an Anjali ceremony in which people repeat its mantra after the priest as they crowd around the protima’s dais to offer flowers and betel leaves to Durga, the goddess whose worship is most prominent in Bengal and Assam. The first night is called Ghatsthapana on account of the “establishing of the holy water vessel” (called kalash) that is put before the image of the goddess as Vedic verses are read or incantations are said to entice her to alight on the rim at an auspicious moment determined by astrologers. For nine days, neither the protima nor the kalash is to be touched, and there should be fasting of some kind, while an oil lamp (called nandadip) is kept burning throughout. A fresh flower garland is tied before the protima every day, and grains are sown in mud by the jug, so that, sprinkled with holy water and kept in the shade, it sprouts during Navaratra, and a bunch of tender plants can be put on clothes on Dusshera. In Nepal, barley seeds and other grains are also sown in the cow dung designs on the kalash itself, as well as the sacred yellow jamara flower that adults put in their hair and behind their ears over the last days of Dasain, as well as on top of children’s heads as a blessing from Durga. The “House of Dasain,” or Dasain Ghar—the room set aside for the goddess to reside in a water jug—is off-limits to other females for the duration of the festival, when rituals are performed there daily. This is done by brahmin priests wearing red robes in her honor in wealthy homes that can afford hiring them. Groups of singing devotees go purify themselves in the waters of a different tirtha or sacred bathing spot on each of the nine nights “while stars are still seen in the heavens.” Still

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dripping wet in their damp clothes, they take trays of offerings on their heads to the temples of Durga before dawn. Also on each of the nine nights, starting around midnight, male dancers impersonating the Eight Mother Goddesses (Asta Matrika) make their way through the narrow streets of Patan to perform old traditional dances by torchlight at the local temple of Mahadevi, the Great Goddess whom the eight all manifest with a final afternoon performance on the tenth day at the shrine of another one of her forms—Taleju, patron of Nepal’s ruling dynasty. This is located in the former royal palace. In many parts of India during Navaratra and especially on Dusshera, following the monsoon rains, women and girls in their best attire carry pitchers from house to house and dance around the garabi or garb—a pot decorated with flowers and betel leaves, its mouth covered with a coconut, containing offerings that are hung in the doorways. Such joyous dances in which they clap their hands in rhythmic movement are especially associated with Gujarat, but others like them are known elsewhere in the country, as in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, and they are also performed at the Holi spring festival, though mostly in honor of Krishna.

Solemnities and Entertainment All through the festival, many people visit temples of the Goddess, usually located on the outskirts of a town or village, or else on high mountains. In some places, special food is prepared for the Goddess every day, and brahmins, married women, and young girls are invited for dinner. On the last evenings, an arti service is celebrated with great solemnity by a priest who traces a circle of light before the protima, while burning incense and ringing bells. In Bengal, wherever their sound and that of the traditional dhak drum reaches, people feel that the Great Mother protects them from harm. On the seventh to ninth days, there is also puja and anjali in the morning, followed by a community

lunch and an afternoon of sports and games for young and old. Among other activities often featured are film showings, theater (including the recently revived jatra or folk plays, and music performances of all kinds) from street entertainment up to the Carnatic classical music festival started by Maharaja Swathithirunai at Sree Padmanabha Swami Temple in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. There and elsewhere, dolls of gods and animals are artistically arranged by young girls alongside toys and trinkets in tiered displays reminiscent of Japan’s Doll Festival. Among Shaivas, some Vedic rites such as the homa or butter oblation to the sacred fire are integrated into services that remain essentially Tantric—as a kind of high magic, like the Shondhi Puja performed in Bengal at an auspicious hour of the night to usher in the ninth day. Following a public reading from the Chandi, 108 lamps are then lit and as many blooming lotuses are offered to the goddess to mark the exact moment of her killing of Mahishasura.

Sacrifices In many places in India, buffaloes, goats, and pigs have been sacrificed in this connection, but Nepal remains unsurpassed in the scale of this seasonal bloodletting. Vegetarian Vaishnavas there prefer to hack a pumpkin to pieces instead, and the majority Newar people of Kathmandu Valley break duck eggs over an idol and may drink the yolk as prashad or a blessing gift from Durga. The meaning is the same as that of countless temple sacrifices in which merit is directly proportional to the height to which the blood spurts upon slitting an animal’s throat. In Kathmandu’s Taleju temple, if the blood fails to reach one of the upper tiers, it should at least wash over the kalash inside, or else its efficacy is lost. The royal family’s own kalash would have been brought over the day before (which is called Fulpati after the sacred flowers and leaves covering the sacred object) with dazzling pomp and circumstance from its ancestral seat in

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Gurkha to the royal Dasain Ghar, in an inner chamber of the same Hanuman Dhoka palace where the dynasty’s ancestral patron Taleju has her main temple in the capital. During the “Black Night” (Kalratri) of the “Great Eighth” (Mahashtami), while goats, sheep, chickens, and ducks by the hundreds may be sacrificed elsewhere, only buffaloes are slaughtered there, following exacting Tantric ritual prescriptions. Durga prefers the blood of black, uncastrated water buffaloes, most like the Buffalo Demon she slew in mythical times. But within living memory, she was not above accepting human sacrifices, such as the ones long legal at Dakshin Kali near Farping, where her terrifying image is bathed in blood on this Black Night. Rumors are even perpetuated among the people of secret sacrifices of this kind that might still be performed by some sects at certain temples, which are said to account for mysterious cases of missing children. Be that as it may, the animals sacrificed on such occasions as Dasain are actually privileged, since they are thought to be reincarnated as human beings. As for their remains, the severed head, tail stuffed in its mouth, is left facing the idol in the temple, and the keeper can later have it, while donors get to take the body home as prashad, parts of which will also be distributed as a blessing from Durga to relatives and friends after the family has feasted on it that evening. The next one is Nawa Ratri—the Ninth Night of a day Kathmandu’s Newars call Syako Tyako, because “the more you kill, the more you gain.” Among prayers, gifts, and sacrifices to the Mother Goddesses on this “Great Ninth” (Mahanavami), there is one they particularly like to perform on this occasion. It is that of a goat whose head is cut into eight specific parts and sewn back together with a reed to be taken to the home of the paternal house or its equivalent, where eight men seated in order of seniority will get their respective part, as a way to reassert ancestral bonds.

Specialized Blessings Early that morning, dozens of black buffaloes are slaughtered at the armory across from Hanuman Dhoka in front of high officials and the troops in full dress uniform, as bands play and cannons boom. Each beast is to be decapitated in one stroke before a display of regimental colors that will be imprinted with an official’s blood-soaked hand, in order to secure Durga’s blessings as goddess of victory and power. Because officers who used to attempt this execution themselves and happened to botch it had reason for concern at such a bad omen, the task is now left to soldiers who are adept at it, while civil servants from the warrior caste stand at attention holding merely symbolic khukuri sabers. Again, the carcasses will be consumed later in regimental feasts. Along with spirits, flowers, rice, and red powder, blood from the gaping throats of sacrificial beasts is also used that day to bless vehicles of all kinds (including every plane of Royal Nepal Airlines), especially if it is an offering to Bhairab, Durga’s bloodthirsty male counterpart and means of transportation to the gods. A goat or a duck is sacrificed to their Great Carpenter Vishwa Karma, patron of arts and crafts, drenching in blood the tools of people’s trade in factories and workshops, which are closed for the occasion. Flowers, incense, and flaming wicks are also used to bring the blessings of this god or of the Goddess Durga on the implements used in all professions, from the weapons of warriors and hunters to the instruments of craftsmen and doctors, as well as students’ books. This literate kind of implement is particularly emphasized by Vaishnavas, with their reliance on Vedic scripture, in their version of these observances over the last three days of Navaratra, which are devoted to Sarasvati, goddess of learning. In Kerala, all of Mahanavami is dedicated to her with pujas performed in the morning and evening, and a range of vegetable offerings slightly larger than that already fea-

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tured at the Pujavaipu ceremony the night before—the night of Durgashtami (“Durga’s Eighth”), also known therefore as Sarasvati Puja. It is done in temples and households with a reputation for learning (like those of brahmins), opened for the occasion to the public, among whom the offerings will be distributed afterward. The ceremony takes place in a decorated room where an image of Sarasvati is set in front of an arrangement of books and scriptures, as well as weapons and implements too sometimes. Studies and all skilled work would have been suspended all day, to resume on the morning of the tenth with the removal of books and tools as part of the breakup of the puja or Puja Eduppu, marking an auspicious new beginning for work and learning. As in New Year customs in Japan or ancient Rome, skilled workers then do a symbolic amount of work with the tools of their trade, and people who can will write the alphabet on sand and read a few sentences from sacred scriptures. Children are taught how to write the alphabet on sand or rice as an initiation into the world of knowledge called Vidyarambham. Only then are they actually entitled to read and write.

The Start of the War Season The following Tenth Day (Dusshera) also used to be the day to worship weapons, as the hero Arjuna did on this day when he took back those he had hidden in a hole in a shami tree, once he came out of a year’s retreat in the forest and set out to fight the good fight against a rival divine clan, as related in the Mahabharata. This is one reason why the feast of Dusshera is of special importance for the princely kshatriya warrior caste, since it used to mark the beginning of the war season as the time for simollanghan, when kings crossed over their borders to fight against neighboring kingdoms. When the military situation did not allow for the regular performance of the appointed puja, prayers and sacrifices would still be made to invoke the blessings of Durga on this day of her own victory over

Mahishasura. In Mysore, Karnataka’s second largest city after Bangalore, it is still celebrated with a pomp and pageantry reminiscent of the days when, there as in other princely states, the Maharaja would come out of the royal palace on a state elephant, preceded and followed by cavalry and infantry, in a procession of nobles and officials, with trumpets blaring and war drums sounding, to go perform these rites at a sacred site outside city gates. In the afternoon of Dasain day, several quarters of Kathmandu hold a “Sword Procession” (Kharga Yatra) where Buddhist priests in a trance wear costumes to represent the deities possessing them as they each hold up a sheathed sword quivering on its own with the energy of Durga’s power, which it symbolizes.

Final Processions On this day in India, images of the warrior goddess are taken out in jubilant processions to nearby bodies of water to be immersed in them. In the morning, married women first bid farewell to the goddess by applying sindar or vermilion to the parting of her hair, her bangle, and her feet, and putting a sweet in her mouth. Then, instead of a puja, there is a Tantric ritual called Darpan Visharpan, where a mirror that has reflected her feet is plunged in a basin of water. In the afternoon, some of her weapons and adornments are removed from the protimas before they are taken on trucks (formerly ox carts) to a gathering point on the banks of the water. There may or may not be a final arti before they are put on a boat and immersed amidst shouts of joy and triumph. People can now go home to an empty pandal for Shanti jal, that is, to receive a sprinkling of the “water of peace” that signals its advent with the final victory over evil. The sacred water vessel and its shrine are also dismantled and the offerings ceremonially disposed of as a brahmin says the Vedic prayer: “Give us peace, O Goddess, preserve peace, and give peace to the earth and the whole universe.”

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The Play of Rama In North India, where Vaishnavas associate Dusshera primarily with Rama’s victory over the demon king Ravana, the Ram Lila (or “Play of Rama”) is the highlight of this festival of the Tenth Day. For the war led by the seventh avatar of Vishnu to recover his wife Sita from her abductor also lasted for ten days. The tale, as told in the great Ramayana epic, is played in different episodes on successive nights by young actors in elaborate costumes and masks. In Delhi, many amateur troupes perform plays, recitations, and music based on the life of the legendary hero Rama. Athletic tournaments and hunting expeditions are often organized too. On the tenth day, there is a procession to the Ram Lila grounds, where huge crackerstuffed effigies of the demon-king Ravana and his brother and son explode and burn to the cheers of thousands of spectators (as at the burning of King Carnival in the West). In the Kulu valley in the Himalayas, villagers in colorful costumes also form a procession of local deities to the sound of pipes and drums. In remembrance of a divine rain of gold in Rama’s kingdom of Ayodhya (during the reign of his ancestor Raghu), rewarding the guru Kautsa— who distributed it to the people—on this day there is also a custom of picking the leaves of apati trees, which people give each other as sone (that is, “gold”).

Seasonal Visitations Across the border in Nepal, the red tika dot worn by goddesses on their forehead was a mark of victory and power often bestowed to warriors on their way to battle in the past as it is nowadays as a general blessing of good fortune on all elders on Dasain. It is vital to visit all of them in rising order of seniority to put some red paste on each one’s hand and forehead. For not to do so would be tantamount to severing relations. On the contrary, all disputes must be laid to rest and goodwill should pre-

vail during the time allotted for going through this rite with all of one’s senior relatives. Tika Puja is the name of this five-day period between Dasain and the “full moon of Kartika” (Kartik Purnima). This may also be reckoned as the midpoint of Ashvina. In Bengal, it is called Lakshmi Puja (like the third day of Divali elsewhere), and the period of mutual visits where people offer sweets, which extends from the “Tenth Day of Victory” (that is, Vijay Dasami) until Kali Puja at the end of the month, which is known as Bijoya, for it is a continuous celebration of victory—that of spirit over matter, of the divine self over base desires, of the light of wisdom over the darkness of ignorance.

Related Festivals Also in Bengal, the month-long autumn festival of Durga Puja used to be echoed by another one when the image of the Goddess was similarly worshiped, but it now appears to be declining. It was called Basanti Puja to mark the spring equinox. In some regions of India, there is likewise another springtime novena or Vasanta Navaratri, culminating on Rama Navami—“Rama’s Ninth” of the waxing, bright half of the month of Chaitra (March–April). The miraculous birth of Rama (as a result of the performance for a childless king of the ancient Vedic ashvamedha horse sacrifice) is then widely celebrated in his temples. The Ramayana is first ceremonially recited and expounded upon there in between concerts over the eight or nine days of Ramayana Week since the official New Year’s Day of India’s 1957 calendar reform, much as in those leading up to the Vaishnava version of Dusshera, celebrating the exploits of a mature Rama. See also Carnival; Days of the Dead (West); Divali; Games (Rome); Holi; New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Sekku; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

n aw r u z | 311 References M. Amanullah. Dashera of Bastar. Photographs by Ashok Pagnis. Bhopal, India: Vanya Prakashan Tribal Research and Development Institute, 1988. Sauresh Ray. Durga Puja, [s.l.]: R. M. E. Press, “Living Festivals” series, 1990. Richard Schechner. Performative Circumstances, from the Avant-Garde to Ramlila. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1983.

◗ NAVA VARSHA See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ NAVU VARSH See Divali

◗ NAW RUZ (ZOROASTRIANISM, BAHÁ’ISM) Celebrated near the spring equinox, on March 21, the ancient Persian festival of Naw Ruz survives today as the New Year celebration of two world religions: Zoroastrianism and Bahá’ism. It also remains a vital part of the cultural identity of the mostly Muslim populations of the Iranian plateau and of adjacent areas in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, but above all of the Parsis of India, who have kept the flame of Zoroaster’s faith alive in exile after Persia became Muslim.

An Ancient Persian Festival of Creation, Redemption, and Spring Naw Ruz (also known as Noruz or Nevroz) means “New Day,” referring to the seventh day of Creation, the one when mankind appeared, in the Zoroastrian account. In Persian mythology, the primordial couple arose out of the semen of the cosmic human archetype Gayomart after he was killed by the Devil, called Ahriman in Persia. Preserved and purified in the sun, this seed then

fell to earth, where it sprouted as rhubarb forty years later, on the first day of spring: Naw Ruz, in the shape of two intertwined figures, one with a man’s face and the other with a woman’s. The Lord breathed life into them and named them Mashya and Mashyani. In 538 B.C.E., the benevolent first world-emperor or King of kings who founded Persia’s Achaemenid Dynasty, Cyrus the Great (for whom the prophet Isaiah first coined the title Mashyakh—the Messiah or “Anointed One” of the Lord—for freeing the Jews, along with other communities, from their Babylonian exile) changed the time of the New Year from the autumn equinox to the spring equinox. He was thus following the pattern of Akitu, the festival of divine and royal enthronement centering on the sky god Marduk and his earthly representative that Babylonia’s last king Nabonidus had been neglecting for some time when his capital surrendered to Cyrus the year before. This was widely seen as a result of his failure to ceremonially reassert divine protection over his realm—a lesson that was not lost on the victorious new Shah, acting as viceroy of the One God of Creation. “It appears almost certain that it was Cyrus himself who imported this foreign practice to secure his seat on the throne, establishing it in the process as the signature of Iranian nationhood” (Kriwaczek 2002, p. 203) even to this day, when the poet Ferdowsi’s national epic Shahnameh (1010) about Persia’s preIslamic glories is constantly referred to around Naw Ruz. On the occasion of this festival, where the king appeared as a killer of the dragon responsible for the dry season, ambassadors and supplicants from numerous peoples within and without this first multinational empire used to come bearing gifts and tributes to the majestic palace complex of the ceremonial capital Persepolis built by Cyrus’s Achaemenid successors Darius the Great and Xerxes I. Their Naw Ruz procession is vividly sculpted along the lower walls of its imposing ruins.

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Naw Ruz is celebrated on the first of five intercalary Gatha days. Named after the five divisions of the Gathas (Zoroaster’s hymns), they separate one year from the next at the end of the month of Âbân and are devoted to the souls of the dead or fravashis—hence this period’s name, Farvardine. Initially, Naw Ruz was the festival of the creation of mankind by God, but it was later also devoted to Rapithwin, who personifies noontime and summer. Nevertheless, for a long time, Naw Ruz was celebrated twice, following both the lunar and solar calendars. In fact, the New Year is still celebrated twice but for different reasons, except by the Fasli sect of Iran; the other two sects (the Qadmis and the majority Shenshais) observe the anniversary of their landing in India as another New Year’s Day around July 21 and August 23 respectively. Celebrations of the standard Jamshedi Naw Ruz (said to go back to King Jamshid of the ancient Peshdadian Dynasty) used to begin on the last Wednesday of the old year, followed by a weeklong holiday, after which they would come to a close on the thirteenth day of the New Year (much as Akitu did at the same time in ancient Babylon). Though this remains a day for picnicking in the countryside and playing seasonal outdoor games, the Naw Ruz holidays with their mutual visits and gift exchanges (be it only of treats and trinkets, extending to colleagues, acquaintances, and even strangers on the street) have otherwise been scaled down to two days. Still, Iran remains plunged in giddy chaos for some ten days before and after March 21, as people travel from one end of the country to the other to spend time and have fun with their families, so that hotels are booked long in advance, and heavy traffic on all roads makes them even more dangerous than usual. As in many other traditions, the Persian New Year is a time to chase evil spirits and invite good energies by cleaning the house and wearing new clothes. In Bombay, Parsi men wear their traditional white coats and pugree hats to the fire temple. There, they take part in most of

the liturgical rites typical of the six seasonal Gahanbar festivals to be joyfully observed by all Zoroastrians: Midspring, Midsummer, Harvest time, the Time of Prosperity, Midwinter, and the spring equinox as the last one. Its Naw Ruz ritual thus includes the Afringan hymns of praise, the Baj prayers to angels and guardian spirits, and the Yasna offering of the haoma drink of immortality, while the Pavi prayers to God and his spirits give way to the Fravardigan and Satum prayers for all the dead. Purity laws need to be observed with special care, as their souls are thought to come out of heaven and hell to partake of the offerings set aside for them at their living relatives’ ritual banquets. This reunion prefigures the joy of the resurrection of the body and the restoration of the Creation of Ahura Mazda (the “Wise Lord” of Avestic scripture) to its initial goodness after Ahriman’s final defeat. Such an eschatological spiritual vision of cosmic redemption overlaps with the seasonal experience of nature’s liberation, central to the ancient Persian New Year festival, when the king was seen as the slayer of the dragon ruling over the dry season. A political meaning can even be discerned in the epic story that plays the same role in Kurdish seasonal songs about a humble blacksmith’s successful struggle against a tyrannical ruler. The celebration of Nevroz among Kurds, long semiclandestine under the repressive regimes of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, can now openly feature traditional festive meals with their symbolic foods.

Persian New Year Customs Like New Year festivals from Britain to Japan, Naw Ruz has its carnival king in the comic figure of Haji Firouz—a wild tambourine-man in blackface and red pants, which goes back thousands of years. In ancient times, a few days before Naw Ruz, the king and his harem would wait for Haji Firouz and his followers to come and dance for them at the palace. Having received a handful of coins from the king to dis-

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tribute to his followers, Haji Firouz would lead them out of the palace in a procession to the houses of all the worthies of the capital to repeat their performance and demand gifts in the name of the king. These could even include slaves and girls for his harem. Haji Firouz might also carry a rope, which he would throw over the wall of a garden. On the other side, the home’s owner had to tie to it the object nearest at hand, so Haji Firouz would predict his future from whatever he retrieved when he pulled back the rope. For instance, pastries heralded a sweet New Year, but a broom announced a rough year ahead. The procession did its rounds until the thirteenth day, when the value of all the presents collected was tallied; if it was above 40,000 riyals, the man playing Haji Firouz was given an important position at court, but below that amount, he was banished from the capital. Today, few Parsis and Iranians suspect the long history behind the trick-ortreating mummers who still go from door to door on Naw Ruz in the guise of Haji Firouz. From the remaining Zoroastrian areas of Iran (like Kerman and especially Yazd—a favorite Naw Ruz tourist destination) to the periphery of Persian lands (as in Kurdistan), there is also a custom that goes back at least to the prophet Zoroaster’s time and finds many parallels in the folklore of the Old World. It is that of jumping over New Year bonfires and chanting: “My yellow to you, your red to me”—yellow standing for disease and impurities, and red for the purifying energy of fire, at the heart of Persian religiosity. Unlike other New Year festivals however, Naw Ruz does not begin at a fixed time of day like midnight or sundown, because it follows strictly the ancient solar calendar devised under King Jamshid and called the Taquim-eNowrooze-e-Sheheriyari, which knows no leap years and always lasts precisely 345 days, five hours, forty-five minutes, and forty-five seconds. In the past, canon shots would mark the exact moment of the New Year, but today it is

A family gathers for a ceremony celebrating Naw Ruz, the Iranian New Year. The ceremony goes back to pre-Islamic times. (Paul Almasy/ Corbis)

announced on the radio—unless, that is, the “rolling egg” method is followed, which consists in placing an egg on a very smooth surface and waiting for it to move ever so slightly on its own, just when the bull holding the world on its horns annually flips it from one horn to the other! At that point, family members have been waiting around a table, clutching coins or green leaves as symbols of the prosperity they hope for over the coming year. To greet its official arrival, the younger ones get up and kiss the hands of their elders, who give their juniors and social inferiors seasonal gifts called eidi—either cakes, flowers, or cash (preferably gold coins), much as in the lucky money pockets also offered by seniors in response to New Year greetings in China. In Iran and among Parsis, older people stay home to receive the homage of younger guests, who soon arrive for their gifts, since young people go visit their seniors in other households and also get gifts from them. All this can also be traced back to the ancient court practice of making formal gifts to the king, as the high priest, called the Mobed mobedan, would present him with twelve items sym-

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bolizing wishes for the New Year. They were: a slave boy, a stallion, a falcon, a sword, a bow and arrow, a ruby ring, a pen and inkpot, and, finally, a golden cup of wine, which he would put in one hand, and a tuft of barley, which he would put in the other hand along with some gold and silver coins. Likewise, Persian people today hold on to coins and green leaves while they await Naw Ruz. When guests arrive at a house on Naw Ruz, they are welcomed by a thoran garland above the door. They then walk over intricate chalk designs on the floor to make their way to the Sofrah Navrozi table that awaits them inside with all kinds of delicacies, such as sev (vermicelli floss candy), hardboiled eggs, curd, and falooda (a seasonal milk and rose syrup drink that is a favorite with youngsters). On this table are also laid a number of symbolic objects, in addition to a Koran that provides a thin veneer of Islamic piety: candles, milk, and a mirror, among other things, but above all, as the centerpiece, a white cloth on which are arranged seven species of flowers, seven kinds of dry or fresh fruit, and seven twigs from different fruittrees, adding up to twenty-one items so as to coincide with the twenty-one letters of the ancient Yatha Ahu Vairyo prayer. Though the items included may vary from one place or one era to another, they all have to be things that start with an “s”—as in surkh for “red.” (So anything will do that is of that ubiquitous color of the Chinese New Year.) Hence the name Haft Seen (“Seven S’s”) for the most important domestic ritual of Naw Ruz, whose origins are as remote as its meaning is obscure. Yet, all places of business have a haft seen table on display and are usually hung with bunches of cypress, myrtle or rue—plants that all have Zoroastrian symbolism. Throughout the day, Parsis greet one another with the rite of hamazor, where one passes his or her right hand between the palms of the other before they exchange good wishes for the New Year. They also call it Pateti, after the Patet

seasonal prayer of repentance for past misdeeds, expressing commitment to right action in the future. In Bombay (recently renamed Mumbai) where most of them live, they flock to the shops that sell seasonal treats and to the theaters that show Parsi plays in the evening.

Naw Ruz under Islam Naw Ruz has endured in Iran (as Persia is called nowadays) as the main, solar New Year—beside the season-neutral Islamic lunar calendar, despite recent efforts on the part of Shiite fundamentalist authorities to discourage the observance of pre-Islamic customs like gift exchanges and thirteenth-day outings amidst a newly verdant nature. During this favorite time for weddings, the Islamic prohibition on alcohol does not even prevent many Iranians from taking out a secret supply of wine—even if (possibly to avoid suspicion) it is made from pomegranates and honey rather than from grapes. Naw Ruz also came back with a vengeance in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban who had banned it outright, even though it is the country’s traditional New Year. For such is this festival’s irresistible appeal that Islam’s Sixth Imam Ja’far al-Saadiq, less than a century after the Muslim takeover of Zoroastrian Iran in 632, could still praise it as follows to a devout Arab visitor: “Naw Ruz is the Day when God made an Alliance with the souls of His servants that they might recognize Him as the One and follow His Messengers and His proofs. It is the Day when the Sun shone on the world, when the breeze rose to fertilize the plants and the earth became verdant” (Mavaddat 1987, p. 23). The Shiite holy man went on to relate to Naw Ruz every past, present, and future event of Islam’s history.

The Bahá’í New Year Derived from messianic forms of Shiite Islam, the Bahá’í faith (which arose in Iran in the nineteenth century and is now professed by five million people throughout the world) has

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adopted Naw Ruz as its own New Year from the days of its forerunner the Bab in 1844. In the Bahá’í nineteen-month calendar that, he then introduced the nineteen-day month of fasting known as ‘Ala (modeled on Islam’s Ramadan) lasts from March 2–20. Naw Ruz immediately follows it on the twenty-first as the New Day at the start of the month of Baha of the spring season and of the New Year, all pointing to the even larger temporal dimension of the new dispensation for a united world which Bahá’ulláh brought to his disciples. For, in the words of his eldest son Abdul-Bahá, they are to “make of this world a New World, so that the old earth disappears and another sphere is born, and that old ideas make way for a new way of thinking” in a kind of spiritual spring. It is the New Year that is the complete turn of a cycle of the year. A year is the expression of a solar cycle; but now is the beginning of a Cycle of Reality, a New Cycle, a New Age, a New Century, a New Time, and a New Year. That is why it is most holy. (Mavaddat 1987, p. 22.) See also Akitu; Carnival; Days of the Dead (West); New Year (China, Korea); New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Nineteen-Day Feast; Purim; Ramadan; Rosh Hashanah; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References Mary Boyce. Zoroastrians. Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. John Ebenezer Esslemont. Bahá’ulláh and the New Era: An Introduction to the Bahá’I Faith. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’i Publishing Trust, 1980. Threety Irani. “Navroze,” in P. N. Chopra, ed. Festivals of India. New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, 1977, pp. 40–45. Paul Kriwaczek. In Search of Zarathustra. The First Prophet and the Ideas That Changed the World. New York: Knopf, 2002. Naw-Rúz = New Day: A Compilation. Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, 1992.

Rochan Mavaddat. “À propos de ‘Naw-Rúz’,” in Bahá’i France, Nos. 9–11, January–March 1987.

◗ NEMEAN GAMES See Games (Greece)

◗ NEMESIA See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ NENOHI NO EN See Sekku

◗ NERONIA See Games (Rome)

◗ NESTEIA See Thesmophoria

◗ NETJERYT See Khoiak and Heb-Sed

◗ NEUJAHR See Midwinter

◗ NEVROZ See Naw Ruz

◗ NEW FIRE CEREMONY (AZTECS) For the Aztecs, the end of time came every fiftytwo years, when the two calendars they used finished on the same day. This meant the sun god Tonatiuh might have to submit to the returning culture hero Quetzálcoatl (the “Feathered Serpent”) instead of the supreme air god Tezcatlipoca as usual. So as to allow time to start anew, in imitation of the sacrifice of two primordial deities who had thrown themselves into the fire of creation to give rise to the sun and moon, Aztecs would first let all old fires go out and then hold a New Fire Ceremony (Toxiuhmolpilia), also known as the “Binding of the Years” (Nexiuhilpilitzli), the greatest and most solemn of their public festivals.

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When Two Calendars End at the Same Time The Aztecs shared a combination of two calendars with other Central American peoples like the Mayas. The ritual calendar used in divination, called tonalpohualli, comprised all possible combinations and permutations of twenty named days with thirteen numerals, adding up to a 260-day year. The civic solar calendar, called xiuhpohualli, regulating agriculture and business, grouped tonalpohualli days into eighteen named “weekly” periods of twenty, adding up to a 360-day year (not unlike the nineteen “weeks” of nineteen days of the 361-day Bahá’í calendar). To reach 365 days, five intercalary days, (or nemontemi, (the Nahuatl word for “hollow” or “superfluous”) were added, separating the last month of one year from the first month of another and considered inauspicious as a time of instability (just like the five days of the epact bridging the lunar and solar years in ancient Egypt). Solar years were in turn grouped into cycles of fifty-two, since this is the interval at which the solar and divinatory calendars would be completed on the same day, as part of a “calendar round” of the 18,980 possible combinations of the two sets of dates. This is reflected in the thirteen turns that four flying acrobats dressed as macaws—the sun’s sacred birds—have to swing around a pole on the end of ropes rotating at the top in the volador game still played at Mexican fiestas, since thirteen times four equals fifty-two solar revolutions.

A Brush with Doom The entire cycle always ended on a 1 Malinalli (a Nahuatl word for “grass”) in the divinatory tonalpohualli calendar. To avert the possibility that the world might end with it, certain precautions were called for on that date. To prevent pregnant women from turning into wild animals, they were shut up inside the granaries, while children were kept awake lest they turn into rats. Fear kept people awake all through that night anyway. As in much New Year folk-

lore, there was furious sweeping and cleaning of everything in sight. All Aztecs then threw away into water, burned, or broke their possessions, casting out the old to make way for the new—be it idols, furniture, mats, pestles, or hearth stones. In this way, dumps of pottery have been able to provide a neat clue to the chronology of Aztec styles. This holds even more clearly for temple pyramids, as they were rebuilt for every new fifty-two-year cycle, like the one at Tenayuca, enlarged at regular intervals in 1299, 1351, 1403, 1455, and 1507.

Rekindling the Fire Most importantly, the fires in all Aztec dwellings and temples were allowed to go out with the old cycle. People waited with baited breath for the outcome of the New Fire Ceremony that alone could rekindle them if the world was allowed to go on for another fiftytwo-year period. In order to perform it, priests marched in solemn procession up the Hill of the Star on a peninsula near Culhuacán to wait for the star Yohualtecuhtli (either Aldebaran in the Taurus constellation or the Pleiades as a whole) to get past its zenith, which would show that the world was allowed to get past this point in time. Having ascertained this, they would tear out the heart of a sacrificial victim and kindle a flame in a small wooden hearth they placed inside the hole left in his chest. Just as in many similar new cycle fire rituals the world over, the priests used an archaic drill method to generate this sacred flame. It was then carried to all corners of the land on pine sticks to light the fires anew in every hearth, including the sacred braziers of perpetual fire, that numbered over 600 in the capital alone. With the conclusion of this Binding of the Years, the Aztec world came out of the shadow of dread to find a new lease on life, which the people celebrated with feasting. See also Busk; Easter; 8 Monkey; New Year (West); New Year (China, Korea); New Year (Japan); Nineteen-Day Feast; Samhain

n e w ya m f e s t i va l | 317 References Anthony Aveni. Empires of Time. Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures. Rev. Ed. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002. Alfonso Caso. The Aztecs. People of the Sun. Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1958. Brian M. Fagan. The Aztecs. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1984. George C. Vaillant. Aztecs of Mexico: Origin, Rise, and Fall of the Aztec Nation. London: Allen Lane, 1975.

◗ NEW MONDAY TO NEW FRIDAY See Easter

◗ NEW MOON See Rosh Hodesh

might not be so helpful the next year. In many other cultures, chiefs or village elders consult with ancestral spirits to determine the exact date of the New Yam Festival, but among the Ewe as in most of Ghana, it is traditional calendar experts such as the head fetish priest who calculate it and inform these local authorities. Depending on the place, the Ewe New Yam Festival can begin as early as August 12 and last as little as two days in Tsome, or fall as late as September 27 and last for over a week as in Nyangbo, not to mention a few spots where it has been absorbed by the November commemoration of a tribe’s migration to its current home, as in Kpedze. In view of the many local variants in the details of the rites involved, it is mainly the Ewe of Peki near the lower Volta River that will be considered here.

Welcoming Worthies ◗ NEW YAM FESTIVAL (EWE) Throughout the yam-growing areas of tropical West Africa, where its greatest civilizations (Ashanti, Dahomey, Ife) have arisen, one of the most important festivals is still the annual blessing of a new harvest of this indigenous staple. Its main outline may be discerned by focusing on the Ewe-speaking peoples that settled in southern forests and close to coastal areas from Benin to Ghana. They now know it as Tedudu (“yam-eating”), though older generations preferred to call it Dzawuwu (“purification”); these two names reflect twin aspects of the festival.

The Timing of a Unique Harvest Ritual In Ghana, only those Ewe who live in the interior of the Volta Region have a festival for yam—while their other crops (which include corn, rice, and cassava) are not singled out for one. This is because growing this tuber requires the most attention and work, and the help of gods and spirits is therefore acknowledged by presenting its first-fruits to them—or else they

The Pekis, who once belonged to the sphere of influence of the Akwamu branch of the Akan peoples, have kept the calendar common to them to calculate the start of their own yam festival in the first half of September, following one of the Adae forty-day cycles that begin on a Sunday (Akwasidae) as opposed to a Wednesday (Awukudae). Like those of many tribes on a New Yam Festival, the paramount chief of Peki invites the other local chiefs for Akwasidae. He then slaughters three sheep to serve to them, along with wine brewed from the sap of palm trees that elders have ritually felled in a sacred grove on an auspicious day. Some unfermented wine is sent to the priest for his initial offerings in the fetish house. The chief ’s senior spokesman pours wine as a libation to pray for the welfare of the assembled chiefs and their subjects—whose elders will also be invited for drinks by the chiefs once they return to their respective villages. On this first day, there is drumming and dancing in all of them before the town crier announces that the next Tuesday will be the day of general cleansing and purification.

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Expelling Evil After sunset that Sunday, each home is swept clean by the housewife, and all fires are extinguished so hearths too can be cleaned and the ashes taken out of town. There, the men meet the fetish priest, and they put together the various plants and animals gathered for a ceremony in which the priest ties up evil spirits and witches (symbolized by a chicken and a frog) to a branch. (In Ghana’s Ho district—famous for its yam festivals—a young oil palm leaf is used instead.) He then drags them in a procession to the ash heap. They are left there after prayers meant to ensure that no evil gets any nearer than this point. In some places, the roads are either magically sealed (as in Wodze) or physically barricaded (as in Kpeve) to prevent evil from entering a village. The cassava crop even used to be thrown out of town with much abuse as undesirable at this point in Agate’s purification rites, because of the plant’s exotic origins. In all Ewe fetish houses, sacred objects— such as the ceremonial stools in which ancestral spirits dwell—are ritually cleansed too. On this Tuesday in Peki, those people who have been widowed over the last year are supposed to quit their mourning, and there is no funeral (only a summary burial) for those who die between the town’s purification and the actual harvest celebration on Friday.

The Offering of First-Fruits In preparation for this offering, Pekis go dig up their yams on Thursday, only to hide them in the bushes outside of town, since they should not be brought in before sunset. More importantly, to prevent evil from entering the area, the first-fruits, specially grown in a special plot tended by the priest (as is also the practice among Nigeria’s Ibo) should first be offered by him—in this case at a forest shrine of the war god Tato, along with corn flour, wine, and water. Nine times over (to square the sacred number three), he can then apply a slice to the tongue of a harvester and then a slice of the

largest yam of the new crop to his own tongue in the fetish house. This special yam is often grown in a corner of the house from the head of a yam planted there on the previous year’s New Yam Festival Friday, in advance of the regular February planting season. The priest also pours fermented wine, egg yolk, and ram’s blood on three spirit stools, before villagers come to kneel before them in thanksgiving, while sweet wine is being poured. Only then can they proceed to harvest their own tubers. If anyone tastes the yams prematurely, he faces serious punishment and fines, as this is thought to jeopardize the village’s survival and well-being by leaving it open to wrathful or evil influences. This taboo on eating (or even bringing home) the new yam before a certain point is a common feature of all versions of this festival, from Ivory Coast to Nigeria. It distinguishes this harvest festival from others in the same region, such as the Homowo of the Ga around Ghana’s capital Accra. Yet it is no longer observed as literally as it once was, since food is grown out of reach of urban masses and brought in from far and wide by modern means of transportation. This makes it impossible to keep track of where a crop comes from and ensure that no one eats it before it is blessed. With this blurring of local patterns of sacred space and time and the general secularizing impact of modernization, many yam festivals are by now maintained largely as mere social occasions, without strictly observing this premise of their propitiatory ceremonies.

A Week-Long Holiday In Peki’s New Yam Festival early on Friday morning, every village chief sends a chicken and two yam tubers to the fetish priest. He uses them to prepare a communal meal of yam fufu in front of the fetish house, where all are welcome to partake of it. In Ho on the first Sunday market in September, it is prepared in the house of the paramount chief, to make sure he

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is first (after the fetish, that is) to have his share of the new yam. Much as elsewhere in Eweland, some of it is also divided into two portions, one of which is dyed red with a mixture of egg yolk and palm oil. Both are then scattered around the house, as well as on the ground—as an offering to the implements used to harvest the precious crop. There follows a big parade of new yam tubers in front of the assembled chiefs and priests. In some places, this has turned into an agricultural show since German colonial rule in Togo. Where Christian missionary influence has prevailed, a preacher’s sermon or a church service may also precede the drums signaling that every household can now have its own yam-based festive midday feast, with yam fufu and chicken or fish as the main course. After lunch, people call on the other families of the neighborhood to bring them best wishes for the New Year if, for instance, the Akan calendar applies. All the while, the fresh crop of yam tubers is proudly displayed in every peasant’s home. Drumming, dancing, and all manner of rural fun and games can also begin. They will go on almost unabated for about a week of wellearned rest from a difficult harvest, for as the Ewe saying goes: “If you labor for something, you must enjoy its sweetness.” The way the holiday comes to a close in Peki is fairly typical: a male family member takes a firebrand from the hearth to chase evil spirits from every corner of the house and all the way out of town, before throwing it into the branches of a tree. See also Adae; Busk; Situa References C. A. Ackah. “The Historical Significance of Some Ghanaian Festivals,” in Ghana Notes and Queries, No. 5, 1963, pp. 16–27. E. Y. Aduamah. “The New Yam Festival Among the Ewe: A Comment,” in Ghana Notes and Queries, No. 12, June 1972, p. 31. D. G. Coursey. “The New Yam Festival Among the Ewe,” in Ghana Notes and Queries, No. 10, December 1968, pp. 18–23.

Geoffrey Parrinder. West African Religions. A Study of the Beliefs and Practices of Akan, Ewe, Yoruba, Ibo, and Kindred Peoples. 2nd ed. London: Epworth Press, 1961.

◗ NEW YEAR (BALI) See Nyepí

◗ NEW YEAR (CHINA, KOREA) The celebrations of the Chinese New Year take place between New Year’s Eve and the Festival of Lanterns on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, usually falling between January 19 and February 23. They combine festive observances of many types: seasonal, mythical, and religious. Their common theme is clean endings and auspicious beginnings. Like the season’s foods, they come in endless local variations. Among the basic customs are: welcoming a new Kitchen God, displaying New Year prints and Spring couplets, setting off firecrackers, visiting family and friends, giving lucky items, hanging red lanterns, enjoying Lion Dances and other performances, and the like.

Place in the Calendar The New Year has been known by many names over more than 2,000 years as a Chinese national holiday (though 2002 corresponded to the Chinese year 4700 in a traditional count that comes into effect on the winter solstice or Dong Zhi). Among them are Yuan Zheng (“Beginning of the Month”) and Yuan Shuo (“First Day of the First Month”). This first lunar month starts toward the end of winter, when Chinese peasants have time and food enough to spare, with nothing better to do than wish for the best over the coming year, by consuming the fruits of the past one and disposing of its undesirable residues. Then on February 5 or 6 comes the first of twenty-four divisions— Jie Qi—of the peasants’ solar calendar, called the “Beginning of Spring”—Li Chun. The New

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Year has been named after it: the Spring Festival (Chun Jie), ever since the Republican Revolution of 1911 brought the adoption of the Gregorian calendar the next year, as well as the dating of Chinese years from the accession in 2698 B.C.E. of the legendary Yellow Emperor (said to have instituted the traditional calendar on March 8, 2637 B.C.E.), instead of from the beginning of the current emperor’s reign or his own declaration of a new era, as had been customary until the abolition of the monarchy. Under this name, the lunar New Year was distinguished from January 1 (the official start of a New Year) by referring to its approximate solar date. The use of the Western calendar was more strenuously imposed after the Communist Revolution of 1949, with the result that the Chinese New Year was long celebrated less extravagantly on the Chinese mainland (with the exception of Hong Kong) than it was (and still is) in Taiwan as well as in Chinese communities in other Asian countries. There, every business and public institution closes for what remains the biggest event of the year, which is something like American Christmas and Thanksgiving rolled up into one. As for people of Chinese background in the West, they often have to make a conscious effort to hold on to this essential part of their heritage instead of just following local holiday customs, at the same time as it is gaining new visibility in the general population through the schools, the media, and many shops. The New Year’s Day of some other Far Eastern cultures, such as Korea’s Seol, Vietnam’s Têt, and Tibet’s Losar, is also celebrated by largely following local versions of China’s calendar and customs.

New Year’s Eve On the sixteenth day of the twelfth month, by the festive meal following the old year’s final sacrifice to the Earth, all old things (such as clothes) have to be either gotten rid of or renewed. Since lunar New Year’s Eve is a time to take care of loose ends, work contracts, mar-

riage promises, and other pending affairs have to be settled by then, and the last day of the year is considered auspicious to make sure they are and that any quarrels are resolved. This includes settling debts (an aspect also known in Western and Korean New Year customs), so as to be able to start the New Year with a clean slate. In Taiwan, those who cannot pay sometimes take refuge in the front seats of theater performances given in temples on this day, so that their creditors will not dare come after them to pay up in full view of an indignant holiday audience. If people need to clean up the house and take out the garbage before the New Year, it is not only in order to make a fresh start, but also because it is believed that the year’s wealth would be thrown away with the trash if this was done during its first two days. They sweep every corner of the house, as a way to clear it of the accumulated evils of the past year. (This is done by torchlight in Korea, in order to prevent new demons from coming near.) It is important not to sweep outward through the threshold, as this would also sweep away the family’s luck, just as using knives and scissors would cut it off, so that people have to get haircuts a few days in advance. The same thing would happen if they failed to hide their brooms afterwards (much as, in the West, looms should be put away during the Twelve Days of Christmas). Witness the merchant Ou Ming of a New Year cautionary tale: when he tried to brutalize again the beautiful servant girl he had been given by a wizard along with lots of jewels, Ru Yuan disappeared with them inside a broom, leaving its careless owner a pauper. But with the New Year also come new evils, slipping through the crack between two cycles of time. It is in order not to lay themselves open to the attacks of demons and misfortune that Chinese people make sure they at least give the impression of being happy and wealthy, by putting on their best and newest clothes for instance. This is also why they ring in the New

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Year by letting off rounds of firecrackers day and night. This scares off evil as it did the onefooted little people haunting hilltop bamboo groves in ancient times. It was said that they came down once a year (when one year ended and another began) looking for things to eat and spreading disease to the mortals they met. Yet, they could not stand the crackling noise of bamboo tubes as they burst in the fire, which firecrackers have been imitating ever since. Likewise in Greece, the loud bursting noise of certain wild plants when they are thrown on the burning Yule log never fails to drive away the pesky little people called kallikantzaroi, who poison food and can only come up from the bowels of the earth to roam it over the Twelve Days of Christmas, hinging on the New Year. And just as ancient Athenians surrounded their temples with a red thread to prevent them from being polluted by such evil spirits during the festival of Anthesteria in February or March, the lucky color red—seen everywhere around the same time of year during Chinese New Year celebrations on account of its yang associations with the fiery brightness of the sun and the life force of blood that demons cannot stand—is the one thing that is sure to prevent the ogre Nian (whose name means “year” in modern Chinese) from coming to devour humans on New Year’s Eve. For he might get tempted to return to his bad habits of a long time ago, before a wise old man convinced him to prey on other monsters instead. This is said to be the reason why, before every New Year’s Day, people started to hang red paper bands with wishes for happiness to enter the house above their front doors, as they would eventually begin writing auspicious words in gold ink on parallel sheets on either side. However, these Spring couplets have a more likely source in the peach-wood talismans that were put up from about 3,000 years ago on the first thirty days of the year. While the peach is a phallic symbol that can drive off evil and confer immortality, the talismans represented Shen Tu

and Yu Lei as kings over ghosts and demons. It was believed the two gods had subdued them on the orders of the God of Heaven, because they had been gnawing at the peach trees of the Peach Capital Mountain in the East China Sea, the first island to catch the light of the rising sun every day. These fierce protectors thus came to be associated with the peach trees they stood guard over. At first sculpted in peachwood, they were later simply evoked in writing on parallel peach-wood boards that people would hang on both sides of a double door. Emperor Meng Shang of the Later Chou Dynasty (951–960) once asked some scholars to compose auspicious verses to put on the boards on either side of his bedroom door on New Year’s Eve. Unhappy with the results, he came up with his own, and this began a trend. Under the Sung Dynasty (960–1279), members of the Imperial Academy put Spring couplets on paper and hung them at the gates of the Palace. Then Hung Wu, founder of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), told all nobles and ministers to imitate him in hanging parallel sentences (duizi) on the front doors of their residences for the New Year. The custom spread to every home in China. There had long been a similar custom of hanging pictures of two guardian gods (Men Shen) on double doors, and of repainting them in bright colors every New Year. The pair became specifically identified with generals Qin Shubao and Yuchi Jingde, who had stood guard before the bedroom of Emperor T’ai Tsung (626–649) to prevent the ghost of the Dragon Lord of the Jing River from haunting him in his sleep for having failed to prevent his execution by the heavenly Jade Emperor. To allow them to also get some sleep, the monarch had their images painted on the Palace gates, and common people put up reproductions on their own front doors. Men Shen were but one in a range of favorite themes illustrated on nianhua—hand-painted woodblock prints that became immensely popular in late Imperial

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China to decorate houses on New Year’s Eve. Some nianhua represented exorcists, who played the same defensive role as door gods. Others jointly evoked the pantheon of China’s “three religions”—Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism—to bring down their respective blessings. Others still brought luck by depicting the objects of wishful thinking—plentiful crops, male heirs, worldly success in affluence and prestige, and colorful scenes of the idealized home life of the well-to-do—or from famous plays, stories, and legends. With the industrial production of such prints as China’s version of season’s greeting cards, their imagery and symbolism may have been simplified, but hundreds of millions are still made and distributed every year. On New Year’s Eve, humans also have to actively relate to the higher realms, by performing the appropriate ritual, for good fortune to come down. Families have to get together for this, so China’s trains are overflowing with people trying to make it home for the “year change” (guonian). At nightfall, the doors of houses are supposed to be shut and locked. Tables are put up for the gods in front of their home altars. These hold dishes of three main meats (pork, chicken, and fish), lucky red tangerines (which visitors also bring with their leaves intact to symbolize a lasting and secure relationship), and rice cakes, as well as spirit money. Prayers begin as the incense sticks are lit, while the gods are offered wine so as to put them in a festive mood. When the incense is half burned and the gods have had their meal of the food offerings, they are ready to receive offerings of spirit money. Like ordinary money, it symbolizes worldly goods, except it is meant to be burned as a way to transfer this wealth to the other world in payment of a debt of gratitude for divine gifts. After this has been done, the tables are moved to the left of the gods’ altars to make offerings to the ancestors’ altars. Aside from rice in which red paper flowers have been stuck (which symbolize the household’s abun-

dant supplies, although nothing is supposed to be left of the old year but these festive offerings), the ancestors, having seniority, first feast on the aromatic essence of all the food and rice wine before leaving the tasty substance for the New Year’s Eve dinner of their living descendants. This is the most copious meal of the year, at its most auspicious when it comprises eight courses, because that number sounds like the verb “to grow” in Chinese. If a family member happens to be missing for this all-important gathering, an empty chair may be set at the dinner table with the person’s clothes on it. Under the round table, a heater (or lu, the same word as for “incense-burner”) adorned with a string of coins symbolizes family unity, life, and luck. Like the different kinds of fresh flowers (normally associated with funerals during the rest of the year) and the miniature prosperity tree that adorn the home as a promise of spring, all dishes have a symbolic meaning as a wish for luck. Fruits with many seeds like peanuts stand for the wish to have children in the coming year. Sweets stand for all good things, greens for growth, fish for surpluses, dumplings for money, and such. This is just the beginning of chuxi, which means “spending the night”—from New Year’s Eve to the next morning—in order to usher in the New Year. Oil lamps and red candles are put in every corner of the house to expel evil spirits lurking there. The entire family stays up long after the eating winds down. Children refuse to go to bed even though they are dozing off, and the longer they stay awake, the longer their elders are supposed to stay alive. (As a prank based on folklore, Korean children even get their eyebrows painted white if they do fall asleep.) Men chat; women are busy in the kitchen preparing more food for New Year’s Day or more spirit money for the ancestors. For these will be attended to again at daybreak, with offerings to their tablets or their portraits (just as in the Korean charye ceremony). It is also at dawn that the men of the house will welcome

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back the Kitchen God, Zao Wang. This male guardian of home fires was sent off to Heaven on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month to make his annual report to the Jade Emperor on the behavior of all members of the household. Offerings on that occasion were meant to bribe him into hushing up anything negative and even included sticky sweets or glutinous rice that would literally keep his mouth shut or garble his report. His image had been burned in the courtyard with spirit money amid firecracker bursts, which will also welcome him back when the new image of the god is put in its frame on New Year morning. When such images are “bought,” it is important to say the god is “invited” and avoid using words that make him sound like a commodity, as he might get offended. Nowadays, three quarters of the Chinese mainland’s population actually spend New Year’s Eve watching a four-hour-long Spring Festival variety special on the China Central Television network—a tradition of sorts since 1982.

New Year’s Day On the “First Morning of the Year”(Yuan Dan) at the start of the “First Day” (Yuan Ri) as the “Time of the Beginning”(Yuan Chen), it is vital to make auspicious first moves, as on New Year’s Day anywhere. Since killing is out of the question, this is considered a vegetarian day. Traditionally, the whole family would put on new clothes (often with a touch of red), pray to its ancestors, and look up in an almanac an auspicious time and direction to move toward for its first walk outside the house. After arranging offerings to the God of Happiness, all would carry lanterns and set off firecrackers to drive away disease and secure peace, stopping at every temple on the way to burn joss sticks and pray the returning gods for a good year ahead. Later that day, Chinese people may have their fortunes told. In any case, as in most cultures, they still try to visit their relatives and

acquaintances to give them their best wishes for the New Year—an activity known as bai nian, zou chun, or tan chun. A prominent member of the community with too many people to visit all might just send them his name card instead or a card bearing the character fu—for “prosperity.” Group visits between palaces on New Year’s Day started under the Ming Dynasty some six centuries ago and eventually became widespread in all of society. When a Chinese person gives New Year greetings to somebody senior (typically unmarried children to their elders), in return, he or she gets some lucky yasui money in a lucky red pocket (called lai see in Cantonese and hong bao in Mandarin) as a kind of birthday gift— since everyone is now deemed to be a year older. For Chinese children kneeling before their elders (as French Canadians also once did before their father for his New Year blessing), this used to be the only money they could spend freely, without parental hindrance, to buy candies, melons, and especially the ubiquitous lucky “red” oranges and mandarins. In Taiwan today, thousands line up to receive about $6 of lucky money from the President, but many may be turned back when pockets run out. As in Indian New Year customs, gambling and betting are allowed in order to test one’s luck for the coming year. But the general idea is that “giving and receiving lucky money signifies good luck for all. Those who give will in turn receive” (Gong 2005, p. 15), according to the basic principle of the gift and the obligation to return it by a counter-gift that regulates premodern social exchanges, as typified by the Native American potlatch in anthropological literature since Marcel Mauss’s Essay on the Gift (1924). In Hong Kong, there is a New Year parade of one to two dozen floats through the streets of Wanchai quarter. In Indonesia, 2003 was the first year when the lunar New Year could be observed as a public holiday by the relatively rich but resented and mistreated Chinese minority.

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In Korea on the New Year, sebae (a formal bow of respect to one’s elders) is followed by seongmyo (bowing to the ancestors’ graves, as one would if they were alive). Bowing to the dead or the living used to be just as important in traditional etiquette.

Second Day In China, the second day of the New Year is also devoted to making visits, with a special focus on married women, who go back to their parents’ home and see their siblings again, bringing their own children, along with some gifts. In return, they are given sugarcane and lettuce to bring back home as blessings of sweetness on their families. Visitors get tea and cigarettes. Members of a clan used to have a New Year reunion (tuan nian) at their common ancestral shrine, where they would congratulate each other, chat, have some food, and play games. At home, this is the day to “attract wealth and draw in treasures” by displaying pictures of the God of Wealth (Cao Shen). Somebody often dresses up to play his part and hand out money and sweets to children, like Saint Nicholas in the West. At night, families set lanterns afloat on a body of water.

Third Day No visits were made on the inauspicious third day of the New Year, the “loyal dog day” of staying home and “sending away poverty.” This took the form of cleaning the house and taking out the trash to be burned in the fields. Other ways of keeping filth and poverty at bay and bringing in happiness and wealth included prostrations to Cao Shen, setting off firecrackers, and lighting incense sticks and candles. However, lanterns had to be put out early, and people did not stay up late, so they would not disturb the rats as they came to feed on the grain and salt scattered on the floor for them. For this was an auspicious day for animals (the birthday of all dogs or that of pigs, and the day when rats got married), country people said.

Fourth Day It is on the fourth day that all deities formally come back to earth. To invite them, their pictures and those of their guards are burned with spirit money and incense, food is offered, and firecrackers are set off. In order not to offend possible latecomers from the celestial realm, the welcoming ceremony only takes place in the afternoon. During this New Year period on the hinge of time, when the eternal gods come down to mix with lowly mortals, people refrain from using needles, for fear they might inadvertently prick their invisible guests. They also ought to make some noise before entering the bathroom to use the toilet, so the gods have time to slip away in case they should happen to be in the room and are not made to witness anything unsightly and offensive. This is considered to be the birthday of ducks and sheep.

Fifth Day The next day is that of “Breaking the Five” (Po Wu). All five elements combine, as an ordered cosmos, on the birthday of the gods of the five directions, when they are inspecting the human realm in person. (This is also the birthday of cows.) People then pray for good fortune and prosperity, having removed previous offerings. Businesses offer the gods red cloth and hang some on their storefronts, as they reopen after the one long holiday of the Chinese year. The fifth day’s weather is supposed to be an indication of the weather to be expected in the year ahead—much as on Candlemas at the same time of year in the West.

Sixth Day It is around the sixth day (the birthday of horses) that Lion Dances begin. Since there were no lions in ancient China, they had the same mythological status as dragons and unicorns and the same magical power to chase away evil spirits. It is as a kind of exorcism that seven to ten uniformly dressed men perform

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their elaborate dances, holding up the fanciful shape of a lion. The same goes for the smaller lions that may be seen doing the rounds of all the houses of a Chinatown, as if trick-or-treating, from January through April. They chase away demons and bring good fortune to homes and businesses by dancing amid the crackle and smoke of firecrackers, once they have been fed treats dangling at the end of ropes from sticks hand-held out of doors and windows.

Ninth Day The ninth day is the turn of the Jade Emperor or Mister Heaven (Tiangong, in popular parlance). On the birthday of this head of the Chinese pantheon, people make an effort to avoid offending Heaven by losing their temper and disturbing mutual harmony. This is also the birthday of fruits and vegetables.

Tenth Day This is the birthday of grains.

Seventh Day

Season-Long Activities

The seventh day of the year commemorates the seventh day of Creation, when (much as in the Persian account or on the sixth day of Genesis) the goddess Nü Wa shaped humans out of mud into her own likeness. Chinese women perform similar gestures a night in advance to prepare dim sums for a meal of seven symbolic dishes with seven candles. They have to first make peace among themselves and keep children out of the kitchen, for fear that careless talk might dispel the lucky harmony symbolized by dim sums, causing them not to cook well, or worse, to burst in the boiling water. This would spell trouble for the whole year, while counting them would bring poverty. The same applies to the jiaozi dumplings that are renamed yuanbao in Northern China at this time of year, after the ancient gold ingots they are shaped as, symbolizing fortune along with the eight specific lucky items inserted in one of each of the eight kinds of yuanbao to be mixed into the batch; they can then function much as fortune cookies to indicate to the family members who find them what blessings they may expect over the coming year.

During the first ten days of the lunar year in Korea, each house hangs a fortune mesh dipper on the wall, to hold taffy, matches, or money. In China’s country villages, drum and gong bands are heard from New Year’s Eve to the end of the Spring Festival. Throughout Southeast Asia, raw fish salad or yu san is a seasonal meal enjoyed between these two dates, even beyond Chinese communities. Among these, other seasonal activities include opera performances, walking on stilts, dragonlantern processions, bamboo merry-go-rounds, and Boat Dances, culminating on the fifteenth day of the New Year with the Festival of Lanterns.

Eighth Day The eighth day is reserved for paying homage to the stars—praying to their god, making nocturnal offerings to them, attending temple fairs, walking to high places, viewing flowers. It is also the birthday of rice.

See also Candlemas; Christmas; Dionysia; Divali; Dong Zhi; Epiphany; Holi and Vasant Panchami; Laba; Lantern Festival; New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Nyepí; Saint Nicholas; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References Patricia Bjaaland Welch. Chinese New Year. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997. Wolfram Eberhard. Chinese Festivals. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1958. Rosemary Gong. Good Luck Life. The Essential Guide to Chinese American Celebrations and Culture. Foreword by Martin Yan. New York: HarperResource, 2005. William C. Hu. Chinese New Year: Fact and Folklore. Ann Arbor, MI: Ars Ceramica, 1991.

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◗ NEW YEAR (INDIA) See Divali, Navaratra and Dusshera, Paryushana and Dashalakshana, Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ NEW YEAR (ISLAM) The Islamic year begins on the First of Moharram, which is the first month of the Arabic lunar calendar, with the Day of the Hegira (Hijra)—the Prophet Mohammed’s trek from Mecca to Medina, marking the beginning of the Muslim era. But this relatively late addition to the Muslim cycle of celebrations may coexist with other New Year observances not specific to Islam.

Alternate New Year’s Days For in some Muslim countries, New Year’s Day (Ra’s el’aa’am in Arabic) is not only the First of Moharram. It can also be the first day of another calendar—a solar one, like Naw Ruz on March 23 in the Persian calendar as in Iran, or Yanayer (January 1) in the Julian calendar still used in the Maghreb since Roman times for economic activities. Thus in Tunisia, the Julian New Year (called Ras el’aa’am el-’aajmi as opposed to Ras el’aa’am el-’hijri—the Hijra New Year) is celebrated thirteen days after the Gregorian New Year, since the modern Western calendar has official status throughout the Maghreb as in Turkey; this means that Tunisia celebrates New Year’s Day three times! But regardless of the increasing role of the Gregorian calendar and Western New Year observances, the First of Muharram has remained sacred for all Muslims since the early modern Ottoman era as the Day of the Hegira, marking the birth of Islam as a community of believers in One God and in His Prophet Mohammed.

The Day of the Hegira The term Hegira (from the Arabic hijra for “leaving, breaking away”) refers to the miraculous escape of the Prophet Mohammed and his

companion Abu Bakr from the plots of their pagan enemies in Mecca. It relates more specifically to the moment they reached Quba, the southernmost tip of the oasis of Mecca, on the eighth of Rabi’al-Awwal in the Arab calendar— a date corresponding to September 4, 622. Mohammed and his Companions had recently concluded the Pledge of War with those who were now their Helpers—the people of the Nawfal clan of Medina who had come to Mecca for the annual pilgrimage (which had been performed by Arabs since time immemorial before becoming one of the five pillars of Islam). This new alliance that reached beyond tribal clan allegiances allowed the Prophet to join them in an indissoluble union based on his new creed, which took precedence over blood ties such as his own with the Quraysh clan of Mecca. This was an even more radical step for Arabs than the adoption of monotheism (indigenous forms of which had long coexisted with their traditional polytheism). This is the meaning of Hijra—not just an emigration, but a painful break with the past, and specifically from communion with a wellknown lineage of dead ancestors and living relatives on which Arabs based their personal and collective identities up to that point. These family ties were left behind along with Mecca’s idolatry of many gods, just as Abraham had left Ur of the Chaldeans and his father’s idols on God’s command to establish His chosen people in the Promised Land of Canaan. Likewise, it was in the second holy city of Medina that Muslims shifted their allegiances from the local tribe to the universal Umma, which, as one community for all believers of whatever background, now reflected among men the supreme unity of a transcendent God. This is why they eventually started to count years from the one of this turning point, the Hegira. Yet they did not start with its actual date but with the first day of that year, corresponding to July 16, 622. It was adopted as the official start of the Muslim era, from which its years were now to be

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counted, under the second Caliph or successor of Mohammed after Abu Bakr: Umar ibn alKhattaab (581–644). On the eve of the First of Moharram, an important assembly is held in mosques to commemorate the historical Hegira and reflect on its spiritual meaning. Beyond that, the Muslim New Year’s Day is also marked by seasonal greetings and the telling of edifying stories about the founders of the faith. See also Naw Ruz; New Year (West) References Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi. The Hijrah, Its Philosophy and Message for the Modern Man. Lahore, Pakistan: Islamic Book Foundation, 1981. Zafarul-Islam Khan. Hijrah in Islam. London: Muslim Institute, 1997. V. V. Tsybulsky. Calendars of Middle East Countries: Conversion Tables and Explanatory Notes. Moscow: Nauka Publishing House, Central Department of Oriental Literature, 1979.

◗ NEW YEAR (JAPAN) Traditionally in Japan, the New Year holidays, mostly known as Shogatsu, are a time to expel demons, give thanks to the gods, and welcome ancestral spirits, in order to secure good fortune over the coming year. The celebrations of this quiet, yet vibrant, season are associated either with the first day of the year (Oshogatsu) or the year’s first full moon (Koshogatsu ), the latter following the native Japanese peasant lunisolar calendar, and the former the Chinese lunar calendar officially adopted in the sixth century, which was replaced by the Gregorian solar calendar after the Meiji Restoration of imperial power, ushering in rapid modernization in the late nineteenth century. The four different dates of New Year celebrations—the first day and first full moon of the solar and lunar calendars—varied a lot until the latter’s were then fixed on February 1 and 15.

Year-End Preparations Come December, popular year-end parties reminiscent of Christmas office parties and known as bonenkai are held in pubs and restaurants by all kinds of Japanese associations and companies, though participants usually pay their own share of expenses. Seasonal decorations are sold at temples and shrines at year-end fairs called toshi no ichi. The word toshi means both “rice” and “year,” because the peasants’ solar calendar used to revolve around the planting and harvesting of this staple crop before the official adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1873. In some rural areas, the old calendar is still used to determine the date of New Year celebrations (which may fall there anywhere between January 20 and February 19). Whatever the date used, the New Year is preceded by a period of purification starting in the last days of the old year with a ceremonial housecleaning. At the very least, home altars are then dusted off. Set on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month by the official calendar of the Tokugawa shoguns (who ruled Japan in the Emperor’s name from 1603 to 1868), the Sweeping of Soot (Susuharai) was even then observed at a later date in practice. To this day on New Year’s Eve, called omisoka in Japanese, just before midnight, Buddhist temples all over the country begin a countdown of bell peals known as joya no kane. The bells are struck 108 times to symbolize the purification of this canonical number of earthly desires (bonno). From 774 onward, on the imperial court calendar of annual events (nenchu gyoji) of the Heian Period, the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first days of the last month were devoted to On-Butsumyo—the General Confession of the sins committed over the closing year. Different Buddhist priests held services each night in private residences and in the palace. There, a statue of the merciful female deity Kannon was set up along with painted screens depicting the horrors of hell. They

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Young women at a Japanese New Year celebration throw beans to drive away evil spirits for the year, ca. 1950. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

households where small children or a new bride are to be found are invaded by a pair of demons (played by local boys) who come to threaten them on New Year’s Eve. Reflecting the duality of “rough” and “gentle” or “blessing” aspects in Japanese deities, one of these Namahage is red and carries a stick with Shinto’s sacred white paper tassels, and the other is blue and wields a butcher’s knife, beating a wooden bucket with it. When the intruders eventually settle down, the master of the house, who is formally attired, comes with wine and food to entertain them as he assures them that his bride is a good housewife and the children are not crybabies. This ancient practice is reminiscent of the holiday questing and mummering customs that abound in various parts of the West, especially around the New Year from Saint Nicholas to the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Spring Cleaning served as a reminder to courtiers of the need for penitence. On the last night of the year from 706, officials from the Ministry of Central Affairs would join the Masters of Yin-Yang to recite special spells in a Service of Expulsion called Tsuina. One of the Imperial Attendants was selected as Devil Chaser (Hososhi). Wearing a golden mask and a red skirt, accompanied by twenty assistants, he would do the rounds of every building and courtyard of the Palace. He was supposed to expel all evil spirits prior to New Year rituals proper, by twanging his bowstring, shooting arrows into the air, and striking his shield with a spear. By the eleventh century, the Devil Chaser tended to get confused with the devils he was chasing. It therefore became customary for the gentlemen of the Court to shoot arrows at him and his assistants. (Chroniclers have not bothered to specify if the unkindly targeted exorcists were ever actually hit.) Similar steps were taken in the private households of notables. In parts of northeastern Japan—especially on the Oga Peninsula in Akita Prefecture—all

The eve of the old solar New Year’s Day is when “spring begins,” according to its Japanese name: Risshun. Many New Year customs confirm this original link with the expected coming of spring as a time of rebirth. Among them are the bright green, yellow, and pink colors of the plant-shaped rice cakes with which are decorated the branches hung from the ceiling of all the houses of Ojiya in Niigata Prefecture. One year in three, Risshun used to precede the main, lunar New Year’s Day— Ganjitsu or Gantan (“Day of Origin”). Since the coming of spring or Setsubun was scheduled on the third or fourth day of the second month, some of the observances traditionally held on this day still take place between February 3 and 5, even though this is the coldest period of winter. The best known is the ritual of opening the doors and windows of houses and expelling bad luck and demons by tossing beans into the air while saying, “fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto” (“fortune in and demons out”). Health is secured by eating the number of beans equivalent to one’s age, and it is digni-

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taries of the same Chinese astrological sign as the current year who throw soybean packets from special wooden boxes at the crowds gathered outside Buddhist temples for this Bean-Scattering Ceremony or Mame-Maki. The practice is reminiscent of the ancient Roman fertility rites of the Floralia, when beans were also thrown at the people, as well as of the domestic exorcism of the Lemuria, in which the master of the house tossed beans over his shoulders to drive away restless spirits. Likewise, the Mame-Maki used to be performed at the Imperial Court on the last day of the lunar year, only to sweep away the spirits of winter cold and gloom and welcome springtime cheer with the New Year. In a similar vein, the Great Purification (Oharai) services to cast out evil influences were not only conducted on lunar New Year’s Eve from remote antiquity, but also on the last day of the sixth month (another crucial point dividing the two parts of the Japanese year), as well as in times of special need like epidemics. In all cases, having attained ritual purity by fasting and abstinence, princes and officials would gather by the main gate of the Imperial Palace to perform a Shinto service purging the emperor’s subjects of their impurities and sins. The sins of the monarch were removed by washing his life-size effigy (mi-agamono) in a river. Today still at the Gion Okera Festival in Kyoto, a sacred fire of the medicinal herb okera (Atractylis ovata) is kindled in Yasaka Shrine on New Year’s Eve. It is then distributed on lengths of special rope until the early hours of the New Year. Visitors can thus take the fire home to cook their first meal of the year with it, in the hope of remaining free of illness throughout the year. A very similar fire purification ceremony is also held at Omiwa Shrine in Nara Prefecture. The principle seems to correspond to that of the Yule log and other sacred fires of the New Year, to be found since ancient times in many traditional cultures all over the world.

Auspicious Beginnings This practice is also a good illustration of the principle that still draws millions of Japanese people (and all of them in the past) to their places of worship on the first day of every year. It is then that the native gods, the kami, are revitalized. New Year’s Day is therefore the best day to seek their blessings, because the kami are at the peak of their power and efficacy. Letting this opportunity go by would be inauspiciously starting the year on the wrong foot, with a deficit of energy, thereby inviting misfortune. Whether good or bad, the kind of fortune met with during the crucial first days of the year makes of its first month the Standard Month (Shogatsu) that is representative of what is to be expected of its other eleven months. First recorded in 642, the initial ceremony of the New Year among Japan’s ruling élite used to be the Obeisance of the Four Directions (Shihohai). It has been observed regularly from the reign of Emperor Saga (809–823) to this day. When Kyoto was the capital in the Heian era (794–1185), the Emperor would go before dawn to the Eastern Garden of his Residential Palace to call upon his guardian birth star from among the seven stars of the Big Dipper. This was in accordance with the astrological usage of China’s Tang Dynasty. He would look to the Great Ise Shrine and make obeisance to the heavens and the earth in the four directions, as well as to his parents’ graves. He then prayed gods and ancestors in turn for a prosperous reign and the subjugation of evil spirits. After doing similar rites in their own mansions, nobles would go to pay their respects at that of the foremost of their kind, the powerful head of the Fujiwara clan and Chancellor of the Realm (kampaku). They were later admitted to the Imperial Audience Chamber for the Lesser Obeisance. This was introduced as Kochohai around 850, to replace the more elaborate Tang-style Choga ceremony. Still observed today (albeit in modified form), the New Year’s Day Feast (Ganichi no

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Sechie) arose in 649 from the practice of giving tributes of food, clothes, and services in honor of the New Year. Until the third day, from about 815, various types of spiced wine were prepared as an elixir of longevity by the Palace Medicinal Office and tasted by specially appointed virgins. They were given to the Emperor as New Year Medicinal Offerings (O-kusuri), in addition to lucky foods like melons, radishes, and mirrorshaped rice cakes. This ceremony was known as the “Tooth Hardening” (Hagatame). It was meant to ensure the monarch’s good health (“hard teeth”) over the coming year. Nowadays, Japanese people pray to obtain this blessing for themselves, as they toss coins in the offertory box of the first of the local Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples they are supposed to visit on January 1—a custom called Hatsumode. But the main purpose of the visits used to be to pray for good crops and the household’s safety over the coming year. They were traditionally made to Shinto shrines located in a “favorable direction” from home. Among the most visited Shinto shrines during the first week of the New Year are the Meiji Jingu Shrine in Tokyo, the Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine in Osaka, and the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine in Kyoto, while the Kawasaki Datsiti Temple in Kanagawa Prefecture and the Naritasan Shinshoji Temple in Chiba Prefecture are the most popular Buddhist temples for Hatsumode. On New Year’s Day before sunrise (which crowds still gather to watch, with ceremonial hand-clapping as to a deity in certain rural areas), all family members would traditionally put on their best outfits. Having drawn the first water of the year (wakamizu), the head of the household or its firstborn son would then pour the water into a basin for all other family members to wash their faces (as in some Greek New Year customs). They would then gather in front of the home altar to light candles and offer rice cakes to their ancestors, and proceed to exchange formal New Year’s greetings around the

table, before drinking the ceremonial wine poured by the head of the family and eating a bowl of the traditional zôni rice paste soup. Aside from vegetables, the chief ingredient of this soup is mochi glutinous rice, the staple of the holiday season; countless round cakes are then made from this paste. Other seasonal dishes include sweet black beans, mashed sweet potato with chestnuts, rolled seaweed, and above all, fish. This is boiled to a paste, made into a salad, mixed into egg rolls, dried as a candy, or seasoned, as in the case of herring. These foods remain available for family and guests until January 20. Over this festive period and on the first day in particular, Japanese people make a point of visiting each other and exchanging gifts—a New Year custom also found in China and Europe since ancient times. In Japan, it still serves to underline the expression of appreciation that is the key principle of the rules governing all social interactions. This even extends to inanimate objects, such as the working tools that farmers and fishermen decorate during New Year celebrations to show their gratitude for the indispensable part these play in their livelihood. Starting on New Year’s Day and throughout the holidays, people receive greeting cards or nengajo from relatives, friends, and acquaintances. More than four billion nengajo were sent annually for the New Year at the turn of the twenty-first century. Over the holidays, children receive special gifts of spending money—otoshidama from their parents and relatives, often amounting to several tens of thousands of yen in the case of high school students. On the year’s second day, at home or in public, young and old execute in fine calligraphy their first formal writing of the year or kakizome. It is a reminder of the time when the second day was the one when arts and crafts could ritually commence for a New Year (being taboo on New Year’s Day as in ancient Rome). But nowadays, January 4 is the First Business Day (Goyo Hajime).

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The fifth day of the year used to be set aside for the Bestowal of Ranks, or Joi, at the early medieval Heian Court. The Chancellor and the Great Ministers would do this while very formally seated at the emperor’s Residential Palace and then pass on a cup of sake wine. On the year’s first Day of the Hare (u)— which was the fourth day of the duodecimal cycle—the U Staff (Uzue) ceremony was performed from 689 onward. Japanese courtiers would give bundles of staves to the Emperor, to the Crown Prince, and to one another. These were meant to ward off evil spirits and attract divine blessings. Uzue spread beyond the Court to Shinto shrines in the medieval Kamakura and Muromachi Periods, and to the people of Osaka and what is now Tokyo during the early modern Edo Period. The ceremony is said to be based on the one designed by the usurper Wang Mang, who ruled over the Chinese Empire from 8 to 23, to signal with a pole the disgrace of the legitimate Han Dynasty. But Uzue is more closely related to other Japanese folk practices once observed at Court. One of them that has spread throughout society since the Edo Period consists in decorating doorways with pine boughs and bamboo, so as to attract and shelter benign deities and the returning souls of dead ancestors for the New Year. As symbols of stability, these ornaments are woven together with bamboo, representing righteousness, in kadomatsu bouquets that are placed at both sides of the entrances of dwellings and businesses, and they play a similar role as the tall sasatake bamboo pole with streamers on Tanabata no Sekku—the summer Festival of the Weaver. Another traditional door decoration combines elements that also stand for specific New Year wishes: a small bitter orange for the family’s longevity, a lobster more specifically for that of its currently living members, a bit of seaweed for happiness, and a piece of fern for purity and fertility, all of which hangs on rice straw rope that stands for unity. Oversized, elaborately woven shimenawa sacred ropes of

this kind, meant to keep out evil spirits, also appear hung on their own over gateways, and some shrines and temples are famous for the monstrous proportions of theirs.

Women’s New Year The New Year kami’s temporary dwelling places are ceremonially burned on the fifteenth of the first month in what is called Tondoyaki in eastern Japan and Sagichô in western Japan. In some areas, sacred “year (or rice) wood” (toshigi and toshi meaning both “rice” and “year”) is still cut to be burned, as it was at the Court on this day in a Kindling (Miramagi) ritual first recorded in 675. Thus, in Niigata Prefecture’s Sai-no-kami or New Year Deity SendOff, children heap old rice stalks over pine branches gathered from the mountains to form the Fort of the God. They then place their offerings at its feet before setting the teepee-like structure on fire and waving farewell to the deity, who from heaven will stand guard at the gate for the arrival of the following year. Until then, one may be saved from catching a cold by eating rice cakes toasted in its burning dwelling. The fifteenth of the first month also used to be the day of the first Full Moon of the New Year (Koshogatsu). Survivals of this archaic Japanese New Year’s Day in farming villages focus on imitative magic like the making of rice cakes in the shape of fish and flowers to encourage fertility and an early spring, and may include the ritual planting of rice in the snow (unique to Japan) during the second week of January. On this Little New Year or Women’s New Year (Onna Shogatsu), women would chase each other and playfully whack one another with the elder-wood sticks used to stir a special Full-Noon Gruel (Mochigayu). This was thought to magically promote the birth of male children, especially since the first month was dedicated to the Shinto deities of the male element. But this practice was also common among the upper classes, and it thus appears in

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the classic Pillow Book written by Court Lady Sei Shonagon around 1002. At the Court, the Imperial Water Office would prepare the same gruel to offer it to the Emperor. On the following day, the sixteenth of the first month, the Ceremony of Beating Time to a Song (Toka no Sechie) would be held at the Palace. These dances were originally performed in the eighth century by Chinese expatriates, following a Tang Dynasty custom. By the ninth century, they had become amalgamated with the Utagaki folk festival and were now done by a group of forty ladies-in-waiting to accompany a poetry recital. During that same Heian Period, a shellmatching game (kaiawase) popular among aristocrats developed into a seasonal card game called uta karuta that involved swiftly matching the initial three lines of any of the classic One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets (Hyakunin isshu) to the next two from another 100-card set. For generations thereafter, young men and women would socialize on the occasion of the New Year by playing this game that helped them learn classical poetry. It is still played in period costume on January 3 in Kyoto’s Yasaka Shrine. A kind of backgammon called sugoroku also used to be popular at this time of year. Until modern forms of entertainment started to compete seriously with seasonal games, small boys would fly kites and be more likely to spin tops than little girls, who alone played shuttlecock (hanetsuki) with battledores elaborately decorated as effigies of historical warriors, kabuki actors, movie stars, and other celebrities. From 860 onward, New Year celebrations were concluded at the Court on the eighteenth day of the first lunar month with the Bowmen’s Wager (Noriyumi) between officers of the Inner Palace Guard and the Middle Palace Guard. This archery contest was followed by a banquet, where Court dances were also performed competitively, and there was a prize for the winning team and cups of defeat for the others. In contemporary Japan, the festive season closes with the January 15 national holiday known as

Adults’ Day or Coming-of-Age Day (Seijinno-Hi), in honor of people who have reached their twentieth birthday over the past year. In this government-sponsored rite of passage, young people are officially bestowed the right to drink, smoke, vote, marry without needing their parents’ permission, and contribute to the National Pension Fund. Along with many older people, they make offerings for a successful adult life at their neighborhood shrines and temples (although in Tokyo the Meiji Shrine is favored by all). For this, they put on their best traditional clothes, especially the women. This long used to be the Women’s New Year after all! See also Christmas; Days of the Dead (West); Floralia; Gion Festivals; Kasuga Festivals; Khoiak and Heb-Sed; New Year (China, Korea), New Year (West); Saint Nicholas; Sekku References Reiko Mochinaga Brandon and Barbara B. Stephan, eds. Spirit and Symbol: The Japanese New Year. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts and University of Hawaii Press, 1994. Takutaro Sakurai. Japanese Festivals: Annual Rites and Observances. Tokyo: International Society for Educational Information Press, 1970. Tal Streeter. The Art of the Japanese Kite. New York: Weatherhill, 1974. Yoshiko Yamamoto. The Namahage: A Festival in the Northeast of Japan. Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978.

◗ NEW YEAR (NEPAL) See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ NEW YEAR (TIBET), NEW YEAR (VIETNAM) See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ NEW YEAR (WEST) Though steeped in folklore, in the Western world, New Year celebrations do not have the

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official religious status they possess in other traditions. Yet this was the case of January 1 in the ancient Roman calendar, now in universal use in its updated Gregorian version. This reformed calendar was adopted in 1582 by Catholic countries, while others only gradually followed suit—from Scotland in 1660, through Germany and Denmark around 1700, to Sweden and England in the early 1750s. Though William the Conqueror had already switched the date of the New Year in the latter country from December 25 (the day he was crowned after his Norman invasion in 1066) to January 1, later on Great Britain had joined the medieval Western European norm in taking the year to begin with spring on March 25 (as had been decreed for Rome by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.E.). The climax of New Year celebrations came a week later on April Fools’ Day—a time for pranks reminiscent of the year-end Feast of Fools, and, like it, originally a French custom. (Similar practices characterize India’s Holi festival by the end of March.) At the time of Rome’s foundation, a primitive ten-month year used to begin in March there. These former springtime New Year celebrations went on being observed in Rome long after the year was made to start in January (just as in Japan today the Little New Year of an archaic calendar survives on January 15 beside the official Gregorian New Year).

Fire and Water Folk traditions of pagan origin have long surrounded January 1 as New Year’s Day, even though some customs (like children begging for money from door to door) shifted to or from Epiphany as the peasants’ Great New Year on January 6, or to or from Christmas and the winter solstice. In the latter case, the reason is that days start growing longer at the darkest time of year, when the year itself grows short, and a new year will soon be in the upswing. On both New Year’s Day and the winter solstice, the waning of something that is on its

way out overlaps with the waxing of new beginnings. This kind of pagan light symbolism is still explicit in Rio de Janeiro’s Réveillon (a French word for a late-night holiday party), which is the most spectacular New Year celebration of its kind in Brazil, even though it actually follows the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. From dusk to dawn, devotees of the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion (widespread in the country’s urban centers) lead about a million white-clad people in a procession to the beach, where they launch tiny candlelit boats into the sea as macumbas (offerings) to their chief goddess Iemanjá, who is patterned after the Virgin Mary. (She is also identified with Saint Barbara, patron of seamen, who head out to sea with their own offerings to promote the success of the coming year’s catch.) To have their wishes fulfilled, the devotees have to jump over three waves and throw flowers into the sea. They keep on praying and dancing to music from big loudspeakers well after midnight, when splendid fireworks are launched from all the hotels along the beach. In their original European context, like the related Carnival practice of burning winter in effigy, New Year fireworks are a common way of marking the triumph of new light over all that dies away in darkness, and one method among others to make a racket that will scare away the demons of winter. Another one may still be observed in North America in some remote subarctic communities like Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, where all shotguns fire thunderously into the air for fifteen minutes at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve— much as they did in colonial Manhattan. Many folk customs, however, emphasize the delicate formal transition between a dying fire and a new fire. This was a central feature of the Celtic New Year celebration of Samhain on what is now Halloween. In many northern locations of Great Britain, there is still a custom of “burning the old year out” in a civic bonfire.

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A related pattern of lighting thirteen fires or thirteen candles often appears in Epiphany customs of the British Isles. It may be likened to the traditional thirteen desserts of the Christmas Eve dinner in Provence, especially in Nice. There, the Nativity is still called Calèna in the local dialect of the Occitan language—a clear reference to the calends of January, that is New Year’s Day in the ancient Roman calendar. In both cases, the number thirteen, accounted for by folklore in terms of Jesus Christ and his twelve disciples, is more likely to be pure New Year symbolism, standing for the sun and the year’s twelve months. In ancient Egypt, the religious New Year that began on the first day of the month of Thoth (marked by the rise of the brightest star Sirius in conjunction with the sunrise around midJuly) was solemnized by lighting a taper with new fire in Karnak’s sacred precinct. Outside it, friends and relatives exchanged wishes and small gourds of the water drawn at dawn (to repeat divine creation at the dawn of time) by priests who would distribute it at the conclusion of the procession of the supreme sun god Amon’s huge and precious water jar, as a magic symbol of the flooding of the Nile just starting in the south. Likewise in Great Britain, “New Year Water” drawn from a town’s public water supply (a well, spring, or river) was widely presumed to bring good fortune to all it touched, be it people, beasts, or implements. Competition was sometimes fierce between families to be the first to get the water at dawn on New Year’s Day; they might camp all night around a well and fight for access to it in the morning. This water was often kept in bottles all year long, like the water blessed on Epiphany by Orthodox priests or that drawn from the local fountain on the dawn of Christmas (when it was not holy water from the September 14 Holy Cross service) in Greece in order to make the yeast needed for baking bread over the coming year. There, the distinct rite of the “renewal of water” is also observed on January 1 as

Saint Basil’s Day. All containers in the house must be emptied of water and replenished with “Saint Basil’s water” obtained from the well that morning, following rites that usually involve food offerings to the Nereid water spirit dwelling in the spring or fountain. Thus, in Aetolia, corn is thrown into this body of water by a child who then says, “May riches flow as water flows” but is not to utter one word, neither on the way to fetch the “speechless water” nor on the way back home, where all will drink from it and wash with it. On account of its reputed curative properties, water was also drawn in strict ritual silence from brooks and fountains on Easter morning in folklore ranging from Germany to French Canada, where it is even bottled by mineral water plants to be sold in drugstores, with profits going to charities. If such New Year magical practices sometimes ended up on Christmas or Easter, the Western Church had long projected Easter-like sacrificial symbolism onto New Year’s Day by making it the feast of the Circumcision, honoring the first shedding of Christ’s blood eight days after his Nativity, as Jewish law demanded of male infants.

Shapeshifting and Gift-Giving But the Church did not tolerate as easily other age-old pagan New Year customs. Christian authors consistently condemned New Year deer and bull masquerades, especially after their religion became official in the Roman Empire. For putting on an animal’s head meant playing at being the god it stood for and overwriting the image of God in man as restored in Christ as God-Man. This did not stop most people, even though they were baptized believers, from going through the motions of their Celtic ancestors’ rituals that made them one with the deergod Cernunnos. He was known in Britain as Hern or “Old Hornie”—hence the word “horny,” originally referring to the sexual energy of a beast as displayed in the yearly renewal of its horns. (The reason for New Year

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kissing under the mistletoe is also that this plant is a fertility symbol, since it is still green and growing white fruits in the middle of winter.) Identifying with the deer made sense as the seeds of a New Year were sown. But access to the Kingdom of God beyond time depended on personal faith, not on biological reproduction over time. As Saint Maximus of Turin put it around the turn of the sixth century in his Sermon No. 64 (p. 156): “How then are you able to celebrate the Lord’s Epiphany religiously when, with your greatest devotion, you have also celebrated the kalends of Janus?” The first resolution of a Church synod held in Auxerre in Burgundy in 603, renewing canon 23 of the Synod of Tours that had officialized the Dodecahemeron or Twelve Days of Christmas in 567 (the better to control pre-Christian survivals), was to ban both the wearing of masks and the exchange of New Year gifts on January 1. Generally consisting in money (referred to as “stips” in this festive context), these seasonal gifts were called strenae in ancient Rome, where, for instance, schoolmasters expected them from their pupils, by courtesy of the parents. Derivations of this old Latin word are still quite common in modern Romance languages, with the same basic meaning of New Year or Christmas presents. From its French form étrenne has come the verb étrenner, to refer to the tentative and playful, yet solemn, first use of a new object. This was just the point of the Roman strenae: to ensure auspicious beginnings so that good fortune would spread over the coming year from its highly sensitive first day.

Starting the New Year on the Right Foot Presents were part of a whole range of ways of starting the New Year on the right foot. Tripping on the threshold of the house when setting out on a journey was a bad omen at any time of year. But January was the month of Janus, the god of thresholds—like those between different realms: the divine and the human, past and fu-

ture, the old year and the new. The poet Ovid portrayed the god Janus explaining to him in these terms various January 1 customs. On this holiday, people did not just rest; they also made a symbolic show of attending to their daily occupations, since being inactive on the first day of the year might make them lazy all year. Thus, the judges would sit without giving out sentences, the troops would be gathered with their insignia, peasants would put a hand to various tasks. The latter would invoke Janus first in their sacrifices to Mars to purify their land, since he was the mediator between mankind and the gods, the Janitor at the door, as well as the god of beginnings. Not only prayers, but all words, had their full weight on this day when the gods’ ears were open like the doors of their temples. So Romans tried to avoid quarrels and idle talk and wished each other well as a good omen—the origin of our season’s greetings. They offered sweets so that the whole year might keep the sweet taste of its beginnings, from the three traditional gifts: dates, figs, and honey, given in a white jar. This is also why Greeks still break a pomegranate over the threshold on New Year’s Day. They always make sure the dinner table is laden with fruits, honey, olive branches, and other symbols of happiness. These include many cold and hot dishes as a good omen for the year (not unlike the Sofrah Navrozi table in Iranian homes on Naw Ruz, the ancient Persian New Year that is celebrated on the spring equinox), as well as the dead relatives’ portion of “Saint Basil’s colybes”—corn cakes that keep away evil and spells. Conversely, coffee should not be drunk or ground, as it could give its bitter taste to the year. Greek housewives still offer buns, cakes, nuts, or coins to children on this day when they are joined by the grown-ups in going from door to door singing kalandai (carols) as on Christmas. But this time, they all convey their wishes by tapping every member of the family on the back with a green rod, among other symbolic actions they may perform to se-

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cure the household’s happiness and prosperity over the coming year, in addition to each carrying an auspicious object: an apple, an orange, a paper ship, or a paper star. In some parts of Greece, windows and doors are left open all day for all comers to get a piece of cake. Front doors are hung with wild lily (brought on the way back from getting “speechless water” to touch the head of everyone in the house with wishes for a happy New Year) around Marathon, with wild hyacinth in Athens, but most often with olive or laurel branches, as used to be done in Constantinople. This former Eastern imperial capital relayed to the Greek populations of northern Turkey an ancient Roman custom of replacing the old olive branch over the fireplace with a fresh one. As a sign of joy and ritual purity, it was dressed in white that the Romans went to Capitol Hill to attend the inauguration of the new consuls. The consuls wore the new purple robes of their office as they sat for the first time in their ivory chairs, which had just been carried separately in a procession to the temple of Jupiter. There, young bulls, raised in sacred enclosures and free of the stain of labor, were sacrificed to please the gods, after the omens about the coming year discerned on the dawn horizon by an official augur had been announced to the people. Saffron was burned in the gilded temples of the Capitol, and the golden reflections of the crackling fires were also very auspicious. Senators, knights, and commoners who could afford it brought money to the Emperor, with which he bought statues of the gods. Poor plebeians (“clients”) would offer their wealthy patrician protectors (“patrons”) a bronze coin of the lowest denomination—the as with which the Roman currency started, and which appropriately bore the two-faced effigy of Janus. No matter the value of the money offered, the idea was that, as a gift, it was a favorable omen of good fortune. This principle was called “saining” in British folklore, and translated into many superstitions

also embedded in Far Eastern New Year customs (except that, as on the summer solstice Midsummer and Dragon Boat festivals, the Chinese thought it more auspicious to refrain from activity than to add to the upsurge of seasonal energies). Among these are the need to sweep the house by midnight so none of the dirt of the old year is carried over into the new on its first day, when nothing should be thrown out so fortune does not decrease over the year, and nothing should be washed or else a family member may be washed away, just as bills should be paid and debts settled by then so the year is not marked by a deficit. The same concept applied in Great Britain as in Greece and other countries to the “First Foot,” the first visitor to cross the threshold of a private house on New Year’s Day. Because his or her identity was also an omen for good or ill over the coming year, the visit of a neighbor or a friend was often arranged in advance so as to avoid the bad surprises that blind luck might otherwise bring. The visitor was warmly received, as he or she was supposed to bring small gifts for every person in the household, often replaced by flowers, mistletoe, or holly (or even a stone in Greece, where the resulting heap is thrown away after eight days). Such New Year visitation customs were entrenched in colonial Manhattan, where Christmas was a purely religious festival, as in England. This pattern endured until fairly recently in Scotland and France, and even in French Canada. There, New Year’s Day was the high point of holiday season revelry in large family gatherings, though it began on a solemn note with the (grand)father’s formal blessing of his kneeling children, young and old. The grownup ones who had moved out would rush to his feet to receive it as soon as they entered the house. Only later would one think of the étrennes, but soon thereafter groups of men would start dropping in on their rounds of New Year visits, kissing the ladies, taking a drink, and giving their wishes before leaving their cards.

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Whereas in many parts of continental Europe, the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counterreformation had often shifted New Year presents and other customs to Epiphany, Anglicans eventually blended them into their pious observance of Christmas, regarding New Year’s Day as a pagan affair. In the newly independent United States of America, the kind of riotous urban street revelry out of which Philadelphia’s New Year’s Day Mummers’ Parade later evolved was still frowned upon in respectable circles. There was long some hesitation in these quarters about the most suitable date for a gentrified revival of Manhattan seasonal customs: Christmas or New Year’s Day? Christmas won out in its current form due to the wide popularity of Clement Clarke Moore’s poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas, the work of an Episcopalian, shaped by Anglican tradition.

A Springtime New Year’s Day In ancient Rome too, the attributes of the winter solstice and New Year’s Day were somewhat interchangeable, due no doubt to the close analogy between the shortening, then increasing length of days and the diminishing, then rising number of days. When Ovid asked Janus why the New Year began in winter, the god’s answer pointed to the winter solstice. “Winter has the first new sun and the last old one: So Phoebus [the sun] and the year begin the same”(Fasti 1:163–164, p. 8). Ovid had been arguing that springtime would have been a more obvious starting point for the year, as it had been for his distant forebears. He saw as evidence that the Roman year used to begin at the calends of March the practice still observed in his day of putting new laurel trees and removing the old in front of the ancient Curia and Regia temples on March 1. Laurel had purifying properties as the symbolic plant of PhoebusApollo, the sun god. The Roman names of the months we still use today, when they include a number, are obviously counted from March, two months later than January. Thus, Septem-

ber is not the seventh month its name implies, but the ninth, and so on to the “tenth”—December—in twelfth place. It had been so for centuries when Ovid was writing his Fasti at the beginning of the Roman Empire. Yet the “New Year” inauguration of consuls had only been set on January 1 since 153 B.C.E.; before that, starting in 222 B.C.E., it had been performed on the fifteenth of March (the ides) and for a while in the fourth century B.C.E., on the first of March (the calends). To this day in parts of Switzerland on what is called Chalanda marz, young people crack whips and sound bells of all sizes, like hellish carnival music in the chaotic gap between two years. This “old” March 1 New Year was the one that the Vestal Virgins had always observed in their temple on the Forum, by putting out the sacred fire they kept on its hidden altar, to then rekindle it by the archaic method of rubbing two pieces of wood from certain auspicious trees. Likewise in parts of Greece, there was until recently a custom of lighting a new fire on March 1 after putting out the old fire the previous day. In ancient times, the druids used a method similar to that of the Vestals (not to mention the Aztecs at their New Fire Ceremony every fifty-two years) to rekindle their sacred fires, and from them, all the fires of Celtic lands; only they did it two months later on Beltane, the feast of Bel, their version of the sun god Apollo, who is triumphant on May Day. Conversely, the humble Christ Child, as the “Sun of Righteousness,” was later welcomed in British, French, and Balkan homes in the darkest night of winter with the solemn lighting of the Yule log, recalling old springtime fire rituals long connected with the New Year in Rome. See also Annunciation; Beautiful Festival of the Valley; Carnival; Christmas; Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Dragon Boat Festival; Easter; Elevation of the Cross; Epiphany; Feast of Fools; Holi; Lupercalia; Matronalia; May Day; Naw Ruz; New Fire Ceremony; New Year (China, Korea), New

338 | n i n e t e e n - d ay f e a s t Year (Japan); Nyepí; Panathenaea; Saint Nicholas; Samhain; Saturnalia; Vestalia References Edwin Oliver James. Seasonal Feasts and Festivals. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961. Raymond Montpetit. Le Temps des fêtes au Québec. Montreal, Canada: Les Éditions de l’Homme, 1978. Stephen Nissenbaum. The Battle for Christmas. New York: Knopf, 1997. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 2000. Max L. Raab. Strut! (Documentary film about Philadelphia’s New Year’s Day Mummers’ Parade.) Max L. Raab Productions, 2002. The Sermons of Saint Maximus of Turin. Tr. Boniface Ramsey. New York: Newman Press, “Ancient Christian Writers” No. 50, 1989.

◗ NEW YEAR NEW YEAR NEW YEAR NEW YEAR

FOR ANIMALS, FOR KINGS, FOR TREES, FOR YEARS

See Tu bi-Shevat

◗ NEXIUHILPILITZLI See New Fire Ceremony

◗ NGURLMAK See Kunapipi

◗ NIGHT OF ONIONS See Khoiak and Heb-Sed

◗ NIGHT OF POWER See Ramadan

◗ NIGHT OF THE PRINCIPLE See Lantern Festival

◗ NINETEEN-DAY FEAST (BAHÁ’ISM) Recurring on the first day of all nineteen weeks of a 361-day year (plus four extra intercalary days called ayyám-há to match the solar year), the Nineteen-Day Feast, or Bahá, is central to the practice of the Bahá’í faith, and it is the touchstone and model of its humanitarian vision of religiously guided direct democracy. It fulfills both a spiritual and administrative function at the grassroots level of the local assemblies that have to be constituted wherever at least nine Bahá’ís are living.

Principle The Nineteen-Day Feast was instituted by the Bab, the Forerunner of the Bahá’í faith, and ratified by its founder Bahá’ullah in his holy book the Akdas, so that his followers would meet and express friendship and love, thereby manifesting the divine mysteries. According to Bahá’ullah’s son Abdul-Baha, the goal of the festival is to establish concord, uniting hearts by fraternization in mutual help. These are at the basis of society, because human beings cannot exist without a tangible link between them. Cooperation and mutual help are the preconditions for the progress of any important movement, and this is why the Nineteen-Day Feast was described by Bahá’ullah as the very foundation of the new world order he came to build, even though, strictly speaking, it does not constitute an obligation like temperance, the three daily prayers, or the annual week of fasting, ’Alá (which is derived from the Moslem holy fast month of Ramadan).

◗ NIGHT OF SHA’BAAN See Ashura

◗ NIGHT OF SHIVA See Mahashivaratri

Symbolism Monthly units are replaced by nineteen-day weeks in the Bahá’í calendar, similar in this to the traditional calendars of Central America

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and Indonesia. What is unique to it, however, is the perfect symmetry between the weekly and yearly cycles, since the nineteen weeks of the year have the same names as the nineteen days of the week, of which ’Alá is the last, immediately followed by Bahá, the first day of another week, when the Nineteen-Day Feast is held. There might then be readings from the Béyan, the holy book of the Bab, organized in strict parallel to the calendar he devised, in nineteen-chapter sections called vahid, as are nineteen-year Metonic cycles (numbering exactly 235 full moon cycles), nineteen of which add up to a kull-i-shay, a cycle of 361 years of 361 days. Similarly, if the nineteen sections of the Béyan had been completed as planned, the number of chapters in the Babi holy book would have added up to 361, “the number of all things” following which God is supposed to have organized Creation, since it is the square of nineteen as the number of unity. But it was probably chosen because it “most closely approximates 19.1113, the square root of the total number of days in the solar year, 365.2422. In other words, the Bahá’is’ nineteen-day weekly cycle is the closest approximation of the square root of the annual cycle. By introducing it, they have managed to establish the most symmetrical relationship possible between the week and the year, which no one else throughout history has ever managed to accomplish” (Zerubavel 1985, p. 49).

ternational concerns of the faith. It is through the channel of the Nineteen-Day Feast that individual believers can forward their suggestions and recommendations to the National Spiritual Assembly, provided they have first been approved by their own community and submitted to the Local Assembly. The National or Local Assembly’s answer to these resolutions is then conveyed to the local community at the next Nineteen-Day Feast. The third part of Bahá observances consists in informal socializing, usually around some snacks and nonalcoholic beverages, though the Bab insisted that sharing a glass of water could even be enough, because the main thing is to preserve and manifest the spiritual imprint of the first part of the festival. Purity is of the essence, or else the holy festival is profaned. This should be expressed by physical cleanliness and more importantly by a clean heart, which does not have any room for the seeds of discord in idle worldly talk but instead radiates generosity in friendly faces and courteous demeanor. On this condition, Bahá’ullah could say he would always be in the midst of his disciples as long as he could breathe this aroma of friendship at their assemblies. His successor Abdul-Baha said the same thing about his own postmortem presence at the Nineteen-Day Feast, going so far as to suggest it had the same spiritual efficacy for Bahá’ís as the Lord’s Supper for Christians at Sunday worship.

Practice

Responsibilities

The Nineteen-Day Feast that makes this grand unified rhythm of Bahá’í time a concrete regulator of believers’ lives should unfold in three stages, of which the first two appear to owe a lot to the Friday sermon at the Muslims’ Day of Assembly. The first part, entirely spiritual in character, is devoted to readings from Bahá’í and other sacred scriptures such as the Bible and the Koran. The second part is reserved for a general consultation addressing the business of the local community as well as national and in-

In view of these spiritual benefits and the responsibilities they entail, it is said that Bahá’ís should consider this festival as the crucible of their activities, of their participation in the mystery of holy utterances, of their oneness in a universality that leaves far behind all limitations of class, race, nationality, religion, or personality. It is thus incumbent upon every Bahá’í to regularly attend the Nineteen-Day Feasts, except if he or she is ill or traveling out of town. Bahá’ís from other localities may also attend, as

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well as minors who have made their declaration of faith and have already started to study the teachings. The believers who are entitled to partake in this religious experiment in grassroots democracy are expected to arrange their personal schedule accordingly, in compliance with the Bahá’í calendar. See also Day of Assembly; New Fire Ceremony; Nyepí; Passover; Ramadan; Sunday References Hushmand Fathea’zam. The New Garden. New Delhi: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1962. National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Australia. Local Spiritual Assembly Handbook. Mona Vale, Australia: Bahá’í Publications Australia, 1996. Eviatar Zerubavel. The Seven Day Circle. The History and Meaning of the Week. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

◗ NINTH DAY See Sekku

◗ NINTH OF AV See Tisha be-Av

◗ NORUZ See Naw Ruz

◗ NOUMENIA (GREECE) Throughout the Greek world, every month began with a festival meant to coincide in principle with the appearance of the first visible sign of the new moon, after which it was known as a Noumenia.

Monthly Festivals Most of the other days of the first decade of any month, while the moon was waxing, were actually festival days in Athens. That of the second day was dedicated to agathos daimon, the “good demon” or genius of the earth. The third day was Athena’s birthday, and the fourth was that

of Heracles, Hermes, and Aphrodite, when her companion Eros was also honored. Aristotle’s disciple Theophrastos noted (Characters 16) that, on that same day, the superstitious also made offerings to the androgynous god Hermaphroditus born of the two deities combined in their name. There was no festival on the fifth day, but, in all of Greece, one was dedicated to the moon goddess Artemis on the sixth as her birthday, as was another to the sun god Apollo on the seventh. Athens’ founding hero Theseus was honored on the eighth day, along with his father the sea god Poseidon.

The Holiest of Days While no other deity but Apollo ever had its festival concurrently with his birthday on the seventh, no annual festival whatever included the Noumenia. The philosopher Plutarch (Moralia 828A) could therefore refer to it as the “holiest of days.” A quarter of attested financial transactions in the historical record for Athens occurred on monthly festival days (as opposed to a handful during annual festivals). It should therefore come as no surprise that a big market was held in the city on the first of every month. Men would still find the time to practice athletics at the palaestra, as well as to hold banquets. Back home, frankincense was to be placed on the statues of the gods as a regular part of the routine of private religious rites. See also Rosh Hodesh References Benjamin Dean Meritt. The Athenian Year. Berkeley: University of California, 1961. Jon Mikalson. The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. H. W. Parke. Festivals of the Athenians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

◗ NUNTARIYASHAS See KI.LAM

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◗ NU YAH See Midwinter

◗ NYEPÍ (HINDUISM) As the purification of the whole island around the spring equinox, Nyepí is Bali’s most important annual festival. It is also the only one of island-wide significance in the lunisolar saka (“monthly”) calendar of Hindu origin—as opposed to the acosmic wuku (“weekly”) calendar of Javanese origin, counting 210 days (that is all possible combinations of the five-, six-, and seven-day weekly cycles out of nine overlapping cycles of two to ten days), the one most used for Bali’s exceptionally complex sequence of ceremonies. Fundamentally different from them in being seasonal rather than occurring at wildly divergent points of Nature’s cycles from one time to the next (much more so that in the case of the 354-day Islamic lunar calendar followed by most Indonesians outside the last Hindu stronghold that Bali remains), Nyepí is considered to be New Year’s Day. And yet, it actually comes on the first day of the tenth month, called Kadasa, that is Vaishakha in the particular Hindu calendar it comes from, though its Balinese version is one month ahead in the names used, so this one would correspond to Chaitra (March–April) in parts of India.

Sweepings of the Year Lasting a couple of days, Nyepí really begins at the end of the previous month with Tilem Kasanga, the “new moon of Kasanga,” which is the Balinese equivalent of the Hindu month of Chaitra. This is when Yama, Hindu Lord of Hell, sweeps it of devils and ghosts. These evil spirits fall on Bali with a great din, so that the entire island and every village is unsafe and needs to be purified. Since people will therefore try to stay indoors and put out fires and lights on Nyepí itself, the food for that day needs to be prepared in advance. This keeps the whole community busy on the days leading up to

Nyepí, when there are also processions to take the gods to bathe in the sea. At the crossroads where demons congregate, scaffolds need to be built for priests, along with altars for the offerings they will make to both gods and demons in a great purification called metjaru.

Offerings to Demons and Gods On this day, there is unrestricted gambling in connection with the universal cockfighting that is intimately related to this ceremony, since the land is cured by the spilling of blood over impure earth, which feeds and appeases demons as the metjaru does. Countless dead roosters can be taken home afterwards to serve as the next day’s Nyepí meal, while in Bali’s capital Denpasar, children are offered decorated trays of cakes and sweets by the officials of each ward or banjar. Before sunset, the demons have to be lured by their share in the great offering in order to then be expelled by the powerful curses of the priests. This offering is set nearer to the ground than the high platforms bearing offerings to the high gods of the Hindu Triad as well as to deified ancestors. Offerings to the sun god Surya are placed on an even higher platform to the east, and a somewhat lower one is set across from them for the eight pedanda or brahmin priests, who officiate with chants and bell-ringing facing the direction of the rising sun. When he is not seated alongside them on his own smaller, lower platform, the sengguhu, or lower-caste priest dealing with evil spirits, faces north toward an image of their master Batara Kala, drawn in rice flour on the ground and surrounded by a little bamboo fence to keep dogs away. A low fence of woven palm leaves also protects the manifold offerings symbolically arranged according to color-coding among the eight points of the compass. They might include money and utensils, all sorts of alcoholic drink, meat from all the beasts of Bali, along with samples of all the fruits and seed found on the Indonesian island, held by hundreds of banana leaves. It takes months to collect all these

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ingredients, so that the majority are wilted and decomposed by the time Nyepí arrives—reflecting a certain contempt for the coarse lower beings who accept such offerings laid on the ground for them to absorb in this earthy fashion. Once the ceremonies are over, the poor are allowed to loot the money and any other offerings that can still be of use to humans.

From Pandemonium to Sabbath But first, consecrated rice, holy water, and sacred fire to light every hearth anew (as in many a similar new fire ceremony elsewhere on the globe) are distributed to the klihans banjar or ward heads for them to pass on to every head of a household in turn. In some places, small boys then fight with fire in imitation of former battles of this kind between banjars. Everywhere, firecrackers are set off and people run through the streets in groups, their faces and bodies painted, carrying torches on the end of long poles and beating drums, gongs, and cans (not to mention the trees and the ground) as they yell over and over again, “Megedi!”—that is, “Get out!” As in many New Year customs from China through Russia to Scotland, all this racket is meant both to imitate and scare away evil spirits—in this case, the ones that have been purposely attracted by the offerings, only to be ritually expelled at the “great offering,” wherever they may still lurk. This pandemonium may go on well past midnight on the eve of “bringing the land to silence”—which is the meaning of Nyepí. For a bit like the Sabbath, this is supposed to be a day of absolute stillness, when people stay at home, road traffic is normally forbidden, no light or fire is permitted (not even to light a cigarette), no work is to be performed, and no sexual activity is allowed, while the bodies of the recently deceased need to be removed from the house (unless they happen to have received the consecration to read the holy scriptures like the

brahmins). But there are plenty of local variations in these observances, and many exceptions to their rules. In Denpasar, people go about doing their New Year visits, and there are certain seasonal outdoor games between boys and girls. In some villages, walking outside is allowed as long as nothing is carried, while in others, as in Western carnivals or year-end festivals, all sexual restraints are lifted at community picnics in the rice paddies. This is probably a local method to promote their fertility by imitative magic.

The Ritual Pacing of Rice Planting Yet normally, no one may enter the rice fields on the special Nyepí days of “restriction” observed in every village, on pain of heavy fines. This is a time to reaffirm boundaries between villages and their respective fields, be it in space (as at ancient Roman Terminalia) by stretching lines or erecting gates over the roads where they end, or in time. Official pacemakers are responsible for setting Nyepí as the holiday preceding the twenty-day period within which all planting has to be done, also on pain of heavy fines for transgressors and those who abet them. (However, certain transplanting rites need to be performed along with offerings to rice deities on the eve of Nyepí.) Strict enforcement is not only necessary to maintain work discipline and efficient division of labor, but also for ecological reasons having to do with water, disease, and pest control. The vermin infestations unleashed by state-sponsored attempts to increase productivity by having several planting cycles a year have proved the soundness of the traditional wisdom regulating the yearly agricultural calendar of every village, as enshrined in the religious ceremonies surrounding Nyepí in Bali. See also Carnival; Feast of Fools; May Day; New Fire Ceremony; New Year (China, Korea), New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Nineteen-Day

n y e p i | 343 Feast; Rogations; Sabbath; Saturnalia; Terminalia; Vaishakha and Vaisakhi References Miguel Covarrubias. Island of Bali. New York: Knopf, 1973. F. A. Liefrinck, et al. Bali: Studies in Life, Thought and Ritual. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris Publications Holland, 1984.

David Suzuki with Amanda McConnell. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Vancouver, Canada: Greystone, 1997.

O ◗ O-BON See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ OCTOBER HORSE See Games (Rome)

◗ OMER See Lag ba-Omer

◗ ON-MATSURI See Kasuga Festivals

◗ ODWIRA

◗ ONNA SHOGATSU

See Adae

See New Year (Japan)

◗ OENACH See Lugnasad

◗ OKEEPA See Sun Dance

◗ OKHI DAY See Protection of the Mother of God

◗ OKUNCHI See Sekku

◗ OLD CHRISTMAS See Epiphany

◗ OLENZARO See Christmas

◗ OLYMPIC GAMES See Games (Greece)

◗ OPALIA See Saturnalia

◗ OPET See Beautiful Festival of the Valley

◗ ORIGIN (DAY OF) See New Year (Japan)

◗ ÒRUNMILÀ (FESTIVAL OF) See Òsun Festival

◗ OSCHOPHORIA See Dionysia

◗ OSHOGATSU See New Year (Japan)

◗ OSIRIS (FESTIVAL OF) See Khoiak

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◗ ÒSUN FESTIVAL (YORUBA) A major goddess of the Yoruba people that makes up one-eighth of Benin’s population and over a fifth of Nigeria’s, and whose cult was brought by slaves to the Caribbean and South America, Òsun Sèègèsí (pronounced “Oh-shun Sheh-geh-see”) or “Òsun who owns the beaded comb” has her traditional yearly festival in the western Nigerian town of Òsogbo (a contraction of the Yoruba Oso Igbo for “spirit of the forest”), by the river bearing her name. It has also been observed by Yoruba religious lineages active in the United States since the late twentieth century, normally some time in August. Devotees of Òsun flock to a sacred riverside grove to ask favors of or give thanks to this elegant amazon, mistress of the àjé (ambivalent “powerful beings”), who controls childbirth.

Mythical Beginnings Many orisa (pronounced “oh-ree-shah”) or “head guardians” (that is, Yoruba deities or deified ancestors) have Òsun as a name. It refers to the “seeping out” of a source, usually because, in their myth, they turn into a river, and they have their seat at some point along the Òsun River in the state of the same name created in southwestern Nigeria in 1991. But Òsun Òsogbo is considered to be the real goddess Òsun of the river along which she is most widely worshipped, as it was heard to say Òsogbo (pronounced “oh-shog-boh”)—that is, “all my pots of indigo dye have been broken”— when two refugees from a drought affecting their respective homelands in the eighteenth century felled one of the trees of her sacred grove of dye-producing plants into the water. They agreed to move their new settlement to the marketplace where their heirs’ palace now stands in the town therefore known as Òsogbo. It is the center of her cult, attracting devotees and tourists every year in the rainy season, around early August, when the river’s flow is abundant, fresh, and sweet to the taste, for the great festival of Òsun.

At an appointed time after the festival of Òrunmilà (one of Òsun’s two husbands, in addition to the thunder god Shango), Òsogbo’s traditional ruler: the Atáója, summons this god’s priest or babaláwo (“father of mysteries”) to his palace to perform divination that will reveal the specific date and particular sacrifices Òsun has in mind for her upcoming festival day. The festive season leading up to it officially begins once the Atáója, as her representative, makes her wishes public at the end of the first of many solemn royal processions—to her shrine at the market in this case. There, he accepts on her behalf communal gifts of food and drink that will be shared among visitors at his palace later that day. Lesser local rulers also come with gifts—of money as well as in kind— to renew their allegiance to the Atáója and the goddess he stands for. Because she is known for promoting childbirth, women who have had a baby since the last festival carry them in the procession, in which the many children who have likewise been devoted to her also figure prominently. Women and children especially wear the golden colors of Òsun’s divine authority, delegated to the Atáója by the covenant his ancestors made with the local goddess—possibly in the guise of an earlier lineage of female rulers.

The Lighting of the Sixteen Lamps Four days after the announcement of the festival’s proceedings, drummers in the palace courtyard lead worshippers in calling upon the spirits of Òsun and other orisa to join in its official opening. They are trained in the elaborate Ifá divination method central to Yoruba life and sacred lore. Yet it is the gift of Òrunmilà (mediator between heaven and earth) to his wife Òsun of a simpler alternate method just for women that is being commemorated with the Lighting of the Sixteen Candles (olójùmérindínlógún), namely the sixteen-cowrie divination now spread from Africa to the New World. It also reflects the six-

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teen palm nuts used instead of these shells in standard Ifá divination, the sixteen major divisions of the Ifá corpus of texts, and the sixteen primordial orisa who came down from heaven to organize the world for human life. Their plans went awry at first because, being males, they neglected to include Òsun in them, as she was just a woman, and they failed to realize the vital role she had to play in world order as leader of the àjé (“powerful beings”). The Supreme Being Olódùmarè himself, who had given her this role, had to advise the sixteen major orisa to consult with the Great Mother Òsun, who demanded initiation for herself and “women like her” to make up for the earlier slight and restore the cosmic balance of energies. To celebrate women’s knowledge and power as a divine gift, thousands of people gather around a brass column holding sixteen receptacles in which cotton and palm oil are kept burning from dusk to dawn. Òsun’s clergy—of all ranks and both genders—goes back and forth between the sixteen lamps and the secret rituals it performs indoors, out of sight of the uninitiated. The Atáója and the Iyá Òsun, or chief priestess, also come out of their adjacent dwellings three times to lead the people in joyous invocation of deities and ancestors by dancing around the lamps behind their respective musicians before returning inside to worship. Hunters open their path by firing into the air, in a kind of reenactment of the way Òsogbo’s two founding fathers were led to their new home by an elephant hunt.

The Òsun Festival Proper Eight days later, a virgin chosen from the ruling family, the Arugbá, carrier of the sacrifice, assisted by the Àwòrò (an administrator of Òsun’s clergy) after early morning public prayers inside her shrine on palace grounds, takes the offerings to her sacred grove by the Òsun River. They will renew the covenant between its goddess, her representatives, and Òsogbo Township. The Atáoja, as “He who

feeds the fish with his own hands” (the meaning of his title), is the one who officially pours the offerings into the river, along with the Iyá Òsun and the Àwòrò, in thanksgiving for the past year’s blessings and to secure them again over the coming year. He does this after performing certain rites with them and other high clergy in the seclusion of a sacred precinct whose walls are guarded by a few sitting babaláwo. But first, he addresses his people and visitors from his temporary throne in the grove, having entered it in full regalia with his court along a ceremonial path cleared by trumpeters and drummers under general acclaim. While he is out of view, worshippers and lower clergy carry on with their festive song and dance. The tone is set by troupes of musicians and dancers representing a variety of orisa, whose worshippers gather around their statues set at the base of trees, while those of Òsun are covered with palm fronds (unlike on previous days). Among the performances that stand out are the colorful and acrobatic Egúngún masquerade, embodying the ancestors’ power to sanction departures from the Yoruba way, and the parade of omode Òsun— “children of Òsun,” sent to their mothers because they made proper sacrifices for this blessing on the goddess’s previous festivals. Such offerings typically consist of corn meal, beanloaves, and pounded yam with the Yánrin vegetable, but snails and guinea-corn are among some other things she cannot even stand. Each year, women loudly promise the gifts they will bring this fertility goddess if she helps them have children, and those whose wish has been granted are also vociferous in their thanksgiving. The ones who used to be barren before this divine intervention go back to the river to perform special rituals with the Iyá Òsun and the Arugbá. Other people wash their faces in the river or drink its water after it has been blessed by its resident deity’s acceptance of the yearly solemn sacrifice by king and clergy. Many in the wading multitudes on the riverbank fill con-

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tainers with sacred water to use it over the year—either for ritual purposes or for its power to heal the sick. All the while, people continue to gather outside the decorative walls of the sacred grove’s entrance. Some rest between it and the nearby vending area, where fried fish or beans and other street foods are sold along with refreshments ranging from soft drinks to palm wine, while others seek out friends and relatives to chat and have fun with them. Many have their photograph taken. It is common for devotees to join in the dance of a passing troupe. Crowd control, including the creation and maintenance of passageways, is one of the tasks of the olose (pronounced “oh-loh-shey”) or “whipping boys.” But they also challenge each other with their whips in groups of two, four, or six; this staged fight, symbolizing the struggle against malevolent forces, keeps them at bay during the proceedings. They may yet face the concrete opposition of devout Muslims who object to the joyful pagan displays that only end

that night at the palace across the street from the mosque. See also Adae; Kokuzahn References J. Omosade Awolalu. Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites. London: Longman, 1979. Diedre Bádéjo. Òsun Sèègèsi: The Elegant Deity of Wealth, Power, and Femininity. Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: African World Press, Inc., 1996. William Bascom. Sixteen Cowries: Yorùbá Divination from Africa to the New World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.

◗ OUR LADY MESOSPORITISSA, OUR LADY POLYSPORITISSA See Presentation of the Virgin Mary

◗ OUR LADY’S HERB DAY, OUR LADY’S THIRTY DAYS See Assumption

P ◗ PAI-PAI See Matzu’s Birthday

◗ PALIO See Games (Rome)

◗ PALM SUNDAY (CHRISTIANITY) Coming at the apex of the main fasting season on the last weekend before Easter, Palm Sunday (together with its Eastern forefeast Lazarus Saturday) is a joyful prelude to this celebration of Christ’s Resurrection, prior to the intervening Holy Week of his Passion and death on the Cross. Its devotional focus is the Redeemer’s brief moment of earthly triumph—the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem—where the palms waved at him by the crowd have become the pretext for many popular celebrations of springtime greenery. An ancient procession held on this feast fell into disuse in the Eastern Church at the turn of the second millennium of the Christian era, just when the Western Church took it up almost until the third.

former name of Palm Sunday in Rome. For, until the tenth century, this last Sunday of Lent only commemorated the imminent Passion of Christ, rather than the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem that formed a joyous prelude to it. Matthew’s version of the story of Christ’s Passion has thus been solemnly read in its entirety on that day ever since the fifth century. For all of that time, across all changes of emphasis, it has been called in Latin by the ancient and ambivalent name of Dominica in Palmis de Passione Domini. Passion Week and Holy Week together form Passiontide in the Western Church. The week leading up to Palm Sunday is called Palm Week in the East. It is also called Dumb Week in Greece, since no service is held in church except for one on the eve of Lazarus Saturday. In the Orthodox Church, Palm Sunday, along with its forefeast Lazarus Saturday, stand apart from both Lent and Holy Week. As the hinge between the longer fasting season and the short, but intense, final stretch to Easter, they are a semifestive break before renewed ascetic efforts.

Place in the Calendar The Roman liturgy of Holy Week starts with the blessing of palms and a procession on Sunday. The previous week is known to Catholics as Passion Week, after Passion Sunday as the

Lazarus Saturday In the Eastern Church, Palm Sunday is closely linked and intermingled with the commemoration of an episode that immediately precedes |

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the triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. The previous Saturday is named after the beloved disciple whom Christ resurrected in Bethany, which was the starting point for his journey to Jerusalem the next day. This was a kind of prophecy of the agony awaiting him there, as well as of the ultimate triumph of his own resurrection. For the resurrection of Lazarus at the command of Jesus heralded the universal resurrection at the end of days. If, as a man, Jesus cried over his friend’s death and wanted to undo it, as God himself, Christ would actually have had it in his power to call him back to life. In Greece, Lazarus Saturday is popularly known as the First Easter on account of the disciple’s death and resurrection, which not only prefigured Christ’s, but also echoed those of the youthful gods Adonis and Attis in pagan springtime rituals, as evidenced in the ancient practice of the impersonation of the dead Lazarus by a child, which is still to be seen in Cyprus. All around Greece, it is evoked by other, usually pictorial, means in children’s door-to-door funeral processions as they sing Lazarakia hymns, for which each child is given a special lazaros bun. Such buns are still baked by some Greek communities in the New World, even if the processions have failed to cross the ocean. In Bulgaria, it is girls who go singing and dancing in the homes of acquaintances on Lazaritsa (as this day is known there), as a women’s rite of passage from childhood to maidenhood.

The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem News of the resurrection by Jesus of his friend Lazarus, crowning all the other miracles he had performed, brought crowds to cheer him as he entered the holy capital city, joyfully welcoming him as the long-awaited Messiah who would restore the Kingdom of Israel. Christ came seated on a young donkey as the prophet Zechariah had foretold of the future king, the

way King David himself had once victoriously entered the city. In the Biblical equivalent of a ticker-tape parade, the people of Jerusalem waved palm and olive branches to show their allegiance to Jesus as this victorious king. They even threw their garments in the way of this Son of David, much as they had done centuries earlier when they acclaimed Jehu as King of Israel (2 Kings 9:13). But the Kingdom of God Jesus came to establish was not to be confused with the temporal power the Jews expected to see restored and turned against foreign rule, as it was not of this world, consisting in Christ’s victory over death through his obedience unto death. As they come with palms to celebrate the earthly triumph of Jesus as a prefiguration of his eternal victory, Christians are supposed to recall that they are heirs to the Kingdom of God only insofar as they are willing to go with Christ all the way through the dark tunnel of the Passion on the Cross, so as to come out the other end in the light of Easter.

Palms, Evergreens and Pussy Willows Palm Sunday is a very festive occasion, one when the fasting rules of the season are relaxed. On Moscow’s Red Square, there even used to be a toy and candy fair where the wealthy would show off. In France and Spain, it had become customary by the eighth century to imitate the Jews’ acclamations of “Hosannah!” (an Aramaic expression of praise to God that also happens to be the word for a palm leaf) at Christ’s coming, and by the ninth century the practice of bringing branches to church had spread in the West as in the East. Churches are decorated with palms in sunny regions, unless it is with olive or laurel branches where they are more available, as in certain parts of Mediterranean countries. Substitutes such as box-tree branches are used in northern climes, or even pussy willows as the first blossoms of spring in Russia, where this is Pussy Willow Sunday. Flowers and evergreens may also be used. Wherever

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they appear, palm leaves are often woven into different shapes, especially crosses. In Greece, a small cross is handed to each parishioner together with a myrtle or bay branch by the priest at the door of the church after the service. This bunch is called a vaya and will be propped with the family’s holy images at home, as the pussy willow is in Russia, and its equivalents elsewhere. In many Palm Sunday customs, the blessed boughs should never be stuck with a sharp object, as doing so would cut their power to ward off evil and disease and to promote fertility in all living things, from trees and fields to barnyard animals and young brides, and even improve the productivity of inanimate objects such as boats and windmills. Palm Sunday foliage is often brought to the tombs of the dead in Greece as in many parts of France. In the latter country, a 1961 survey showed that Palm Sunday stood alongside All Saints Day as the time of year when the largest number of people came to the cemeteries to pray for their dead. There, as in other Latin countries, they would plant box-tree branches blessed on Palm Sunday on their loved ones’ graves and would often insist on being buried holding one in their hands as a token of the life hereafter. As an evergreen plant, the box-tree has been ascribed this funerary symbolic meaning since pre-Christian times, when it was dedicated to underworld deities Hades and Cybele. In Russia and Central Europe, people had to eat the willows’ pussies on Palm Sunday in order to avoid summer fevers. From Carelia, a largely Orthodox region of Finland straddling Russian territory, a related custom has spread to the rest of this mostly Lutheran Nordic country: asking people if they want to be touched with a pussy willow while saying a magic formula for health, in exchange for a reward from that person on Easter morning. This may be a traditional chocolate egg containing a ring or the more recent effigies of the Easter witches of folk tales and copper coffee pots for them to drink from. Healing properties were

also ascribed to branches from the maypole made by the children in eastern Slovakia for the procession of Flower Sunday (as Palm Sunday is also known in Eastern Europe). People would throw their expensive garments or small boughs in its path, and give money or an egg or two to every child who offered them a wreath when they answered the question: “Do you wish for a new summer?” Such maypoles are decorated with flowers in Poland, with dry flowers and grain in Lithuania and Latvia, and with apples, oranges, and pretzels in Austria. In Germany, Palm Sunday is called Green Sunday because of all this greenery.

Palm Sunday Processions Children of all ages already figured prominently in the festive procession observed in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday by the presumably Spanish pilgrim Etheria in the fourth century. Late in the afternoon, they would all run to the site of the Ascension outside Bethany, near the starting point of Christ’s final progress toward Jerusalem, and the little ones would be held by their parents as the crowd, waving palm and olive branches, slowly escorted the bishop back to the city for the last evening service of a long day of celebrations. From Jerusalem, the practice of Palm Sunday processions spread to most Eastern Churches. Yet it somehow fell into disuse in Constantinople about a thousand years ago, being reduced in the Byzantine liturgy to an indoor procession after the Eucharist at the end of the service. At this point, the priest just carries around the church the icon depicting both the Resurrection of Lazarus and the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Around the same time, the Roman Church was moving in the opposite direction in adopting and expanding upon the practice. Since the Middle Ages, Palm Sunday processions have taken place on the way to church, with the blessing of the palms being performed before Mass. Among Catholics, this used to be an elaborate ritual including a solemn procession just

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In El Salvador, children hold palm leaves to celebrate Palm Sunday, the beginning of the Holy Week. (Reuters/ Corbis)

outside church doors to symbolize the entry into the Heavenly Jerusalem made possible to the faithful by Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. For a long time, only the clergy went outside, but the people was included in the procession after 1955, before the whole affair was made less solemn and optionally more discreet in 1970. Despite a revival of some of these traditional rites in the Anglican and Episcopalian Churches since the nineteenth century, most Protestant churches do not observe them at all. Likewise, a beloved and spectacular variant of the Palm Sunday procession has long been eliminated in all but a few Austrian and Alsatian hamlets, though there have recently been isolated efforts to revive it: the Palmesel— “Palm-Donkey.” In the Rhineland and southern Germany, there used to be (since at least the

tenth century) a live reenactment of the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem on a donkey. Initially, the bishop himself might take the place of Christ on the donkey—or more often than not, on its wooden substitute on wheels, which, in many cases, included a wooden sculpture of Christ riding it. This vehicle eventually became a sacred object in its own right, and the Christ figure was often decorated with wreaths, sausage rings, and pretzels. This was eventually frowned upon by clerical authorities, especially after the Protestant Reformation banned the practice, while the Catholic Counterreformation discouraged it, and the “enlightened despotism” of Emperor Joseph II forcibly put an end to it in its last stronghold of Austria in the eighteenth century. In this process of repression, many Palm-Donkeys, which had been lov-

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ingly carved as a focus of civic pride, were publicly destroyed. Some museums and churches now cherish the few survivors as precious medieval artworks. See also Ascension; Days of the Dead (West); Easter; Elevation of the Cross; Holy Week; Lent; May Day; Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis References Eileen Elizabeth Freeman, ed. The Holy Week Book. San Jose, CA: Resource Publications, 1979. Mary Paloumpis Hallick. The Treasured Traditions and Customs of the Orthodox Churches. A Fascinating Study of the Richness of Traditional Orthodox Religious Customs. Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life Publishing Company, 2001. Hugh Wybrew. Orthodox Lent, Holy Week, and Easter: Liturgical Texts with Commentary. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997.

◗ PANATHENAEA (GREECE) The greatest festival of ancient Athens was that of the city’s patron goddess Athena Polias of the Erechtheion temple, celebrated every year on her birthday on the twenty-eighth of Hekatombeion, the first month of the Athenian calendar, toward August. A distinction arose under Pisistrates (600–527 B.C.E.) between the annual Lesser Panathenaea and the Greater Panathenaea this tyrant instituted in 566, held every four years with great pomp (to rival PanHellenic Games like the Olympics) from the twenty-first to the twenty-ninth or thirtieth of Hekatombeion.

The Games In this larger format, the Panathenaea began with a musical contest in the Odeon, built especially by the democratic statesman Pericles (c. 495–429 B.C.E.) as a venue for this substitute for the rhapsodies traditionally excerpted from

epic poems to be recited on this occasion. Those of Homer had been collected and edited under the sponsorship of Pisistrates, who probably made a point of showcasing them in this festive setting in the first place. Among other innovations due to Pericles were song performances with flute or cithara accompaniment, as well as dithyrambs (poetic eulogies) sung by choruses as they circled the sacrificial altar. The award for the music event consisted in a gold wreath with a cash prize. Next came the sporting events (many of them not Olympic), which were eventually concentrated in the Panathenaeic Stadium, built in the second half of the fourth century B.C.E. Gymnastic competitions were arranged by age and degree of difficulty and included wrestling, boxing, pancratium (combining the latter two), the pentathlon, and much racing. Equestrian contests of a military nature followed, be it on chariot (like the daredevil apobates race testing the ability to dismount from one at full speed) or on horseback (like throwing a javelin at a target). The prizes, of which the first was worth five times the second, consisted in jars of oil from the Academy’s olive trees. Many examples and imitations of these Panathenaeic prize amphoras have come down to us, with an image of Athena on one side, and a depiction of an athletic contest on the other. An ox was the prize for the sponsor and leader of the best group to perform a Pyrrhic war dance of Spartan origin, which had been introduced in Athens in the time of the tyrant Pisistrates. To commemorate his dynasty’s demise, a muster of men was later held, as the city’s ten tribes sent their strongest, most dashing warriors in teams to make a good impression in a kind of male beauty pageant. Such a gathering of armed citizens was a democratic demonstration, as it would not have been allowed under the tyranny. Like other contests, this was a liturgy, in the original Greek sense of the term, meaning “working for the people,” since the festive event was voluntarily sponsored and

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organized by a wealthy citizen as a public service. Another example of a liturgy was the torch-race, where the winners earned their sponsor a water-jar. It coincided with a big “night festival” (pannychis) celebrated by choirs of boys and girls on the eve of the most important part of the Greater Panathenaea, the procession, as famously depicted on the friezes of the Parthenon, the grand temple of Athena Parthenos (“Virgin”). Like the “All-Athenian” festival itself, it testified to Athens’ devotion to its patron, as well as to civic pride in the powerful and well-organized political unit it had fashioned out of many local tribes over a fairly large territory for a city-state.

The Procession The greatest procession of the year assembled on the twenty-eighth of Hekatombeion before sunrise at the Pompeion, near the Dipylon Gate at the north end of the city. It set out through the Ceramicus cemetery, and then the agora or public square, on its way toward the Acropolis, in a neat cross-section of Athens’s most important places. Priests and prophets, magistrates and treasurers, and the superintendents of sacrifice opened the march before generals, colonial envoys, and delegates of allied cities with offerings. As the future mothers of Athenian citizens, the city’s maidens of marriageable age carried sacrificial vessels, censers, and baskets of cakes for offerings (hence their designation as kanêphoroi or “basket-carriers”), as they escorted the centerpiece of the procession (probably only taken out for the Greater Panathenaea): the new saffron-dyed robe for the xoanon—an ancient wooden sculpture of Athena in the Erechtheion temple, named after the mythical ancestor of Athenians, who was thought to have instituted their great civic festival. Athena’s robe was suspended like a sail on the yardarm of a ship gliding on rollers, and spread out so that all could admire the workmanship of the embroidered depiction of the battle of the gods and

the giants. Many women had put all their skill in completing the garment first begun by two of the arrèphoroi (girls aged between seven and eleven whom the chief magistrate would choose from noble families to perform certain religious functions as helpers of the priestess of Athena Polias over the course of a year). These women were to be found among the citizens’ families following this display of their handiwork. Folding seats and parasols were held at their disposal by the daughters of resident foreigners. The latter, called metics, had the honor of bearing honey cakes and fruits on flat dishes, among other offerings, with jars of the wine needed for sacrificial rites. Next came the sacrificers leading oxen and sheep, followed by citizens too old for military duty, carrying knotted sticks, who bore olive branches. The four-horse chariots from the equestrian competitions led the way for a display of cavalry in travel gear that took up the largest portion of the procession. It wound up with an infantry parade, while musicians played their flutes and citharas as they marched. Having turned eastward to the Eleusinion, north of the Acropolis, the endless procession made its way around to the hill’s western ascent. There, the robe known as peplos was taken off the rolling ship so as to be folded and carried through the covered gateway of the Propylaea and a long plaza to the Erechtheion, the temple of Athena Polias (“Civic”). Her wooden statue was dressed with it by one of the archons or magistrates who exercised the ancient religious functions of a king. On an altar in front of this temple, along with the client cities’ sacrifices of a cow and two sheep each, the hecatomb that gave the month its name was offered. In this most solemn sacrifice, a hundred oxen were slaughtered, and their entrails were examined to ascertain whether that offering was agreeable to the goddess. Certain parts would be burned on the altar, and the rest was to be divided at the Ceramicus between the clergy and the various demes or local groupings of the people, in a

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plentiful banquet. Sacrifices were also performed on the Areopagus hill where the supreme court met, as well as to Athena Hygeia just inside the Propylaea. Just as public meetings were cancelled at the end of that month, all court proceedings were dropped if they had not been concluded by the time of this civic New Year, when the appointment of new magistrates was announced, as part of the general reaffirmation of the political order. At the close of the festivities, a regatta was held in the Piraeus (the port of Athens), where, as in the other contests, it was tribes rather than individuals which competed for a substantial prize of 300 drachmae, with more funds to cover the winners’ festive banquet. The budget for all these contests came from the treasury of the temple of Athena Polias, and they were organized by ten judges appointed for four years. Except for occasional public fundraising, the sacrifices were supplied by ten superintendents appointed annually by each of the tribes to prepare and manage the proceedings of the city’s most splendid festival. See also Dionysia; Geerewol; Games (Greece); New Year (West); Saturnalia; Thargelia References Ian Jenkins. The Parthenon Frieze. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Jenifer Neils, ed. Worshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Spyros Piblis. Panathenaea: The Greatest Festival of Ancient Athens. Athens: Classical Editions, 1970.

◗ PANCAKE TUESDAY See Carnival

◗ PANCHAK YAMA See Divali

◗ PANHELLENIC GAMES See Games (Greece)

◗ PARDON (CHRISTIANITY) Celtic Brittany’s most typical religious and folkloric ritual, the pardon, is the feast day of the saint to which a church is dedicated. The people of that parish and others in the area then come, often in fulfillment of a vow or penance, to perform pious acts that are meant to secure divine forgiveness and practical favors such as healing, the safety of sailors, the protection of cattle, and abundant crops. Held from March to October but mostly in the summer, pardons are big social events for Bretons, who wear their best folk costumes. Some places have two pardons a year: a small one for the local people, where devotion is still most sincere, and a big one as a regional pilgrimage attracting believers (including handicapped beggars) from far and wide on account of the favors already granted by that church’s particular saint—often the Virgin Mary or her mother Saint Ann. In either case, beyond local variations, a pardon normally begins the night before the feast with an invocation of the saint in question in the church or chapel dedicated to him or her, in preparation for the solemn morning mass, followed in the afternoon by vespers at a consecrated place, which can be a holy well. It is reached at the end of a singing procession (for example, a flotilla of small boats across a bay between Concarneau and the chapel of Sainte-Anne de Fouesnant on the saint’s July 26 feast) bearing relics, crosses, statues, gold-embroidered banners, and ex-votos— such as models of ships saved from danger. That shrine is decorated with flowers and offerings of different kinds, depending on the place: it could be skeins or beeswax, grain or wool sacks, white hens or pigeons (as at Sainte-Anne de la Palud) or ox and cow tails (as in SaintHerbaut). These gifts reflect the kind of protection expected from a given pardon, as at specialized ones like the horses’ pardon of Baye, where the beasts are taken before the priest at a certain crossroads out in the fields to be blessed with a sprinkling of holy water.

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It used to be once the sacred ceremonies were over that the pardon turned into a local fair or a profane village feast, warily tolerated by the clergy; for these were rare occasions when boys and girls could socialize openly. Nowadays though, if the pardons that survive are sometimes little more than tourist events; the fest-noz, or “feast-night,” on a pardon’s eve has become very popular as a party where Bretons get to practice their complex folk dancing steps—an activity meeting with renewed interest among all generations. It should also be said that the Tro-Breiz annual pilgrimage (a 548kilometer “tour of Brittany” to the tombs of the seven bishops who brought Christianity from Great Britain) has recently been revived with some success, after a long, three-century lapse, attesting to a revival of traditional faith and customs on the pardon circuit. See also Kermis; Lent References Frances M. Gostling. The Bretons at Home. Intr. Anatole Le Braz. New York: R. M. McBride and Company, 1925. Pierre-Jakez Hélias. The Horse of Pride: Life in a Breton Village. Tr. and Abr. June Guicharnaud. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978. Anatole Le Braz. The Land of Pardons. Tr. Frances M. Gostling. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1906.

◗ PARENTALIA See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ PARILIA See Fordicidia and Parilia

◗ PARTY See Potlatch

◗ PARYUSHANA AND DASHALAKSHANA (JAINISM) Paryushana is the Sanskrit name of an eightday festival of the Shvetambara sect (named af-

ter its “white-clad” ascetics) of the ancient Jain religion of India, which knows it as Pajjusana in the Prakrit language of its sacred scriptures. It takes place from the thirteenth day of the dark half to the fifth day of the bright half of the month of Bhadrapada (August–September). Just after it is over, the rival Digambara sect (named after its “sky-clad,” or naked, male ascetics) begins to observe its own ten-day version of the most crucial Jain festival: Dashalakshana.

Abiding in Fasting and Forgiveness One of the meanings of Paryushana, “Abiding,” is to stay in one place for the duration of the monsoon season. For it is the auspicious climax of chaturmas—the “four-month” rainy period during which wandering ascetics settle down to take shelter among laypeople, who will strive to imitate them by fasting or restricting their diet, and even temporarily becoming a monk or nun for at least twenty-four hours. They are actually supposed to observe this practice called posadha twice a month but are mostly content to try it at the end of the year. They have the option of a partial fast called daya or samvara, allowing one food and boiled water at will over the course of a retreat, though they all have to forego even these on the very last day of the year, called Samvatsari, meaning “annual.” Paryushana also means abiding in devotion and moral exertion through service and pacification. Thus, to ensure that no quarrel is carried over into the new year, people ask each other to forgive their misdeeds of the past year, conscious or not. This too they are supposed to do all through the year, but they get the opportunity to do it communally on the last day (rather like Eastern Christians on Forgiveness Sunday as they enter Lent), at the end of a temple service where pardon is also sought from all living beings for injuries of any kind. In this spirit, Jain communities (especially in Gujarat where they are mostly concentrated) are sometimes able to get local authorities to ban the slaughter of animals for

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food temporarily. Jains also privately send year-end letters to all friends, acquaintances, and business associates, Jain or not, to ask them forgiveness for any possible or hypothetical wrongdoing.

Worshipping Words and Images On the last day of the festival, Jains give alms to the poor and take out the image of a Jina, or spiritual “conqueror,” of detached omniscience in a procession through the streets, headed by an ornamental pole called Indra-Dhvaja (the “Staff of Indra”). For it was this ancient Vedic god, patron of warriors, who received in his hands all the hair cut off as a sign of renunciation by Mahavira (599–527 B.C.E.), founder of Jainism. Mahavira’s Birthday (which is also a festival in its own right for Jains of all sects on the thirteenth day of the bright half of the month of Chaitra—in March or April) is underlined the day before with a procession of his cradle, as well as the decoration of temples with flags as on any other birthday of a tirthankara, or “fordmaker” across the ocean of rebirths. The Sthanakvasi subsect is an exception, as it frowns upon such image-worship. One of the original features of Paryushana is the recitation by monks of the Kalpa-Sutra, a part of the Prakrit canon devoted to the lives of the Jinas. The example of their ascetic strivings was supposed to inspire and bind together the monastic community as it waited out the rains amidst the lay population. Eventually, it too was allowed to attend on the fourth to eighth days of the festival, though few people avail themselves of this privilege until the last day, when they all show up. On the previous days, it is actually a basic Gujarati commentary that is read (sometimes by specially trained young laymen in the absence of monks), following a custom that may go back a couple of centuries. For a breakdown in monastic tradition then left leadership in the hands of simple clerics who lacked the basic skills to interpret canonical texts written in ancient languages.

Yet even the few people who know Prakrit among the crowds present on the final day while two monks (sitting on a dais) alternate reading from the original text cannot possibly follow its meaning, as it is gabbled at a breakneck speed rivalling that of a Western cattle auctioneer. That is why a designated young layman has to rely on prompts from one of the monks to show the worshipful audience miniature paintings from an illuminated manuscript of the KalpaSutra, illustrating as they come up events of Mahavira’s life as well as stories from medieval commentaries. The sight and sound of the holy book (as of the Gujarati commentary read out at the same rate on the fourth to seventh days) are actually what is most meritorious on this and other days of the festival. On the fifth day, the right to touch and garland silver images of the fourteen dreams announcing Mahavira’s birth to his mother, lowered from the ceiling of the monks’ lodgings as they read the corresponding passages, is actually sold to the highest bidder—as is often done with such ritual privileges. As Paul Dundas has pointed out: This bidding represents one of the most public activities which a Jain layman can perform within the community and serves as a means by which his moral and financial status can be established, while at the same time the idiom of the activity, which is that of the marketplace, acknowledges the centrality of business in Jain society. (Dundas 2002, p. 198)

Celebrating the Ten Religious Qualities Just as a communal meal on New Year’s Day, breaking the strict fast on its eve, concludes Paryushana among Shvetambaras, Digambaras are about to launch upon their own equivalent of it, based on a rival set of scriptures called Dashalakshana-Parvan. This “Festival of the Ten Religious Qualities” has one day devoted to each in turn. These qualities are forbearance,

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gentleness, uprightness, purity, truth, restraint, austerity, renunciation, lack of possessions, and chastity; the reading of the corresponding chapters of the Tattvartha-Sutra is accompanied by sermons from the congregation. Toward the end, the most auspicious day is Ananta-Chaturdashi (“Endless Fourteenth”), celebrating the Fourteenth Tirthankara Ananta in a puja (service) with fourteen flowers. There is also general fasting and veneration of images. As with the Shvetambaras, the final day is one of “Asking for Pardon,” or Kshamapana. See also Lent References Paul Dundas. The Jains. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002. Jyoti Prasad Jain. Religion and Culture of the Jains. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Bharativa Jnanpith Publication, 1977. Margaret Stevenson. “Festivals and Fasts (Jain),” in James Hastings, ed. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. V. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912, pp. 875–878.

◗ PASCHA See Easter, Lent

◗ PASSION WEEK, PASSIONTIDE See Palm Sunday

◗ PASSOVER (JUDAISM) The festival of Passover is celebrated in March or April on the fifteenth of the Jewish month of Nisan. It is preceded on the fourteenth by the Fast of the Firstborn—those of Israel who were “passed over” by the last of the seven plagues of Egypt. It is the first of three pilgrim festivals mentioned in the Pentateuch as requiring Jewish males to come up to Jerusalem especially to observe them. Passover lasts seven days in Israel (and for Reform Jews) and eight in the Diaspora, where the Last Day is repeated and the second is treated as a full festival day

rather than as one of the intermediate days (hol ha-mo’ed) of rejoicing when work is forbidden, weddings are discouraged, and mourning is restricted. This is a feature shared by Passover with the pilgrim festival of Sukkot. Among Moroccan Jewry the world over, Passover is immediately followed by a more relaxed folk festival of brotherly love and community harmony, called Mimouna.

Two Festivals in One The Hebrew name of Passover is Pesah, derived from a verb for “protecting,” “having compassion,” or “passing over.” It is also known as the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the only kind of bread allowed for the week. The festival of Passover (Hag Haposah) and the Festival of Unleavened Bread (Hag Hamatzot) were originally two different festivals. The oldest one was Passover, the animal sacrifice of nomadic herdsmen who slaughtered a small head of cattle at the time of lambing and the change of pastures in order to secure the health of the rest of the herd. The Hebrews made sure none of its flesh was left the next day, since it could not be preserved on the road; hence the requirement that any uneaten portion be burned. The Festival of Unleavened Bread was an offering of the first sheaf of barley made by the sedentary peasants the Hebrews had become after having settled in the Promised Land of Canaan. Before they were exiled from it to Babylon, the latter, agricultural festival had been united with the former, pastoral one as part of King Josiah’s religious reforms of the late seventh century B.C.E., standardizing and centralizing Jewish rites around the capital Jerusalem. It was set on the day after Passover proper, that is on the fifteenth of a month then known as Abib, meaning “ears” (of grain), and in post-Exilic times as Nisan, from the Akkadian nisannu for “beginning,” denoting that this was an archaic New Year ritual of springtime renewal. Hence the requirement that this Spring Festival (Hag Haaviv) be celebrated only after the spring equinox,

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on the basis of which an extra lunar month is added to the year seven years out of the nineteen it takes for the lunar cycle and the solar cycle to coincide, so that it does not get out of step with the rhythm of the seasons as reflected in the latter. It is from this omer sacrifice of the new barley, originally meant to authorize consumption of the new grain crop, that the fortynine days of Omer are still counted to determine the date of Shavuot, the next pilgrim festival in the summer, held on the fiftieth day (hence its Greek name of Pentecost). Yeast was associated with the corruption of mould and was therefore to be cleared from the premises of a dwelling, in order for them to be pure and to afford its inhabitants a fresh start in a new life, free from the restrictions of winter.

The Festival of Unleavened Bread The historically based Feast of Unleavened Bread was eventually grafted onto this agricultural nucleus, so that the week-long ban on leaven is explained by the Bible in terms of the Hebrews’ haste to leave the shackles of slavery in Egypt to find freedom (an event set in springtime): they did not have time to wait for the dough for their bread to rise. In honor of their zeal to heed the call of liberation, after which Passover is also known as Hag Haherout (the Festival of Freedom), there is such a taboo on yeast-based foods that any Jew who eats any during the festival may be cut off from the people of Israel. Still, the original concern for ritual purity at the first full moon of a new year is clearly in evidence in the stringent rules for the removal of all traces of hametz (leaven) from the house. Thus, a Hasidic wife has to clean it thoroughly and clean all dishes that have been in contact with hametz, if she does not ritually sell them to repurchase them later. Then, on the eve of Passover, the husband, holding a candle, goes from room to room in search of crumbs of anything fermented in water. Some have been deliberately hidden so he can find them and sweep them with a feather

into a large wooden spoon to put them in a paper bag that will be burned the next morning. From that day on, and normally for all the time the festival lasts, the only bread Jews are supposed to eat is the unleavened kind known as matzoh, used in sacrifices involving bread. For every head of a Hebrew household was required to come and make one at the Temple of Jerusalem on the second day of Passover once major observances had been centralized there. The host used by Roman Catholics for the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist since the ninth century is also of this type, as it is directly derived from the Passover sacrifice.

The Sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb The custom of offering a lamb to God on the first day of Passover, on which the sacrificial symbolism of Easter and the Christian liturgy is based, has been preserved in amended form by the Samaritans. This is a dissident community of Jews who claim to have been spared the fate of the ten lost tribes of Israel deported and assimilated after the Assyrian conquest of their Northern Kingdom in 721 B.C.E. By now barely 500 strong, they still collectively roast dozens of their fattest sheep at their ancient holy place at the foot of Mount Gerizim, about forty kilometers north of Jerusalem. Other Jews had to give up the regular performance of their own sacrifice after the destruction of the Temple, where it had been taking place ever since the centralizing reforms codified in Deuteronomy. Until this happened in 70, the head of every Jewish family was supposed to come to the Temple of Jerusalem with a Paschal lamb to be slaughtered on Friday evening by the priests. They would splatter the altar’s horns with its blood, instead of the lintels and doorposts of the family home or the pole at the entrance of a tent, as had originally been the case. This was done in memory of the sign the Hebrews painted on the front of their dwellings with the blood of the lambs they sacrificed in the Biblical account of the original Passover, following

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the command given to Moses by God, so the Exterminating Angel would know which houses to pass over as he went over the land of Egypt bringing death to the firstborn male of every family, as a display of the wrath of God and of His mercy to His chosen people. This memorial was so central to the descendents of these chosen few that, for those who may have been prevented from presenting their sacrifice at the Temple because they found themselves abroad or in a state of ritual impurity (due to touching a dead body), there was even a “Second Passover” (Pesah Sheni or Pesah Katan) on the fourteenth of the following month of Iyar, when a little unleavened bread was eaten. The Semitic concept of a sheep as a substitute for a human sacrifice, also echoed in the last minute replacement of Abraham’s son Isaac by a ram as an offering to God, can be traced back to a Sumerian liturgical text of the fourth millennium B.C.E. To this day, Muslim Bedouins observe ritual prescriptions similar to those followed by Jews at Passover since Biblical times when they sacrifice a lamb: its flesh has to be entirely consumed in a meal or by fire, its blood may not be spilt on the ground, and it is normally roasted so that none of its bones is broken, or else the entire herd might get maimed. Conversely, it was a common belief in ancient cultures that an unbroken bone could become the seed of the resurrection of the whole being it had belonged to. It was therefore doubly significant that, as Christ’s beloved apostle John underlined in his Gospel, the Roman soldier who went around breaking the legs of the men crucified on Golgotha to hasten their death chose not to do it to Jesus but to pierce his side instead— much as the prophet Isaiah had foretold in identifying the Messiah, as a passive “man of sorrows,” with the Paschal lamb. This allowed Christians to see in Jesus a divine-human substitute for the animal sacrifice by virtue of which the firstborn of Israel were spared when Moses was set to lead his people to freedom in the thirteenth century B.C.E.

The Seder Meal By the Common Era, this Biblical story of the Exodus had long been recounted as part of the ceremonial meal for which ten to twenty pilgrims to Jerusalem would gather in a decorated room after the lamb was brought back from the Temple on Friday night. Unfolding along the lines of the prescriptions found in Chapter Twelve of the Book of Exodus, this religious meal known as the seder (a Hebrew word for “order”) is still served in Jewish homes on the fifteenth and (except in Israel and in Reform communities) sixteenth days of the month of Nisan. It is meant to allow every participant to personally relive as a spiritual event the defining moment of the history of the people of Israel that was the Exodus. For as is written in the Mishnah’s second-century Pesahim tractate (Babylonian Talmud 1938, 10:5, 116b), which describes and explains the order of this meal, coming out of Egypt means passing “from bondage into freedom, from sorrow into joy, from mourning into festivity, from darkness into great light, and from servitude into redemption.” The head of the family first puts on a white ritual gown called a kittel, and then proceeds to sanctify the holiday with a benediction or kiddush said over a cup of wine, before explaining that the unleavened bread on the table stands for the “bread of affliction” that was the lot of the Hebrews while they were slaves in Egypt. All wash their hands before being presented by the master of ceremonies with maror (bitter herbs also meant to recall the bitterness of slavery); lettuce, celery, or other raw vegetables may fit the bill, once they are dipped in vinegar or salt water. After the host has mixed the second cup of wine and water, the guests sing the first two Psalms (113 and 114) of the so-called “Egyptian Hallel” (from the Hebrew word for “praise”) initially recited at Temple sacrifices during pilgrimage festivals. Exceptionally on Passover, the first of the benedictions normally

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A Jewish family holds a Passover seder, commerating the Hebrews’ escape from slavery in Egypt. (Ted Spiegel/ Corbis)

preceding and following recitations of the Psalms is skipped. One or two of the symbolic items on the seder plate are then removed: a shank bone, standing for the Paschal lamb which would have just been roasted at home in the days of the Temple, often along with a hardboiled egg representing either the destruction of the latter or God’s loving kindness (depending on the tradition). Once the second cup of wine has been poured, the youngest child asks the following standard questions about the unusual ceremonies: “Why does this night differ from all other nights? For on all other nights we eat either leavened or unleavened bread; why on this night only unleavened bread? On all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs; why on this night only bitter herbs? On all other nights we need not dip our herbs even once; why on this night must we dip them twice? On all other nights we eat either sitting up or reclining; why

on this night do we all recline?” All this symbolism is explained in the stock answers recited in unison in fulfillment of the Biblical injunction (Exodus 13:8) to pass on the story of Israel’s liberation from bondage from generation to generation. An annual high point of Jewish life, this ritual retelling is known by the Aramaic word for “lore,” as the Haggadah. The allusions to reclining in the Haggadah would suggest that the custom of Passover toasts may have been derived from the Greek and Roman banquets of the time when the Talmud took shape. A fine example of a midrash or compendium of scriptural interpretations, the Haggadah was largely drawn from it in the same era, but the earliest complete text that has come down to us was put together in the tenth century by the Kabbalist philosopher Saadiah Gaon. Other versions are still used in various Ashkenazi and Sephardic

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communities, as the Haggadah has been diffused through an enormous number of editions, some of which are famous for their calligraphies and illuminations. Many new liturgical passages (such as homilies on the unbroken spirit of the captive Hebrews, on the ten plagues of Egypt, and on the parting of the Red Sea) have found their way into the Haggadah during the Middle Ages. After the second cup of wine has been drunk, and the Passover sacrifice has been explained, all present again wash their hands before consuming matzoh and maror dipped into a mixture of crushed fruits and wine called haroset, in order to convey that suffering and sacrifice are eventually rewarded by freedom and spiritual progress. This signals the start of the meal, formerly centering on the lamb. A third cup of wine is poured once grace has been said afterwards, to express thanksgiving to God, and a fourth after the reading of the bulk of the Hallel, consisting of Psalms 115–118, previously read in part, to acknowledge God’s loving Providence. (A so-called “half-Hallel,” the one used on every New Moon and limited to Psalms 113–114 and 117–118, is read during the last six days of Passover.) In some communities, a fifth glass is poured for Elijah, and an extra seat is left empty, in case the prophet should show up on this occasion to announce the Messiah’s arrival, as a Kabbalistic tradition insists he will one day. The door is even left open for a while during the seder dinner as Biblical verses are read in order to welcome Elijah. When he does come, it is said he will resolve all the controversial issues having to do with the interpretation and application of the Law. Thus at Passover, the seder dinner does not only look back to the historical redemption of the people of Israel from the bondage of Egypt, but also looks forward to its coming redemption in the days when the prophet Elijah and the promised Messiah will appear in close succession at the end of history. In the meantime, before this final judgment of

the living and the dead, Jews like to insert the names of dead relatives in the medieval yizkor (Hebrew for “may He remember”) prayers recited after the reading of the Law and before the Torah scrolls are put back in the holy ark on the final day of Passover. While Ashkenazi communities read the Bible’s Song of Songs during Passover, the folk songs that conclude the seder meal most often go back to the Middle Ages. Among them is a poem designed to entertain children and keep them awake on that special night, entitled Had Gadya (Aramaic for “The Lamb”) and first found in a Haggadah produced in Prague in 1590. Some commentators see it as an allegory of the Jewish people’s destiny among the nations; others, as a description of the soul’s experience of embodiment, from birth to final judgment. The song’s explicit point that everyone finds somebody else who is stronger, but that above all stands God, has parallels in English and German literature, and even in the Christian story of Saint Christopher, as the mightiest giant in the world, who carried travelers across rivers and yet is said to have faltered under the weight of the Christ Child.

A Post-Passover Celebration of Moroccan Jewry: Mimouna Upon the close of the Passover holiday at sundown on the Last Day, Sephardic Jews of Moroccan background begin a more light-hearted celebration all their own, called Mimouna. In contrast to the seder night, when Jews hurry home from the synagogue to start the Haggadah, after Passover’s last evening service, they take time to greet each other with wishes for success (terbah) and special Mimouna blessings, and to have a drink before visiting people in their community in hierarchical order from the rabbi’s family on down to their own relatives, friends, and neighbors, whom they will also welcome at their open house around a festive table. Set on a white tablecloth and decorated with flowers and stalks of wheat, this is a

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display of symbolic foods (reminiscent of Persian Naw Ruz customs): milk or buttermilk, flour, eggs, honey, butter, fruits, nuts, yeast cakes, sweets, five dates, five coins, five beans, wine, and plain yeast. Women wear their embroidered caftans to prepare a rich menu of dairy delicacies, such as stacks of muffaleta crepes. Grilled fish is also on the menu when engaged couples are invited for dinner by the fiancée’s parents, on a night when other singles look for a prospective marriage partner as they mingle under their family’s watchful eye, among the people of all ages who go out on the streets to socialize. Early on the morning of Mimouna, families head to the local wells, springs, rivers, swimming holes, or to the seashore, where they splash their faces with water and step barefoot into it. This appears to reenact the crossing of the Red Sea, which is supposed to have taken place on the last day of Passover, and is associated with both spiritual and worldly freedom and bounty. These two meanings are intertwined in the feast’s name, in addition to an allusion to the medieval religious philosopher Maimonides’ father (more explicit in the alternate name Maimuna). Maimon is said to have died on the day of this feast, which also originated in the Moroccan city of Fez he happened to be from. On the one hand, Mimouna comes from the Hebrew and Aramaic word mammon, which means “riches” or prosperity, suggesting these are determined on this day for individuals and the nation—as on a New Year’s Day such as Rosh Hashanah, or the ancient New Year for Kings on the first of Nisan, identified in Exodus 12:1 as the first month of the year on account of the birth of the Jewish nation with its liberation from Egypt on Passover on the fifteenth. On the other hand, Mimouna also contains the Hebrew word emunah for “faith,” referring specifically to the belief that the final redemption will occur in the month of Nisan, just like the Hebrews’ liberation from Egyptian bondage on Passover. Given these patriotic and messianic

overtones, it may not be entirely surprising that Israeli politicians have taken to using helicopters to descend upon the various outdoor settings of picnics where Moroccan-rite Jews pitch tents, play music, dance, and make merry in a holiday spirit of community harmony and peaceful relaxation on Mimouna Day. As a result of such politicized gate-crashing, these massive gatherings now often turn into confrontational electoral meetings instead. See also Akitu; Easter; Eid; Holy Week; Naw Ruz; Nineteen-Day Feast; Rosh Hashanah; Rosh Hodesh; Shavuot; Sukkot; Sunday; Tu biShevat; Whitsuntide References The Babylonian Talmud. Part 2: Seder Mo’ed, Vol. 2. Tr. Rabbi Dr. H. Friedman. London: Soncino Press, 1938. Baruch M. Bokser. The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984. Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman, eds. Passover and Easter: The Symbolic Structuring of Sacred Seasons. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999. Ronald H. Isaacs. Every Person’s Guide to Passover. Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 2000. “Mimouna. A Festival of Brotherly Love,” webpage on The Sephardi Connection (http://www.sephardiconnect.com/pesah/mim ouna.htm), 1998–2000. The Mishnah. Tr. Jacob Neusner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.

◗ PENTECOST See Shavuot, Whitsuntide

◗ PERCHTENTAG See Epiphany

◗ PERIOD FESTIVAL See Matsuri

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◗ PERIODIC GAMES See Games (Greece)

◗ PESAH See Passover

◗ PFINGST See Whitsuntide

◗ PHALGUN KRISHNA PRATIPAD See Holi

◗ PI MAI See Water-Splashing Festival

◗ PIG FEASTS See Carnival

◗ PILGRIM FESTIVALS See Sukkot

◗ PITCHER FEAST, PITHOIGIA See Dionysia

◗ PITRIPAKSHA See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ PLEBEIAN GAMES See Games (Rome)

◗ PLYNTERIA See Venus Verticordia

◗ POKROV See Protection of the Mother of God

◗ PONGAL See Thaipusam

◗ POILA BAISHAKH See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ POSEIDONIA See Saint Nicholas

◗ POTLATCH (PACIFIC NORTHWEST) The peoples of the Northwest Coast of the American continent have applied the word “potlatch” (meaning “to feed, to consume” or “to give” in their common trading lingo the Chinook jargon) to a kind of festival and fair that has long been central to the area’s indigenous cultures. In the twentieth century, social scientists have also come to use it to refer to a wide range of institutions and practices the world over, from the earliest times to the recent past. This is because they all show traits of the rituals of competitive giving best exemplified in the potlatch, as this Native American festival fully reveals the logic of the anti-utilitarian principles governing much of premodern social and economic life.

An Economy of Festive Giving In the strict sense, the term “potlatch” refers primarily to elaborate festivals combining feast and fair, political assembly, and religious initiation, that were repeatedly held all through the long winter months by the native cultures of the North Pacific coast: first and foremost, by the Amerindians of the province of British Columbia and the states of Oregon, Washington, and Alaska: Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Haida, Tlingit, Nootka, Coast Salish, Bella Coola (or Nuxalk); to a lesser degree, and under the influence of the latter two, by many Dene (or Athapaskan) groups of the interior up to southern Yukon; also to some extent among Alaskan Eskimos and, across the Bering Strait, all the way to the Asian continent with the Chukchis and Koryaks of the Siberian Far East. Like similar institutions in the southwest Pacific and elsewhere, the Amerindian potlatch involves the constant circulation of goods in the form of gifts exchanged between rival social groups, such as clans and brotherhoods. In the highly ceremonial setting of the potlatch, they would lavish the wealth accumulated during the fair season upon their guests. The latter

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were obligated to reciprocate within a reasonable amount of time, “on pain of private or public warfare” (Mauss 1990, p. 5), by inviting their hosts to another potlatch where they would outdo them in generosity. This would launch another round of competitive giving, made possible by nature’s bounty in fish and game under the warm rains of the Pacific. Whenever successful whaling or fishing expeditions brought in a sizable surplus, people seized the opportunity to throw a feast for their neighbors. An orator would extol the wealth of the chief ’s domain as demonstrated by the generous entertainment of his guests. They might even compete in eating and drinking contests.

The Politics of the Potlatch These feasts eventually came to be overshadowed by large-scale potlatches, when average families were no longer able to afford them. For a process of reckless escalation was triggered by trade with British and American newcomers some 200 years ago in some northern groups like the Kwakiutl, through the influx of consumer goods and the advent of wage earnings. Yet the potlatch practices of southern groups like the Nootkas and Salish remained largely immune to the notorious excesses that became synonymous with the potlatch and gave official authorities a pretext to ban it, under pressure from missionaries, government agents, and teachers. They were all concerned that the potlatches were impoverishing the tribes, since chiefs tried to outdo their rivals by giving away hundreds of blankets, or even furniture, canoes, and motor boats. Canada’s federal government first enacted legislation prohibiting the ceremonies in 1884, but since it was difficult to enforce because of the vagueness of the wording, the law was later revised, and the potlatch went underground to evade prosecution. Despite a number of high profile trials, it was still held in remote fishing camps, or even in stormy weather so federal agents could not reach them,

until 1951, when the Indian Act was revised and Section 149 was dropped. The deeper reason for the Westerners’ repression of the potlatch no doubt had to do with its running counter to the assumptions prevailing by then in their own culture about economic activities, where thrift was valued and waste was frowned upon. For in spite of its economic importance, the potlatch was not about trade in the usual sense of the word, since each village was normally self-sufficient as far as useful goods were concerned. In their original context, Northwest Coast native communities had two ways of interacting: one was war for sport, glory, revenge, booty, slaves, and ceremonial access to the various supernatural powers governing natural resources, and the other was collaboration in view of the careful organization needed for the spring and summer fisheries. The latter were carried out under the leadership of warrior-entrepreneurs who were able to bind together for this task large work forces of their relatives and associates from far and wide. In addition to providing them with the necessary equipment and temporary lodgings, this was done by throwing impressive potlatches for them, and obliging them to give something back in the process. It was at these potlatches that prestige was secured and ranks were assigned within and between neighboring communities, as reflected in the strict hierarchy of seating arrangements and the quality and quantity of food and gifts offered to variously distinguished guests (all of which also typified the Celtic Samhain festivals of Ireland). The most honored guests ate their meal in the host’s elaborately carved wooden feast dishes—family heirlooms bearing the clan’s crest. Whether they were held outdoors or inside large longhouses, locally by commoners or intertribally by noblemen, potlatches were the occasion for a host to promote or uphold his status in society, to establish or reassert his claims to economic and ceremonial privileges, or to formally transfer them to heirs. For this was the

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way for aristocrats to demonstrate that they were effectively one in glory with the mythical ancestor from whom they claimed descent. The wealthiest among them could seize upon just about any pretext to shower guests with gifts and show off their clan’s treasures, masks, and dances. In most cases though, potlatches were held on the same pattern, but on a more reasonable scale, to mark a significant event in the family, such as somebody’s initiation in a secret society, the birth or naming of a child, a daughter’s first period, a son’s marriage, or a memorial for the dead.

Clan Parties and Basketball Tournaments Nowadays, these “parties” (as they are sometimes called) still commemorate such important events in an extended family’s or a clan’s collective life, and may include in addition baby showers, anniversaries, special birthdays, and graduations. Potlatches used to last several days, but parties now take place over the weekend, so people need not worry about missing work. These events can require a year of advance planning, and they easily cost several thousands of dollars in meals, snacks, and drinks for hundreds of guests, as well as in gifts for each of them in cash or in household goods like laundry baskets, towels and handkerchiefs, cups and glasses, plates and cutlery, pots and pans, and the like, not to mention colorful umbrellas. Much as in Plains Indians’ powwow giveaways, honored guests, such as elders or community leaders, are publicly acknowledged as they get both cash and expensive gifts like baskets, blankets, comforters, and artwork. The role of the potlatch as social binding agent has partly been taken over in recent decades by the All-Native Basketball Tournament (because basketball is an indoor sport—a vital consideration in a rainy climate, where even a small community is sure to have its own gymnasium). It allows teams from all the coastal nations of Alaska and British Columbia

to compete for prestige, as they once did in periodic warfare as well as at potlatches. Much like the latter, it makes the host town a temporary, yet self-sufficient, hub of bustling social exchange, where traditionally festive and modern economic activities constantly overlap. These range from dances and parties to fundraising activities. Lasting eight days, the event has an even higher profile than the Christmas holidays. Front-row seats are precious family heirlooms, handed down from one generation to the next (like inherited names and titles at a traditional potlatch). Tribal solidarity with the young players and regulated intertribal rivalry between teams are still two sides of the same coin of social integration, the common currency of the potlatches of old.

Waging War or Wasting Wealth In a similar way, larger loyalties used to emerge thanks to the potlatch as an alternative to war that continued by other means the same fierce struggle for prestige and power; displaying wealth was just one of the methods used. If conspicuous consumption is still around in modern societies to show that this remains the case, it is in a very different sense than that of the potlatch. For there, it was not enough to accumulate wealth; holding on to it and showing any reluctance to part with it was worse than lacking it. Just as failure of nerve in laying down one’s life in battle, or failure to perform a ritual properly, appearing mean-spirited in this way would mean losing face—quite literally, losing your soul along with your honor, like a slave. Forcing a guest into a position where he could hardly reciprocate was the supreme weapon. In order to thus “flatten” one’s rival, it was legitimate to deliberately destroy valuable property, whether movable or immovable. This could include clubbing slaves to death or even giving away wives and children—not to mention burning grand pianos, canoes, or boxes of precious candlefish oil. This oil, as a food staple, skin medicine, and ceremonial substance, is

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Tlingit dancers pose in traditional ceremonial attire during a potlatch at the village of Chilkat (Klukwan) in Alaska, 1895. (Museum of History and Industry/Corbis)

central to the traditional culture and economy of coastal peoples and used to be traded with the peoples of the interior against other luxury goods like fur, copper, amber, and precious stones. If it may still be poured on fires at Kwakiutl potlatches, most of it is now given to the guests in bottles. The giant wooden ladles carried by the costumed dancers are reminders that pouring away this liquid gold is the quintessential gesture of the feast.

Personal Prestige and Social Bonding These are all ways of keeping the memory of the host’s mythical ancestors and animal protectors alive and powerful, along with the formal speeches often heard during potlatches. The host’s persona of social recognition through acknowledged gratitude was traditionally embodied in the totem pole depicting the clan’s mythical animal ancestors. It was also represented by beaten-copper shields with their

owner’s coat of arms. These would appear at a potlatch mainly for show, and be given only on loan, or else very reluctantly. However, other copper objects served as a kind of money (known as “the bringer of property”) for the purposes of the potlatch. Luxury items distributed to the guests as a display of affluence would also have included multicolored chilkat blankets, otter skins, war clothing, axes, and carved boxes, not to mention massive quantities of food. If many of these goods had some practical use, the less they had, the better; coppers had none whatsoever, although they were worth hundreds of chilkat blankets and might be purposely destroyed for this very reason: to show that one could afford such outrageous waste. As actual or potential gifts, each with their own history of being given back and forth, such precious items were felt to be different in kind from utilitarian objects. Yet thanks to the networks woven by this prestige economy, wealth would accumulate and trickle down the

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social ladder. It was first gathered under the chief ’s aegis (to use an ancient Greek expression in its related original sense as the protection of his shield), but only to be pledged on the honor of his name on the day of the potlatch. Then, with the full power of the clan concentrated in his person, as demonstrated by his splendid generosity, he was free to make contracts on the clan’s behalf. “To contract debts on the one hand, to pay them on the other, this constitutes the potlatch,” according to the American anthropologist Franz Boas in his 1898 Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada. “This is done publicly with much ceremony, and is like a notarial act . . .Those who receive presents at this festival, receive them as loans that they use in ongoing enterprises, but after a few years they must be given back with interest to the donor or his heir” (Mauss 1990, p. 111 n31).

The Potlatch Principle around the World The study of the potlatch has thus led some social thinkers to argue that, contrary to the received wisdom of economists about the origins of trade, relationships over time within a given community are more basic than the instant exchange of goods of equivalent value for individual use; that is to say, credit precedes barter. The utilitarian paradigm that modern Western societies now take for granted only became widespread relatively recently. Previously, the “festive” principles of social organization so dramatically illustrated by the potlatch used to structure the institutions and the mental habits of all other cultures in history. In his landmark essay on “The Gift, and especially the obligation to return it” (1924), which has lately become an object of renewed attention and debate across the range of the humanities, the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss claimed to have “uncovered a quite considerable number of intermediate forms between those exchanges comprising very acute rivalry and the destruction of

wealth, such as those of the American Northwest and Melanesia, and others, where emulation is more moderate but where those entering into contracts seek to outdo one another in their gifts. In the same way we vie with one another in our presents of thanks, banquets and weddings, and in simple invitations” (Mauss 1990, p. 7). Aside from the now prevalent tradesman morality, “there still remain people and classes that keep to the morality of former times, and we almost all observe it, at least at certain times of the year or on certain occasions” (Mauss 1990, p. 65). Without reaching the fever pitch and elaborate ritual of the Pacific Coast potlatch, socialization in many cultures was also concentrated in a winter festive season. Around the Northern Hemisphere, from China to French Canada, the cold or snowy season that put a stop to months of hard work in the fields or at sea was filled by a succession of extended family gatherings and visits to relatives. As a class, feudal aristocracies all over the world have always been shaped by codes of behavior and forms of contract embodying principles of honor and generosity, as well as a preoccupation with rank and etiquette. These noble pursuits and that holiday spirit, sharing the same roots, have equally found their ultimate festive expression in the potlatch of Northwestern warriors. See also Candlemas; Christmas; Lugnasad; New Year (China, Korea), New Year (West), Powwow; Samhain References Margaret Anderson and Marjorie Halpin, eds. Potlatch at Gitsegulka. William Beynon’s 1945 Field Notebooks. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2000. Barb Cranmer, dir. T’lina: The Rendering of Wealth. (Hour-long video documentary.) Montreal: Nimpkish Wind Productions Inc. in coproduction with the National Film Board of Canada, 1999. Aldona Jonaitis. Chiefly Feasts. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.

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A Northwest intertribal powwow in Cashmere, Washington. (Mike Zens/Corbis)

Marcel Mauss. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Tr. W. D. Halls. London: Routledge, 1990.

◗ POTS (FEAST OF) See Dionysia

◗ POWWOW (NORTH AMERICA) The most widespread public gathering of North American Indians is the powwow, an intertribal celebration of Native culture centering on dance competitions and giveaways.

History The Eastern Algonquian (possibly Pequot) term pahwayaw originally referred to a medicine man or shaman in southern New England, but early British settlers applied it as a verb to the curative ceremonies performed by such Na-

tive American religious specialists, and eventually to all Indian meetings involving public declamation. Such was the case of summertime intertribal visits like the adoption ceremony called the Calumet by French explorers that spread from the Pawnee to the Ottawa and the Sioux, and featured warriors’ dances, since they were an occasion to forge military alliances. Later, in a typical pattern, with the spread of a certain men’s society across the Plains, songs and dances of the peoples involved were exchanged, borrowed from, adapted, given, or bought and sold in kind between the reservations on which they were resettled in the second half of the nineteenth century. Like the feast dances of a number of religious, hunting, agricultural, healing, craft, and policing organizations, this society’s dances had largely outlived their original function. Shorn of their more openly warlike features so as not to arouse the suspicion of federal Indian Affairs

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agents, they were gradually amalgamated, and took on a more secular, purely social character as the Omaha Dance of the Teton Sioux. It also functioned as a repository of elements of various dances drawn from other organizations. By then, such social dances were held on reservations on the occasion of ration-distribution days or of national holidays like Independence Day on July 4 in the United States or Dominion Day on July 1 in Canada. These dances eventually recovered some of their martial features as both countries recruited Indians to fight in foreign wars and as their entertainment value for the general public was recognized. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Indian cultural exhibitions were sponsored off-reserve by non-Indians, sometimes in conjunction with other events such as the Calgary Stampede or as separate events like the touring Wild West Show. There, Indian performers were encouraged to “fancy up” their dancing for the sake of entertainment. Regalia made of colored feathers and more vigorous, rhythmic steps thus brought out warlike features that were banned as seditious on federal reserves, but which slowly found their way back to them under the guise of the Fancy Dance. This emerged as a standard dance category in the late 1920s in Oklahoma (the former Indian Territory where most expropriated tribes had been deported). Their constant interaction within a relatively small territory made of Oklahoma (which became a state in 1907) the crucible of the modern powwow as part of a revival of Native American culture. The latter was favored by U.S. Indian Affairs Commissioner John Collier’s Circular 2970, which, in 1934, reversed the American government’s repressive assimilationist policy by forbidding any further “interference with Indian religious life or ceremonial expression,” thus paving the way for the spread of the Oklahoma-style powwow to all Indian groups (Young and Gooding 2001, p. 1011). Previously, federal authorities in western Okla-

homa had even resisted using the word “powwow” for dance events, and tried to replace Gift Dances and Ghost Dances with “picnics” and “fairs.” Yet by the 1920s, the term, first spread in this sense through the popular press at the turn of the twentieth century, had started being used regularly (if still disparagingly) by Indian Affairs agents. During World War I, some agents had even given their blessing to dances held to send off soldiers, raise money for the war effort, or welcome veterans home—thus lending a new official legitimacy to the long suspect Indian warrior ethos. As they returned from World War II, Indian veterans were greeted with victory dances and homecoming celebrations that figured prominently in local fairs and holidays. These powwows were now often held in the urban areas where many of them had moved after leaving the reserves with their families, encouraged by federal relocation policies. There, Indians found themselves too few and far between to practice their specific tribal ceremonies but could still find much of their spirit in generic intertribal powwows. A Pan-Indian identity, emergent among Native American soldiers during the Second World War, thus became prevalent in the second half of the twentieth century, having found its main channel and most vibrant expression in the post-war powwow, whether small and tribal or large and intertribal, in a format that developed on the Plains and spread elsewhere.

Dance Styles Still quite distinct before the war, the powwow styles of the Northern Plains and Southern Plains peoples have converged since then. Many Northern Plains dance styles combined to form the standard Traditional Dance and Grass Dance (with colored ribbons standing for the old grass bundles), and along with the typical Northern falsetto and fast tempo, they became widespread on the Southern Plains. Likewise, the North adopted the latter’s Fancy

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Dance and large drum played by male singers seated on the ground around it. By the 1960s, women’s versions of the Traditional Dance and Fancy Dance had become accepted, aside from their own Jingle Dance in the North (of Great Lakes origin, performed in dresses covered with small metal cones) and Cloth Dress and Buckskin Dress in the South. In the Switch Dances of the Northern Plains, men’s and women’s styles are even performed by the other gender. The mixed Round Dance often leads the Grand Entry of all dancers in an evening program that may include a powwow princess pageant, or the warrior society Gourd Dance in street clothes. The latter has been revived in recent years around Oklahoma specifically to honor veterans and is often held as a separate event. Some dancers can now make a living on the Powwow Trail of over a thousand major events a year (some with a cast of thousands) throughout North America, from Florida to Alaska, competing for money in the various style, gender, and age categories represented. Yet many dances remain open to all dancers (even from the audience) since they are not choreographed but are actually solo performances done as a group by freely following a basic style to the accompaniment of warriors’ songs. Such open dances are therefore called War Dances, though they are also referred to as Intertribals at some powwows.

The Sacred and the Profane Photographs are not allowed when one dancer starts playing eerie tunes on an eagle-bone whistle during an Intertribal and the others crowd around the singing drum group for an impromptu public, yet secretive, ceremony. For an element of sacrality occasionally still manifests at these traditional festivals, even though they are not thought of as specifically religious in nature. Tobacco may be sprinkled on a powwow ground as part of a blessing ceremony, and cigarettes are often distributed because the smoke of this sacred substance helps prayers to

rise and spirits to descend. Nonetheless, though liquor is banned at most powwows, people can still get a little wild in a festive atmosphere conducive to gambling and flirting. Powwows may now be held in big city gyms, arenas, or convention centers instead of outdoors on reserves, as was still the rule in the 1980s. In the third quarter of the twentieth century, the Southern Plains powwow kept many of the elements of its forerunners and of earlier fairs and homecomings, like a campground, rations for the dancers, displays and sales of Indian foods, arts and crafts, baseball, football and other games, in addition to rodeos. These were also found at Northern Plains powwows (including their imitations beyond the Plains, as among Iroquois and Hurons) along with running events and even canoe races, though other games were favored, such as golf and softball tournaments. Then there were recreational and competitive hand games of ancient origins, in which two teams took turns trying to guess in which hand someone was hiding an object to rhythmic accompaniment, with the most successful team getting to take home the goods wagered by the other.

Giveaways A more formal public redistribution of goods with roots in indigenous social and religious rituals now most often takes place at powwows. Like the potlatch of the Northwest Pacific Coast, the Plains giveaway is used to share out wealth as well as to publicly announce and validate a new status in the community. It can function as a rite of passage to mark a birth, a child’s first participation in a powwow as a dancer, a graduation, marriage, or a wedding anniversary, leaving or returning from military service, retirement, recognition of an award or public service, or a memorial for the dead. It may also formalize adoption into a family, tribe, or society, entitling one to its distinctive ceremonial privileges, as at the Calumet ceremonies of colonial times, or when a woman

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from a Cloth Dress tribe is adopted into a family or clan of a Buckskin Dress tribe like the Kiowa or the Comanche and can henceforth perform the type of dance associated with this outfit at powwows. On the Southern Plains, organizers of a two or three-day weekend powwow work a giveaway into the afternoon schedule, on the grandest scale when it is held to honor an individual. The items given away may then include (especially if they bear Indian patterns) fringed shawls, blankets, sheets, towels, household goods, antiques, or other objects specifically associated with the person or family being honored. On the Northern Plains, powwows are frequently interrupted in the evening by a halfhour giveaway hosted by a specially selected master of ceremonies. After stating the purpose of the occasion over the public address system, he asks the honored person and his or her family to parade around the arena (with a framed portrait in the case of a memorial) during the traditional tribal anthem and honoring songs and dances, while spectators either stand or join in the dance. The latter are acknowledged through a receiving line, before individuals, families, and groups are called out by name to receive gifts from the honored person’s family, members of which go on handing out gifts (in money or in kind) among the audience until nothing is left. Among the Teton Sioux in the nineteenth century, a family would be highly regarded for giving away all of its belongings at the one-year anniversary memorial for a dead relative and holding an extravagant feast afterwards. Finding itself destitute as a result, it might, however, expect to be provided for by the community, including by the giveaways of other families. The custom of giving away all the deceased’s belongings on this anniversary developed into that of holding a specific kind of giveaway each year that followed his or her passing, so that the shawls and quilts to be given away started being made or ordered right after the death. Blankets, bedding, cloth,

kitchenware, jewelry, and a variety of knickknacks are now also given away after the eulogies and the loud weeping of female mourners on such occasions on the Northern Plains, mostly during powwows. When the giveaway is held as an independent event though, a feast is finally served to all present, who may number in the hundreds. See also Potlatch; Sun Dance References Adolf and Beverly Hungry Wolfe. Pow-Wow. Skookumchuck, Canada: Good Medicine Books, 1983. Lee-Ann Martin and Bob Boyer. The Powwow: An Art History. Regina, Canada: The Mackenzie Art Gallery (exhibition catalogue), 2000. Michael Parfit. “Powwow: A Gathering of the Tribes,” in National Geographic, Vol. 185, No. 6, June 1994, pp. 88–113. Drew Hayden Taylor. “Rhythm of Nations,” in Canadian Geographic, Vol. 124, No. 4, July/August 2004, pp. 54–64. Gloria A. Young and Erik D. Gooding. “Celebrations and Giveaways,” in Raymond J. DeMallie. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 13: Plains (Part 2). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2001, pp. 1011–1025.

◗ PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE, PRESENTATION OF THE LORD IN THE TEMPLE See Candlemas

◗ PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN MARY (CHRISTIANITY) The November 21 feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary is also known in the Eastern Church where it originated—as the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple. It marks the day the mother of Christ is said to have been taken there as a child to be consecrated to God, who would later take flesh in her womb as

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Jesus—as Christians believe. This feast therefore celebrates the prelude to the salvation of mankind worked by God’s Incarnation. It also marks a turning point in the agricultural calendar of Greece.

History The Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple was adopted relatively late as one of the Eastern Church’s Twelve Feasts (aside from Easter, in a class of its own as the “Feast of feasts”). It seems to have originated in Jerusalem. Thus, it is probably no coincidence that the Church of Saint Mary the New was dedicated there, in the holy city of the former Temple of Israel, on November 20, 543. This happened to be the eve of the Presentation of Mary at the Temple. The feast itself though was actually first mentioned in the late seventh and early eighth centuries in sermons on its occasion by Saint Andrew of Crete and Saint Herman of Constantinople. It was eventually adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as well while the Pope was in exile in Avignon in the south of France, in 1374 under Gregory XI. During the Counterreformation, the feast was suppressed by Pope Pius V (1566–1572) on account of its complete lack of historical credibility, but Sixtus V re-established it upon his accession to the Holy See in 1585. In thanks for the deliverance of Venice from a plague in 1630, November 21 henceforth became the date of a yearly pilgrimage over a bridge of boats across the Grand Canal to the baroque Church of Santa Maria della Salute. Soon thereafter, the Presentation was adopted as the special feast day of the French clergy. This was initiated at a time when the training of priests in a new seminary began, as the teaching order of Saint-Sulpice was founded in Paris by Jean-Jacques Olier (1608– 1657). In his writings, Olier takes Mary’s consecration as a virgin to dwell in the Temple as a symbol of the priest’s dedication to celibacy in

the exclusive service of the Church, partly on the basis of medieval typology. This was a stock set of perceived correspondences between events in the New Testament and their prefigurations in the Old Testament. Thus, the prophet Samuel who anointed Israel’s first kings was offered to God while still a child by his mother, just as Mary was taken to the Temple at three in fulfillment of her parents Joachim and Ann’s vow to give her to God, who had miraculously removed the shame of their childlessness. Once there, it was on her own that she unhesitatingly went up the fifteen steps leading to the holocaust altar outside the sanctuary, which traditionally corresponded to the fifteen “Psalms of the degrees” sung by the Hebrews as they came up to Jerusalem for pilgrimage festivals. These fifteen steps thus became a symbol of the priest’s own progress up the stairs of the altar at his ordination in early modern French piety.

Theology The rich symbolism of the Temple for spiritual life and theological understanding was one important reason why the festival was enshrined in Church tradition on the sole basis of apocryphal accounts of Mary’s life such as the Book of James. This was in spite of the patent impossibility of its premise that a girl could be kept in the Temple of Jerusalem along with some companions (as though they were Vestal virgins in a Roman temple), let alone be admitted into the Holy of Holies where the High Priest alone could go once a year on Yom Kippur with fear and trembling. Of course, by then even rabbinical tradition held that “five things which were in the first temple,” built by Solomon, “were no longer in the second,” built by Zorobabel— among them the oil of anointment used for kings, the Ark of the Covenant between God and man, and the Holy Spirit. But as the Eastern Church points out in its liturgical texts for the feast, the Virgin Mary is presented in the Temple as the living ark of a New Covenant whereby God is united to the very nature of

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man in the person of Jesus Christ, whose name means the “Anointed One,” born of the Holy Spirit when it dwelt in her as it once did in the Temple. His mother is also compared in these texts to the royal door through which he will come in the Temple, and to the throne on which he will sit. The Virgin Mary is actually preparing to become herself “the Temple of His Body” at the Annunciation, by constantly praying within the Holy of Holies. Indeed, progress in prayer through the three stages of moral purification of the soul, clear contemplation of God, and intimate union with God has long been described by the Church in terms of the three courts of the Temple of Jerusalem, each corresponding to one of the three Biblical books attributed to its builder King Solomon as another fruit of his supreme wisdom: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. This journey of the Christian soul to God is reflected in Orthodox icons of the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple by her own progress through these three parts to its very center. The chosen Virgin’s preparation from infancy to receive the Messiah into the world, mirroring the chosen people of Israel’s long expectation of his coming, is underscored by the place of the feast of her Presentation in the calendar: after the start of Advent, a season of looking forward to the Nativity of Christ. Many Christmas hymns are already sung on this day.

An Age-Old Greek Winter Sowing Festival In the north of Greece, the November 21 date of the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple has always been significant for agricultural reasons. In Macedonia, there is a belief that if seed is sown before that time, it will sprout after a day or two, but that if it is sown any time later it will take at least forty days to sprout. In Aetolia, it is thought that the weather will remain unchanged for forty days if the sky is clear enough to see the setting of the

constellation of the Pleiades. This event was already taken to mark the beginning of winter by the ancient Greeks, who also believed that seed sown later on would take a long time to germinate. This is why a farmer must have sown at least half of his land by November 21, so that the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple is often called that of Our Lady Mesosporitissa or “Mid-Sowing.” It is also known as the feast of Our Lady Polysporitissa or “Varied Sowing,” because several varieties of corn boiled in a large cauldron provide the dish of the day, plates of which are sent to relatives and neighbors with good wishes for the crops. There is a related custom in Aetolia of throwing a handful of grain (wheat, maize, beans, and the like) into the family’s well or fountain with the wish: “As the water flows, so may riches flow,” before taking a glass of water from it into the house. This custom is known mostly as polysporia, meaning “many seeds,” and in some places as panspermia for “all sowings,” which was already the name of a similar one in ancient Greece. There, by early March, people would offer such an assortment of seeds to earth deities and to the dead on the third day of the Athenian festival of Anthesteria, in honor of Dionysus. A couple of weeks before the current date of the Presentation though, toward late October, the Pyanopsia festival of the sun god Apollo also included a distribution of broad beans, which still figure among the grain used for panspermia. Referring to this ancient feature of the folklore of the Presentation (with other harvest festivals and days of the dead), the Swedish historian of Greek popular religion Martin Nilsson could thus write: Very seldom can the continuity of a cult usage be followed through the ages like this one can. These popular customs, which belong to the oldest and, as some say, the lowest stratum of religion, are the most long-lived of all. (Nilsson 1961, pp. 31–32)

p r o t e c t i o n o f t h e m o t h e r o f g o d | 375 See also Annunciation; Christmas; Days of the Dead (West); Dionysia; Easter; Thargelia; Vestalia; Yom Kippur References William E. Coleman, ed. Philippe de Mézières’ Campaign for the Feast of Mary’s Presentation (from Bibliothèque Nationale manuscripts Latin 17330 and 14454). Toronto, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1981. Martin P. Nilsson. Greek Folk Religion. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961. Pierre Pourrat. Father Olier, Founder of St. Sulpice. Tr. W. S. Reilly. Baltimore, MD: The Voice Publishing Company, 1932.

◗ PRIESTS’ DAY See Christmas

◗ PUDU See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ PURULLI See KI.LAM

◗ PRINCIPLE (NIGHT OF THE) See Lantern Festival

◗ PROPSONÎ See Carnival

◗ PROTECTION OF THE MOTHER OF GOD (CHRISTIANITY) The Protection of the Mother of God is a Marian feast peculiar to the Eastern Church. It commemorates an apparition of the Virgin Mary on October 1, a day also devoted to the memory of Saint Romanos the Melodist. However, while it is particularly solemn in Slavic Churches, the Church of Greece has shifted the observance of this feast to October 28, on account of the role attributed to Mary in the country’s firm stand against Italian Fascist aggression on that date in 1940.

The Vision of a Holy Fool In contrast to the Western Church, where apparitions (those of Mary in particular) have had a high profile from the Middle Ages down to the present time, the Eastern Church has known comparatively few spectacular apparitions and has generally made little fuss over such phenomena. The exception that proves the rule is the Feast of the Veil or the Protection of the Mother of God. Both words are translated as Pokrov in Russia, where many churches have been named after this feast since it was introduced in that country around 1160. Yet it originates in Constantinople, in the church of Blachernes, where the Virgin’s veil (known as the Holy Mamphorion) was preserved as a precious relic, famous since about that time for the “Weekly Miracle” of its levitation from the Friday night vigil service to Saturday’s matins. The July 2 feast of the Deposition of the Most Pure Veil of the Holy Mother of God of Blachernes already commemorated its arrival from the Holy Land in 458. Whenever the city was under siege, dipping this veil in the waters of the Golden Horn could raise a storm so as to shipwreck the enemy fleet and save the situation. In the first half of the tenth century, at such a moment when the imperial capital was threatened by barbarians at the gates, Saint Andrew, called “the Fool in Christ”—as the Orthodox Church terms mystics who specialize in simulating madness for humility’s sake—and his disciple Epiphanius were attending a vigil service in this church when, at about four in the morning, they both saw Mary advancing majestically from the sanctuary, flanked by Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, and followed by a number of other saints. The Virgin Mary knelt and prayed in tears for a while in the middle of the church and then again in front of the altar, where she finally rose, took off the shining veil she was wearing, and held it above her head; from there, it miraculously extended over the whole congregation. All present felt wonder-

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fully protected, although the two holy men were the only ones to see the Mother of God spreading her protecting veil. The threat of an invasion subsided soon thereafter. According to another version of the story, it was Saint Andrew who, looking up while he was praying, and seeing the Virgin Mary overhead holding her shining veil, sprang to the sanctuary and took her actual veil out of the reliquary. He then spread it himself over the crowd of worshippers, where it was miraculously held aloft in midair and extended to cover them all. The thing that matters for the celebration is that the apparition, whatever its details, was a powerful display of Mary’s intercession with her son Jesus Christ, extending protectively over the entire universe. In the words of the kontakion hymn (tone three) of the feast: The Virgin is today present in the church: With the choirs of saints she prays God invisibly for us. Angels and bishops prostrate themselves, apostles and prophets rejoice: For the Mother of God intercedes for us before the eternal God. (Ouspensky and Lossky 1982, p. 151)

The Gift of a Singing Saint In the center of the feast’s icon, the Mother of God holds her veil, or else angels hold it above her. Below her, at the bottom of the composition, Saint Romanos the Melodist holds the famous Christmas hymn in her honor that was the first of many he composed in sixth-century Constantinople. He is shown there because he was commemorated on October 1 long before the Virgin Mary appeared at Blachernes, but also because of his special relationship with her, since his hymn-writing talent was a miraculous gift he owed to the Mother of God. It is therefore fitting that this Marian feast also be about Saint Romanos.

The Day Greece Said No Yet it is now celebrated several weeks later in Greece. For obscure reasons, it had never had much of an impact in the Greek Church, despite appearing on its calendar for October 1. In 1960, in a clever move to make it more relevant, it was therefore transferred to October 28, so as to give credit to the decisive protection of the Mother of God for modern Greece’s finest hour. A civic holiday already commemorated that date in 1940, when the country faced an ultimatum from Benito Mussolini to surrender without a fight to Fascist Italy’s invading armies. The dictatorship of General Metaxas responded with a firm “No!” (“Okhi”) in Greek, so that this holiday is commonly known as Okhi Day. The Greek counterattack was remarkably successful, so much so that Nazi Germany was compelled to send troops to take over from the Italians in invading Greece. Since Hitler’s planned invasion of Russia was thus postponed long enough to prevent it from achieving the required decisive objectives before the winter of 1941–1942, it may well be then that Greece’s resistance made a big difference in the outcome of the Second World War, resulting in the final defeat of the Axis. As a patriotic holiday second only to the Annunciation, which is observed on March 25 as the main national holiday, the Protection of the Mother of God is also observed with great pomp on October 28, wherever there are Greeks. But in their Church, it has found added significance as a divine blessing on the determination of human beings to stand up for their own dignity as well as their brethren’s as children of God, in the face of all attempts to deny it by the use of raw force. See also Annunciation; Lent References Charles Cruickshank. Greece, 1940–1941. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1979. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Tr. G. E. H. Palmer and E.

p u r i m | 377 Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982. Hugh Wybrew. Orthodox Feasts of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000.

◗ PURE BRIGHTNESS (FESTIVAL OF) See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ PURIFICATION OF THE VIRGIN MARY See Candlemas

◗ PURIM (JUDAISM) Known in English as the Feast of Lots, the minor and relatively recent Jewish winter festival of Purim is a joyful commemoration of the foiling of a plot to exterminate the Jews living in Persia around the fifth century B.C.E., as related in the Bible’s Book of Esther. The role of lots, and so of sheer luck, in the plotter’s reversal of fortune and the Jews’ sudden triumph after they came within an inch of annihilation have likely contributed to Purim’s carnival atmosphere with its playful antics and social inversion.

The Story of Esther The story behind Purim is found in the Book of Esther, which is read at the synagogue on the eve of the feast. It relates how the beautiful Esther, who won the heart of the Persian king Ahasuerus, was therefore able to save her people. Her foster father Mordecai had incurred the enmity of the prime minister Haman by refusing to bow down before him, as called for by one of the king’s laws. Incensed, Haman then succeeded with a bribe in persuading Ahasuerus to order the execution of all the Jews in his empire. After Esther pleaded for the Jews and denounced Haman’s plotting at a banquet that she had taken the unheard of and

dangerous initiative of suggesting to the king, he was upset and went out in the garden. Ahasuerus came back to find Haman pleading for mercy with the queen, just at the moment when he was throwing himself upon her couch in a frantic gesture, which was misinterpreted by the king as an assault on his wife. The king decided on the spot to have Haman hanged and replaced with Mordecai who, with Esther, obtained permission for the Jews to kill Haman’s descendants and attack all their enemies throughout the empire on the thirteenth of the month of Adar, the date that Haman had originally chosen to kill them by drawing lots. This is why the fourteenth is now known as the Day of Lots (Purim in Hebrew), because Haman’s luck turned, and it was he who died instead of the Jews.

Variants and Constants of Purim The festival day reenacts the celebration after danger had passed, while the Fast of Esther (Ta’anit Esther) on the thirteenth of Adar itself recalls the public meeting called by the queen after she learned of the imminent peril to her fellow Jews. They now gather that evening at the synagogue to hear the reading of the Book of Esther, except in the cities of Israel that already existed in ancient times; there, the festival itself is called Shushan Purim (after the Iranian city of Susa) and is observed a day later than elsewhere, on the fifteenth of Adar. However, in leap years, the Jewish calendar has two months called Adar. Whenever this is the case, the main festival is celebrated in the second month of the name, and the corresponding date of the first Adar is celebrated as a minor Purim (Purim Katan) with less exuberant rejoicing but still without any fasting or eulogies allowed. Other minor Purims are specific to individual communities (ranging from Algiers to Vilnius) or to particular families (from Brandeis to Segal) on the anniversary of their being saved from imminent peril due to natural or man-made disasters. All minor Purim observances are mod-

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eled on the main Purim ones: sharing a festive meal, giving alms, and reading the story of the specific providential rescue.

lonian gods Ishtar and Marduk—hence “Marduk khai!” for “Marduk lives!”

The Jewish Carnival Hidden Meaning and Obscure Origins The story of Esther is taken in Jewish tradition as a sign of God’s providential care working behind the scenes of history through what appears to be chance and not just through spectacular miracles and revelations—as when the Hebrews were led out of Egypt on Passover. That is why in Kabbalistic and Hasidic literature, which are both interested in the hidden sides of Jewish faith, Purim is especially honored as a day of joy and friendship, precisely because there is no specific reference to God in the entire story. This strange omission led to a long controversy before the Book of Esther was included in the canon of the Hebrew Bible, among the five Scrolls of the Ketubim. The twelfth-century philosopher Maimonides could then even hold it as second only to the Five Books of Moses in importance among all those that make up the Bible. Another difficulty was raised by the question of the tale’s historicity. Although a whole section of the Mishnah was devoted to the observance of Purim in the second century, claiming that the festival was instituted by Esther’s uncle Mordecai after he replaced Haman as Ahasuerus’s prime minister, there is no evidence of Purim in Jewish literature until the first century B.C.E. It is also hard to place Ahasuerus in Persian history, since the only king to be known to have had a Jewish consort is Yazdegird I of the Sassanian Dynasty in the fourth century, whose queen was referred to as ShushanDokht—“Daughter of Susa.” As if all this were not enough, modern scholars have pointed out that in this book (one of the earliest novels, in the same tradition as the Persian tales of Princess Scheherezade in The Thousand and One Nights), the names of Esther and Mordecai are none other than those of the major Baby-

Such considerations have not affected the great popular appeal of Esther’s story. While it is being read at the synagogue (often from a colorfully illustrated scroll called the megillah), the usual decorum of the liturgy is set aside. The congregation boos at every mention of Haman’s name, and the children of the congregation wave special holiday rattles. Often, they will have already acted out the story of Esther as a school play earlier that day, so that they are familiar with it and feel very involved by the time of the service at the synagogue. On the basis of the Book of Esther, it is the custom to give charity to two people at least and to give two gifts of food to a friend and receive two in return. A special evening meal includes boiled beans and peas, as well as triangular pies known as “Haman’s ears” or “pockets” (hamantaschen). Hard drinking is not only allowed but encouraged, following the Babylonian teacher Rava’s call on every man to have so much wine on Purim that he no longer knows whether he is cursing Haman or blessing Mordecai. It is thus hardly surprising that all sorts of sanctioned wrongdoing and social inversion take place on Purim, as at any carnival. This carnival atmosphere of Purim was probably emphasized in the Middle Ages in imitation of the Christians’ Carnival just before the Lenten fast, starting around the same time of winter. Dressing up and even cross-dressing also figure prominently on Purim, as in TelAviv’s Adloyada Carnival (which may have set the stage for the city’s notorious transvestite scene). In many communities, even the sacred texts legislating every detail of Jewish life used to be the object of parodies, frivolously reversing the commandments in a special Purim Torah. A Purim rabbi recited this Torah, acting as an arbitrary Lord of Misrule or Carnival king for a day.

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A tradition of improvisational theater known as Purim-shpil developed from family entertainment at the Purim meal, and enhanced the festival in the Ashkenazi communities of Eastern Europe from at least the sixteenth century until the Second World War. The Purim-shpil was clearly derived from the German Fastnachtspiel (“Mardi Gras play”), with disguised actors and jesters, led by a narrator, making the rounds of every home. They would perform a humorous short play based either on biblical or on local material, drawing heavily on obscenity and profanity for its effects. See also Akitu; Carnival; Feast of Fools; Naw Ruz References Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Philip Goodman, ed. The Purim Anthology. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960.

Hayyim Schauss. Jewish Festivals. A Guide to their History and Observance. Tr. Samuel Jaffe. New York: Schocken Books, 1996.

◗ PUSKITA See Busk

◗ PUSSY WILLOW SUNDAY See Palm Sunday

◗ PYANOPSIA See Dionysia, Presentation of the Virgin Mary, Thargelia

◗ PYTHIA, PYTHIAN GAMES See Games (Greece)

Q ◗ QING MING See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ QOYLLUR RITI See Corpus Christi

◗ QUADRAGESIMA, QUARESIMA See Lent

◗ QUASIMODO See Easter

◗ QUINQUAGESIMA See Lent

◗ QUINQUATRUS (ROME) In ancient Rome, various professions honored Minerva during her March festival called Quinquatrus, and flute-players, in particular, had their own Lesser Quinquatrus in June.

Minerva’s Several Shrines and Constituencies The name of the Quinquatrus festival was said by Ovid to refer to its five-day length and by

Varro to mean that it started on the fifth day after the ides of March (or March 20). But modern authors have suggested an Etruscan origin like that of the goddess Minerva it honored on her birthday, taken to be the date when her temples had been dedicated on Aventine Hill in 263 or 262 B.C.E. and on the Caelian Hill in much more ancient times. At the foot of Mount Caelius stood the small shrine of Minerva Capta. This statue was put there after it was taken back as a prisoner from Falerii, a major center of the cult of Minerva, after the city was destroyed by the Romans in 241 B.C.E. However, Minerva Medica had her shrine on Esquiline Hill, and it was there that the healing professions would pay her homage on Quinquatrus. It was forbidden to shed blood and to fight with weapons on the first day of Quinquatrus. The other days featured gladiator fights, since “the war-hungry goddess loves the drawn sword.” (Fasti 3:814, p. 79) But this trait was much less prominent in the Romans’ Minerva than in the Greek Athena, with which she was identified. Especially around her Aventine shrine, where some professional guilds seem to have been based, Minerva was seen more as a patron of weaving as well as of dyeing, and of the trades calling for either a chisel or a pen. Quinquatrus was thus a school holiday, and |

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teachers, who were very poorly paid, received a seasonal bonus called Minerval.

How Pipers Got to Play Their Own Tune Another trade was however so crucial to the religious life of Rome that it got to celebrate its very own Lesser Quinquatrus on June 13, following a famous strike in 311 B.C.E. The fluteplayers (tibicines in Latin) were an essential part of all temple services, funerals, and civic games, and Minerva was said to have invented their instrument. When they left Rome for what is now Tivoli to protest legislation limiting their numbers and canceling their traditional banquet in the temple of Jupiter, the Senate eventually relented and arranged for their return, for fear that the gods might be offended

by their sudden absence. The ban on temple banquets was lifted, and the flute players were now allowed to roam the streets of Rome in parade costumes for three days, making music in Minerva’s praise. See also Games (Rome) References Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. William Warde Fowler. Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic. An Introduction to the Study of the Romans. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1969. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

R ◗ RAIN FESTIVALS (AZTECS) Festivals in the Aztec xihuitl solar calendar normally occurred at twenty-day intervals on each of the eighteen “weeks” whose name they shared. Several of them were meant to attract the Tlaloc rain gods as clouds of rain for the crops. This was often accomplished by means of sympathetic magic, playing on the imagined connection between analogous phenomena of the human and the natural world (seen as the divine world), such as that between smoke and clouds or tears and rain.

Gifts to the Gods The Aztecs believed that the gifts of nature’s bounty required on the part of humans a commensurate counter-gift in order to be repeated from one season and one year to the next. Otherwise, the capricious deities who controlled such phenomena as the weather might withhold them and seriously jeopardize people’s livelihoods and their very survival. The offering of humble daily tasks did not even come close to matching the munificence shown by nature on a regular, yet wholly contingent, basis, since the return of the conditions humans counted on at certain given times of the year was never really guaranteed. To put all chances on their side, the Aztecs thought it was a small price to pay (not to

mention a great honor) to have to sacrifice even a child, in comparison with the blessings granted to the entire family by the spirits who protected the harvests.

A New Year Child Sacrifice This reasoning applied to the case of the child especially chosen in every village and every town quarter to be sacrificed at the end of February to the old Toltec rain god Tlaloc, once a new year began in the month Atlcaualo. The child was taken on a symbolically decorated palanquin to a nearby river, where he or she would be beaten until he or she cried, and all onlookers would strike one another so they too would wail and weep. This was thought to induce rain deities to look upon mortals with overflowing pity, which would materialize in tears raining from the clouds—the Tlalocs, children and agents of the rain god. By way of an invitation, the hoped for storm clouds were imitated by the black smoke of the rubber balls burned on that day, as on other rainmaking ceremonies. Though a rainy period was actually around the corner, its coming was not seen as a regularly recurring natural phenomenon, but as a direct result of the people’s impression of rainfall: the abundant tears they all shed when the small victim was thrown into the water to drown. |

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A month later came the time for Tozoztontli, a prayer for rain offered to its gods the Tlalocs and to the Earth-Mother Coatlicue, which lasted from late March to mid-April.

Bean Food and Frog Priests Then the end of May and the first half of June was the time “When they eat bean-food,” the meaning of the name Etzalqualitzli, for a period of semifasting during which people ate mashed beans as they implored the gods for rain. Many human sacrifices were made at mountain altars and at artificial ponds, where large cemeteries awaited their remains. The priests would plunge into a lake and start to swim around and croak like frogs, because these rites were aimed at both Tlaloc and his wife Chalchihuitlicue (the “Emerald Lady”) who was usually depicted as a frog. The divine couple was thought to inhabit the Popocatepetl and Teocuinani volcanoes; on the latter, Tlaloc had a temple where his image was carved in green stone, in his standard pose: lying on his back with head and knees raised as he holds a disk on his chest. In towns during Etzalqualitzli, young people would run through the streets and take away objects that were not solidly secured (as they also do on festive occasions such as May Day in some parts of France), as a symbol of the picking of maize cobs that Aztecs were already looking forward to in the autumn. That was when the great celebration of the Tlalocs would take place after the September harvest. It was called Tepeilhuitl, the “Festival of the Mountains,” because races to the mountains were organized (as at the Huarachicu rites of passage of the Incas). Images of the god were covered with amaranth paste that was later eaten.

was named after the desired effect of the rite of putting up poles hung with rubber-coated paper strips and setting them on fire. The black clouds of smoke thus produced were thought to bring on the big storm clouds of the coming rainy season. They would soon show up on Tititl, a time of storms following the winter solstice, when the rain was encouraged to fall even more vigorously by generating as many tears as possible. The methods used (in addition to the usual human sacrifices) included beating up children with bags of flour and women clawing their own faces to shreds until they sobbed profusely. All this was thought to secure good luck for the rest of the year. See also Inti Raymi and Huarachicu; Izcalli; May Day; Mid-Autumn; Whitsuntide References Cottie Burland and Werner Forman. The Aztecs. London: Orbis Publishing, 1975. J. Eric S. Thompson. Mexico Before Cortez. An Account of the Daily Life, Religion, and Ritual of the Aztecs and Kindred Peoples. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1933. A. Hyatt Verrill. Old Civilizations of the New World. New York: The New Home Library, 1942.

◗ RAISING OF THE CROSS See Elevation of the Cross

◗ RAKHI BANDHAN, RAKSHA BANDHAN See Divali

◗ RAMA NAVAMI, RAMAYANA WEEK See Navaratra and Dusshera

End-of-Year Smoke and Tears Watchmen were posted to herald the coming of the winter solstice in December, when offerings were made to the gods of the hearth on Atemoztli, the “Falling of the Waters.” This festival

◗ RAMADAN (ISLAM) As a way to mark the Night of Power (Lailatul-Qadr in Arabic) when the Koran was first revealed to the Prophet Mohammed, fasting

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(seeyam) every day during the ninth month (Ramadan) is one of the five pillars of Islam. Another one is the annual Poor Due (Zakat). It is usually given on the occasion of the end of Ramadan, along with the Zakat-ul-Fitr specific to this time for solidarity and asceticism, ensuring that the equivalent of a meal is provided to a Muslim who cannot afford one when the annual fast is about to be broken on Eid-al-Fitr.

The Night of Power By the end of Ramadan, any Muslim will have experienced firsthand what it feels like to know hunger and thirst most of the time and will be genuinely inclined to relieve the burden of the poor for whom this is a permanent plight. A Muslim’s fraternal awareness of the whole community of believers (Umma) should have increased over the month as a result of training to forego the gratification of his own desires, since he or she (along with all fellow believers) will have been radically curbing them for twentynine to thirty days in a row. This discipline frees the spirit from its habitual patterns and reminds it of God’s sovereignty and provident mercy. As self-mastery for God’s sake, it is an inner holy war (jihad) against temptations, where valor is shown through endurance (sabr) against Satan and the strengthening of faith. But it is first and foremost an act of pure submission (the literal meaning of the word islam) to God’s command, given in the sura (chapter) entitled Al Baqarah in the Koran (2:185). This is the only passage where a month is mentioned by name, with instructions to fast throughout the month in which the holy book was first “revealed as guidance to man and clear proof of the guidance, and criterion (of falsehood and truth)” (The Koran, Ali tr. 1992). This was during the Night of Power when Mohammed (ca. 570–632), then in his fortieth year, while meditating in the Cave of Hira, was suddenly ordered by the Angel Gabriel to take his dictation from God. It is known from a sound hadith (a traditionally handed-down

saying) of the Prophet that this took place on one of the odd-numbered nights of the last ten days of Ramadan. According to his wife Aisha, he then used to exert himself in devotion more than at any other time of the year. These nights of Ramadan are therefore held to be particularly conducive to fruitful prayer and meditation—more than a thousand months of supplications in the case of the Night of Power itself. The Prophet Mohammed is reported to have said that “when the Night of Power comes, Gabriel descends with a company of angels who invoke blessings on everyone who is standing or sitting and remembering the Most Great and Glorious God” (Islamic Correspondence Course 1982, p. 47). In the absence of reliable evidence to decide which one of those nights is the actual Night of Power, it is commemorated with solemn prayers on the night from the twentysixth to the twenty-seventh for convenience’s sake.

The Poor Due The time between sundown on the twentyninth and the next morning’s Eid-al-Fitr communal prayer for the breaking of the fast of Ramadan is set aside for special takbir prayers of Allahu Akbar (“God is Most Great”) said in common in a number of variants, as well as for giving Zakat-ul-Fitr, the seasonal poor due which the head of the family has to donate on behalf of all of its members to the corresponding number of needy Muslims. These are defined as believers who do not have enough for a meal to celebrate the breaking of the fast along with the rest of the community, which must therefore look out for them in this way, at the rate of about one U.S. dollar per person. If such people are not to be found in the local Muslim community, the Zakat-ul-Fitr is to be sent to one where there are. If it is given after the Eid prayer, it only counts as an ordinary gift and can no longer ensure in the same way as the Zakat-ul-Fitr the purification of all the sinful actions of those who have just fasted. The regular

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yearly Zakat is also given then, amounting to 2.5 percent of a Muslim’s liquid assets.

The Fast According to a saying of the Prophet Mohammed, “he who fasts during Ramadan with faith and seeking reward from God will have his past sins forgiven” (Islamic Correspondence Course 1982, p. 46). Provided he has faithfully formulated the right intention (niyya) in his heart before beginning his fast on any day, a human being then takes on the “color” of God, by analogy to His attribute as “the Creator of the heavens and the earth, who nourishes all and is nourished by none” (The Koran, Ali tr. 1992, 6:14). The fast therefore regulates the entry into the body of all foreign substances, be it food, drink, smoke, or medication (including injections) as well as the issue of bodily fluids, through intentional vomiting and of course any kind of sexual activity—ranging all the way from full intercourse to a kiss (which may be replaced by patting between spouses). All of these are banned as a rule between the first glimmer of dawn, up to a couple of hours before actual sunrise, until the sun has completely set, at which time all these exchanges between inside and outside become licit again—in due course. These two moments of the start and end of the daily fasting period are signaled by cannon shots during Ramadan in the cities of many Islamic countries, such as Cairo in Egypt. Just after sunset and the iftar prayer for the breaking of the fast has been said, it is usual to have a light snack, such as one or three dates as was the Prophet’s custom; this evening breakfast is experienced as a kind of sacrament of brotherhood. Once the daily evening prayer has been completed, a full dinner may be had—obviously none too soon. In this context, a festive atmosphere overtakes Muslim neighborhoods as friends visit each other’s families. Near bedtime, extra tarawih prayers for Ramadan follow the daily night prayer at home or at the mosque. In the Maghreb, both kinds of build-

ings are whitewashed with lime. Staying up all night is not uncommon, be it to chant from the Koran at the mosque or to mix in the joyous bustle of the streets. There, a lame old man, called the tabbal, will make his rounds to announce the time for a light predawn meal or suhoor, consisting in this case of mesfouf, a very fine and sweet raisin couscous, which is the children’s special incentive not to go to bed. Whether or not people have been sleeping, this meal precedes the day’s formal statement of the intention to fast, and devout Muslims may use the time left before the daily dawn prayer for pious reading and meditation. Inadvertently putting something in one’s mouth or embracing a family member will not invalidate the day’s fast, but breaking it in any other way means that one will have to make up for it at a convenient date of the coming year, that is before the next Ramadan. The same goes for health reasons preventing or invalidating the fast, which for women include periods, pregnancy, confinement, and nursing. People who have to travel during Ramadan, including soldiers, may also postpone to a more suitable time of the year the observance of the affected days of prescribed fasting. Given human frailty, keeping one’s initial intention to fast on any given day may prove impossible due to a specified number of tolerable reasons, in which case this particular day will have to be made up for at a later date. However, if the intention, once taken, is deliberately broken without valid reason, including in every case of daytime sexual relations, this day of broken faith can only be expiated in one of three ways: the release of a slave, two extra months of fasting, or giving sixty needy people the equivalent of a meal each or the corresponding amount of money, in that order. Aside from the accommodations and exemptions mentioned above, failure to fast for the entire month of Ramadan can never be made up for, even by a whole year of fasting, according to a hadith or saying of the Prophet. It must be added that the obligations

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A Muslim Palestianian mother and her children enjoy traditional foods at home after a day of complete fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Annie Griffiths Belt/Corbis)

of Ramadan do not apply to people who are not of sound mind or yet of age, though children are encouraged to try to follow them for a few days as they approach puberty. For every Muslim believer, fasting during the month of Ramadan should preferably be accompanied by at least one complete reading of the Koran, and as much charity and as many good deeds as possible. One should also refrain from being rude, backbiting, quarreling, and from seeing indecent shows, movies, programs, and the like.

Breaking the Fast: The Moon of Eid After a month of ascetic exertion, Muslims watch out for the new moon of Eid-al-Fitr (the festival marking the end of the month of Ramadan) with a great deal of excitement. The day before its expected appearance, men spend the day at the mosque and women take the children to the cemeteries to visit the family dead.

(Among the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara, both men and women visit their dead on the first of Ramadan instead.) The new moon must be sighted between the sunset of the twenty-ninth and the break of dawn on the following day, or else a thirtieth day of fasting is added. The same method is used at the end of the previous month of Shaban in order to determine the actual beginning of Ramadan. Whenever there is any doubt about a sighting or when poor weather conditions altogether prevent the making of any sighting, both the months of Shaban and Ramadan may be rounded out to thirty. Modern communications have made local observations less critical, since the first valid nighttime sighting can be reported and applied to all areas where the night is not over yet. But in practice, different methods and many observers often lead to an embarrassing situation, where the many independent ethnic or sectar-

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ian communities of a non-Muslim country may start or break the fast of Ramadan at different times, up to a couple of days apart. On the other hand, the Islamic lunar calendar, beginning eleven days earlier each Gregorian solar year, ensures that the month of Ramadan will fall during all seasons of the year in turn. It has done that several times over since the time of Mohammed, when the root r-m-d in the month’s name referred to the heat of summer. Thus, regardless of which time of year happens to present favorable conditions for fasting in a given place, no Muslim community will have it easier on a permanent basis due solely to its geographical location. See also Eid; Lent; Nineteen-Day Feast References Mario Buitelaar. Fasting and Feasting in Morocco: Women’s Participation in Ramadan. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1993. Rhonda Fabian, dir. Ramadan. Schlessinger Video Productions (Library Video Company), 1996. The Koran. Tr. Ahmed Ali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Dianne M. MacMillan. Ramadan and Id al-Fitr. Hillside, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1994. Muslim Students’ Associations of the United States and Canada. Islamic Correspondence Course. Kuala Lumpur: International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, 1982.

◗ RANGOLI BIHU See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ RAS EL’AA’AM EL-’AAJMI, RAS EL’AA’AM EL-’HIJRI See New Year (Islam)

◗ RED-LETTER DAYS See Whitsuntide

◗ RED THURSDAY See Holy Week

◗ REED DANCE (SOUTHERN AFRICA) KwaZulu-Natal, which is one of the smaller provinces of South Africa, and the Kingdom of Swaziland it borders to the south, which is the smallest country in Africa, are both known for holding a centuries-old Reed Dance festival. It gathers all the maidens of the land in late August or early September to put their virtue, talent, and beauty on display in allegiance to the King and to the Queen Mother, as potential wives or a labor tribute, respectively.

The Frail Reed of Women’s Virtue The Royal Reed Dance, called Umkhosi woMhlanga in the Zulu language and just Umhlanga by the Swazis, developed out of the old custom known as umcwasho among the latter, whereby all young girls had their place in a female age grade. When they reached a marriageable age, they had to perform labor service for the Queen Mother, ending with dancing and feasting. But if any girl fell pregnant out of wedlock, her family paid a fine of one cow to the local chief. In today’s ceremony, young girls still set out to cut reeds that will be used for the restoration of windbreaks and walls in the enclosures or kraals at KwaNyokeni Palace in Nongoma, former capital of KwaZulu (“the place of the Zulus”), early every September, and some years in late August too at Ludzidzini Royal Residence, Swaziland’s administrative capital, twenty-three kilometers southeast of the official capital Mbabane. Just as this reinforcement of the Queen Mother’s fence is a symbolic strengthening of all Swazi womanhood, the Reed Dance is a show of allegiance to her, both as queen and as custodian of the rainmaking medicine. The dancers’ good morals are acknowledged by the King who, as part of the ceremony, can select one of the maidens as a girlfriend. She may later become a fiancée (liphovela in Swazi), and even a wife. Some girls, though, are compelled to take part in the event, because otherwise local chiefs

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may exact from their families a fine of one cow, several goats or chickens, or at least fifty rands in cash. The parents who can afford it would often rather pay the hefty fine than expose their daughters’ virtue to the perils of an event at which cases of serious sexual abuse are reported each year. Many unwanted pregnancies also result from the girls’ casual encounters with the many men who have come especially for this pageant of all the beauties of the land. Still, girls who are caught misbehaving may be lashed by the male guards appointed by each chief to chaperone the delegations of a couple hundred of them by chiefdom. In recent times, however, both Swazi and Zulu authorities have used the Reed Dance festival as an opportunity to educate the people about sexual morality and safety, in an attempt to prevent teenage pregnancy and halt the spread of sexually transmitted diseases—especially HIV/AIDS, which is rampant in the region. This is sadly ironic, since the Reed Dance gives the nation’s maidens the opportunity to display their chastity to the world. For only virgins are supposed to take part in the festival from about age ten, to make sure they are ritually pure. In Zulu mythology, if a young woman who is no longer a virgin takes part in the Reed Dance ceremony, her reed will break and embarrass her in front of everyone. Even today, an expectant hush falls on the crowd as the Zulu royal princess who has been chosen to lead the realm’s maidens through this rite of passage leads them in choosing a reed. Shouts of joy and celebration greet her as the reed remains intact. It is also with bated breath that each of the young women in turn will now also pick her reed by the riverbed.

Inaugurating the Reed Harvest Aside from a girl’s virtue, the reed symbolizes the power of nature as well as national origins, since Zulus believe their common ancestor emerged from a reed bed, and Swazis think the first human beings came from a primordial

reed, split lengthwise with a long knife. The dance is convened when the river reeds are ready for cutting, which thus begins as a communal task, symbolic of social solidarity. In Swaziland, as the more active counterpart of one of its daughters, the royal family appoints as captain (induna) of the girls one of the best dancers—a commoner maiden who is also knowledgeable about protocol—to announce the ceremony’s dates over the radio. Other subjects are not supposed to cut reeds for their own homes prior to the ceremony. During the first three days, the girls of Swaziland first gather at the Queen Mother’s palace in the Ezulweni valley and take a ritual bath in the nearby river and hot springs. They can then walk to a river of the King’s choosing (from ten kilometers away for the eight-to-thirteen agegroup to forty or more kilometers for the senior teenage and early twenties class) to harvest reeds with their symbolic long knives. After spending a couple of nights there to complete the task, they walk back to the Palace with a bundle each. These bundles are tied with grass plaited into rope by traditionalists, while strips of plastic bag will do for most. They arrive after dark both times “to show they travelled a long way.” In KwaZulu, to the accompaniment of joyful singing and dancing, the procession winds its way up the hill to the palace entrance where the King awaits with his retinue. The chief princess leading the group of young women kneels down before her father and presents him with a reed to mark the occasion, before joining the young women in a joyful dance of tribute to the sovereign. Among Swazi girls, who have returned by the fourth evening and spent the fifth day preparing their elaborate costumes for dancing, this occasion is also a kind of dress rehearsal for the singing and rhythmic dancing scheduled for the late afternoon of the sixth and seventh days at the Royal Village. Assisted by Court officials, they drop their reeds outside the Queen Mother’s compound before they move to the arena and dance

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Zulu virgins select reeds for the traditional Reed Dance, where they will be presented to the king. (Ed Kashi/ Corbis)

in their own groups—all singing different songs simultaneously.

Seasonal Crafts Photography is permitted at the Umhlanga, provided a permit is first obtained from the Tourist Office. After many months of preparation, the Reed Dance is an opportunity for the young women to show off not just their singing and dancing, but also their beadwork. KwaZulu’s beadwork is renowned as the finest in Africa. The colors, patterns, and styles of the beadwork worn by the young women as both ornaments and clothing attest to the distinctive regional origin of the craftwork, which is also available as souvenir items. In Swaziland, the girls wear metal-studded, fringed puberty aprons, with beadwork in symbolic colors: red for fertility, white for purity or transition, and black for

wealth and marriage. The color coding of the tassels on the flashy yarn sashes they wear also denotes whether the maidens are already betrothed to be married or are still available to be courted by the eligible men ogling them along their procession. Strands of dried seed pods tied around the ankles enhance the beguiling cadence of their steps.

Royal Courtship and Final Sacrifice On the second and last day of dancing, the girls parade into the stadium past the King, Queen Mother, Queens, ministers, and diplomats, in addition to hundreds of spectators from around the world. Speeches and performers entertain the Zulu royal family and their guests, as well as the local chiefs and their subjects. As the ceremony draws to a close, the King joins in the dancing and singing. He walks out to the girls

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with some of his retainers to appraise them and pay homage to those he finds most beautiful— by doing the giya courtship dance in Swaziland, and by kneeling in front of them in KwaZulu. There, members of the Royal Guard, who have been sitting around the edge of the stadium barely containing their excitement, eventually run to revere the girls in similar fashion. But when Swazi King Mswati III rises from the royal podium at the Ludzidzini arena, it is his choice of a new girlfriend and potential new wife he indicates by going over to one whose beauty or dancing has caught his eye, wielding his golden battle axe with his right hand, and placing his shield briefly at her feet as a sign of admiration. Clan diplomacy will determine the final choice of new concubines and wives over the course of the year. Because Swazis see it as a king’s duty to have as many wives and children as possible, the current monarch’s father Sobhuza II had sixty-five wives and over a hundred children over the course of his sixty-one-year reign. By contrast, Zulu King Zwelithini only takes advantage of this opportunity to choose a new wife every few years, as in the case of the fifth one in 1993. That year also saw the token participation of two young white girls, who wore red skirts and tops tied in a knot in the front, in contrast to the customary topless outfits of other maidens. Led at first by royal princesses, the girls, numbering some 10,000 in KwaZulu and up to 25,000 in Swaziland, perform a number of dances for their king. By paying tribute to their respective kings in this way, the Zulu and Swazi nations, represented by the young women, bestow on them the symbolic authority to legitimately rule over their loyal subjects over the coming year. In return, the Zulu king makes a sacrifice to the royal ancestors on behalf of all the young women and their communities across the land. It is the chief princess, wearing the inyongo (the gall bladder of the main sacrificial beast, which is an important symbol of purity in any Zulu ritual), who leads the pro-

cession from the palace. To show his gratitude to the girls, the Swazi king orders some twenty or so heads of cattle to be slaughtered on the eighth and final day of the festival. The girls can then collect their pieces of meat and go home. References C. T. Binns. The Warrior People: Zulu Origins, Customs and Witchcraft. Cape Town, South Africa: Howard Timmins, 1974. Hilda Kuper. The Swazi: A South African Kingdom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963. Brian Marwick. The Swazi: An Ethnographic Account of the Natives of Swaziland. London: F. Cass, 1966. Brian Roberts. The Zulu Kings. London: Hamilton, 1974.

◗ REMEMBRANCE DAY See Martinmas, Rosh Hashanah

◗ RÉVEILLON See New Year (West)

◗ RICE-TRANSPLANTING FESTIVAL See Matsuri

◗ RIDVÁN (BAHÁ’ISM) In the Bahá’í calendar of nineteen weeks of nineteen days, there are nine holy days (mostly devoted to anniversaries of founders of the faith) on which believers ought to refrain from work. The first of them is the Persian New Year, Naw Ruz, on March 21. A month later begins the twelve-day festival of Ridván, during which elections are held in local assemblies. The first, ninth, and twelfth days of Ridván are the holiest, as they mark the anniversary of the Declaration of Bahá’ullah’s mission as the Promised One of the Babi movement—and hence of all world religions according to the Bahá’í faith, since he was destined to bring a new universal

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religion that finally fulfilled their promise of peace for a unified world.

Twelve Days in the Garden of Paradise This took place in the so-called “Garden of Paradise” that the Persian name Ridván (pronounced “rez-vahn”) refers to, located on the edge of the Tigris river in Bagdad, where Bahá’ullah’s mostly Babi supporters came to say farewell to him during the twelve days he stayed there between April 21 and May 2, 1863 (hence the twelve days of the festival). He was about to leave for the imperial capital Constantinople (today’s Istanbul), because Ottoman authorities had bowed to pressure from the government of his native Persia to remove him farther away from the borders of that country, as his prophetic activity was still causing some unrest there. After five years in Andrinople (present-day Edirne in Turkey), he would spend the rest of his life in detention in Palestine, where he died at 3:00 A.M. on May 29, 1892. This day is commemorated by Bahá’ís as that of his Ascension. It comes nearly a week after the anniversary of the Bab’s Declaration of his own mission on May 22, 1844, two hours and eleven minutes after sunset. Since sunset marks the end of a day in Bahá’í practice, Bahá’ís celebrate it on May 23, and the month of May for them is therefore like one big festival!

Other Festivals of the Prophets As for the year 1844, it is also the first of the Bahá’í reckoning, since it was the one when the Bab acknowledged before an emissary of the Shaykhi movement of Shiites, who was looking for the Mahdi or Messiah of a new age, that he was himself the Door (the meaning of his name) to a new prophetic dispensation of the Truth. For Bahá’ís, this Door opens onto the Divine Manifestation of the prophet Bahá’ullah, an early follower of the Babi religion, that he would later reshape into their own.

This is why the Bab’s martyrdom at noon on July 9, 1850, and his birth on October 20, 1819, are commemorated on a par with Bahá’ullah’s birth on November 12, 1817, and his Ascension on May 29, 1892. But Bahá’ís prefer to downplay the dimension of mourning implied in the festivals of their two founders’ parting from this world, deliberately wishing to avoid the penitential excesses displayed in the Shiite festival of Ashura, honoring Imam Hussein’s martyrdom.

Moderate Merriment and Philanthropic Projects The best way to show one’s loyalty to Divine Manifestations who have gone back to their Source is to further the plan for a new world that they came to reveal. This is true for all Bahá’í festivals, which are not just an occasion for merrymaking; indeed, excesses in this direction are as strongly discouraged as ascetic extremes. Festivals are above all the best time to start new philanthropic projects such as schools and hospitals, or for individual good deeds and resolutions. In Iran, whenever persecution by the authorities does not prevent their public observance, Ridván and the other joyful festivals of Bahá’ism are nonetheless celebrated by picnics, playing music, singing verses from holy scripture, and making appropriate speeches. This pattern is followed and adapted by Bahá’ís outside Iran, in a number of countries second only to that of the ones where Christianity is present. See also Ascension; Ashura; May Day; Naw Ruz; Nineteen-Day Feast References The Ascension of Bahá’ulláh: A Compilation. Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, 1991. J. E. Esslemont. “Bahá’í Calendar, Festivals and Dates of Historic Significance,” in The Bahá’í World (Haifa, Israel: The Universal House of Justice), Vol. 13, pp. 749–758. Peter Smith. The Bahá’í Religion: A Short Introduction to Its History and Teachings. Oxford: G. Ronald, 1988.

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◗ RISSHUN See New Year (Japan)

◗ ROBIGALIA See Rogations

◗ ROGATIONS (CHRISTIANITY) In the West, the Sunday before the feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ on a Thursday and the intervening three weekdays are known as Rogations, a festival of public prayers and processions (often involving dragon floats in towns) to call God’s blessing on the fields and the beasts and to consecrate rural boundaries.

Rogationtide Processions It was Saint Mamertus who, either in 470 or in 474 (the year of his death on May 11), in thanksgiving for the end of the natural catastrophes that had lately been besetting the Alpine French town of Vienne of which he was bishop, made a vow to have solemn Rogations (from a Latin word for “prayer’) accompanied by fasting on the three days prior to the Ascension from that year onward. After mass, the people would go in penitential processions in the fields while singing the so-called “Gallican litanies” attributed to Saint Mamertus. The celebration of Rogations was officially extended to all Frankish churches by the First Council of Orléans in 511 and soon spread to the rest of Europe. Pope Leo III adopted them at Rome around the time he restored the Western Roman Empire by crowning Charlemagne in 800. From then on, it was officially forbidden to work during the triduum, which is the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Rogations. This prohibition was long applied by folklore to kneeding and washing. About a century earlier, Pope Saint Gregory the Great had already instituted the more urban (and initially more strictly liturgical) processions of Major litanies on April 25, alongside the rural Minor litanies before Ascension that

had made Rogations so popular overnight, as they took over from pagan processions such as those of the late May Ambarvalia. In this ancient Roman festival, the god Mars had used to be invoked in purification rites and processions around the boundaries of arable land, as Rome’s best protection against all aggressions from hostile forces beyond the pale of the city’s culture and the country’s agriculture alike. Though the name of the god Mars already finds an echo in the name of Saint Mark who has his feast day on April 25, the main reason for having a Major Rogation procession on this date, in view of obtaining God’s blessing on the crops just planted, was more likely to supersede an older festival in the pagan calendar of Rome, called the Robigalia. It featured games with adult and junior races and a procession outside city limits to the fifth milestone of the Via Claudia. There, the priest of Quirinus sacrificed a red dog and a sheep in order to preserve the crops from the blight of “wheat rust” by appeasing its deity Robigo (as the disease was known in Latin). The Christian procession in Rome therefore followed the same itinerary as the pagan procession (up to a certain point, where it turned around and went back to Saint Peter’s basilica for a mass). Originally, Minor Rogation processions would do the grand tour of parish territory, with stops to rest and snack. Later on, they were scaled down to a small tour of the most important or sacred spots. The faithful would follow the priest in a very specific order of social categories (such as men, women, boys, girls). Temporary altars decorated with flowers and greenery were set up at every stop, where the priest would bless the fields and the beasts as the faithful sang the litanies. The blessings would be aimed at a specific harvest for each day, with the parish’s major crop usually singled out on Wednesday as the final day of Rogations. In 1969, as part of a general move away from such largely folkloric practices, the Roman Catholic Church shifted the focus of Minor Rogations

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Early in each farm season, Rogation Days are observed at the Mt. Loretto farm school in Colorado. This 1996 procession is led by priests who are blessing the flocks for a fruitful year. (Bettmann/Corbis)

from the processions to votive masses, to be observed in accordance with the guidelines set by local Churches. Of the few parishes that have kept on organizing traditional Rogations processions, some are found in parts of France, such as Burgundy, while in Switzerland, others take crosses and banners as they join the regional pilgrimage to Maria Sonnenberg chapel, where, since 1589, penitents bring petitions or leave ex-votos to the Virgin on Kreuzmontag, or “Cross Monday,” before the Ascension.

Beating the Bounds Having spread to England in the eighth century, Rogationtide is still known in its northern counties as the Ganging Days, after an Old English word for “going, walking” in the season’s processions. Banned in many Protestant countries (though in some places the Lutheran Church has kept them before Pentecost and/or in May), Ganging Days were tolerated by the Anglican Church on account of the vital social role played by this collective “perambulation”

led by the clergy, which until the nineteenth century allowed villagers to publicly ascertain that no boundary markers delimiting property had been moved and that contracts had been respected. To this day in Leicester, such a bound-beating ceremony (reminiscent of the ancient Roman festival of Terminalia) is held every three years on Ascension Day in the presence of the city’s notables and the cathedral’s dean, who proclaims: “Cursed is he who removeth his neighbour’s landmark!” Similar customs are known in other places in England, like Oxford. They also occur during either Rogationtide or Ascensiontide (the ten-day period between the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost) in other countries such as Switzerland, Austria, and Bavaria. In these southern German lands, the beating of the bounds of parishes is often done on horseback. Sometimes, the horses are first made to witness the sacrament of the Eucharist at the parish church, which somehow establishes a mystical connection between the blood of Christ and the soil they are going to trample ritually to protect it from hail, in what is called a Blutritt or “Blood Ride.” (This may perhaps help explain the resonance that slogans like Blut und Boden or “Blood and Soil,” coupled with constant marching to establish territorial claims, could find in the national consciousness of Germany under Nazi rule.) In Hungary among other places, equestrian contests allow young people to display not only their skill, but also their manly vigor at this time of year, thereby communicating it to the ground as they trample it and jump on it. This fertilizing virtue of cavalcades may also have something to do with the famous Holy Blood procession and medieval pageant still held in Bruges every year—traditionally on Ascension Day, or now on the first Sunday after May 2; it centers on the display of a vial reputed to contain a drop of Christ’s blood, which, since the Crusades, has become the city’s palladium or totem and Belgium’s most sacred relic.

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Taming the Dragon In France and Belgium, processional dragons often used to be led in triumph during Rogationtide in urban centers and were fed by the crowd along the way. In Paris, for instance, children would put small breads, pastries, and fruits in the mouth of the wickerwork dragon of Saint Marcel as it went through the streets; the food collected would then be given to the sick in the hospital. This particular parade disappeared around 1730. However, such dragons would also crop up in the giants’ parades still known in many towns of Northern France, Belgium, and England, but they are much older than them and have probably inspired the fashion for oversized characters in these picturesque parades, which are literary more than folkloric in origin. The dragons themselves go back at least to the twelfth century and have their roots in the paganism which they came to represent in Christian legend. Rogationtide dragons (which would often come out again on Ascension Day itself—to say nothing of the role of dragons in Provençal and Spanish Corpus Christi processions) are usually associated with the particular local holy man who vanquished and tamed them. Yet, they do not represent evil as such, so much as the ambivalence of the forces of nature, particularly regarding the water supply vital to the crops, which they were universally thought to control. This is why they received offerings of the fruits of the earth in order to placate their power over its fruitfulness. But it also extended over humans in the discreet form of a custom found in parts of Burgundy, where the first girl to adorn the statue on the village fountain on Rogations would most likely get married over the year. See also Ascension; Corpus Christi; Terminalia; Whitsuntide References Joyce Bazire and James E. Cross, eds. Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982.

Alain de Benoist. Les Traditions d’Europe. 2nd ed. Arpajon, France: Éditions du Labyrinthe, 1996. Bernard of Clairvaux. Sermons for the Summer Season: Liturgical Sermons from Rogationtide and Pentecost. Tr. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and James Jarzembowski. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991. A. R. Wright. British Calendar Customs. England,Vol. I: Movable Festivals. London: The Folk-Lore Society, 1936.

◗ ROIS (FÊTE DES) See Epiphany

◗ ROMAIA See Fordicidia and Parilia

◗ ROMAN GAMES See Games (Rome)

◗ ROSALIA, ROSARIA See Easter, Whitsuntide

◗ ROSH HASHANAH (JUDAISM) The Jewish New Year, called Rosh Hashanah, is a fall celebration of the Creation of the world, of God’s kingship, and of His future Day of Judgment—in view of which it opens a ten-day penitential period culminating at Yom Kippur. It features the solemn sounding of a horn called the shofar, recalling the ram substituted for Isaac in Abraham’s sacrifice.

The Day of Creation The Biblical term Rosh Hashanah, meaning “head of the year,” did not originally refer to the fall festival now celebrated by Jews any time between September 6 and October 5 as their New Year’s Day on the first and second days of Tishri. This month used to be the seventh in the Babylonian calendar, which started in the spring. It was kept in this position by the rabbis of the early Common Era, even as they gave it a

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Boy in prayer shawl for Rosh Hashana—the Jewish New Year—in New York City, 1911. (Library of Congress)

Babylonian name whose root seru means “to begin,” on account of a festival that marked the beginning of the business year with the sale of the late crops, so that the Jewish New Year was eventually transferred to its date. Before it became Rosh Hashanah, the festival was already known in the Bible as Yom Teru’ah or the “Day of Blowing the Horn.” Yet, the holy book does not tell us the reason why a horn was blown on this particular occasion, in addition to others like the weekly Sabbath, the monthly New Moon or Rosh Hodesh, and the anointing of a new king (a practice revived for the inauguration of Israeli presidents). According to a homily for the Sabbath of Repentance in the Sefat Emet collection of the Hasidic teachings of Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter (1847–1905), there is “no need to sound the shofar on the Sabbath,” since it was instituted in Eden by God’s grace after Adam repented from his sin, as an actual

“return of Creation to Oneness, with no admixture of evil” necessitating divine mercy and human repentance. By contrast, in the mixed conditions of historical time, if “on each Rosh Hashanah the Creation is renewed,” it is only “in accord with the consciousness and willingness of the people of Israel to accept His blessed kingdom,” since “the shofar sound is meant to arouse this Oneness, as Scripture says: ‘Make yourself two trumpets of silver . . . when the community is assembled, you shall sound them’ (Numbers 10:2,7)” (Green 1984, p. 396). Amid the music of drums, lyres, and harps, “sound the New Moon trumpet, at the full moon, on our feast day! This is a statute binding on Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob,” sings the Psalmist (81:3–4). During the period of the Second Temple (515 B.C.E.–70 C.E.), because it was crucial that all Jews, wherever they were, begin the year at the same time, Rosh Hashanah came to be celebrated over two days (as ordained in the Jerusalem Talmud, Erubin III), so as to allow for delayed news or discrepancies between sightings of the New Moon of Tishri, as the signal to open the festival (except for a few exceptional cases that call for it to be postponed to the next day or the one after). Although a reform of the calendar in 359 had made it possible to observe the feast on the first of Tishri alone in Palestine, the two-day span of the feast eventually prevailed as standard practice both in the Holy Land and abroad, under the influence of twelfth-century Jewish scholars from Provence (who were also shaping the early Kabbala at this point). In this, Rosh Hashanah differs from other festivals that include a second day only in the Diaspora—that is, in Jewish communities outside the land of Israel. Unlike these other second days, that of Rosh Hashanah is considered part of the first and so does not permit a relaxation of the laws governing nolad, the creation of something that was not there before. This would be especially out of place on the day that the liturgy identifies with the Creation of the world—from which Jewish years

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are counted, being traditionally held to have taken place in 3761 B.C.E., on the twenty-fifth of the month of Ellul. The first of Tishri actually commemorates the sixth day of creation, when the primordial human couple of Adam and Eve was made to crown God’s work.

The Day of Judgment The opening of the books of life and death is another prominent theme on this Judgment Day, or Yom ha-Din, and is closely related to the theme of God as King. According to the historian of religion Sigmund Mowinckel in a classic study of The Psalms in Israel’s Worship (1962), many psalms point to a pre-Exilic Hebrew New Year festival held in the fall. God was then enthroned as King in a way that recalls the enthronement of the sky god Marduk in the Babylonian pantheon on the Akitu New Year festival, in which this event had been moved from fall to spring. But as their religious scholars like to point out, instead of trembling like the heathens when they appear for judgment before their dread lord, the Jews rejoice in their trust in God’s Providence, looking out for them over the year to come. During the Rosh Hashanah service, they recite ten Biblical texts proclaiming God’s kingship, ten about His remembrance of His people (hence the day’s name Yom ha-Zikkaron or “Remembrance Day”), and ten more about the means of this remembrance: the ceremonial shofar horn, made from any animal’s horn except a cow’s. It is sounded after each set of prayers: six times ten blasts after each plus forty at the end of the service, adding up to a hundred on both days— unless one falls on the Sabbath when even the horn cannot be used. Medieval commentators suggest that this is not only to express God’s majesty and as a reminder of His glorious revelation on Mount Sinai (both evoked by the long and strong initial and final note), but also as a call for the soul to wake up, repent, and come back to the practice of the Law as given there to the chosen people of Israel (with trepidation

over the process of judgment expressed in the short and somber middle notes). Since postBiblical times, a ram’s horn is preferred, in memory, it is said, of Abraham’s submission to God’s will, that eventually spared him the sacrifice of his son Isaac after it was first ordained by God. His obedience is also symbolized by the horn’s curvature, since Abraham bowed completely before God. This was “a day of trumpet blast and battle cry” for the prophet Zephaniah (1:16), when “the whole world passes before God like a herd of sheep” in a striking image from Talmudic tradition (Malka 1989, p. 111). “Human beings are judged as individuals and as part of a group, as individual ‘sheep’ and as a ‘flock,’” in a month that is seen as corresponding to the zodiac sign of Libra, the scales of justice. This symbolism also points to the dual quality of anxiety and elation of this festival: According to the sages, the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob were also born on Rosh Hashanah. Just as many bad events occurred on Tisha be-Av, so many happy events occurred on Rosh Hashanah. Three barren women (Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah) were made fertile, enabling them to bear children: Isaac, Joseph, and Samuel the Prophet. Jewish slave labor in Egypt stopped on the first day of Tishri. (Kanon 2002)

The Quality of Mercy On the one hand, according to the Mishnah (a philosophical law code canonized by the second century), the awesome sounding of the shofar at the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah announces the Lord’s Days of Judgment over all mankind. Yet on the other hand, a midrash or Bible commentary attributed to Rabbi Josiah also makes clear that “Israel is the people which knows how to win over their Creator with the blasts of the shofar, so that He rises from His throne of judgment to His throne of mercy and is filled with compassion for them, and turns

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His quality of judgment into the quality of compassion” (Lev. R. 29:4, in “Rosh Ha Shanah” 1971, p. 309) For this to happen, His people must first return to Him by the way of repentance (teshuvah), over the course of the ten-day penitential season heralded by the shofar, leading up to atonement at Yom Kippur. This is why the thirteen attributes of divine mercy taught to Moses by God (Exodus 34:6–7) are central to the penitential prayers called selihot that are recited before the morning service of each of the ten days, and even in the preceding days of preparation for this period of heightened mindfulness of the Law. Realizing what is really at stake, Jews then wish each other to be inscribed in the book of life for another year and many more. On the first night of the New Year, they prepare delicacies to offer each other for luck. At the festive meal of the second night, they dip pieces of bread and apple in honey so as to underline this hope that the quality of mercy will prevail and the new year will keep the sweet taste, expressed in the prayer they say before eating them: “May it be Thy will O Lord our God and God of our father, to renew unto us a good and sweet year”(“Rosh Ha Shanah” 1971, p. 305). But fortunes can still rise and fall over the coming year, as the ladder shape of a special seasonal bread reminds members of some Jewish communities. Pomegranate and fish evoke prosperity, and dates represent God’s good care of Israel in thwarting the schemes of its enemies. However, nuts may not be eaten, because their Hebrew name is numerologically equivalent to the word for “sin,” and as Jews pray to God at the Tashlikh ceremony after the prophet Micah: “to the bottom of the sea throw [ve-tashlikh] all our sins” (Micah 7:19). For this, they gather near a body of running water to recite appropriate Bible verses and selihot on the first afternoon of Rosh Hashanah (or the second afternoon if it falls on a Sabbath). The lidless gaze of the fish from below the waters is traditionally said to reflect

God’s ever-merciful looking out for his creatures from above the heavens. See also Akitu; Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Naw Ruz; Rosh Hodesh; Sabbath; Tisha be-Av; Tu bi-Shevat; Yom Kippur References Max Arzt. Justice and Mercy: Commentary on the Liturgy of the New Year and the Day of Atonement. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963. Philip Goodman, ed. The Rosh Hashana Anthology. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1971. Arthur Green. “Teachings of the Hasidic Masters,” in Barry W. Holtz, ed. Back to the Sources. Reading the Classic Jewish Texts. New York: Summit Books, 1984. Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968. Sharon Kanon. “Celebrating the World’s Birthday,” in Western Jewish Bulletin, September 6, 2002, http://www.jewishbulletin.ca/archives/Sept02/ archives02Sept06–11.html. Victor and Salomon Malka. Le Petit Retz du judaïsme. Paris: Retz, 1989. Mishnah Tractate Rosh Hashanah with the commentary of Rabbi Ovadiah MiBartinura. Tr. Jeffrey R. Cohen. Brooklyn, NY: Tanna v’Rav Publications, 1981. Allan Rosengren Petersen. The Royal God: Enthronement Festivals in Ancient Israel and Ugarit. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. “Rosh Ha-Shanah,” in Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

◗ ROSH HODESH (JUDAISM) The day of the New Moon marks the beginning of a month in the Jewish calendar, hence its Hebrew name Rosh Hodesh, meaning “the head of the month.” It should be observed with rejoicing like a festival, though some sects keep a Yom Kippur-like fast on its eve.

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Biblical Prescriptions This is because New Moon feasts are put on a par with other festivals in the Bible’s Book of Numbers (10:10), and on account of verse 24 of Psalm 118, always recited on this occasion: “This is the day made memorable by Yahweh, what immense joy for us!” Fasting is therefore forbidden, and funeral services are kept to a minimum, as is domestic work. On the contrary, it is recommended that every family hold a festive meal or zebah as in the Book of Samuel (1:20). This sacred feast is concluded with the special prayer “Ya’aleh ve-Yavo” in the grace said afterwards. As on the last six days of Passover, an abbreviated “half-Hallel” (omitting parts of Psalms 115 and 116) is read on the New Moon at the synagogue. According to the Bible, on the New Moon people would go on a pilgrimage to see a holy man (2 Kings 4:23), and members of a family who lived in different places would come together at their birthplace for a festive sacrificial meal. At the royal court, this feast was also held on the following day, and ritual purity was a prerequisite for being allowed at the table (1 Samuel 20). The law set down in Numbers (28:11–15) also required three special public sacrifices: a burnt offering, a grain offering, and a libation, preceded by a sin offering in order to ensure ritual purity. For all these reasons, one of the main functions of the old Sanhedrin religious High Court into the Common Era was the sacred proclamation of the first day of the new month: the kiddush ha-Hodesh or “sanctification of the month.” It was made by an official called the Beth-Din after he had waited through the night and day of the thirtieth for the detailed reports of the first eyewitnesses of the appearance of the New Moon’s faint crescent, called the Molad, which, once ascertained beyond any shadow of a doubt (a task so vital it overruled Sabbath restrictions on human activity), marked the start of the first day of the corresponding month; if they failed to appear, it was

automatically proclaimed for the second half of an extra thirty-first day. This is why Rosh Hodesh is actually celebrated over two days: the thirtieth of the old month and the first of the new, except after twenty-nine day months, when only the latter is observed, unless it is after the month of Ellul, since the Rosh Hodesh of Tishri happens to be Rosh Hashanah.

A Minor Day of Atonement It is said to be in memory of the Beth-Din’s kiddush ha-Hodesh that, since the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70, the solemn announcement of Rosh Hodesh at the synagogue on the previous Sabbath, the birkat ha-Hodesh, is recited while standing before the Musaf service, where the former additional New Moon sacrifice used to be; it starts with the words: “The beginnings of the months Thou didst assign unto Thy people for a season of atonement throughout their generations.” On this basis, a minor day of atonement called Yom Kippur Katan has been observed on the eve of the New Moon by Kabbalists since the sixteenth century, under the influence of the school of Isaac Luria in Safed, in the mountains of upper Galilee.

A Day of Rest for Women If business transactions were to be avoided on the New Moon in Biblical times (Amos 8:5), work is still allowed when it comes up today, though women may take the day off or do only light tasks, like sewing as opposed to weaving. This is meant as a reward to Jewish women for not having given up their jewelry to be used in making the golden calf while Moses was away on Mount Sinai.

From Monthly to Weekly and Yearly Cycles Before a permanent calendar was established in the fourth century, a month officially began when beacons were kindled on the Mount of Olives. They were then relayed by other fires all over the Holy Land and even in the Diaspora,

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so as to notify all Jews that the members of the High Court or Sanhedrin had sanctified the New Moon on the basis of the sightings of two reliable witnesses, as mentioned earlier. But messengers had to be dispatched to faraway communities whenever confusion was created by the misleading beacons of the heretical Samaritans. In such cases, the New Moon was sometimes observed on both the thirtieth and thirty-first days of the month. Over time, the increasing importance of the Sabbath made the New Moon relatively less significant, as a weekly rhythm of observances gradually took precedence over the monthly cycle of the lunar calendar. The New Moon of the seventh month, that of Tishri in early fall, was an exception, since it heralded the main pilgrimage festival—the festival of ingathering, or Sukkot. This was done by sounding the shofar horn on this particular New Moon, which eventually became the way to ring in the Jewish New Year. While ordinary New Moons receded into the background, one Rosh Hodesh

was thus raised above the others as Rosh Hashanah. See also Noumenia; Passover; Rosh Hashanah; Sabbath; Sukkot; Yom Kippur References Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, 1971; Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Judith Y. Solomon. The Rosh Hodesh Table: Foods of the New Moon. Jewish Women’s Monthly Festivals. New York: Biblio Press, 1995.

◗ ROYAL ENTRY See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary, Corpus Christi

◗ RUNNING OF THE BULLS See Games (Rome)

◗ RUSALII, RUSHAJET, RUSICAT See Whitsuntide

S ◗ SABBATH (JUDAISM) The Sabbath is the last day of the Jewish week, ordained by God as a day of rest like the seventh day of Creation, when He rested after all His work. Strict rules curtailing any creative activities on the part of His chosen people of Israel are there to make sure that all its members do the same and turn to God as the uncreated source of all creation.

History The observance of the Sabbath is not attested before the eighth century B.C.E., but Israelite legal traditions as recorded in the Book of Exodus (23:12, 34:21) suggest an earlier date. Yet, despite its inclusion among the Ten Commandments, it is unlikely to go all the way back to Moses himself, as it presupposes a move from nomadic and pastoral ways to sedentary agricultural ways. It does not seem to have been very strictly enforced before the exile in Babylon, where it may have been influenced by the local custom of holding the seventh and last day (called shabattu) of every quarter of the twenty-eight-day lunar month to be inauspicious for most human endeavors and activities, since it was ruled by the planet Saturn and its genius Ea, inducing sluggishness in mind and body. The masters refrained from work as a taboo on Saturday and also made it a day of rest

for their slaves. From there it was but a short step for Hebrews among these slaves to hallow Shabbat as their own special day. For it set them apart from the idolaters around them as the basis for a unique seven-day week, distinct from the quarters of the moon that regulated Babylonian religious life and therefore independent of natural cycles in its hallowing of time itself at fixed numerical intervals to face the utterly transcendent Creator of all things. It remains the only day to be named in the Jewish week, the other six being simply numbered— one half as leading up to the Sabbath (Wednesday to Friday), and the other half as coming after the Sabbath (Sunday to Tuesday). In the days of the Temple of Jerusalem, the twelve showbreads, arranged on a table next to the Holy of Holies to stand for the twelve tribes of Israel, were changed by the priests on every Sabbath. With its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., the Synagogue Period began, named after a building deliberately designed to hold a weekly congregation. Replacing the spatial center provided by the Temple, the temporal structure of a pulsating week defined by the Sabbath as its peak (and long identified with the week as a whole by a common name, as it still is by the Armenian Shapat) rested on the new institution of the synagogue, where the Jewish people could |

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gather anywhere in remembrance of God. It was therefore known as the “Sabbath house” until as late as the first century B.C.E., when the Sabbath was about to be permanently identified with the day of Saturn (a planet they therefore named Shabtai) in the astrological sequence of seven planetary days that had already gained wide currency in Greco-Roman culture on the basis of Babylonian lore, which and is still reflected in the number and names of the days in most European languages. Regulations and prohibitions for this weekly holiday had proliferated after the return of the Hebrews to the Holy Land. When they later spread through the Hellenistic world and the Roman Empire, their superstitious Gentile neighbors may have come to view this day as an unlucky one when it was best to do as little as possible (much as the Babylonians had done before them). This may be why they too easily associated it with Saturn, the god and the planet of restrictions and downfall.

Turning from Creatures to the Creator The Sabbath is traditionally thought to owe its name to a Hebrew word for “bringing to an end,” with reference to the seventh day of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, when God rested in the satisfaction of six days of work on the world, making it a day of completion. According to a midrash or Bible commentary, if God, who knows no exertion, can “write about Himself ” that he rested, how much more ought man to rest, since it is said that he was born to toil. This day of rest is therefore at the heart of the Jewish religious and national identity, on the basis of God’s explicit commands to remember it and hallow it by ceasing work after six days (Exodus 20), and to observe it in memory of Israel being delivered from slave labor in Egypt by God’s mighty deeds (Deuteronomy 5). These two commands are symbolized by the two candles that the mistress of a Jewish household will light

an hour before nightfall on Friday, to herald the Sabbath about to begin, as it lasts from sundown to sundown. During this time, no more fire may be kindled or extinguished, and no creative activity may be undertaken. This includes buying and selling, writing, and traveling more than half a mile beyond city limits. It ensures that attention shifts from particular lights to the Source of Light itself, from creatures to the very fact of Creation, and to the Creator who acts through it for His chosen people. According to the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel, “the meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world” (Heschel 2003, p. xviii) and to its ultimate end, when Creation will have been redeemed from all evil and restored to oneness in God. For when Jews observe the Sabbath, their faces are said to glow with the radiance of neshamah yeter—an “additional soul” that enters the lives of mortals as the primal light Adam and Eve enjoyed in Eden, allowing them to see the world in the pristine glory which will suffuse it again in the messianic time. Meanwhile, the Sabbath is also a day of much needed physical rest from hard work, to which not only Jews are entitled, but also their beasts of burden, their slaves, and the foreigners in their midst (Exodus 23:12). By extension, under Mosaic law, the land itself was allowed to rest every seventh year as a sabbatical year when little work was done, the social hierarchies largely determined by labor were relaxed, and all accumulated debts were cancelled. Every fifty years, the one following seven such sabbaticals was the jubilee as Shabbat shabatton (meaning something like “Sabbath of Sabbaths”), when the land was redis-

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tributed equally between all the clans of Israel, restoring an “original” state of social justice.

Sabbath at the Synagogue It has been a challenge for Judaism to translate some age-old customs, devised to honor the holiness of the Sabbath since the days of the Patriarchs, to the modern context of the technological world that has made basic creative procedures so casual. Both electricity and the internal combustion engine involve the kindling of fires. This can be gotten around in the case of electrical appliances by the use of timeswitches set in advance. Automobile travel is forbidden by Orthodox Judaism and allowed by Reform, while Conservative Jews may use their cars to go to the synagogue. There, Psalms 95–99 about God’s kingship as a present fact are recited before the Friday evening service called Kabbalat Shabbat (“Welcoming the Sabbath”) and dating back to the Middle Ages. The Song of Songs is added in Sephardic communities, where the Moroccan poet Shimon Levi’s song in memory of the early Talmudic master Bar Yohai is also sung at home. The practice of singing the hymn Lekhah Dodi (composed around 1540 by the Kabbalist Rabbi Solomon ben Moses ha-Levi Alkabetz) at the start of the Friday evening service was initially confined to the Sephardic rite, but it is now also standard in the Ashkenazi tradition of Northern and Eastern Europe. Its opening lines, from which the title is taken, set the stage for sexual imagery drawn from the Bible’s Song of Songs to evoke the encounter of the Sabbath (as the crowning seventh day of Creation) with her Lord (who had her in mind from before Creation) as a prefiguration of the reunion of opposites in the messianic final days (bringing Creation back to the Creator): Come, my Beloved, with chorus of praise. Welcome Sabbath the Bride, Queen of our days.

Come, let us all greet Queen Sabbath sublime, Fountain of blessings in every clime. Anointed and regal since earliest time, In thought she preceded Creation’s six days. (Wigoder 2002, p. 473)

In Israel, where it originated like the psalm recitation among Isaac Luria’s Safed circle of Kabbalists, this poem used to be sung while the faithful literally went out in the courtyard of the synagogue or into the fields around town to meet the Sabbath at sunset, and to meditate on the mystical inner meaning of this sacred moment. As a relic of this custom, today all eyes turn toward the door of the synagogue while the Lekhah Dodi is being recited. The Saturday morning service includes the weekly Torah readings (while those of the following weeks are previewed in the afternoon service). The Torah scroll is first retrieved from its cabinet (called “the ark” to recall the Ark of the Law in the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem), taken around the synagogue and unveiled. It is then read by at least seven members of the congregation (though some may prefer to follow on the scroll as another reads from it). Their ascent to the podium (called aliyah) is the moment to announce or celebrate important turning points in the life of individual members, be it times of crisis with prayers for the sick and thanksgiving for a rescue from peril or happy occasions like marriages scheduled for the coming week and the birth or naming of babies. The best known such occasion is a rite of passage called Bar Mitzvah, when a boy (or a girl, in the case of the Bat Mitzvah, also to be found in many Conservative and Reform congregations) who has turned thirteen over the past week assumes adult religious responsibilities before the community by doing one of the readings from the Torah. He (or she) may sometimes additionally chant the Haftarah, a thematically related excerpt from the Prophets that is read out on feasts and fast days.

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Special Sabbaths There are a number of Special Sabbaths throughout the Jewish calendar, featuring liturgical variations, particular customs, or commemorations of events or themes. They are sometimes named after a key word in the additional Torah reading that then replaces the Maftir, the last portion of the assigned one, as in the case of the “four readings” (Arba’ Parashiyyot), each with their own special Haftarah as well. Concentrated in springtime, they are named Shabbat Sheqalim (after shekels, a monetary unit, from Exodus 30:11–16) just before the month of Adar (or the second one of this name in a leap year), Shabbat Zakhor (after “remember,” from Deuteronomy 25:17–19) before Purim, then Shabbat Parah (meaning “red heifer,” from Numbers 19:1–22) and HaHodesh (or “the month,” from Exodus 12:1–20) in immediate succession leading up to Passover. While the Sabbath just before Passover is called Shabbat ha-Gadol (“great Sabbath”), the one that takes the most place in liturgical life is Shabbat Mevarekhin, recurring all through the year, since it immediately precedes a new month; the name of the month is then formally announced along with the day of the New Moon on which it begins. In many Ashkenazi communities where women did not usually attend Sabbath services, they would come on this “Sabbath of the Blessing,” named after the special Rosh Hodesh petition composed by Rav, which asks for life, peace, gladness, salvation, and consolation for the house of Israel.

ring), to recall the double portion of manna provided by God to the Jews on their journey through the wilderness, so that they would not have to work to get their food on the Sabbath. These hallot are covered by decorative cloths (traditionally embroidered by women since the seventeenth century) during the abridged kiddush blessing said by the husband over a cup of wine, so that the precious life-giving bread does not take offense at the special treatment of the festive drink. The children of the house will first have been blessed by both parents. Special table hymns called zemirot are chanted at the day’s festive meals, where it is better to also have guests. In Hasidic communities, the courses are the same from one week and one household to the next, since this is not a meal where a wife’s particular human gift for cooking should get special notice and risk detracting attention from the general divine gift of the occasion itself. The Sabbath concludes on Saturday evening with the Havdalah blessing, thanking God for separating the sacred from the profane—like day from night and the Sabbath from weekdays, blessing over spices so they can cheer up the soul after the holy day’s departure, and a blessing over light so that fire may be kindled again. The special Sabbath clothes one should wear can then go back to the separate Sabbath half of the wardrobe, since the Talmud insists on the cultivation of a distinctive “Sabbath look” contrasting with profane weekday garb, which includes a requirement that women wear special jewelry.

Domestic Rites

Borderline Cases

It is in any case up to women to make sure that distinctive food is prepared in advance for the Sabbath and that the table is specially set when the head of the household returns from the synagogue. There will then be two candles and two loaves of white Sabbath bread (in contrast to black weekday rye bread, just as Sabbath fish is different from regular salt her-

According to the pioneering sociologist of time Eviatar Zerubavel (1989, p. 116), The ancient Talmudic ruling that travelers who lose count of the days of the week should nevertheless keep observing the Sabbath every seventh day despite the likelihood of its being the “wrong” day makes it quite clear that at the

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A Jewish family prays before the Sabbath meal. (Dave Bartruff/Corbis)

very heart of the institution of the Sabbath lies the periodic alternation between the sacred and the profane along a 6–1 pattern. This structural feature is far more central to Judaism than the actual temporal location of the sacred within historical time.

In another significant ruling, Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph (50–136), one of the four great masters of the Mishnah, held that the Sabbath was only desecrated if a proscribed act was performed even though it could have been done before or after. If there was no choice, there was no offense, so that for instance a midwife could freely ply her trade if a woman came into labor on the Sabbath. However, healing people, as Jesus Christ insisted on doing on the Sabbath, would not have fallen into this category. There were also those who stuck to the strict letter of the prohibitions, such as the Essene sect based in Qumran, who would not help a wounded

animal or one giving birth if it happened to be the Sabbath. However, studying the Torah for a while is allowed, with due moderation on this divinely ordained day of rest for all Jews, pious or not. It is also a preferred time for conjugal lovemaking. In the State of Israel, the Sabbath is the official day of rest on which all businesses must be closed, the only question being the legal definition of a business. See also Day of Assembly; Nyepí; Passover; Purim; Rosh Hashana; Rosh Hodesh; Sunday References Eviatar Zerubavel. The Seven Day Circle. The History and Meaning of the Week. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2003. “Lekhah Dodi,” in Geoffrey Wigoder, ed. The New Encyclopedia of Judaism. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

406 | s a c r e d h e a r t Yehoshua Noivirot. Shemirath Shabbath: A Guide to the Practical Observance of the Sabbath. New York: Feldheim, 1989. Adin Steinsaltz. Miracle of the Seventh Day: A Guide to the Spiritual Meaning, Significance, and Weekly Practice of the Jewish Sabbath. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.

specifically revered on account of the spreading belief in her Immaculate Conception. He wrote the first liturgical services for each of these cults, and was then able to devise a distinct feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was celebrated for the first time in 1670—on August 31 in Rennes and on October 20 in Coutances. It is still observed on the latter date by Eudist Fathers.

◗ SACRED HEART (CHRISTIANITY) On the heels of Corpus Christi comes another Eucharistic feast instituted by the Roman Catholic Church on the basis of the private visions of woman mystics: the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, focusing on forgiveness for sins against his real presence in the bread consecrated at Mass and for ingratitude for this saving sacrifice of his body.

From the Wound on Christ’s Side to the Heart Inside It was only from the eleventh century onward that, in the Western Church (as opposed to the newly separate Eastern Church), devotional attention gradually shifted from the wound on Jesus’ side, out of which came his blood in Passion narratives, to the wounded organ inside, in the private meditations and mystical visions of a growing number of contemplatives. This theme was eventually taken up by certain religious orders, like the Franciscans who were propagating a devotion to the Five Wounds on Christ’s crucified body, as part of which the image of the wounded heart of Jesus was widely circulated—all the more so when the Jesuits made it their emblem, appearing on books and buildings alike. By their time in the Counterreformation, various ascetic writers had helped make this devotional theme familiar to a broader public. In 1641, the Jesuiteducated Norman preacher Saint John Eudes founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary on the basis of the intertwined cults of both their hearts, that of the Virgin still being more

A Penitential Twist to Eucharistic Piety Yet such a feast would only become popular as a result of a series of divine apparitions to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), a humble nun of the recently founded Congregation of the Visitation of Holy Mary. (The name refers to Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, six months pregnant with Saint John the Baptist. This Gospel episode is itself the object of a minor feast since the fourteenth-century Council of Basel; it was revived in 1863 as a way to promote the newly proclaimed dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and switched from July 2 to May 31 in 1969.) Saint Margaret Mary maintained that Christ had requested to be honored under the guise of his heart of flesh and that a feast should be established for this purpose on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi (during which this “great apparition” took place around June 16, 1675). This was to be done in reparation for all sins against the Eucharist, as a most grievous instance of the ingratitude for Christ’s love already displayed by men at the Passion it stood for, and ever since then. She was also instructed to turn to Father Claude La Colombière, superior of the Jesuits in the same Burgundian town of Paray-le-Monial. He readily consecrated himself to the Sacred Heart and used Saint Margaret Mary’s written account to promote this new cult, which could soon count for this on the Jesuits and Visitandines as well as the Eudists.

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From a Small Order’s Mass to a Feast for All Mankind Though the cult of the Sacred Heart rapidly spread to other religious communities, the Holy See was still lukewarm and only granted the feast for the exclusive use of the Visitandines with the Mass of the Five Wounds in 1697. The cult became common among the general population when several cities in the south of France followed the example of Marseille, which had publicly worshipped the Sacred Heart and consecrated itself to it in 1720 to seek relief from a plague. In the face of this growing momentum, the French Church as a whole was finally allowed to observe the feast in 1765 and, maintaining the pressure on the papacy, was able to obtain from Pius IX its adoption by the Catholic Church as a whole in 1856, as a double major. It was upgraded to the double rite of first class in 1889, but in the meantime, more and more groups, congregations, and states had been consecrated to the Sacred Heart (not to mention the massive basilica built between 1879 and 1910 atop Montmartre in reparation for the revolutionary excesses of the Paris Commune of 1871). On Sunday June 11, 1899, all of mankind was solemnly consecrated to the Sacred Heart by Leo XIII, in what he called “the great act” of his pontificate, inspired by the visions of Sister Mary of the Divine Heart (née Drost-zu-Vischering), a nun of the Good Shepherd in Oporto, Portugal. She had happened to pass away two days before, on the actual date of the feast of the Sacred Heart, that is on the third Friday after Pentecost. An office and the mass Cogitationes were added to the service in 1929, and three series of three readings in 1970. Like Corpus Christi, the feast of the Sacred Heart has a strong visual focus on a vivid symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, to foster pious meditation and religious feeling—here: compassion for his sufferings for the sake of mankind and reliance on their efficacy to make up for the latter’s lack of mindfulness of them.

See also Corpus Christi, Whitsuntide References The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912 (Online Edition: Kevin Knight, 1999). Raymond Jonas. France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic Tale for Modern Times. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGrawHill, 1969.

◗ SACRIFICE (FEAST OF) See Eid

◗ SAD-HALDA See Divali

◗ SAIDAIJI EYO See Naked Festivals

◗ SAINT ANN See Pardon

◗ SAINT BASIL THE GREAT See Epiphany, New Year (West)

◗ SAINT BRIDE, SAINT BRIDGET See Candlemas

◗ SAINT CATHERINE See Saint Nicholas

◗ SAINT DASIUS See Saturnalia

◗ SAINT DEMETRIOS See Saint George

◗ SAINT DISTAFF DAY See Epiphany

◗ SAINT ELIGIUS, SAINT-ÉLOI See Martinmas

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◗ SAINT FERMIN See Games (Rome)

◗ SAINT GEORGE (CHRISTIANITY) April 23 marks the feast of Saint George, one of Christianity’s most popular saints, since he has something for everyone: commemorated at a turning point of the pastoral year, this martial protector of states in general and agriculture in particular is chiefly known for saving a princess from a drought-causing dragon.

A Military Saint The least dubious piece of information we have about Saint George’s largely—if not entirely— legendary life is that he was apparently beheaded for his faith during the last great Roman persecution of Christians, under Emperor Diocletian on April 4, 304, in Lydda—Lod in present-day Israel. There were pilgrimages to his grave from the sixth century to the eighth, when the Muslim conquest of Palestine made them more difficult—even though local rulers have kept respecting any church dedicated to this native son. His story as put together in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries states that he was born there in 280 and, walking in his father’s footsteps, became a high-ranking officer in the Roman army. He fought gallantly on the Empire’s frontiers, at first in the East against the Persians, and then serving in the West on the staff of Emperor Constantius Chlorus in York. This episode would later cause him to be associated with Glastonbury, the holy city of Arthurian romance, and contribute to making him the model of the Christian knight. As such, he became the patron saint, not just of England (replacing King Edward the Confessor since the 1222 Council of Oxford), but of countless European towns and several Christian nations, starting of course with Georgia in the East all the way to Portugal in the West, and including the former kingdoms of Sicily in Italy and Aragon in Spain.

A Book and a Rose on Saint George’s Day Also part of Spain, Catalonia has made of the feast of its patron Saint George a day to reaffirm its nationhood against the central state’s attempts to suppress it after its side lost in the War of the Spanish Succession of the early eighteenth century. A custom arose of lovers exchanging a rose (since in Catalan folklore roses instead of blood streamed from the dragon’s neck after the brave knight Saint George freed a princess by cutting it with his sword) and a book (since April 23 happened to be the date on which Spain’s greatest writer Miguel de Cervantes is traditionally said to have died in 1616—though historians favor April 22 as the actual day). In 1923, it was officially sanctioned as a double gift to loved ones by the Catalan Chamber of the Book Trade. In 1995, foreign publishing and media personalities were invited to Barcelona to witness the very popular social event that this practice had allowed the yearly opening of the book publishing season to become. They were so impressed that UNESCO promptly declared April 23 to be World Book Day. Jointly with the Catalan government, it then launched a successful worldwide campaign to have book trade organizations of a now growing list of countries observe Saint George’s Day by encouraging its customs there, with bookstores giving out roses and free books to shoppers.

Saint George and the Dragon In Eastern Christianity, Saint George is honored as a “Great Martyr,” and his intercession is asked for in the matins of his feast on behalf of “those who suffer various tribulations” in order to “free them from all oppressions.” This is also why, for example, South Indian pilgrims (Christian or not) flock by the thousands to make offerings of money or ex-votos to miraculous statues of Saint George on the occasion of the patronal feast of two great Catholic churches dedicated to him in Kerala, among the

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most popular festivals in that state. Both last eleven days (the one at the ancient Forane Church in Edapally from April 23 to culminate on May 4 and that of Edathua from April 27 with its climax on May 6), and feature the ceremonial hoisting of Saint George’s flag, the procession of his statue, colorful historic costumes, the illumination of the church, and spectacular fireworks. As the martial champion of the oppressed, Saint George was depicted riding a white horse on the banners and pennants of the Byzantine Empire, and still is on the regimental flags of the Greek army, as its patron saint. He has always been seen as the Christian embodiment of the classical Greek heroic ideal. Hymns written in his honor have thus incorporated many features of tales from pagan mythology about demigods, like Cadmus who killed the dragon guarding a spring, sowed its teeth in the earth and reaped a harvest of armed men: the Sparti (“Sown”), noble founders of Thebes in Boeotia. Another example is the famous story which appeared around the tenth century, about how George fought against the dragon who was terrorizing a city and demanding human sacrifice as tribute, or else he would cut its water supply. Saint George volunteered to kill the dragon and save the king’s daughter who had been designated as the next victim, on the condition that he and his people would accept baptism into the Christian Church. This is usually said to have happened in the Libyan city of Selena, but in other versions the story it is set in England near a hill known as Arthur’s Table (Bwrydd Arthur), and in others still in Joppa (presentday Arsuf) on the coast of Palestine. The latter happened to be the place where Perseus was supposed to have killed the sea-monster to which the local king’s daughter Andromeda was being offered, so it would stop devastating the country with floods. This Greek myth was thought by Robert Graves to have been born of a reinterpretation of the iconography of Philistine coastal shrines of Astarte, showing the

Akkadian god of heaven and order Bel killing the female sea-monster Tiamat, thereby subduing chaos in Babylon’s creation myth. This cosmological theme, echoed in the Bible, is vividly conveyed in the imagery of Saint George and the dragon as the triumph of good over evil.

Green George Yet no less important is the connection between the dragon and water, as shown at the climax of the celebration of Saint George’s Day as the patronal feast of Arachova near Mount Parnassus in Greece. The village’s water supply having been cut off earlier, it is restored again when the dancing old men who sing the popular Greek folk song about Saint George come to the line saying: “Dragon, set the water free that revelers may drink.” As part of a mythological pattern to be found from Europe to China, Saint George represents the typical Western instance of the warrior hero who protects agriculture by regulating the flow of water, sustaining it, and he generally promotes vegetation and growth: his Greek name after all means “he who works the earth.” That is why he appears on his April 23 feast as Green George in much European folklore and is often identified in Britain with the Green Man of May Day customs, themselves derived from Beltane, the ancient Celtic feast of the light principle Bel. Such is the case in the Cornish town of Padstow, where the May Day Hobby-Horse goes through the streets and enters every house singing: “Oh where is Saint George? Oh where is he, Oh?”— no doubt as a way to invite fertility in. In the Belgian city of Mons, the combat de Lumeçon attracts large crowds every year as a ritual performance of the fight of Saint George on horseback (accompanied by people on foot in bizarre costumes impersonating his hunting dogs and horses) against a wooden dragon carried by “wild men” wearing foliage. In eastern Slovakia, as part of a Palm Sunday maypole procession, children sang: “Saint George calls, the earth will open,/All forms of flowers will come, roses and

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violets./Grandmothers be merry, we bring you summer,/Pretty green rosemary, indeed a grove, a green May” (Mihalek 2000, p. 3). Unlike other Eastern European peoples, Slovenes did not always accept substitutes for a real Green George to throw into a body of water after the foliage-clad figure had led the young people’s joyful Saint George’s Day tree procession. Serbs used to rise before dawn and swim in a river before a communal breakfast picnic in the fields or the woods, on this the official start of the campaign season for the haiduks (partisans who for centuries kept up a guerilla struggle against the Turks occupying their country). In Tyrol, children would “ring the grass” to chase away the evil spirits that might hinder growth. In parts of Russia and the Ukraine, the priest would go out into the fields to bless them before young married couples rolled several times over the sprouting crop to promote their growth. Alternatively, he himself might be rolled over the fields willy-nilly by the women, so the holy powers ascribed to his person would imbibe the ground and allow the corn to grow for all—including the priest, as the parishioners were quick to point out when he dared to complain. Conversely, a Serb or Croat woman who was unable to have children used to place a new chemise overnight on a fruitful tree on the eve of Saint George’s Day and knew her wish would be fulfilled within a year if she then found some bug had crept into it. In many Slavic lands until the mid-twentieth century, mothers would wake up their children that night by sprinkling them with a wet nettle, which they all tried to sting each other with all day, as an injection of the plant’s vigor. Since evil spirits also happened to be particularly active overnight, throughout Central Europe, greenery would be put on the fronts of houses and stables to counter their influence.

Saint George’s Flock Saint George’s Day on April 23 was a critical turning point of the year in other respects. It

was often the counterpart of the feast of another warrior saint six months later—be it Saint Demetrios on October 26 in Greece, Martinmas on November 11, or Michaelmas (in honor of the Archangel Michael) on September 29 in Western Europe, as days when contracts ended, and the herds were brought in for the winter (as on the Nativity of the Virgin on September 8). Thus, Saint George’s was a time for country fairs where servants and shepherds were hired and land dues were paid, as well as to get the herds out of their folds and up to their summer pastures. On this occasion, a Russian prayer recalls the dragon slain by Saint George in asking for his protection against “sly beasts” threatening them on the way there. In the Carpathian mountains of Rumania, the ewes are first milked, and then all the sheep are purified by making them jump through a “living fire” that is kept up all summer long (much as ancient Roman shepherds would themselves jump over a fire on the April 21 festival of Parilia). And just as their distant forebears drank milk and ate cake as part of these dawn protection rites, after a tree procession like that of Slovenian peasants, Rumanian shepherds made a point of having dairy products at the joyous meal with which they concluded their Sambra oilor (“Sheep Society”) ceremonies on April 23. Greek shepherds also share with relatives, friends, and other villagers a copious meal having as a centerpiece the “lamb of Saint George” along with yogurt, cheese, and milk pies, sometimes keeping the shoulder for the priest who has to visit every sheepfold in turn, and making sure there are no leftovers. Lambs are also sacrificed or offered to the church by all those who have made a vow to the saint to this effect at a time of need, like losing sheep, so that he would help them through it. Elaborate rules specifying the victim’s color and gender, the place and ritual of the sacrifice, and divinatory observations to be made vary from town to town, but the meat, raw or cooked, is always distributed to

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the villagers. The procession, headed by the icon of Saint George, is often preceded or followed by dances, games, and athletic contests, such as a horserace between the young men with a large loaf of bread at the finish line, which the winner must cut up and share with the other competitors. For if Saint George (as the timeless hero riding a white horse) wins the prize, it is not after all for fame and fortune, but for the glory of God, and in view of ensuring the free flow of nature’s bounties for the general welfare of the entire community. See also Akitu; Conception and Birth of the Mother of God; Elevation of the Cross; Martinmas; May Day; Palm Sunday; Samhain; Terminalia References Sir E. A. Wallis Budge. George of Lydda, The Patron Saint of England: A Study of the Cultus of Saint George in Ethiopia. Translations of the Ethiopic texts as found in the manuscripts from Makdala now in the British Museum and an introduction. New York: AMS Press, 1978. Fairs and Festivals of Kerala. Trivandrum, India: Department of Public Relations, Government of Kerala, 1991. Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. One-Volume Abridged Edition. New York: Collier Books, 1985. Robert Graves. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin Books, 1960. Richard Mihalek. “Easter in Drahovce,” April 30, 2000, in Eastern Slovakia—Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn Genealogical Research (http:// www.iarelative.com/easter/mihalek.htm.)

◗ SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST (CONCEPTION OF) See Annunciation

◗ SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST (NATIVITY OF) See Midsummer

◗ SAINT JORDAN’S DAY See Epiphany

◗ SAINT JOSEPH See Lent

◗ SAINT JOSEPH THE CRAFTSMAN See May Day

◗ SAINT KNUT See Epiphany

◗ SAINT LUCY (CHRISTIANITY) In many parts of Europe, the feast of Saint Lucy on December 13 has inherited characteristics of pre-Christian winter solstice festivals of light, on the basis of its date, of this martyr’s name, and of the role of eyesight in her legend. This often makes it a time when beings from the beyond can become manifest to humans in ambivalent forms. A romanticized version of this festival is still observed throughout Swedish society, and to a lesser extent in Finland and Norway. In all Scandinavian countries, children experience Sancta Lucia with the kind of excitement surrounding Halloween in North America.

Lucy and Light ◗ SAINT JOHN See Christmas

◗ SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST (BEHEADING OF) See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

In the Catholic and Anglican Churches, the feast of Saint Lucy used to be followed by one of the four Ember Weeks of prayer and fasting set aside for the ordination of the clergy. In current liturgical calendars, it has however been reduced to the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the third of the four Sundays of Advent preceding Christmas.

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The holy virgin Lucy was martyred in 303 during the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians, because she had broken off her engagement to a young patrician gentleman for the sake of Jesus. The December 13 anniversary of Lucy’s death is marked in her native Sicily by bonfires and torchlight processions. In Syracuse where she was born, a heavy silver statue of Lucy is carried from the cathedral to the Church of Santa Lucia, to be taken back eight days later amidst much pomp and festivity. There is a similar procession in the Calabrian town of Amaroni, which also includes its patron Saint Barbara. In Tuscany too, ceremonies are held in Siena’s church of Santa Lucia, while an outdoor pottery fair fills the adjacent streets with stands displaying ceramics and terracotta. West of Venice, the children of Verona receive gifts in remembrance of Saint Lucy’s role in protecting them from a plague in the fourteenth century. The association of Lucy’s name with light (since it is derived from the Latin lux) may be the source of the story on the basis of which the devout have turned to her to be cured of eye problems. They say that Lucy gouged out her own eyes to send them to her ex-fiancé, but that the Virgin Mary then gave her a new pair of even more beautiful ones. In many cases, her feast day took over from pagan winter solstice festivals of light. The shortest day of the year, after which light increases anew, actually tended to fall toward Saint Lucy’s on December 13, before the Gregorian calendar came into general use and brought the year in step with the actual length of days, from 1582 onward in Catholic countries. In France, there used to be a saying reflecting the pre-Gregorian situation: À la Sainte-Luce, les jours croissent d’un saut de puce; it could be rendered as: “On Saint Luce’s, days grow by one leap of a louse’s.” (Some French Canadians still know its counterpart about Epiphany, at an equal distance from Christmas as Saint Lucy’s on the other side, and reflecting the steady waxing of daylight be-

tween the opening and the closing of the holiday season around the solstice: “À la Fête des Rois, les jours allongent du pas d’une oie,” which could be translated as: “On the Twelfth Night of Christmas, days lengthen by one step of a goose’s.”) In Burgundy, one of the box-tree branches blessed on Palm Sunday the previous spring would be lit at noon on this day—as though to greet the slightly increasing force of light as the distant promise of a new spring. Because of this old connection between Saint Lucy’s and the winter solstice, churches would begin to ring in Christmas on December 13 in some parts of southwestern France, and in parts of Hungary, people might plant some wheat or a peach-tree branch in a pot so it would produce shoots or blossoms on Christmas. As if the doors to the beyond swung open on this hinge between two cycles of time to allow communication with the mysteries of past and future, in Hungary on Saint Lucy’s Day, young women might try to tell how many years they still had to go before finding a husband by the number of grunts swines would make when they kicked their pigsty, and a chair would be left empty at the family table for a dead ancestor or for some passing stranger. This custom from pagan times is known in Poland too—but on Christmas, when Swedes also put some food for the dead on the dinner table.

Swedish Lucia: A Little Christmas In Sweden, Saint Lucy’s Day or Lucia is even called Lille Jul or “Little Christmas.” It marks the time of the official beginning of the monthlong Christmas season extending in that country from December 13 to January 13, which is Saint Knut’s Day or Knut. On Lucia, Swedes are supposed to start preparing for Christmas proper, by cleaning the house from top to bottom and shining the copper and silverware, as well as by getting all of the food ready (which in olden times meant slaughtering the pigs). The legend of the Sicilian saint was only imported in the eighteenth century in this Nordic coun-

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Eva Nycander, a nineteen-year-old Swede, is crowned by her maids of honor during the traditional festival of Saint Lucia at a Swedish church in Marylebone in London, England, in 1954. (Hulton-Detsch Collection/ Corbis)

try where, ironically, the Lutheran Church resorted to Catholic hagiography to provide a thin veneer of Christian piety for ancient pagan rites. Runic inscriptions from Viking times already mentioned this day as the darkest one of the year—after which light comes back. As if to embody the imminent return of light in the darkest of winter, in every Swedish household, the eldest girl, wearing a long white dress with a flowing red belt and a crown of lighted candles (electric ones are mostly used nowadays for safety reasons), appears at dawn to bring breakfast in bed to each family member. It consists of a tray of coffee, gingerbread cookies, and seasonal saffron cakes of various shapes and sizes, each with their special name. The largest bun, with raisins in it, is called “parson’s hair.” A family’s Lucia is normally accompanied by

handmaidens: the younger girls of the house, dressed in white, but holding candles in their hands instead of wearing them in their crowns. They all sing, in a Swedish version of the well known Italian tune (also broadcast on the radio): “Now in our dark house/there arises with kindled light/Sancta Lucia,/Sancta Lucia!” (There is also a whole repertoire of Lucia songs that is performed along with Christmas tunes at church choral concerts during Advent.) As the day progresses, the girls in white dresses continue their rounds at home and at the workplace, except that instead of coffee, they offer glögga—spiced red wine toddy. In every Swedish town, a chosen Lucia is taken on people’s shoulders in a torchlight procession through the crowds lining the streets all the way to City Hall. In Stockholm, she receives a piece

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of jewelry once she gets there, often from the hands of the new Nobel Prize for literature. That girl is the winner of the national Lucia contest sponsored by the Social-Democratic newspaper Stockholms Tidningen since 1927. This parade has included the collection of money for the poor since 1945 and was imitated throughout the country in many advertising gimmicks, until they were all gradually eclipsed by the televised broadcast of the national parade introduced in the nineteen-seventies. Many Nobel laureates have been startled and sometimes frightened by the sudden appearance in their hotel rooms at five in the morning of eight white-clad figures holding candles. So the singing Lucias were eventually banned from the places where the distinguished foreign guests were staying, just after having received their prizes from the King of Sweden in the Golden Room of Stockholm’s City Hall around December 10.

The Fearful Face of Lucy The folklore surrounding Saint Lucy makes clear that this propensity to frighten as well as charm has long been familiar to Europeans. Throughout southern German lands, she was made an equivalent of Frau Holle and of Berchta—fairies who visited spinners, and had both a favorable and a menacing aspect. Saint Lucy replaced them in this capacity among the German populations of western Hungary and of Bohemia, where she would frighten children. She thus took on the role played in other parts of Northern Europe by the Black Petes or by Knecht Ruprecht, going around to do the dirty work of Saint Nicholas on December 6, by punishing children when they had not been obedient. But Lucy also punished sloppy housemaids and the like. The eve of her feast, like Walpurgis Night and Halloween, was a time when witches were very active and went about in the sky. In Sweden, trolls and other evil little people were out, and masked processions were organized to scare them away. The

same practice was also observed in Berchtesgaden—a town of Upper Bavaria named after Berchta, the local counterpart of Lucy; but it was held on slightly different dates, on the first and second Sundays of Advent instead of December 13. Across the German border in Lower Austria, people who (like Greeks on Christmas night and Ascension) dared to stay up until midnight to catch a glimpse of a mysterious light (called the Luzieschein) were then supposed to be able to foretell the future. On the other hand, those who tried to see it, but who instead dozed off before midnight, would be struck by misfortune or disease over the coming year. On December 13, all household tasks were taboo: the spinning wheel was left idle, and there would be no weaving or sewing or baking of bread. This is true in Hungarian folklore too, which is full of stories of people who try to learn the secrets of witches on Saint Lucy’s. The best way to do it was to start secretly building a chair that day, spreading the work over thirteen days, and sometimes using thirteen kinds of wood from thirteen different hamlets. The chair could then be used at the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to spot the village’s witches, but one had to quickly go away and burn the chair before it was over so as to escape their wrath at being found out. (This explains why so few of these magic chairs have survived.) On Saint Lucy’s itself, young men would undergo a hazing ritual of initiation, where their faces were blackened and they were called devils, and they would also go trick-ortreating at all village farms, imitating chickens and singing lewd songs to stimulate fertility in nature and humans. In Bavaria, Saint Lucy’s Day is known for a local festival reminiscent of Far Eastern customs involving the setting adrift of lights on days of the dead, and called the “Floating of Lights”—Lichterschwemmen, in Fürstenfeldbrück. There, “Lucy houses” (Luzienhäuser) are built by schoolchildren a month in advance in order to be blessed at the church on December

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13, and then launched on the river Amper to float away into the darkness. These small-scale models of local houses have paper in the place of doors and windows to allow the light of the candles placed inside to shine through the openings. They are meant to be ex-votos, expressing gratitude for Saint Lucy’s intercession in preserving the town from a flood that threatened it in 1785, as well as offerings so that the river does not overflow its banks again. Many traditions of Saint Lucy’s have been shifted to the next day on December 14, the feast of Saint Odile (660–720). She too is invoked against eye ailments, since she was born blind and was miraculously cured. This is especially the case in Alsace, a German province of France of which Odile is the patron saint. Her major pilgrimage site is the monastery she founded on Mont Sainte-Odile, which has been a sacred mountain from pagan times. It may have been initially associated with Odin—the god who gave up an eye to obtain knowledge; this made him supreme in the Germanic pantheon as the lord of runes, poetry, and war, with the power to fight demonic forces and uphold cosmic order. Something of this ambiguous power of pagan sky gods, beneficent and ferocious in turn, appears to have been inherited by Lucy as well as by Odile, as harbingers of light in the midst of winter. This was due in each case as much to the place of their feasts in the calendar as to the spiritual restoration of vision central to the stories of both saints. See also Ascension; Christmas; Days of the Dead (West); Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan); Elevation of the Cross; Epiphany; Lent; May Day; Palm Sunday; Saint Nicholas; Samhain; Whitsuntide References Alain de Benoist. Les Traditions d’Europe. 2nd ed. Arpajon, France: Éditions du Labyrinthe, 1996. H. Pomeroy Brewster. Saints and Festivals of the Christian Church. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 1990.

Jules Ortutay. “La Sainte-Luce,” in Nouvelle Revue de Hongrie, December 1939, pp. 414–417. Mats Rehnberg. Swedish Holidays and Annual Festivals. Stockholm: Swedish Institute, 1970. Jennifer M. Russ. German Festivals and Customs. London: O. Wolff, 1982.

◗ SAINT MARK See Rogations, Samhain

◗ SAINT MARTIN See Martinmas

◗ SAINT MARY’S FEAST OF HARVEST See Assumption

◗ SAINT MAVRA See May Day

◗ SAINT MENAS See Saint Nicholas

◗ SAINT MICHAEL See Saint George, Samhain

◗ SAINT NICHOLAS (CHRISTIANITY) The feast of Saint Nicholas is celebrated on December 6 and was for centuries in the West an important part of popular year-end celebrations. Except within Eastern Orthodoxy, where it remains a full-fledged church feast, since the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counterreformation, there has been a pattern of official Church disengagement from this sometimes rowdy festival. Yet this was never enough to stop the proliferation in secular forms of the folk customs associated with it in Northern European countries, which were deliberately imitated in nineteenth-century America in an invented tradition of the Christmas season. This feast provided much of the imagery of Santa

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Claus by way of the forms it took in the Low Countries, where on December 6 they live on side by side with the now universal American trappings of Yuletide.

Origins, Development, and Spread of the Nicholas Cult The feast of Saint Nicholas has always marked the symbolic start of winter. Aside from its date (that of his death in 343), little is known with any certainty about Nicholas himself. It does seem that he was the first bishop of Myra in Anatolia (the Asian part of present-day Turkey) to hold this office after the end of Roman persecutions, when the Empire first recognized and soon embraced the Christian faith in the fourth century, as it shifted its center to its new Eastern capital Constantinople (now Istanbul). Not being primarily, if at all, a martyr, Nicholas was a new kind of saint: the type of the bishop in his public function as guide and protector of everyday secular pursuits, as opposed to the path of monastic or eremitic life that was simultaneously emerging in Egypt and Palestine as a model of Christian sanctification. His recognition was due to the maritime role of Myra on the coast of Asia Minor, as well as to the date of his feast, for it coincided with the Poseidonia, when protection on stormy winter seas was sought from the competent Greek gods. Saint Nicholas of Myra took over this function as the new patron of sailors, becoming known as the “Wonder-Worker” partly on account of miraculous rescues at sea. His cult thus spread along the coast and the sea routes to Constantinople and from there throughout the Empire, all the way to its main Italian outposts Rome and Ravenna. Anxious for maritime success, imperial authorities naturally fostered the new cult, especially when it became clear that naval victories could no longer be taken for granted with the constant encroachments of Islam from the eighth century onward. Veneration for Saint Nicholas therefore took off spectacularly, once

that period’s iconoclastic heresy against the cult of holy persons’ images had been defeated. In Eastern Christendom, the cult of Nicholas became perhaps second only to the cult of Mary in newly converted Slavic lands like Russia just as in Greece. Greek sailors still take his icons to sea and cover those in his many coastal churches with silver and gold ex-votos representing the ships he has saved from danger. December 6 (or 19 if it is the Julian calendar that is used) thus marks the feast of Orthodoxy’s most popular saint, with a liturgy in his honor. After the Great Schism of 1054 divided the Eastern and Western Churches, the Eastern Roman Empire suffered two major setbacks in 1071: it lost Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks at Mantzikert, and the Normans captured its last remaining Italian outpost of Bari. Already a center of the Nicholas cult, the Adriatic port of Bari overtook its rival Venice in a bold seafaring raid to a now unsafe Myra in 1087, in order to secure the saint’s relics for itself. After their translation to the West, the relics were housed in a new basilica in Bari. Their delivery is reenacted there on a special commemorative feast on the first weekend of May. They drew a great many pilgrims during the Middle Ages, largely because those proceeding to the Holy Land embarked for the perilous journey in this port. If they made it back, in their gratitude, they took the Nicholas cult home with them. This diffusion was favored by a special property of the relics of Saint Nicholas: they ooze with a holy oil called myrrh. This miraculous power to generate renewable relics, which pilgrims could easily take away in little bottles, seems to have been derived from the circulation along the same maritime routes of flasks of the holy water of Saint Menas—taken from the Egyptian oasis where his cult was centered (in conjunction with a booming ceramics industry producing these earthen containers). In the East, the November 11 feast of Saint Menas still announces the coming of winter with Saint Philip’s Lent that lasts from his November 14

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feast to Christmas Eve, and corresponds to the West’s Advent. Oil from the candles burning at the shrine of Saint Menas was sometimes added to the holy water bottles, resulting in a holy oil. It did not take long before pilgrims came to expect, and obtain, similar “myrrh” from the shrine of Saint Nicholas of Myra by virtue of an association of sounds and ideas. Thus began a long-standing pattern for the veneration of the relics of saints in the East. It began to be reproduced in the West, namely in Normandy, at the turn of the second millennium, in connection with an emerging cult of Saint Catherine, due to developing exchanges with the latter’s Egyptian center in the Sinai on the eve of the Crusades. The liturgy for Saint Catherine’s November 25 feast day was composed in Normandy by German clerics from Franconia, who took over this miraculous theme of the holy oil from the service they used as a model: a popular Saint Nicholas liturgy composed by their countryman Reginold in the tenth century. While countless other saints would soon start exuding myrrh like Nicholas and Catherine by virtue of their life stories being cast in the same liturgical mold, the biographical elements contained in his liturgy made of Nicholas “the first subject of Western scholastic and secular drama; he was, as it were, drama’s patron saint,” according to the great historian of his cult Charles W. Jones (Jones 1978, p. 111). The little school plays put on during the occasion of his feast-day were known for their satirical rowdiness; official authorities often disapproved of them. Reflecting the resentment this caused among the lower clergy, the association of Saint Nicholas with schools may have developed in part from the following legend: some said the saint had appeared one night using a whip to drill his new liturgy into a prior who had turned down his monks’ requests to adopt it. A common feature of German storytelling, this kind of pedagogical whipping into shape of naughty

Saint Nicholas, the original Dutch Santa Claus (Sinter Klaas), and his assistant Black Pete visit a Dutch town for his Feast of December 6. Black Pete carries a birch for bad children, an empty bag to put the bad children in, and a bag of gifts for the good children. (Hultan-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

pupils stuck to the saint’s popular image as one side of it: the punisher of bad children. The Nicholas cult spread in Western Europe along sea routes and major rivers, especially in the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and Lotharingia—where Nicholas would become patron saint of the French province of Lorraine. This process was favored by the dedication to Nicholas of a number of churches sponsored by the Greek-born Western Empress Theophano, her entourage and descendants, starting with the birth of her son Otto III on the way to her favorite palace in Nijmegen—the Valkhof overlooking the Rhine. All that remains of it today on the river’s Dutch banks is the Saint Nicholas chapel built around 980, no

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doubt in thanks for the safe delivery of the imperial heir, for whom she would soon act as regent. This constitutes an early instance of the association of Saint Nicholas with childbirth (and so with childhood) and also of his cult in the Low Countries.

From Northern European Folklore to American Popular Culture By the thirteenth century, twenty-three churches had been built in honor of Saint Nicholas on the territory of what is now the Netherlands. In the fourteenth century, this favorite saint of sailors and merchants became associated, there as elsewhere, with children and gift giving. There was a basis for this in various elements of his legend, such as his bringing back to life three boys whom an innkeeper had butchered or the episode when he secretly threw bags of gold into the house of a bankrupt neighbor so he would not have to give his daughters over to prostitution as the only way left for them to survive without a dowry. In convent schools, the Saint Nicholas Day customs were adapted to pedagogical ends. A monk would put on a long white beard and a red cloak to act as Nicholas rewarding good students with gifts. Throughout Europe, the choirboys of Saint Nicholas churches—and eventually of all churches—took to marching through the streets on their patron’s December 6 feast day, begging for “bishop money” in quests called “nixies.” The custom survives in Mainz, capital of the Rhineland-Palatinate, as a major folk festival, where a parade of thousands of children follows a “Nicholas Bishop,” like the one traditionally elected among children in all corners of late medieval Europe. But official recognition was gradually withdrawn from the public celebration of Saint Nicholas Day in Protestant and Catholic countries alike in the sixteenth century, when it reached its apex; it was eventually downgraded from a feast of obligation to an optional one by

the Vatican in 1969. As if to counter this banishment from church, a story soon arose in the Low Countries and the German-speaking world that the saint rode over the rooftops and dropped candy and gifts down the chimneys, into a newfound domestic setting. He was assisted in his rounds by Zwarte Piet (“Black Pete”), a devil he had chained to his service for the day, rather like the Knecht Ruprecht (“Servant Robert”) of German folklore. Zwarte Piet and Knecht Ruprecht conveniently took over the functions of Saint Nicholas when it came to punishing children, leaving him the popular role of the “nice guy” who handed out gifts— except in regions where it was reserved for Kris Kringle (Christkindl, or “Christ Child” in German) or Père Noël (“Father Christmas” in French), and it was Nicholas who wielded a whip and took naughty children away in sacks! The entrenched expectations created in children by seasonal gifts moved their parents to successfully resist attempts by Dutch civic authorities to suppress as idolatrous the public sale of dolls, gingerbread men, candies, and cookies, which often bore the effigy of Sinter Klaas (as Saint Nicholas was known), such as a 1663 proclamation by the magistrates of Amsterdam. With the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch war the following year, Nieuw Amsterdam fell to England to become New York. There, these Sinter Klaas koekjes (hence the American word “cookie”) continued to be imported from Dutch confectioneries by the colony’s predominantly British merchant classes. They became part of their New Year celebrations due to the length of overseas delivery. The old Manhattan families’ custom of visiting each other on New Year’s Day and being served brandy with Saint Nicholas cookies would be fondly remembered by the United States’s first antiquarian, John Pintard. Aside from launching a number of new national holidays, he attempted to revive as a proper family affair a practice that had lost its respectability by the early nineteenth century, overshadowed and

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displaced by the riotous seasonal partying of the urban masses. Searching for an alternative celebration, Pintard traced the New Year visits to Dutch colonial observance of Saint Nicholas Day. But today, it is thought unlikely that it was ever commonplace among mostly Calvinist Dutch settlers who, like the Puritans, disapproved of saints’ days as idolatrous. Pintard’s unfounded reconstruction of the feast was embraced by the Knickerbockers, a circle of New York notables named after the title of a collection of stories by Washington Irving. This book, set in a bucolic colonial New Amsterdam, is the first publication to name and describe the figure of Santa Claus, albeit still in connection with Saint Nicholas Day. There remained some hesitation on the proper date for observing this invented tradition: December 6, December 25, or January 1? Christmas was fixed upon in the 1820s with Clement Clarke Moore’s popular poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas, shifting the bishop’s appearance to children away from the saint’s feast day. The public observance of the feast of Saint Nicholas on December 6 in Dutch and Belgian towns is regarded by some more as a revival due to American interest in the “original” Santa Claus than as a genuine continuation of old local customs. It involves a parade where Saint Nicholas, with a bishop’s miter and staff, rides to City Hall on a white horse or in a carriage with minstrel-faced adolescents playing his Black Petes, as Nicholas look-alikes, dressed in red, walk the streets handing out sweets. Oranges used to be singled out in Dutch folklore, as a reminder of the lesson given to Spain by the royal House of Orange when it led the Low Countries’ revolt against foreign oppression. Indeed, Nicholas is supposed to come from Spain and take naughty children back with him. In Southern Italy, though, Nicholas is still revered as patron saint in Bari with folk celebrations on his feast day, while in Mezzojuso near Palermo in Sicily, there is the traditional blessing and distribution of panuzze, small

loaves of bread stamped with the image of Saint Nicholas—like a distant cousin or prototype of colonial American cookies. See also Christmas; Epiphany; Feast of Fools; Lent; Martinmas; Matzu’s Birthday; New Year (China, Korea), New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Saint Lucy References Fr. Thomas Hopko. The Winter Pascha. Readings for the Christmas-Epiphany Season. Crestwood, NJ: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984. Charles W. Jones. Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Stephen Nissenbaum. The Battle for Christmas. New York: Knopf, 1997.

◗ SAINT ODILE See Saint Lucy

◗ SAINT PATRICK See Candlemas

◗ SAINT PETER See Midsummer

◗ SAINT PETER IN FETTERS See Lugnasad

◗ SAINT PHILIP See Lent, Saint Nicholas

◗ SAINT POLYCARP See Caristia

◗ SAINT ROMANOS THE MELODIST See Protection of the Mother of God

◗ SAINT STEPHEN See Christmas

◗ SAINT THOMAS (MONDAY, SUNDAY OF) See Easter

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◗ SAINT VALENTINE See Lupercalia

◗ SAINT VINCENT See Dionysia

◗ SAINT WALBURGA See May Day

◗ SAINTS CONSTANTINE AND HELENA See Dionysia

◗ SAINTS’ DAYS See Kermis, Lent, Pardon

◗ SAINTS PETER AND PAUL See Assumption, Lent

◗ SAINTS THEODORE (SUNDAY OF THE TWO) See Lent

SAMHAIN (CELTS) The ancient Irish festival of Samhain (pronounced “Sah’win”) is the only well-documented form of what used to be the high point of the Celtic calendar as its New Year’s Day in the British Isles and on the Continent alike before their Romanization and Christianization. It is attested in Roman Gaul as Samonios, while in modern Irish Lá Samhna (“the day of Samhain”) has given its name to the month of November that starts with it. Much of the folklore of All Souls Day, All Saints Day and All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween on October 31) can be traced back to Samhain, for in Celtic reckoning it began at sunset the day before.

A Fall Festival Samhain seems to have also included the three or six days before and after November 1, depending on the source, which may well have to do with the scale of the territory where it was

observed. For Samhain actually involved much more than the yearly return of the souls of the dead (the anaon of Breton folklore) to seek warmth and food at their living relatives’ hearth at the onset of the cold and dark season. It has been suggested that this behavior closely parallels the return of the herds from their summer pastures to their stalls for the winter, which would have made this day the turning point of the year for the Celts’ distant pastoral ancestors, as opposed to the winter solstice with its more agrarian daylight index. This explanation for their feast of Samhain finds indirect confirmation in the close parallel offered by the strikingly similar festival of Käyri or Kekri, long observed by the wholly unrelated Finnish and Estonian peoples. Originally falling on Michaelmas on September 29, it marked the end of the agricultural season, when the cattle were gathered from their pastures to spend the winter closer to home in the barn, so that in some places all the men of a village would sacrifice a sheep together. Until the twentieth century in Estonia, it was customary to prepare mutton dishes integrating fresh blood from this Michaelmas slaughter. It was likewise during this critical period between the old and new years that the ancestors’ spirits came back to visit their former homes, where food and drink were left for these so-called holy men and the sauna was heated, while the living members of the family feasted together. It thus proved easy in Finland to shift these observances to the November 1 feast of All Saints, set aside to honor the dead in the rest of Western Christendom from the turn of the first millennium—as the Church’s way of absorbing the many survivals of Samhain, the Celtic New Year. Samhain even surpassed Christmas in festive importance in Ireland until relatively recently (though the nearest Monday is still a bank holiday in the Republic, like Saint Stephen’s Day after Christmas), with joyous celebrations and feasting reminiscent of Yuletide. Yet they are more directly related to an

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end-of-summer festival of slaughter and good cheer like Martinmas that comes on its heels on November 11, when there used to be a custom of offering an animal to Saint Martin (no doubt harking back to an old Samhain sacrifice). The continuity between Halloween and Martinmas as a holiday season was especially underlined in Scotland, where country people used to sing: “This is Hallaevan,/The Morn is Halladay,/Nine free nights till Martinmas,/An’ sune they’ll weare away!” But these are only the more popular, peripheral aspects of Samhain, which could best survive Christianization by confirming the spurious medieval etymology of the festival’s name as “the summer’s end.”

A Celtic Potlatch The correct Indo-European derivation of the word samhain actually makes it a close equivalent of Germanic words for “together,” like the Dutch samen. The festival of Samhain meant just that: a gathering, at every conceivable level. It gathered the three functional groupings of Indo-European society in their different capacities as providers, warriors, and priests, around their ruler the king, under the aegis of the king of the gods Lug, in the dark aspect evident at this moment, when time gave way to eternity. For this was the gate of the year, when the old one dissolved and another cycle set in out of the timeless Other World, now brought within easy reach, as at the holy places called síde. The gathering places for royal banquets replicating those of the gods at a local, provincial, or national level were also hallowed grounds of the síd or Other World (pronounced “shee” as in “banshee”—a “woman of the Other World,” or Irish fairy). The election of a king at each level was held on the occasion of Samhain in the respective symbolic centers of these jurisdictions, during assemblies and fairs of proportional periodicity and length. As in other cultures, the year’s end was a dangerous time for the old king; in a warlike, stormy climate, when both the world and society

seemed near a cataclysmic end, he stood out as an alternative sacrificial victim if he failed to perform his priestly-cum-sovereign role adequately. But other people could also be sacrificed on Samhain as scapegoats for the community’s failings, to appease hostile powers like the Fomoire race of demons, and as an offering to the god Cromm Craich. It is always at the Samhain banquet that Irish tales are set whenever they involve conflict with the denizens of the síd’s hollow hills due to intrusions by mortals, or the intervention of these otherworldly powers in human affairs, and the death of a king or a hero on account of taboo transgressions, or of their social counterpart in unjust war or misconduct at a formal gathering. There, one thing often led to the other, as such Samhain feasts were the focus of a warrior society’s intense competition for prestige, which was only heightened by the fact that it could now paradoxically be regulated and stabilized by religious specialists: the druids. The druids were assisted by historians, assigning to each noble landholder or warrior a seat consistent with his rank, title, and genealogy, by ceremonially taking the shields representing them first to their proper places, so as to prevent fatal scuffles between their owners about seating arrangements. This was the origin of the symmetrical and egalitarian Round Table of Arthur’s pacified kingdom, as the French sociologist Marcel Mauss could argue in concluding his famous 1924 Essay on the Gift. For Samhain can actually be seen as a close Celtic equivalent of the Amerindian potlatch on which Mauss based his paradigm of the gift, as a festival where debts and social obligations were periodically renegotiated by warriors vying for recognition of their valor. It was symbolized in this case by the coveted and hotly disputed “hero’s share” of the sacred pork meat (usually the thigh). Samhain also took place in a festive atmosphere charged with volatile high spirits—in both senses—coinciding in this context where mead and beer too were sacred,

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as they opened up mental perceptions to the primal scene of an Other World that founded the very social order loosened by the feast. For legitimate order could now be reaffirmed afresh in otherworldly terms. Attendance was therefore mandatory under pain of madness (as possession by the Other World, or death) if society needed to enforce the sacred rules that were its binding agent. For beyond the pale of these rules lurked unrestrained rivalry, tantamount to crime, sacrilege, chaos, and ruin. As a sacred barrier against these perils, priestly authorities monitored an elaborate etiquette, relying on their ability to channel and transmute violent competitive impulses into the sacred sphere of peaceful coexistence within universally recognized social norms.

The Pagan Easter But whenever druids were not there to play this pacifying priestly role, or warriors disregarded it as they got carried away by their quarrels, all hell broke loose—literally. Aside from epic battles, the land was then ravaged by magic swine from the Other World, as reflected in Welsh folklore about the monstrous Black Sow that used to be run away from or run after (depending on local variants) by country boys once Halloween fires had died out. Only this malevolent aspect of the now neglected sacred animal of war and knowledge could still haunt the popular imagination after Christianity had displaced the sacrifices the druids used to perform on Samhain, rightly seen by some chroniclers as the “pagan Easter.” It was in view of it that in the seventh century, as Saint Adamnan reported, vast herds of swine were fattened over the fall in order to be slaughtered at Samhain. This also happened to mark the end of the campaign season; these swine sacrifices have thus been likened to that of the October Horse in ancient Rome as a typical rite of the second, military function of Indo-European society according to Georges Dumézil. But the druids of the first, priestly function have also been

known (from the scant sources that have come down to us) to sacrifice other animals when opening Samhain: a horse in Ulster, a bull elsewhere in Ireland, and two white bulls in Gaul, where the druids collected mistletoe that day, as Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder noted.

The Sacred Flame of a New Year The most spectacular rite of the eve of Samhain endured beyond the demise of the druids. As they lit the sacred fires on the hill of Tlachtga that night to open the gate of the Other World to another year, heavy fines ensured that all other fires throughout Ireland had been put out, to be rekindled from their eternal source later. People would then jump through the new fires to take in their life-giving force. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, bonfires likewise dotted the countryside of Scotland on Halloween. They still do in the United Kingdom on Guy Fawkes Day, having merely been postponed a few days, in honor of the anniversary of the foiling, on November 5, 1605, of the Gunpowder Plot of Roman Catholic extremists to blow up Parliament along with King James I of the new Scottish Stuart dynasty (which makes this patriotic holiday a fitting vindication of Celtic Britain after all!). Other typical Halloween customs have been transferred to Guy Fawkes Day as a Protestant substitute for Catholic All Saints, and especially to its eve as Mischief Night. (On the other hand, the setting off of Roman candles and fireworks as an echo of the Gunpowder Plot would appear to have been transferred from Guy Fawkes Day to Halloween in Vancouver, British Columbia, where they feature prominently and still cause much property damage every year at this only time they can be sold legally.) Thus, aside from the topical persecution and burning of mock popes and of beggars’ dummies known as “guys” after the leader of the popish plot, there are more traditional children’s torchlight parades with jack-o’lanterns (beets or pumpkins carved out to con-

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tain burning coals). These are meant to guide in the dark the old pagan spirits and ghosts, demoted first to evil beings, then to comical ones, that the fires are now supposed to drive back, no longer invite. “Ge’s a peat t’ burn the witches!” boys used to shout in Scotland, as they collected fuel from every homestead for the fire around which they would dance and play some seasonal competitive games. In Wales, as in Scotland, it was common to mark a white stone and expose it to the fire before going to bed. To find it in bad shape, out of place, or not to find it at all among the ashes in the morning would be a bad omen for the coming year. This was also at stake in other conditional games like “lating the witches” in northern Lancashire—that is, climbing up a hill with a candle between eleven and midnight on Halloween and trying to keep it from being blown out (like one’s own life, which otherwise might also be snuffed out over the next year). Such folklore implies that the entire year is one beyond time with the eerie otherworldly day that was Samhain to the Celts. Most epic adventures of their mythology took place during the closed period of Samhain, or from one to the next yearly opening of the Other World within its brackets, or even a much later one. Thus, a hero who had wandered inside a síd might emerge from it years later without having aged (not unlike Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle from his twenty-year sleep), or he might on the contrary spend weeks and months in the wondrous Other World and still return to the everyday world of humans only a few minutes after having left it.

All Hallows’ Eve Generally speaking, the living and the dead, mortals and immortals, gods and men, fairies and hobgoblins were all gathered at this point in time, especially in the fairy mounds or hollow hills known for being portals to the Other World. “For the síde of Ireland were always open on Samhain and people did not know

how to keep them secret,” as is reported among the Boyhood Deeds of the hero Cúchulainn (Macgnímartha Find, in Le Roux and Guyonvarc’h 1995, p. 75) in the epic tale of the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cuailnge). Between these hills, there was a heavy traffic of fairies— and the dead souls indistinguishable from them—on Samhain, as there still is on Halloween. This used to make it possible to obtain prophecies from a fairy woman, especially about events due to occur in the temporal interval from the current to the next opening of the Other World beyond time at Samhain. The same principle was preserved in a custom known in Wales and the north and west of England until the nineteenth century as the Church Porch Watch. From the vantage point of this threshold between the space consecrated to God and the burial ground surrounding it, a vision might be had at midnight on Halloween (and other turning points of the year like New Year’s Eve, Saint John’s Eve on June 23, and Saint Mark’s Eve on April 24) of the people of the parish who were to die over the coming year—albeit at the risk of joining them as the ghostly “churchyard walker” until another person was foolhardy enough to take it. From pagan times, precautions were in order to prevent recently departed souls (walking among the dead and the fairies but still reluctant to take the next step in the circuit of births, or tuirgen) from coming back to haunt the living in their former dwelling places. This is why there is still a custom throughout Britain and Ireland on Halloween of setting candles and lanterns in the windows, to guide them back where they belong: with the evil spirits that people dress up as to scare the real ones off, or just to mix with them on their night out—one long associated with shapeshifting by the Celts (as was Beltane as the source of Walpurgis Night on April 30). While there was a widespread prohibition on using brooms on Halloween to avoid sweeping away wandering souls, as soon as their time to mix with the living was up, in Cheshire and

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Shropshire, “soulers” would roam the countryside to take them away on the back of their hobbyhorse on November 2—All Souls Day, the one set aside for prayers for the restless dead by the medieval Church, just after All Saints, or All Hallows’ Day. See also Chiao; Christmas; Days of the Dead (West); Easter; Inti Raymi and Huarachicu; Martinmas; May Day; Midsummer; New Fire Ceremony; New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Potlatch; Saint George; Saint Lucy; Whitsuntide References Françoise Le Roux and Christian-J. Guyonvarc’h. Les Fêtes celtiques. Rennes: Ouest-France, 1995. Proinsias Mac Cana. Celtic Mythology. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1983. Caitlín and John Matthews. The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom: The Celtic Shaman’s Sourcebook. Shaftesbury, UK: Element Books, 1994. Nicholas Rogers. Halloween. From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Jack Santino. The Hallowed Eve. Dimensions of a Culture in Northern Ireland. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

◗ SANFERMINES See Games (Rome)

◗ SAN GIUSEPPE See Lent

◗ SANJA MATSURI See Matsuri

◗ SANKTHANS See Midsummer

◗ SAN ROCCO See Martinmas

◗ SANTA CROCE See Elevation of the Cross

◗ SÃO JOÃO See Midsummer

◗ SARASVATI PUJA, SARVAPITRI AMAVASHYA See Navaratra and Dusshera

SATURNALIA (ROME) The public festival of Saturnalia was celebrated in Rome starting on December 17. It lasted a week, during which all distinctions of rank or class were put aside. They were often reversed even, in honor of the god Saturn, who was thought to have ruled Italy during a Golden Age of plenty and carefree spontaneity, prior to civilization and its constraints. European folklore has preserved many traces of the Saturnalia’s rites of social inversion.

The Golden Age when Time Was King The Saturnalia may have been partly modeled on the Chronia held in Athens on the twelfth of the month of Hekatombeion (around August), in which social order was likewise dissolved before being reaffirmed ten days later at the great festival marking the official start of the civic New Year: the Panathenaea. In the hellenizing interpretation of the Italo-Roman deity Saturn that prevailed from the late third century B.C.E. onward, he was actually identified with Chronos, the god of time who had been driven from Greece when his son Zeus (or Jupiter for Romans) replaced him as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Before Time (Chronos) came to Italy by ship, Janus was already there to welcome him, as the god of beginnings—preceding time, yet setting it in motion, along with all institutions. This was true of the calendar too, starting with January as the month of Janus, the god or deified king (as sophisticated late Romans preferred to view many of their ancient deities) who was said to have established the Saturnalia near his fortress town of Janiculum

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after the sudden disappearance of Saturn, his co-ruler in this distant Golden Age. Writing at the decline of the Roman Empire in the West, the scholarly official Macrobius (Saturnalia I, ch. 7, par. 24, p. 59) maintained that “Janus then devised means to add to his honors. First he gave the name Saturnia to all the land which acknowledged his rule, and then he built an altar, instituting rites as to a god and calling these rites the Saturnalia—a fact which goes to show how very much older the festival is than the city of Rome.” This may help account for the fact that the liturgical year of the archaic Arval Brotherhood of priests of Mars had always been counted from Saturnalia to Saturnalia, and partly explain why the calends of January—the first day of the civic year—were observed in much the same way as the Saturnalia, with mutual giftgiving as well as the suspension and reversal of social roles. While the calends of January eventually overtook the Saturnalia in popularity after the latter’s heyday in early imperial times, both Roman festivals were probably the ancestors not only of Christian Europe’s winter solstice and New Year customs of social inversion like the December 28 Feast of Fools, but also of Shrove Tuesday and Carnival, closer to the end of winter. It has sometimes been suggested that the word “carnival” might be derived from carrus navalis, a boat-shaped carriage (also known in some local Greek and Near Eastern festivals of Dionysus) that was used during the Saturnalia to parade masked men and women who sang obscene songs on the streets.

Trading Places The Saturnalia were reformed in 217 B.C.E. in the midst of the religious crisis caused by early defeats in the Second Punic War against Carthage, Rome’s African rival. We know from Livy’s Roman History (XXII, 1:19) that, in December of that year, a sacrifice was performed in the temple of Saturn (the founding of which in 497 B.C.E. the festival commemorated).

Among Greek religious customs adopted for the occasion, the senators gave a lectistern— that is, a banquet in honor of a deity who attends it in effigy, as an image set up on a ceremonial bed. A public banquet was also given, and for a day and a night the entire population was on the streets shouting “lo Saturnalia!” The decision was taken to do the same annually, so that the Saturnalia became an official year-end celebration. According to Macrobius (Saturnalia I, ch. 10), it was initially set fourteen days before the calends of January, “but, after Gaius Caesar had added two days to December, the day on which the festival was held became the sixteenth before the Kalends of January, with the result that, since the exact day was not commonly known—some observing the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others following the old usage—the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more days than one” (par. 2, p. 70) from December 15 (the Consualia marking the onset of winter) to December 17. It comes “when men have gathered in the fruits of the earth” (par. 20, p. 72), and feel free to squander them in a wild winter holiday, as all caution and reserve are dropped to evoke the boundless abundance of the Golden Age, so as to invoke the future bounty (Latin ops, as in “opulence”) of Mother Earth: Saturn’s wife Ops (or the Greek Rhea). The climax of the Saturnalia was her December 19 feast of Opalia; “it was on this day alone that the shout of ‘lo Saturnalia’ would be raised, in the temple of Saturn, at a riotous feast” (par. 18, p. 72). On the first day, as had been done in 217 B.C.E., no one was to put on a formal toga, not even the magistrates at the official banquet. Instead, while the statue of Saturn, whose feet were normally bound, was freed for a day, everyone wore a casual tunic instead of a toga, along with the pileus libertatis, an ancient Italian felt hat that had become the symbol of freed slaves. It was the masters who for once served the unusually impudent slaves at the

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banquet. Women were excluded, although slaves could have their way with their masters’ concubines. After the meal and excessive drinking, all the men would play dice together—a game normally forbidden (to slaves especially), in which they used coins and nuts as stakes. Improvisational games and satire were the parlor games of educated circles, while less sophisticated ones exchanged riddles. No work at all was to be done on this civic holiday, when courts and government, as well as schools, were closed. It was thus under the name of feriae servorum that the Saturnalia were still observed as “the slaves’ holidays” at the fall of the Christianized Roman Empire in the mid-fifth century, when they were also known as the Brumalia.

Ancient Trappings of the Holiday Season Since the first century B.C.E. “however, the addition of the feast of the Sigillaria has extended the time of general excitement and religious rejoicing to seven days” (Macrobius 1969 ch. 10, par. 24, p. 73), during “which we amuse infants in arms with little masks of clay” (ch. 11, par. 1, p. 74), also giving a special allowance, the sigillaricum, to dependents like slaves and clients, so they could buy small gifts such as wax candles and pottery figurines called sigilla as inexpensive symbolic substitutes for the (often facetious) presents to be exchanged on that day. Thus, until what is now Christmas Eve, men and women would take part in candlelight parades, wearing garlands around their necks and leaves in their hair. Roman homes, especially doors, were also decorated with foliage and lights between Saturnalia and the calends of January, much as today during the holiday season; holly was already favored for this in Antiquity. But the early Church tended to disapprove of the custom. “You are the light of the world and the ever verdant tree. If you have renounced the temples, do not make a temple of your door,”

wrote Tertullian (155–222) in Roman Carthage, in one of the first Christian books in Latin (Tertullianus 1987, 15: 11, p. 55). As a way to compete with, and eventually absorb, the Saturnalia, the Roman Church instituted Christmas on December 25 as the feast of the birth of Jesus Christ, previously celebrated as part of Epiphany on January 6, along with other events of his life. But this only shifted vestiges of the Saturnalia to the latter date, when the King of the Bean would be randomly selected in medieval Europe, just as the Bishop of Fools was on Innocents’ Day, December 28, to rule over a partying crowd for a limited time, like the Carnival king of many former provinces of the Roman Empire in Italy, France, and Spain. This king for a day is also mentioned by some Roman authors as a feature of the Saturnalia banquet: someone who would order people around, to do ludicrous things at his whim. This was done in good fun in ancient Rome as in medieval Europe.

Killing the Carnival King Yet this rather marginal practice of the Saturnalia probably goes back to archaic customs that did not stop at choosing someone to impersonate a god and irresponsibly exert the divine right of kings for a while. Originally, this king was killed at the end of his term of office, as a way to exorcise his ambiguous powers, or to send him off to the safe distance of a divine realm. This is why the image of Carnival kings is often destroyed by fire or other means at the end of the pre-Lent festival. But in remote corners of the Roman Empire, where many soldiers were recruited, harsher, more primitive forms of the Saturnalia survived, or were revived or reinvented. They have been recorded in the story of the martyrdom of Saint Dasius on November 20, 303. This Christian soldier had been selected by lots to put on the royal dress of Saturn as king of the Golden Age. He was killed by the other soldiers for refusing to do what was expected of

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him as part of year-end celebrations: indulge all shameful passions until the festival of Saturn, when he was supposed to cut his own throat on the altar of the god he stood in for. Preferring to die the way of the God he actually stood for—Christ—Dasius gave up his life a month early. See also Carnival; Dionysia; Christmas; Epiphany; Feast of Fools; New Year (West); Panathenaea; Thesmophoria References Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. One-Volume Abridged Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Macrobius. The Saturnalia. Tr. Percival Vaughan Davies. New York: Columbia University Press, “Records of Civilization” No. 79, 1969. Tertullianus. De idololatria. Tr. J. H. Waszink and J. C. M. Van Winden. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1987. H. S. Versnel. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion. Vol. 2: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993.

◗ SCHOLARS’ FESTIVAL See Lag ba-Omer

◗ SECULAR GAMES See Games (Rome)

◗ SED See Khoiak and Heb-Sed

◗ SEE OF SAINT PETER (FEAST OF THE) See Caristia

◗ SEGAVECCHIA See Lent

◗ SEIJIN-NO-HI See New Year (Japan)

◗ SEKKU (JAPAN) A sekku is any one of the five Japanese “sacred festivals” derived from Chinese festivals introduced into the imperial calendar of annual events (nenchu gyoji) over a thousand years ago and still observed today. The five sekkus are now known as: the Day of Mankind (Nanakusa no Sekku) on January 7, the Doll Festival (Joshi no Sekku) on March 3, Children’s Day (Tango no Sekku) on May 5, the Festival of the Weaver (Tanabata no Sekku) on July 7, and the Chrysanthemum Festival (Choyo no Sekku) on September 9.

Children’s Day Tango no Sekku, the First of the Five sekkus, has undergone a complicated gradual transformation from its Chinese model, the Dragon Boat Festival, as preserved in the Peiron Boat Race in Nagasaki. It was already combined with martial exhibitions when it was first introduced in 611 under Empress Suiko. For archery contests and horse races were thought to have the same prophylactic effects of chasing away the evil spirits that often brought disease during the inauspicious fifth month (similar in this respect to the month of May in Western folklore). They were most active on the fifth day purposely chosen to hold the Iris Festival, as Tango was called during the Heian period (794–1185). This was because iris leaves as well as mugwort branches (both of them medicinal herbs helpful in controlling seasonal dysentery epidemics) would be hung on the roofs of every building and on the heads of every notable of the capital Kyoto, attached to swords and palanquins, made into pillows, and even drunk in sake rice wine, courtesy of the emperor, who wore an iris garland. Officials of the Emperor’s Bureau of Medicine were responsible for distributing supplies of medicinal herbs on his behalf, together with officers of the Guard, who would also bring the festival to a close by twanging their bowstrings to drive away the evil spirits. Archers would

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come to play a more active role with the ascendancy of the warrior class during the Muromachi Period from 1333 to 1568. For in addition to taking iris-steeped baths, these warriors put on yabusame contests of horseback shooting, of the kind still performed in period costume on September 16 at the Tsurugaoka Shrine to the popular war god Hachiman in Kamakura, the capital from 1185 to 1333. By the Edo Period (1600–1868), paper warriors mounted on straw horses were often displayed at the gate of distinguished houses, while the populace staged mock pebble-throwing battles, called injiuchi, and flew kites—both ways to forecast the autumn harvest. Once Japan started to vie for the status of a modern power in the late nineteenth century, there arose the elaborate display of martial dolls and assorted battle gear that is now customary on Children’s Day or Kodomo no Hi, which is a national holiday. Despite the reference to children in general (more aptly applicable to the Seven-Five-Three Festival), there is no mistaking the paraphernalia of a relatively recent Boys’ Festival emphasizing military virtues in these impressive May 5 displays of miniature armor, weapons, battle streamers, and the like. Nonetheless, a small table at the bottom still holds two bottles of irissteeped sake, as a reminder of the festival’s much older, though not unrelated, hygienic purpose (which also comes through in the use of iris by women to wash their hair on the equivalent Dano Festival in Korea). Outside the house, families fly cloth or paper streamers shaped like carps (called koi)—as many as they have sons and reflecting their different ages in their respective sizes, because this fish is a symbol of virility on account of its strength and determination in swimming upstream. A favorite treat of the festival is mochi, which is glutinous rice wrapped in oak or bamboo leaves.

Chrysanthemum Festival Perhaps as early as 686, Japan’s Chrysanthemum Festival took over from Han China’s

Chongjiu or Double Nine Festival the custom of drinking chrysanthemum wine and composing poems. This is what would initially follow the Imperial Court’s annual inspection of the chrysanthemums in the palace garden, at a banquet featuring dance performances by Palace Girls. They would offer the Emperor small white trout, which was also served to his guests later on. On the eve of the festival, chrysanthemums were covered with pieces of silk floss that people would later rub their faces with in order to prevent or erase signs of aging, since these flowers were thought to promote longevity. Now held in Nagasaki on October 7–9, the Ninth Day or Okunchi Festival features a parade of young men carrying umbrella-topped floats, with a Chinese dragon dance.

Day of Mankind Along the same lines, the Festival of Young Herbs, or Wakana no Sekku, came to be one of the Seven National Festivals ordained in a 718 code, as well as part of New Year observances. On the seventh day of the first month, Imperial Storehouse officials went out to gather seven lucky herbs for a rice gruel that their colleagues of the Imperial Table Office would then present to the emperor. The Chinese custom of preparing this seven-herb gruel, called nanakusagayu, became widespread among townspeople of the Edo Period, and is still generally followed on January 7 as the Day of Mankind, or Jinjutsu, as a way of keeping evil spirits at bay and enjoying good health over the new year. The same health benefits were ascribed to the Ceremony of the Blue Horses (Aouma no Sechie) held on the same day since it was imported from China during the Nara Period (645–794). This was because horses are considered yang (of “male” polarity), even though those paraded before the Emperor and other nobles were white instead of steel gray as in China, due to both the rarity of such “lucky blue-green” (aoi) horses in Japan and the Shinto symbolism of the purity of white.

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The movable Feast of the Day of the Rat, or Nenohi no En, started by 743 at Court. In the ninth century, it became a country outing to clear the mind of evil thoughts and pluck young herbs for longevity; it would therefore later be amalgamated with the Festival of Young Herbs as a popular form of picnic.

there from August 6 to 8. Another local variant is the Lantern Festival, or Kanto, in Akita, where it is celebrated on the fifth instead of the seventh day of the seventh month, with nighttime parades of young men balancing bamboo poles hung with tiers of lanterns.

Doll Festival Festival of the Weaver Known from 734 onwards, Tanabata Matsuri is a replica of China’s Chi Ch’iao T’ien Festival about Cowherd and Weaving Maid’s yearly encounter over the Milky Way on a bridge of magpies. It became established as a weavers’ festival during the Heian Period (794–1185), when young women would put a table in their garden and burn incense on it as they made offerings for skillfulness to the weaver star Vega and the shepherd star Altair. Among them were five needles holding silk threads of different bright colors, as well as long bamboo poles to which were attached decorations made from paper, either folded in the shape of cranes, as poem cards, or as multicolored streamers. Called sasatake, these poles remain a hallmark of this and other late summer and fall festivals in Japan, as ancient heralds of the coming rice harvest. As such, they were meant to be taken down and set afloat on a river with their decorations by the end of the festival. In the countryside, people believe rain is a sign of a good harvest since it brings purity by helping the poles flow downstream, while city folk hold to the Chinese version of this Star Festival’s story, in which clear skies on that night allow the celestial pair to meet. In most towns where it is prominent, this festival is really just a tourist attraction by now, and the poles have grown to gigantic proportions while the decorations are made of plastic. Yet children still write poems on paper dragons, and small paper replicas of samurai clothes may also be seen on display on the street corners of the northern city of Sendai, in the most commercialized version of the festival, held

The Doll Festival developed during the late medieval Muromachi Period from elaborate doll displays at homes where there were little girls, which had long been part of the Festival of the Snake (Jomi) first recorded in 485. It was called that because of its original date on the First Day of the Snake, when dolls were thrown into the water as a purification rite, as mentioned in Court Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s classic Tale of Genji at the turn of the last millennium. It had actually originated in China, where, as in the Roman festival of Argei, known and unknown evil spirits were transferred to the dolls and dispatched in this way. But the focus eventually shifted to the dolls for their own sake, as they became so richly elaborate that they were put on display and kept from year to year and generation to generation, just to appear in a traditional arrangement that took shape during the Tokugawa Period (1603–1868). A set is made up of at least fifteen dolls, which are laid out on five to seven shelves covered with red cloth on March 3. On the top shelf are the dairibina, representing the Emperor and Empress holding court, with three ladies-in-waiting, five musicians, two retainers, and three guards, placed according to their rank. The lower shelves hold miniature weapons, armor, and musical instruments, as well as lacquered doll furniture (chests of drawers and toilet cases) and tableware, and tiny folding screens and lanterns, as well as a small palanquin and carriage. Food offerings are put at the bottom, and two flower arrangements and two lanterns are put to the sides. It would bring bad luck not to put away the dolls immediately after March 3, resulting in delayed mar-

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Observance of Tanabata no Sekku, the Festival of the Weaver. This is the Japanese version of the Chinese celebration of Cowherd and Weaving Maid. Two lovely stars, known as Kenguy and Shokugo in Japan, are set apart on either side of the Milky Way, and they are suppposed to have their joyous reunion during one of the nights between July 6th and 8th. (Bettmann/corbis)

riage for the girl they belong to, who has received them from her parents or grandparents when she was born or on her first birthday as part of her dowry. That nearly every family therefore needs its own set of dolls helps explain that Japan is second only to the United States as a producer of dolls. The traditional craft of making dolls is showcased at the Doll Fair (Hina Ichi) of Kurayoshi in Tottori Prefecture. There, the original link of the doll display with purification by water may still be seen. Children buy strings of paper dolls and untie them to form pairs, which they lay in small straw baskets, along with rice cakes and

peach blossoms. After having first joined the standard Doll Festival display, these Floating Doll Boats fulfill the older ritual function by being set adrift on the nearby Mochigase River. By the eleventh century, the related seasonal custom of Winding Water banquets, also imported from China, had lost its religious significance but was observed at Court and in private houses alike for its sheer aesthetic appeal. Guests sat along a stream running around the house, or even through it. The stream was often punctuated by elegantly disposed rocks in order to provide inspiration for some verse to be composed by each guest every time a cup of

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sake rice wine floated by, or else he or she would have to drink it and set it back on the water to drift on. Nowadays on Girls’ Day (as the Doll Festival is also known), sweet sake sprinkled with peach blossoms is served with seafood on sushi rice and with pink, green, or white diamond-shaped mochi rice cakes. See also Argei; Cherry Blossom Festival; Cowherd and Weaving Maid; Double Nine; Dragon Boat Festival; Lantern Festival; Matsuri; May Day; New Year (Japan) References G. Caiger. Dolls on Display; Japan in Miniature, Being an Illustrated Commentary on the Girls’ Festival and the Boys’ Festival. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1933. U. A. Casal. The Five Sacred Festivals of Ancient Japan: Their Symbolism and Historical Development. Rutland, VT: C. E. Tuttle Co. (for Tokyo’s Sophia University), 1967. Ivan Morris. The World of the Shining Prince. Court Life in Ancient Japan. New York: Knopf, 1964.

◗ SEOL

Two young Japanese girls dressed in kimonos for the Shichi Go San Festival, celebrating the birthdays of seven-, five-, and three-year-olds in Japan. (Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis)

See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ SENSA (FESTA DELLA) See Ascension

◗ SEPTUAGESIMA See Lent

◗ SET-NIGHTS See Candlemas

their respective ages and to invoke the blessings of their continued safety and healthy growth. The day is therefore known as Shichi Go San, meaning “Seven-five-three” in Japanese. But since it is not an official holiday, many parents now combine it with Culture Day on November 3, which is a national holiday, or most often just visit the shrine on the weekend closest to the normal date.

◗ SETSUBUN See New Year (Japan)

◗ SEVEN-FIVE-THREE (JAPAN) In Japan on November 15, boys aged three and five and girls aged three and seven are taken by their parents to the Shinto shrine of their patron deity to offer thanks for having reached

Critical Early Years The prototypes of the day’s combined observances may be found in much older rites still present mainly in rural areas, where a child is taken to the shrine of his or her tutelary deity shortly after birth in order to be introduced, and later goes through ceremonies that are meant to allow his or her spirit from wandering

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away. For the latter’s connection to the body is thought to remain tenuous during a child’s early years, as the high infant mortality rates of former times seemed to demonstrate. If he or she survived a certain number of critical years, the youngster was again taken to the shrine to be introduced to the god under whose jurisdiction he or she lived—this time as a full-fledged person with his or her spirit firmly in place.

Three Samurai Rites of Passage Although the Seven-five-three festival that preserves these rites in an urban guise retains this religious significance mostly for the poor, it actually goes back to the era of the samurais as a combination of three rites of passages practiced in this warrior class—hence the triple name. At age three, boys and girls stopped having their heads shaved and could grow hair to have it arranged on top of their heads for the first time. It was at five that boys first got to wear hakama, which are skirt-like trousers, in order to be introduced to their respective feudal lords. When they reached seven, girls began to wear an obi (the proper stiff sash on a kimono) instead of a cord belt. In the seventeenth century, the habit of visiting a shrine on each of these occasions to pray for the health of children aged three, five, and seven spread through the general population, but still within the framework of a specifically samurai celebration.

acceptable nowadays. This is an ideal photo opportunity, and professionals are often hired to record the occasion. After a purification ceremony has been performed by the shrine’s Shinto priest, the children are given shitose ame, or “thousand-year old candy,” in colored bags. As its name indicates, this red and white rock candy, displaying the colors of luck and celebration, is meant to convey the parents’ prayers for their child’s longevity, also symbolized by the cranes and turtles on the bags. Once they are back home, families conclude the celebration with a party meal of sekihan (boiled rice with red beans) and okashiratsuki no tai (sea bream, complete with head and tail). See also Apaturia; Liberalia; Lag ba-Omer; Sekku References Robert N. Bellah. Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957. Tamotsu Iwado. Children’s Days in Japan. Tokyo: Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways, 1936. Dianne M. MacMillan. Japanese Children’s Day and the Obon Festival. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1997.

◗ SEVEN NATIONAL FESTIVALS See Sekku

◗ SEVENTEENTH OF TAMMUZ A Single Children’s Day It was only in the late nineteenth century that these traditions took on their current format, after the single, fixed date of November 15 was chosen for their joint observance, being a lucky day in the Japanese calendar. It remains one of a couple of special festival days each year when brightly colored traditional dress can be seen, such as hakama trousers and haori half-coats for the boys and kimonos for the girls, who also wear their elaborate hairdos. However, wearing Western formal suits and party dresses is also

See Tisha be-Av

◗ SEXAGESIMA See Lent

◗ SHABBAT See Sabbath

◗ SHALAKO (ZUÑI) Of all the festivals of the elaborate ceremonial calendar of the Zuñi tribe of Pueblo Indians in

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New Mexico, the most spectacular is without a doubt the fall ritual drama commonly referred to as the Shalako. Its true name is actually Kokowawia—the feast of the Coming of the masked gods, that is of the katchinas, who come on other occasions too. But at this festival, the six Shalakos stand out like ten-foot tall horned penguins with their eagle-feather crests and long articulate beaks, as impersonated on this occasion.

Year-Long Preparations The Shalako is the most important and prestigious ceremony of the Zuñi tribe. For the first couple of days it is celebrated in late November or early December, it draws numerous onlookers from all the other Indian tribes of New Mexico and Arizona, not to mention nonIndian tourists from nearby Gallup and elsewhere. This hunting and war ceremony functions as a generic memorial for all the dead, but is mainly aimed at bringing on rain and making the fields fertile, in addition to blessing new houses and granting longevity and happiness to the people. As these depend largely on rainfall, the deities controlling it are most visible in the ritual drama through which they are made present by ascetically prepared impersonators, while the general population looks on. In a wider sense, the Shalako also includes a series of rituals that go on after the day the six Shalakos spend at the village of Zuñi and conclude with the Corn Maiden ceremony after almost a week. But the Coming of the Gods (which includes their departure) is really the culmination of a whole year of preparatory ritual acts. It is on the ninth day of the ceremonies of the winter solstice (starting on a date set as the start of the year by a shifting compromise between the solar and lunar calendars) that feathered prayer sticks are given to the actors officially designated to represent the principal gods: Pautiwa, Kyaklo, Shulawitsi, Sayatasha, the two Yamuhaktos, Hututu and the two Salimopias, as well as the six Shalakos and the ten

Koyemshis. Such telikinawe are also given the next day to the men whose houses are to be built or rebuilt during the summer, which will therefore be known as Shalako houses. A prayer stick is kept for each of them. Up to eight in number, these are to be planted in the fields over eleven months later at the end of the Shalako ceremony by the Koyemshis. Also known as “mudheads” in English, these ten are among the most important and peculiar-looking of the masked gods or Kokos (otherwise known as Katchinas among Pueblo Indians in general, such as the Hopis, who also have their own Katchina Festivals). The nine hideously deformed children of the incestuous union of “their father” Awantachu with his sister take after this parent who joins them, in that they inherited the muddy complexion he acquired when he rolled on the ground because his face had started to swell and bubble as a result of his unnatural act. With their relatively realistic masks (in contrast to the elaborate abstract symbolic patterns on all the others) and transgressive behavior as sacred clowns, these particular impersonators are likely to be a survival of the religion of the Salado element absorbed by Pueblo refugees from drought-stricken cliffdwellings to form the Zuñi people close to eight centuries ago. The people chosen to impersonate the gods visit various sacred spots each month until the Shalako to deposit prayer sticks in their holy springs or bury them in the ground. If they were to neglect any of their complicated ritual duties, the tribe would be exposed to serious misfortune (above all drought, since it is mostly rain gods they represent). Their daily meetings get to last until later at night, and the stick plantings take place every ten days with the start of a countdown of the forty-nine days before the Shalako. Each day is matched by a knot on the two cotton ropes given to Awantachu and Sayatasha, who untie one every morning. Forty days later, coming from Hepatina, the shrine that marks the center of the world (or

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Itiwana, which is a term also applied to the middle of the year that is the winter solstice), the Koyemshis begin to play their part as salacious sacred clowns, once they cross a small sacred bridge into the village to announce the coming of the council of the gods in four days, and that of the Shalakos after four more days. Until then, they do a retreat in the house of the fraternity of the man chosen as their leader Awantachu. They may eat what they want, but touching a woman is strictly taboo. So is even seeing one for the people standing for the Council of the gods, after it arrives at midnight four days later and starts its own retreat in the house of the impersonator of Sayatasha, as do the Shalakos in the houses of their assistants, albeit still out of costume. On that day, Zuñis have thrown food in the fire as offerings to the dead in general. (Since a man’s ancestors do not belong to his clan in this matrilineal society, they are not personally remembered, and the departed remain as abstract a presence as the patterns on the masks that make them present.) From then on, the men frantically finish up the new or renovated houses by cleaning and bleaching them, as the women prepare the great banquets to be hosted in them; not to mention celebrations going on in all other houses. Sometimes, delays in wrapping up all the necessary preparations cause the Koyemshis to come out of their retreat one at a time to announce the postponement of the festival by a day or two. No further delay is possible, since the Gallup local newspapers have to publish the exact date a few days ahead, with a proclamation from the Zuñi governor reminding non-Indians that it is forbidden to take notes, shoot photographs, or make sketches in the pueblo (Indian village). If anyone should happen to catch a glimpse of the masks and the secret preparations of those who are to wear them before they appear in costume, that person would need to be severely flogged in order to dissipate the bad luck that would surely cause a Shalako to trip and fall, with dire con-

sequences for the whole people. The Spanish language is also taboo around the masks, being that used in the past by Catholic missionaries from Mexico, who have tried in vain to stamp them out or even burn them all.

The Coming of the Gods On the eve of the day on which the new houses are to be consecrated, the principal gods assemble at Hepatina. They cross the river on the sacred bridge to enter the village, and, after depositing prayer sticks in various places, they use ladders to go into the house they are to dedicate via the formal entrance through the terrace on the roof. The householder throws corn meal on the gods as they come, and a line of it also connects the foot of the ladder to his fraternity’s altar, at which a priest offers basketsful of grain after holding them to the six directions (including above and below). The gods impersonated then perform similar blessings as one of the most important acts of the Shalako ritual, before sitting on benches in front of their respective priests to share with them a sacred cigarette and launching upon a repetitive litany that lasts several hours. In it, each god in turn explains the route he took from their underwater village of Kothluwalawa to visit humans at the midpoint of the six directions, in order to bring them long life and prosperity with the sacred grain. Meanwhile, night is falling, and the crowd amassed outside the house moves south to welcome the Shalakos at the bridge by throwing flour on their passage. Their impressive, eerie procession breaks up into six as each of the Shalakos then makes his way to the house he is to bless on the same pattern as the Council of the gods (except that a Shalako has to remove his oversized attire to climb on the rooftop and down into the house). By then, it is around half past eight, and it is the turn of the Koyemshis to make their entrance in the village and go inside a new house to bless it, although they first stop to sing and fool around in front of the other

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houses where ceremonies are underway. In a departure from the norm among masked gods, theirs are not leather masks but are made of cotton covered with the pink clay of a sacred lake, with thick stuffing around their round eyes, gaping mouths, and variously placed bumps, which recall their father’s hitting his head on trees in horror at his melting face. These bumps are filled with seeds and earth from the footsteps of the villagers, which makes them into powerful love charms. Touching the Koyemshis while they wear their masks can therefore make one sex-crazed or hysterical, and refusing them anything can bring on severe hardship. Not unlike similar secret societies of masked men in Rumania’s Whitsuntide folklore, they are known for their obscene language and behavior—such as exhibiting their genitals from below their black kilts, though the penis is often tied up so as not to become erect. Paradoxically, this would be out of character, for the Koyemshis are supposed to be sexually immature retarded children. Zuñis invoke this as an excuse for such explicit antics, but remain so sensitive to non-Indians’ frowning at this kind of behavior that it has tended to subside over the years. For the Shalako is now largely driven by the need to proudly display and openly validate Zuñi cultural identity over against the pressures of the outside world, which makes the opinion of outsiders critical—even as they are purposely left out of the inner meaning and workings of the ritual. This ambiguity is reflected in the Koyemshis’ self-censorship of obscene gestures as they go on telling dirty jokes under cover of the Zuñi language. As it is, they represent a strictly delimited manifestation of a layer of out-of-control transgressive revelry amid the otherwise highly formal proceedings and self-controlled behavior of other actors. Inside each of the Shalako houses, once the particular gods who have come to bless it are finished with their litany (the Council of the gods earlier and the Koyemshis later than the six Shalakos), someone dips a feather in holy

water and blesses them before the crowded home is rearranged—first for the banquet in their honor and then to give them space to dance. Over the years, Zuñis have tended to lose patience with visiting Navajos (a neighboring Athapaskan tribe they disliked in the first place), who would try to take advantage of this occasion for hospitality to gatecrash parties to which they were not invited. Both Navajos and Zuñis used to drink a lot that night, but for many decades now, authorities on the reserve have made sure it remained alcohol-free for the duration of the Shalako festival, which has always been relatively immune to festive excess anyway. For this is really just the beginning: it is only when the morning star appears that Sayatasha and Awantachu untie the last knot on their countdown strings as part of a thanksgiving ceremony they perform at the house where they have been celebrating all night. As the party dissolves and most outside visitors get in their cars and trucks to leave town, women ritually wash the heads of the men who have personified the gods. The village then gives in to slumber until the noontime ceremony called Koane. This ceremony, which is forbidden to non-Indians, is one in which, until the next year, most of the gods take leave of Itiwana, the middle of the earth and home to the Zuñis.

The Shalako Race On the ceremonial plot across the river where the gods previously gathered before entering the village, fourteen holes about thirty centimeters square are dug in two parallel rows of seven holes, some distance apart. The fire god Shulawitsi leads his six colleagues in the council in depositing a prayer stick in a hole before they all do a kind of square dance around it, much as they did at each spot in the village where they deposited a telikinawe the previous day. They deposit some more after parading in front of the singers. They then follow Sayatasha when he goes to bury the string he has untied that morning, before most of them go take off their

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sacred masks and their costumes in the nearby shack they have been using as a dressing room. Only the two Salimopias remain behind to run on the same spot with long yucca stems for the duration of the Shalako race that follows, in the unlikely event a Shalako should fall under the weight of his heavy attire. The ill omen this brings to the community could then be immediately dissipated by indiscriminately whipping the audience. At intervals, each of the Shalakos runs from the singers’ line to deposit a prayer stick in the corresponding hole of the north and south rows of the field before returning to his point of departure, where the impersonator’s alternate will take his place inside the dummy to repeat the operation. The same process is followed to then throw some sacred flour onto the sticks in the holes, before the Shalakos can go remove their sacred costumes, which are brought into village houses wrapped in blankets, to be stored until the next year’s Shalako. This relay race of giant birds is meant to facilitate the arrival of rain, being a symbolic representation of the function of the Shalako gods as messengers between the rain gods (unwanami) of the six directions. For the feathered prayer sticks are the messages they exchange when they need to cooperate to send rain to a given point of the land on the order of the Council of the gods, presided by Sayatasha.

Five Nights of Dances Both kinds of gods have now gone back to their own realms, leaving the Zuñis in a sad mood. This is partly a throwback to the mythical times when these gods or ancestors used to take some of them along to the realm they shared with the dead, which may point to human sacrifice as an element in these rituals a long time ago. The last outside visitors have now gone too, and the village seems to go back to the quiet of its everyday routines. However, as the gods promised, they left “their children”—the secondary Katchinas—to perform in the evening over the next five days, along with unmasked dancers, in

the plazas and at the Shalako houses. In addition to these teams, appointed by the various houses of the village (but which have sometimes proven more difficult to recruit in recent years), the Koyemshis also appear at various points and times until the last day of Shalako. From its eve, they stop their clowning, refrain from eating and sleeping, and suddenly become solemn on their last tour of the Shalako houses, being blessed along the way with the throwing of flour. In the morning and early afternoon of the sixth day of Shalako, as part of elaborate farewell ceremonies, each of them is washed by women of their clan and given some gifts of food, clothing, and money, before bringing these to the main plaza. Each of the ten piles of gifts is then increased by truckloads of further gifts, brought by the rest of the people of their respective clans. All the dancers gather there and perform their dances one last time simultaneously, before leaving for the village of the masked gods at the bottom of the Lake of Sighs.

The Corn Maidens This is also where the Corn Maidens are said to have found refuge from the advances of the musicians of the god Payatamu, who was therefore entrusted with persuading them to come back to Itiwana to bring corn cobs for the priests of the six directions, so as to allow corn to grow again. Their procession from Kushilowa (“Red Sands,” a sacred spot one kilometer southeast of the pueblo) is reenacted in the late afternoon by the young men who have been delegated by young women (so as to spare them this journey in the autumn cold) to play the Corn Maidens. They come back to the village square and the adobe house (kiwissiné or kiva for other Pueblo Indians) to the north preceded by the Pekwin or high priest of the sun, by Bitsitsi (as Payatamu is mostly known after the whistling sounds he makes), by Awantachu, and by Pautiwa, high priest of the masked gods of Kothluwalawa and fairest of the Katchinas. Many people leave after the rare appearance of this supreme sun god as

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Native American (Pueblo, Zuñi) men participate in a Shalako race near Zuñi Pueblo, New Mexico, in 1896. They wear tall kachina costumes while spectators look on. (Western History/Geneology Department of The Denver Public Library)

he emerges from the kiwissiné, his beautiful mask whitened by the flour used to bless him inside. The Corn Maidens are led around the plaza by Awantachu and taken one by one on the rooftop of the kiwissiné, where Bitsitsi leads them in blessings in all directions. Once they are all inside, the Pekwin empties their scarves of the grain offerings they held. After their silent ceremony, the Corn Maidens follow Bitsitsi to Kushilowa to bring offerings and prayer sticks to this starting point of the Katchinas’ visit to Itiwana, as all other Zuñi initiates have already done during the day. As soon as the Corn Maidens have left the plaza, which is now lit by a bonfire, a bustling crowd rushes in to bring gifts to the Koyemshis to the respective houses of their impersonators. Ayantachu then assigns to each of his nine sons a section of the village to bring thanks and blessings to before they all convene at his house to remove their masks. The Koyemshis’ priestly function comes to the fore as they then declare: “My father, we

have ended our task, which was to see to the happiness of our people.” Ayantachu collects in a blanket the masks that had made them divine beings for eight days and goes to put them in storage before he formally dismisses them with a speech and blessing, relieving them of their twenty-four hour fast and vigil, as well as a year of strenuous duties as stand-ins for the masked gods. See also Carneia; Whitsuntide References Ruth L. Bunzel. Zuñi Ceremonialism. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992. Edward S. Curtis. The North American Indian, Vol. 17: The Tewa—The Zuñi Mythology. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1970. Paul Radin. Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin. New York: Dover Publications, 1957. Matilda Coxe Stevenson. The Zuñi Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, And Ceremonies. Glorieta, NM: Rio Grande Press, 1985.

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◗ SHANG YUAN See Lantern Festival

◗ SHAO YI JIE

Mishnah law code of that period, Shavuot is said to be the time when God judges trees and determines how much fruit they are going to give that year.

See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

The Giving of the Law SHAVUOT (JUDAISM) This second of the three Jewish pilgrim festivals is mentioned in the Biblical Book of Pentateuch as coming fifty days after Passover— hence its Greek name of Pentecost, meaning “fiftieth.” The idea of the time between the two feasts is also expressed in the Hebrew name shavuot, or “weeks,” and is complemented by other Biblical references to the Harvest Feast or Hag ha-Qatzir and the Day of the First-Fruits (Yom ha-Bikkurim). Celebrated on the sixth of the month of Sivan, as well as on the seventh in the Diaspora outside Israel, it used to mark the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest, but now it mostly celebrates the giving of the Torah to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.

An Agricultural Festival Some have suggested that Shavuot may have been derived from a Canaanite Midsummer festival. On this occasion, two loaves of bread made from the finest wheat grown in Israel would be offered in the Temple of Jerusalem. This confirmed that harvest time, which had been ushered in by the eating of unleavened bread at Passover, was now at an end, so that the more normal course of daily life could resume. Some time between Shavuot and the third pilgrim festival of Sukkot, the villagers of every district were to bring the first ripe fruits of their crops to the Temple, where the priests welcomed them with singing. By extension, in the Hellenistic period after Alexander the Great’s conquests, the feast was also understood to renew the Covenant made by God with Noah after the Flood to provide for the continued existence of all creatures. Thus, in the

But after the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70, rabbis replaced its priests as the chief religious authorities; since they turned to the Law instead of sacrificial ritual as the sole focus of the Jewish faith, the character of the festival of Shavuot changed altogether. As the other pilgrim festivals of Sukkot and Passover already had in biblical times, Shavuot had first tended to lose its early agricultural significance to the benefit of a historical commemoration linked to the Exodus. It did retain an emphasis on nature’s bounty in the final goal of this forty-year journey: the Promised Land of milk and honey (Deuteronomy 26:1–11). Now its focus was shifted to a crucial event on the way there in the wasteland, as Shavuot came to celebrate “the time of the giving of our Torah” on Mount Sinai, when God made his Covenant with the people of Israel. This change was done on the basis of a verse placing the Hebrews’ arrival in its vicinity in the third month after they left Egypt (Exodus 19:1), just as Passover and Shavuot were spread over three months of the Jewish calendar. The Essene sect associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran soon started to celebrate Shavuot as a yearly renewal of the Covenant. The new rabbinical interpretation of Shavuot also dates back to the second century. It motivated the inclusion in the first day’s synagogue readings of the biblical episodes of the manifestation of God on Mount Sinai, when Moses was given the Ten Commandments. It is also described in the morning service’s piyyut, a poem interpolated after the Shema (the first cycle of berakhot in praise of the Creator). But the rabbis had long been uneasy about reciting these passages outside the Temple where they had used to be read

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out loud every day, because this could appear to confer on the Ten Commandments a special status over against the rest of the Torah, and they claimed this oral law had been given as a whole to Moses on Mount Sinai. Since this was the source of their authority, some of them, feeling it threatened, were led to protest against the practice of standing for the reading of the Ten Commandments at Shavuot that had become established by the Middle Ages. It has remained until now, along with the commemoration of dead relatives in yizkor prayers on the festival’s second day.

Secondary Customs Another medieval custom made of Shavuot the time to introduce children to the Torah at the Hebrew school in some communities, and the idea survives in the practice of many modern synagogues of holding Bar Mitzvahs on this festival of the giving of the Torah. However, under Kabbalistic influence, traditionalists have made a point of spending the previous night in a study vigil, devoted to selections from all of Jewish religious literature, and called Tikkun lel Shavuot. Sometimes, the entire Book of Psalms is read on the second night, because its author King David is said to have been born and to have died on a sixth of Sivan. This is also one of the reasons given for the standard practice of reading the Book of Ruth on Shavuot, as Ruth was the Psalmist’s ancestor. Others include the time of year of the events it relates, Ruth’s conscious conversion to Judaism, and her loyalty to the Torah as symbolic of Israel’s. The latter is the theme of the eleventh-century Aramaic hymn Akdamut by Meir ben Isaac Nehorai of Orléans, chanted by Ashkenazis before the Torah reading. All that remains of Shavuot’s original agricultural content is the symbolism of the greenery that is used to decorate the synagogue— over the objections of certain authorities—to its striking resemblance with Church practices like those of the Christian version of Pentecost.

Dairy products are consumed at home on Shavuot, because the laws concerning milk and first-fruits appear next to each other in the Bible. In some communities, triangular stuffed pancakes are made for this festival on account of the third month since the Exodus, when the Torah in three parts was given to Moses, a third child, for a threefold people made up of the Levite priestly tribe, of an élite of priests descended from Moses’ brother Aaron, and of all the rest of the Israelites. See also Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Midsummer; Passover; Sukkot; Whitsuntide References Philip Goodman, ed. The Shavuot Anthology. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1992. Ronald H. Isaacs. Every Person’s Guide to Shavuot. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999. Dianne M. MacMillan. Jewish Holidays in the Spring. Hillside, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1993.

◗ SHEMINI ATZERET See Sukkot

◗ SHICHI GO SAN See Seven-Five-Three

◗ SHIVARATRI See Mahashivaratri

◗ SHO PUJA See Divali

◗ SHOGATSU See New Year (Japan)

◗ SHROVE TUESDAY See Carnival

◗ SIGILLARIA See Saturnalia

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◗ SIMHAT TORAH See Sukkot

◗ SITUA (INCAS) One of several Andean festivals incorporated by the Incas into their imperial calendar, Situa was celebrated toward September, in the month of Coya Raymi. This sidereal month’s symbolic breastplate character points to the lunar origins and nocturnal setting of Situa. Coinciding with the first rains, when the Andes are most susceptible to disease and food shortages, this festival was meant, on the one hand, to keep such calamities at bay through rites of purification by water and fire, and on the other hand, to bring together the huacas or relics from the four quarters of the Empire for their annual visit to its capital Cuzco, where their oracles would be assessed.

Domestic Rites The precise details of Situa observances (in particular the questions to be put to divinatory huacas) were planned and decided each year by the Inca’s entourage on the day of the moon’s conjunction with the sun. In preparation for the expulsion of evils at Situa, foreigners and the physically handicapped would leave Cuzco, while a fast was held on the first day of the moon following the spring equinox. Once night had fallen, a coarse paste of maize called sanco was baked. A separate batch was kneaded with blood drawn between the eyebrows of children aged five to ten. Then each family gathered at the house of the eldest brother in the absence of one, the eldest relative next in line would do. After all family members had washed themselves and rubbed some of the bloodkneaded paste over their head, face, breast, shoulders, arms, and legs, so that it would imbibe their infirmities, the head of the family applied it to the threshold, leaving it there to attest that the prescribed ablutions had been performed in the house. Sanco was also offered

to the deities and to the clan’s ancestral mummies. The same steps were followed by the high priest at the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco. When the Sun appeared in the morning, the people prayed that he should drive out all evils. At a set time, so that all would worship the Sun simultaneously throughout the Empire, they broke the fast by eating sanco, which made their communion effective.

Expelling Evils from the Land But it is actually upon first sighting the new moon that the high priest would have first proclaimed the feast to 400 representatives of the highest clans, assembled fully armed in front of the Temple of the Sun; they shouted in response: “Diseases, disasters, misfortunes, leave this land!” (MacCormack 1991, p. 196). An Inca of royal blood then stood forth as a messenger of the Sun in full regalia, holding a lance to which feathers of many colors were fastened by golden rings. He brandished it as he ran down from the fortress to the middle of the open space in front of the Temple of the Sun, where stood the golden urn used for the sacrifice of chicha, as the Spaniards would call the Incas’ maize liquor. There, the messenger touched the lances of four other Incas of royal blood who headed four companies of a hundred men each, facing the four quarters of the world (in other words, of the Empire). Every quarter or suyo corresponded to the quarter of the twenty lineages of Cuzco represented by each company. The herald told them that the Sun was requesting them, as his messengers, to drive all evils out of the world’s center—Cuzco. They then separated, to start a kind of relay race of a few leagues with the four lances as they brandished firebrands and shouted “Evils go forth!”( MacCormack 1991, p. 197), down the four royal roads leading out of the city, along which squadrons of local state settlers would relieve them. The company facing south ran as far as present-day Angostura, to bathe in the river at Quiquisana, while that facing west ran to the

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river Apurimac, that facing east went over the plateau of Chita and down into the Vilcamayu valley, and those who went north also bathed in a stream that was supposed to wash out all evils, carrying them downstream and out to sea (not unlike the scapegoat dummies thrown into the river Tiber in the Roman festival of Argei). Having bathed and washed their weapons, the final runners set up the lances to mark a boundary within which the banished evils might not return (as is done by other means at West African New Yam Festivals). Along the runners’ path and on every street in the realm, people of all walks of life stood on their doorsteps and shook their clothes as if to make dust fall off, while they gladly shouted: “Let the evils be gone. How greatly desired has this festival been by us. O Creator of all things, permit us to reach another year, that we may see another feast like this” (Frazer 1985, p. 642). They would then pass their hands over their heads, faces, arms, and legs, to wash away evils. For the next twenty-four hours, they would also wash for real in rivers and fountains, dance through the night, and play with great straw torches called pancurcu, passing them on and striking each other with them as they made this wish: “Let all harm go away” (Frazer 1985, p. 642). The firebrands were finally taken out of city limits to be discarded in streams. Although people were less careful in early colonial times, throwing them in the water within the city itself, they still avoided them as charged with evil if they failed to be washed away by the current. Originally, cloth, llamas, coca, and flowers were also thrown into the water (as positive offerings this time) at the confluence of the rivers Huatanay and Tullumayu. All were to enjoy themselves; there was to be no scolding or any exchange of angry words on that day.

Gathering Local Relics at the Imperial Center The following days saw grand ceremonies accompanied by sacrifices of cloth and llamas.

Their blood was sprinkled on platters of sanco given as communion to all present once they had vowed to serve the gods and the monarch with a pure heart, while their lungs were examined for signs of the future, before their meat was distributed among the people. The main event was a ceremony of tribute that would bring to the capital all the provincial huacas, such as relics and other sacred objects, although mummies were foremost. Accompanied by their priests and followed by colorful delegations of subject populations, they were solemnly received at the Imperial Court and displayed on the main square. The huacas were then expected to give oracles on the events of the coming year, after being asked specific questions about war and peace, the harvest, and the Inca’s well being. Their respective priests would respond on their behalf, once the huacas had been given time to ponder the future and had received the proper sacrifices. If it turned out by the following year that their prophecies had been correct, they would then be rewarded by a solemn procession bearing gifts of gold and silver, textiles and llamas to their local shrines; this was the imperial obligation or capacocha in the Quechua language (in which the same word was used for human sacrifice). The huacas that had failed to deliver accurate prophecies would have to forego the official sanction of such offerings from on high and suffer a corresponding decline in reputation. As the city’s handicapped were allowed to come back, provincial subjects were given permission to return home with gifts of gold and silver, cloth, women, and retainers (though not with the huacas they had just brought, but only with those they had left behind in Cuzco the previous year). On the occasion of Situa, the integrity of the Inca Empire was thus reaffirmed at every level simultaneously: spiritual and physical, cosmic and sociopolitical, securing the ties of the Andean provinces to Cuzco as the center of authority.

442 | s p r i n g d r a g o n See also Argei; Busk; Inti Raymi; Naked Festivals; New Yam Festival; Thargelia; Yom Kippur References Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. One-Volume Abridged Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Sabine MacCormack. Religion in the Andes. Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Sir Clements Markham. The Incas of Peru. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1910.

◗ SKIROPHORIA See Thesmophoria

◗ SNAKE (FESTIVAL OF THE) See Sekku

◗ SNOW FESTIVAL See Bear Festival

◗ SOMBA DAMBA See Mawlid

◗ SOTIRIA See Games (Greece)

◗ SOUL SATURDAYS See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ SPECIAL SABBATHS See Sabbath

◗ SPRING BREAK See Lent

◗ SPRING DRAGON (CHINA) “On the second day of the second moon, the Dragon rears its head,” goes the Chinese saying about the festival of the Spring Dragon. This fantastical being (whose hybrid forms and cosmic expanse straddle and connect all realms of

Nature) is thought to stir from its yearly hibernation with the Awakening of Insects, or Jing Zhe, the third of the twenty-four periods into which the Chinese year was divided over 2,000 years ago to reflect the agricultural cycles of the middle and lower Yellow River. In central China, they still say that “once Jing Zhe day is over, there is no end to Spring plowing.” As the very voice of the Dragon, thunder then gives the signal for unrelenting activity to insects and men alike. To protect their cattle and themselves against the swarms that the awakening Dragon’s tail lifts from the ground and spreads through the air, in some places the peasants stir-fry soybeans with sugar as “scorpions’ legs.” In others, they make lantern-shaped dishes out of the leftover dough from the Lantern Festival of a couple of weeks before. In Jiangsu province, they eat “cakes for supporting the loins,” kept from the previous year as a protection against backaches, to ensure the ability to work hard so as to be able to feed the family over the coming year. There as in Shantung, they draw concentric “barn circles” with straw ashes to read the fortune of the new harvest, and sometimes add a ladder design to symbolize the plenty they hope for. In Shensi, they use sugar or lime to literally draw in the Serpent from its dwelling in the well in the courtyard through the door to a water jug inside the house—inviting in the good fortune in its power. For fear of antagonizing the Dragon and facing retribution in misfortune, women do not even dare to do needlework on this day, as they might unwittingly prick its eyes. Such regional folkloric practices aside, the day of the Spring Dragon is generally one for outings, long walks, dragon-lantern processions, and launching dragon boats. See also Lantern Festival; Dragon Boat Festival References Juliet Bredon and Igor Mitrophanow. The Moon Year: A Record of Chinese Customs and Festivals. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1982 (reprint of the 1927 Shanghai edition).

s p r i n g f e s t i va l o f c y b e l e a n d at t i s | 443 Qi Xing. Folk Customs at Traditional Chinese Festivities. Tr. Ren Jiazhen. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1988. C. K. Yang. Religion in Chinese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.

◗ SPRING FESTIVAL See New Year (China, Korea), Passover

◗ SPRING FESTIVAL OF CYBELE AND ATTIS (ROME) Imported to Rome from Asia Minor at the end of the third century B.C.E., the cult of Cybele was at first officially restricted to April games and a procession led by foreign clergy. But it gained state recognition in early Imperial times, when its focus shifted more to March rituals re-enacting the death of her lover Attis and his resurrection as a herald of spring. These rites were known for sexual self-mutilation performed in trance states, as well as for carnival inversion practices. Later, the Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis developed into a mystery cult calling for the initiation of devotees through a baptism in bull’s blood.

How Cybele Came to Rome The cult of the Near Eastern Great Mother of the Gods, the Mater Deum Magna Idaea or Magna Mater, had its major seat in Phrygia (an ancient land in the Asian part of present-day Turkey), at the foot of Mounts Ida and Cybele—the two names by which she was known. She was worshipped there in the shrine of Pessinus in the form of a black stone called a betylus. But this sacred stone was eventually taken all the way to Rome by a delegation sent from there for this purpose after solemnly consulting the Sibylline Books of prophecies for a way to obtain divine help against the armies of Hannibal from Rome’s rival Carthage. They had seemed about to overcome all of Italy; yet within a year, they had gone back to Africa.

Even before this providential retreat, bumper crops had made it clear that the foreign fertility goddess had gone to work from the moment she was installed in the Temple of Victory on Palatine Hill by Rome’s aristocracy on April 4, 204 B.C.E. It was on this day that the first scenic games were organized by the nobles in her honor. These Ludi Megalenses would become annual and last until April 10 from that date in 191 B.C.E., when the Magna Mater’s very own temple was dedicated on the Palatine. The Great Mother’s strange “Phrygian rites” were long confined to her temple and left to foreign clergy. Yet Rome’s patricians made of her games, for a long time the first games of the year, their answer to those of the wheat goddess Ceres, the Cerialia, which immediately followed from April 12 to 19, put on by the plebeians. The nobles seized this opportunity to emulate the common people’s seasonal practice of mutitationes, that is of inviting each other in turn to extravagant sacred banquets. On these occasions, an old peasant dish of white cheese and ground herbs, called moretus, was set aside for Cybele. After over a century of restricting the actual cult of Cybele to a colorful annual procession, the Senate finally had to bow to popular pressure caused by the fascination it exerted and allow her clergy to recruit devotees among Roman citizens. They had previously been barred from full participation, because it involved castration, which was illegal in Rome. Officially protected by Emperor Augustus (63–14 B.C.E.), the public cult of the goddess Cybele was incorporated and regulated by Emperor Claudius (10–54 B.C.E.), likely under the influence of his powerful entourage of former slaves. It thus came to feature a full-fledged liturgy meant to reenact the associated myth of Attis, down to sexual self-mutilation as its centerpiece. This was the price to be paid for the renewed fertility of spring, as part of rites extending from March 15 to 27. They began with a procession of reedbearers (cannophori), introducing eight days of

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The introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome, a painting by Andrea Mantegna from 1505–1506. The imported Oriental cult of Cybele gained state recognition in early Imperial times, when its focus shifted more to March rituals reenacting the death of her lover Attis and his resurrection as a herald of spring. (National Gallery collection, London/Corbis)

fasting that particularly concerned bread and other flour-based products. This was both a sign of mourning for the death of the wheat god Attis and a way to achieve purification before partaking of the sacramental mysteries of his annual resurrection.

Mourning for Attis The Great Mother had by then been assimilated to the Mother of the Gods of classical mythology: Rhea. She had caused her husband Saturn’s emasculation by saving one of their offspring, which until then he had been swallowing as soon as they were born. Jupiter, having escaped this fate, would unseat his father as king of the gods, slashing his father’s male organs in the process. But as Cybele, remembering how her fertility had long been thwarted by the divine patriarch, the Mother of the Gods would not allow her young lover Attis (whom she had actually fathered from the nymph Nana in her guise as the hermaphrodite Agdistis—named after Mount Agdis or Cybele) to ever grow to manhood and into a husband—to her or to anyone. She had him swear to always remain just a boy and never to love anybody else. As a result, when Attis came of age and fell in love with a fair wood nymph, Cybele killed her. Attis then went mad with regret, cutting off with a sharp stone the male organs that had caused the anger of the

jealous Great Mother. The blood from his wound, splattered at the foot of a pine tree, turned into violets. Pines are evergreens bearing cones that are full of seed and have the shape of testicles, which makes them an obvious symbol of fertility. At the time of year when violets actually do blossom in the shade of pines, one of these trees used to be cut in the forest on March 22, to be brought to the temple of Cybele by ceremonial tree-bearers. The trunk was wrapped around with woollen bands and wreathed with violets, to further underline that it stood for the dead Attis, and an effigy of the poor boy was tied to it. It would be buried until the next year, when it would be burned and replaced with a new tree.

Cybele’s Day of Blood On March 23, trumpets were blown, as if to call the spring. But the love sacrifice of Attis to the Great Mother had yet to be performed on March 24, Cybele’s Day of Blood. The Archigallus was head of her priests, the Galles. They were named after the river Gallus that flowed from Mount Cybele, and whose waters were said to make whoever drank from them go mad. This was a condition that the mythical, half-demonic attendants of Cybele, the Corybantes, were thought able to cure with the wild dances of their orgiastic cult. (Likewise in the

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Whitsuntide folklore of Rumania and Bulgaria, only initiated Cal˘u¸sari mummers embodying the Rusalii water spirits had the power to cure the madness they caused with their dances.) It was among the reeds on the banks of the Gallus that Cybele was reputed to have found the body of her son and lover Attis. This event is commemorated on March 15. On the Day of Blood, the high priest of the Galles set an example worthy of the Corybantes by drawing blood from his arms and offering it to Cybele. Entranced by the rhythm of cymbals and drums and the grating sound of horns and flutes, the rest of the clergy used shards, knives, and whips to gash their skin so as to splash blood on the altar and the tree, ecstatically whirling their long hair. In their frenzy, some would go so far as to cut off their genitals and dash them against the image of the Great Mother. It might even have been expected of the novices as an initiation into a new estate of exclusive devotion to the jealous goddess. It is known to have been done on the spur of the moment by ordinary devotees from the general public at Asian cultic centers of a similar Great Goddess, be it Diana of Ephesus or Astarte of Hierapolis. It may have happened in Rome too, since Catullus (87–54 B.C.E.), in his poem on “Attis,” movingly captured the devotee’s appalling realization, upon coming back to his senses, of an irreparable act performed while possessed by a divine spirit.

Hilaria After these wild expressions of mourning for the god, mad rejoicing followed his nightlong funeral wake as dawn broke on March 25, which was the spring equinox in the Ancients’ reckoning. For spring was experienced as the rebirth of the young god Attis. It was celebrated in the streets of Rome and elsewhere as the Festival of Joy or Hilaria. Known also on November 3 for the resurrection of Osiris in the similar foreign cult of Isis, this was a thanksgiving carnival of laughter, where people dressed up

to assume and parody other social stations. None was too high or too sacred to escape such derision amidst the universal license that prevailed for a day when nothing was forbidden. This suspension and confusion of social roles was even once used (however unsuccessfully) by conspirators to get within stabbing distance of Emperor Commodus (161–192); they dressed as his Imperial Guard and mingled with the partying crowd that surrounded him. The following day of rest allowed people to recuperate before the closing procession of March 27. To the accompaniment of tambourines and pipes, it took the silver image of the Great Mother, with the black betylus set on her forehead, through a gate called the Porta Capena to the brook Almo that flowed into the Tiber just outside city walls. The high priest, wearing purple vestments, and usually named Attis, would now wash the image of Cybele and other sacred objects, as well as the wagon itself, in a rite known as lavatio. This wagon, along with the oxen drawing it, would be decorated with fresh spring flowers for the merry ride back to town.

Baptism of Blood The Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis came to be very popular throughout the Roman Empire, from Africa to Bulgaria. But from the end of the third century onward, it was experienced more and more as a mystery religion of personal salvation. On March 28, the candidate for higher initiation would partake in a sacramental meal, eating out of a tambourine and drinking out of a cymbal, which were the ceremonial instruments of the festival. First he would have to go through what was known as a taurobolic baptism of blood. Initially performed on behalf of the Emperor and his realm and soon very widespread throughout its Western half, it was derived from the bull sacrifice introduced into the cult of Cybele in 160 in imitation of other foreign cults like that of Mithra, and possibly influenced by the Christian baptism of water as

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well. Wearing headbands and a golden crown, the candidate had to go down into a pit. The hole was then closed behind him with a wooden grating, and a bull was pressed onto it, garlanded with flowers, with gold leaf stamped on its forehead. The bull would then be stabbed to death with a consecrated spear, bleeding profusely on the initiate underneath it. Leaving behind as in a grave the old man and his sins, he would eventually emerge from the pit drenched with the reeking blood of the bull sacrificed to Cybele. It was supposed to purify and revitalize him for ten or twenty years, as a foretaste of a blissful life everlasting beyond death, it was later assumed (though the sacrifice was generally done for its own sake). His fellows would worshipfully welcome him to this new life by nursing him on milk like a newborn child for a while. The devotee’s regeneration was thus carried out at the same time as that of his god Attis on the spring equinox. These rites were observed in Rome and were most popular among urban women for a long time after the Empire’s formal adoption of Christianity as its only official religion. They were practiced chiefly on the very spot of Vatican Hill where the Roman Church’s symbolic center, St. Peter’s Basilica, would later stand. Likewise, before the date of Easter was universally set as a movable feast in 325, March 25 was taken to be the date of Christ’s Resurrection in the very places where the rebirth of Attis (like him a “solar” god in later times) had long been celebrated on that day as part of the Spring Festival of Cybele: namely Phrygia, Cappadocia, Gaul, and perhaps Rome as well. And of course, March 25 was eventually retained by the Church as the date for the celebration of the Annunciation to Mary that she would be Mother of God, on a day when the Great Mother of the Gods Cybele (also from the Near East) already used to be honored. These coincidences in time and place seem to suggest a hidden continuity in Western man’s quest for regeneration, whether seasonal

or personal; for whether it ensured natural renewal or granted supernatural realization, its high-point was always set in the spring. See also Annunciation; Dionysia; Easter; Games (Rome); Khoiak and Heb-Sed; May Day; Palm Sunday; Venus Verticordia and Virile Fortune; Whitsuntide References Robert Duthoy. The Taurobolium. Its Evolution and Terminology. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, “Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain” series, Vol. 10, 1969. Eugene N. Lane. Cybele, Attis, and Related Cults. Essays in Memory of M. J. Vermaseren. New York: E. J. Brill, 1996. Giulia Sfameni Gasparro. Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and Attis. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1985. Maarten J. Vermaseren. Cybele and Attis, the Myth and the Cult. Tr. H. Lemmers. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977.

◗ SRÉTENYE See Candlemas

◗ STANDARD MONTH See New Year (Japan)

◗ STAR FESTIVAL See Sekku

◗ STUDENTS’ DAY See Lag ba-Omer

◗ SUGÔ FESTIVAL See Gion Festival

◗ SUKKOT (JUDAISM) Sukkot is the principal of the three pilgrim festivals of Judaism (alongside Passover and Shavuot), and its oldest festival altogether. It started out as a one-day harvest festival. Later on, the Hebrew word sukkot was attached to it

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Sukkot. Goldsmidt House, Jerusalem, 1930. (Library of Congress)

and has been taken to refer to the booths (sometimes called “tabernacles”) in which the Jews camped in the wilderness after their flight from Egypt. To celebrate this time of trial and triumph joyfully, Jews still build huts, eating their meals in them over a weeklong festival, followed by a day for honoring the Torah.

The Festival of Ingathering Sukkot was long known simply as Hag or “the Festival.” It was derived from a Canaanite autumn feast of ingathering from the threshing floor and the winepress. Unlike most other Jewish festivals, which start on the New Moon, this one, like Passover, begins on the full moon, namely in the middle of the month of Tishri, in late September or early October. The autumn pilgrimage initially lasted one day; it was then known as the Festival of Ingathering (hag

ha’asip) in the Book of Exodus (23:16). But by the time it was mentioned again in Leviticus (23:33–43) and Deuteronomy (16:13–15), it had become the Festival of Booths (hag hassukkot) and lasted seven days, followed by an eighth day for a sacred assembly. It then started a little later than the Ingathering, when the harvest had already been processed. This delaying and extension of the original festival was probably due to the increasing centralization of all pilgrimage at the Temple of Jerusalem, to the exclusion of any local shrines, which compelled Jews to be on the move for a longer period. The booths may well have arisen as temporary shelters for the countless pilgrims who came to the capital especially for this festival (even from abroad) after the Jewish people spread out in the Diaspora. The greenery still used to adorn the sukkot attests to their original connection with a fertility ritual.

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Sukkot grew into the major yearly gathering of the Jews at the Temple in Jerusalem, after King Solomon first dedicated it on the occasion of this festival around 966 B.C.E. By the same token, he turned it into an enthronement feast of his dynasty and a consecration of its royal capital. So much so that after Solomon’s death, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel split away, its king Jeroboam made sacrifices at his own shrine in Bethel on Sukkot, as King Solomon had done at the Temple of Jerusalem—only a month later than remained the use in Jerusalem, capital of the Southern Kingdom of Juda. There, the seventh month of Tishri, when Sukkot was held, eventually became the first month (as was the case in neighboring Assyria) so that its new moon signaled the Jewish New Year: Rosh Hashanah. It was itself derived from the Mesopotamian New Year festival Akitu as the proper time for the solemn enthronement of kings—an idea Solomon seems to have been emulating. Coming straight on the heels of the ascetic period of fasting between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the feast of Sukkot has always been characterized by joy, even before these other festivals existed. According to a vision of the prophet Zechariah from the year 520 B.C.E., joy will also overflow at the end of time when all the nations of the world come to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot along with the Jews. Three huge golden candlesticks used to be lit in the Temple courtyard during the festival’s intermediate days, for water-libation rites that were meant to bring rain. They called for priests to carry in procession water from the pool of Siloam in a golden jar to pour it on the southwestern side of the altar of burnt offerings—the one facing the direction rain clouds came from. A flute-playing procession also circled the altar with willow branches for a ceremony called Simhat Bet ha-Sho’evah, as the epitome of joy. Some of these customs have been translated to the context of the local synagogue after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in

70. Every day of Sukkot, the congregation circles the pulpit and waves branches of the “four species”—citron, myrtle, palm, and willow— from which the sukkot used to be made in Jerusalem’s squares and courtyards and on the city’s rooftops. On the seventh day, known as Hoshana Rabba (“Great Hosanna”), the faithful sing hoshana prayers for a good harvest in the coming year as they circle the Scrolls of the Law seven times inside the synagogue. This day is now regarded as a supplement to Yom Kippur, when God can still finalize his judgment for the year. Sukkot itself may be seen as a kind of popular counterpart of the priestly New Year’s Day of Rosh Hashanah leading up to Yom Kippur; all three festivals come within a couple of weeks of each other in the same month of Tishri.

Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah The twenty-second of Tishri marks the eighth day of Sukkot, but is treated by the rabbis as a separate festival called Shemini Atzeret. It features a great prayer for rain, as well as the yizkor memorial prayer for the dead after the Book of Ecclesiastes has been read out. This was on account of its seasonal melancholy mood and of the justification for this extra day drawn from the following verse (11:2): “Divide a portion into seven, yea, even into eight” (“Sukkot,” in Encyclopedia Judaica 1971, p. 502). On this eighth day in Israel (but on the next day in the Diaspora), the festival has been closing for over a thousand years with Simhat Torah, or “Rejoicing in the Torah,” because the annual reading of the Torah from the scroll at the synagogue is then completed, and the new cycle of readings is immediately started. One member of the congregation, “the bridegroom of the Torah,” reads the last portion, and another picks up from the very beginning as “the bridegroom of Genesis,” after which the two of them will invite the other members to a party. Both on the eve and on the day of Simhat Torah, the

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scrolls are taken in a singing (and often dancing) procession around the synagogue by a few of the faithful, while the others wave small, colorful handmade flags. Little boys race around the synagogue with them in Hasidic communities, while girls may only look on from another room. Later that evening, babies are cuddled as they are passed from lap to lap, and well-to-do businessmen outbid each other at a ritual auction of opportunities for their less fortunate or elderly brethren to have the honor of reading aloud from the Torah. If the first and the eighth day of the festival are days of rest, certain sacrifices are prescribed for all eight days by the Bible’s Book of Leviticus and Book of Numbers: seventy on the first seven days for the seventy nations of which mankind is symbolically made up, and one ram and one bullock on the eighth day, to denote Israel’s special relationship to God as His chosen people. Yet they can no longer be done without priests or Temples.

Symbolism of the Sukkah In principle, unless it is facing severe hardships, a Jewish household (limited to its male members in Hasidic communities) is still supposed to eat and sleep (as well as celebrate with rhythmic singing and clapping of hands) within the frail temporary shelter of a sukkah for the duration of the festival. According to the Book of Leviticus (23:43), this was ordained by God to Moses as a reenactment of the living conditions of the tribes of Israel during the forty years of their wanderings in search of the promised land. In the words of the festival’s kiddush or blessing over wine: “Blessed are You, YHVH our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by His commandments and commanded us to dwell in the sukkah”(Fine 1984, p. 335). The roof of the cabin should be made of foliage under open sky, so that rain can come through. This probably represents not so much a hazard of life in the Sinai desert as a seasonal invitation for rain to come down and to water the plants. But

there remains the idea of being in touch with nature, and with the clouds in particular, as a reminder of God’s providence, which protected the Jews in a hostile environment during the Exodus, under the guise of clouds of glory. In the Talmudic commentary of Rabbi Eliezer (Sukkah 11b), the sukkot themselves are the clouds of glory, of which there are seven according to a midrash by Rabbi Hoshaya (Numbers Rabbah 1:2). Kabbalists have thus been able to identify them with the seven lower sefirot or power points on the cosmic Tree of Life of their esoteric teachings. In its branches or sefirot, the Community of Israel (Knesset Yisrael in its heavenly aspect as opposed to the earthly people of Israel) is sheltered and lodged by the Divine Presence (the female Shekhinah), both of them corresponding to the lowest sefira: Malkhut, or the Kingdom, as the basis for the manifestation of all the others, leading back to God. For all its associations with the austerity of exile, the seasonal sukkah has always been richly decorated (according to the respective standards of every walk of life of course) with constructions ranging from a ramshackle outhouse to a luxurious pavilion. A variety of fruits will often be hung from the ceiling. Although the walls can be made of any material, they will usually be wood, and they will often be covered with tapestries and pictures. Some of these are termed ushpizim or guests, since they depict Biblical heroes who are thus invited to join the celebration, following a Kabbalistic custom that matches each of them with a sefira: Abraham with Hesed or Mercy, Isaac with Din, meaning Justice, Jacob with Tiferet, or Beauty, Moses with Nezah, Victory, Aaron with Hod, Majesty, Joseph with Yesod, Foundation, and David with Malkhut or Kingship. A different patriarch is invited on each night of the festival, using formulas such as this one for the first: “O Abraham, my exalted guest, may it please you to have all the exalted guests dwell with us—Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David” (Fine 1984, p. 334). In

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their guise, the different divine attributes dwell in turn in the sukkah—or rather, their presence is contemplatively dwelt upon by every celebrant in this Kabbalistic ritual. It has found its way into many prayer books, including most Sephardic ones. At its source in the Zohar (III:104a), the ethical remains inseparable from the mystical, as it clearly states: Nevertheless, he must make the poor happy. Why? Because the portion of those guests whom he has invited belongs to the poor. One who sits in this shade of faith And invites these sublime guests, guests of faith, And does not give them their portion— All of them rise to leave, saying: ‘DO NOT EAT THE FOOD OF A STINGY PERSON . . . ’ (Proverbs 23:6) It turns out that the table he set is his own, not divine . . . (Fine 1984, pp. 335–336)

Though rarely observed in such elaborate forms, the practice of building sukkot has recently been enjoying a comeback after years of neglect in North America, as shown by the sudden mushrooming of wooden back-patios in Jewish neighborhoods at this time of year. Often, it is the children who love the fun idea of moving for a while to a small makeshift house in the backyard of their everyday homes and press for its realization. The trend is seen by some as evidence of a spiritual reawakening among Jewish communities. To feed its flames, Sukkot will often be the occasion of a “gathering of souls” around a religious elder in a home setting, where young and old may raise questions about proper living as a Jew. See also Akitu; Passover; Rosh Hashanah; Shavuot; Yom Kippur References Lawrence Fine. “Kabbalistic Texts,” in Barry W. Holtz, ed. Back to the Sources—Reading the

Classic Jewish Texts. New York: Summit Books, 1984, pp. 305–359. Philip Goodman, ed. The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973. The Living Festivals (video series), Part 2 (Sukkot, Divali, Guru Nanak’s Birthday). Exeter, UK: Pergamon Educational Productions in association with RMEP, 1987. Dianne M. MacMillan. Jewish Holidays in the Fall. Hillside, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1993. “Sukkot,” in Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

◗ SUMMER FESTIVAL See Dragon Boat Festival

◗ SUN DANCE (PLAINS INDIANS) The most dramatic and public religious ceremony of the Plains Indians is the Sun Dance. Known in about twenty different cultures (both Siouan and Algonquian) across North America, it had its heyday in the nineteenth century. All the bands of a tribe would then converge in large encampments every summer (while the bison gathered and food was abundant) for an intense festive period during which its belief systems and social bonds were reaffirmed.

A Name’s Origin The term “Sun Dance” was first applied to this ceremony by the fur trader Jean-Baptiste Truteau in recollections of the late eighteenth century, when he had observed it among its classic exponents and likely originators along with the Sioux: the Algonquian-speaking Arapaho and Cheyenne. The expression was popularized by Mary Eastman’s description of the Santee version in the mid-nineteenth century, since the ceremony had meanwhile spread to tribes from the Kiowa in Texas to the Plains Ojibwa in Saskatchewan. The name stuck in English, even among Indians, though some anthropologists regard it as no more than “a con-

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venience that historians, travelers, and ethnologists have fallen back upon to refer to a range of midsummer tribal ceremonies” (Hall 1997, p. 20). They all have names of their own, reflecting both their diversity of purposes and local variations in the rites involved. Most of them have to do with a temporary lodge built to hold sacred dances, so the Arikara call it House of Whistling (since dancers pray by blowing through eagle bone whistles), while the Ute, Shoshone, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwa know it as the Thirsting Dance (since dancers could not eat or drink). In certain versions, the sun hardly figured at all in the ceremony, which was only named after it by the Ponca and Sioux, as the Sun-Gazing Dance (Wi wan’ yank Waci’pi, for the latter’s Dakota tribe).

Personal Sacrifice and Cosmic Renewal The Sun Dance is a typical instance of individual quests for spiritual power, mystical knowledge, and supernatural assistance, that grew into elaborate collective ceremonies with a body of songs, ritual, and sacred lore specific to each tribe, reinforcing communal ties by involving everyone in their preparation over many months and their performance over several days. For one thing, like other festivals of the Plains Indians, the Sun Dance was normally carried out every year or so in fulfillment of a particular individual’s vow in a time of crisis— be it a woman who wanted to keep illness away from her family, as for the Blackfoot and Sarcee, or a man who had pledged to sponsor this event if he returned safely from a war party, as among the Plains Cree and Ojibwa, or either a man or a woman looking for spiritual protection and was instructed by a vision, as with the Cheyenne. Yet it was usually men who did the actual dancing, while women might fast and perform other rites. For the Sun Dance owed its specific features to the warrior culture of Plains nomads, though their more sedentary neighbors took over and

adapted some of them. The full ritual entailed the discovery of a special tree that was treated as a captured enemy, being carried in triumph to the center of a specially built circular arbor, often the same structure as the lodge. This pole could start out being the focus of abuse, since the Sioux hung it with buffalo hide images of the infectious spirit of licentiousness. But it was mostly the focus of prayerful offerings, which were hung on it (as on the “thunderbird nest” set at the top by the Plains Cree and Ojibwa) by spectators who wanted to have a share in the sacrifice effected through the ascetic exertions of the fasting dancers. These were derived from tests of manhood common in such warrior cultures, and also part of other Native American festivals like the Southeastern Busk. The best known example of this kind of ordeal is the very similar four-day Okeepa ceremony practiced by the Mandan in North Dakota until the late nineteenth century and documented in paintings by George Catlin, who first witnessed it in 1832. At the Sun Dance of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Blackfoot, spectators might join the dancers in cutting tiny pieces of flesh from their arms. But only the dancers had the privilege of being themselves hung on or tied to the central pole by pegs inserted below the muscles of their chest or back. They would dance, gazing at the sun and imbibing its energy through the cables, for as many hours as it took for the flesh to tear away and free them from its bonds. This gave them access to the spirit realm where visions came from, either on the spot or later on during the year. Alternatively, the thongs hooked in their flesh might drag the heavy buffalo skulls they gazed at, like the ones hung on the central pole, as the world axis connecting the earth with the Cosmic Buffalo. Called Wakan Tanka in Sioux mythology, this Great Spirit is identifiable with the sun as the head of all the spirits who manifest him in the special visions he grants, while he remains unseen as their common source and that of the

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Dance were likewise “buffalo cultures” for which the increase of herd and tribe were one and the same thing, in a celebration of the sun’s fertile power that usually involved sacrifice, if not always bloodletting. This feature was thus altogether absent from the distinctive springtime version of the Sun Dance found among the Kutenai people of obscure origin, living in southern British Columbia and the north of the states of Idaho and Montana.

From Apparent Suppression to Ambiguous Revival

Reproduction of a lithograph by Frederick Remington showing a Blackfoot (Siksika) Native American man enduring a portion of the Sun Dance that includes a piercing of both nipples with thongs that are attached to ropes drawn tight. (Western History/Genealogy Deparment of the Denver Public Library)

world they structure. Among the Cheyenne, as stated by a religious leader a century ago, “the object of the ceremony is to make the whole world over again” (Dorsey 1971, p. 186). The Sioux attribute its origin to the White Buffalo Woman who, perhaps a thousand years back, taught them how to find buffalo and other necessities of life in their new Plains habitat by using the sacred pipe of peace she brought as a gift from the Buffalo people to revere the sky, the earth, and the four winds. Representing the breath of life, it presumably empowered the bison skull next to which it was set on the altar drawn on the ground at the base of the pole. Most Plains tribes who practiced the Sun

Regardless of such differences, it was partly on account of some tribes’ inclusion of selftorture and mutilation in its rites that the Sun Dance as a whole was banned in Canada by an amendment to the Indian Act that was only repealed in 1951. American efforts at suppressing such outwardly militaristic, potentially seditious displays of tribal identity and pride culminated in April 1921, when Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles Burke called for the abolition of “the sundance and all other similar dances and so-called ceremonies” (Archambault 2001, p. 988). They had first been outlawed in 1904, though for the most part they just went underground, even as part of Fourth of July celebrations, like the powwow. Many federal agents turned a blind eye to them, but others, along with Christian missionaries, went on discouraging the Sun Dance and other Native American practices even after Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier reversed repressive official policy in his historic 1934 circular on “Indian Religious Freedom and Indian Culture.” By the 1960s, only seven groups from among the nineteen reported at the beginning of the twentieth century still held a Sun Dance. But by its end, all but two of these (namely the Ponca and the Sarcee) performed one—either as a traditional tribal ritual, or as an adaptation of that of another tribe if the original version had died out in the interval. “Of all the twentieth-

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century tribal Sun Dances that either survived or were renewed, the Sioux traditions, particularly those originating on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, played the most significant role in the diffusion of an intertribal, interracial Sun Dance that became international in scope” (Archambault 2001, p. 992). This was largely due to the development of the American Indian Movement, whose leadership was largely Sioux. It was thus at the Sun Dances held on these Sioux reservations that, by the 1970s, many uprooted urban Indian young people got their first taste of Native American spirituality, regardless of their tribal background. Aside from traditional revivals that often allowed piercing to reemerge openly, more or less politicized versions of the Sun Dance appeared among the Sioux. They spread to communities beyond the Plains as part of an intertribal movement of Indian pride, reaching northward as far east as Micmac territory on Cape Breton Island in Atlantic Canada in 1988, and as far west as the Rocky Mountains, for supporters in a land dispute with the Canadian government at Gustafsen Lake, British Columbia, in 1994 and 1995. Non-Indian sympathizers were also welcome to participate as helpers and workers, if not as dancers, increasingly for spiritual as well as political reasons. For since the 1970s too, there has been a renewed emphasis on the universal scope of this ritual for the benefit of all beings, with many Native American religious leaders coming back from vision quests with specific instructions to help people of all backgrounds through the Sun Dance, in a spirit of reconciliation between races and with the earth. This new openness has often been taken advantage of by non-Indian spiritual seekers, leaving these mostly Sioux ecumenicists open to charges of being seduced by their fawning attentions to the point of selling out sacred lore to outsiders, and even of lending a spurious air of traditional legitimacy to New Age versions of the Sun Dance, such as have been held for this new con-

stituency as far away as Britain, France, and Germany. See also Busk; Midsummer; Powwow References Hartley Burr Alexander. The World’s Rim. Great Mysteries of the North American Indians. Foreword by Clyde Kluckhohn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1953. JoAllyn Archambault. “Sun Dance,” in Raymond J. DeMallie, Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 13: Plains (Part 2). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2001, pp. 983–995. G. A. Dorsey. The Cheyenne II: The Sun Dance. Field Columbian Museum Publication 101, Anthropological Series 9(2), Chicago, 1905, reprinted with The Cheyenne I: Ceremonial Organization. New York: Kraus Reprints, 1971. R. L. Hall. An Archeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. V. M. Roediger. Ceremonial Customs of the Plains Indians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961.

◗ SUNDAY (CHRISTIANITY) Among Christians, Sunday has always been set aside for weekly worship in common to commemorate the Resurrection of Christ following the Jewish Sabbath, which it initially displaced as a festive holy day, and gradually replaced as a solemn day of rest. It was enforced with varying strictness in different periods, places, and church denominations.

Primitive Sunday Worship New Testament writings do not explain how Sunday worship began in the time of the Apostles. While they were still mostly of Jewish background, many early Christians probably kept the Sabbath at the synagogue before gathering as a distinct group the following day, which was the first of the week, for the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice, as indicated in

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Acts, 20:7 and I Corinthians 16:2. In Revelation 1:10, it is called “the Lord’s Day,” marking the triumph of Christ in his Resurrection, and the beginning of a timeless new Creation beyond the completion of the old one on the Sabbath as a time of rest on its seventh day. The next day was thus known as “the eighth day,” because of the “other day” fixed by God for his people to reach the “place of rest” after the work of Creation in Hebrews 4:4–11. Around 150, Saint Justin Martyr’s First Apology to Emperor Antoninus Pius on behalf of Christians, to refute charges of atheism and subversion, is the first text that equates (in chapter sixty-seven) the eighth day (as that of Christ’s Resurrection) with the first one (as that of God’s Creation of the world) in the still unofficial Roman planetary week—starting with the sun’s day to end on Saturn’s day. His description of Sunday worship remains largely valid in basic outline for all apostolic Churches and some mainline Protestant ones. On the day known as that of the sun, Justin relates, “all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and . . . when our prayer is ended, the bread and wine and water are brought.” Known as the two species of the Eucharist, bread and wine mixed with warm water were originally available to all the faithful, but laypeople have until recently (for example, the Second Vatican Council for Catholics) had to be content with the bread alone in the Western Church, since about the same time as its separation from the Eastern Church was triggered a thousand years ago by the Roman papacy’s claim to unilaterally and universally impose such innovations as the use of unleavened bread for this sacrament, on the model of Jewish Passover. This schism between the two halves of the Christian Church

still prevents their respective members from communing in each other’s sacraments, starting with the Eucharist. The latter’s name is the Greek word for the “thanksgiving” as which the priest offers the consecrated bread and wine to God with devotion. The congregation then answers with one voice: “Amen”—a Hebrew word meaning “so be it.” According to Justin already, to partake in the Eucharist, one has to believe in the truth of Christian doctrines and live by them in practice, having been born again through baptism as the washing away of sins and the putting on of Christ. For “in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, ‘This do ye in remembrance of me, this is my body;’ and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, he said, ‘This is my blood;’ and gave it to them alone.” In Justin’s time however, “when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.” Deacons are also responsible for a collection from all those in the congregation who have the means and the desire to give—at their own discretion. They then hand it over to the presiding priest or bishop, who “takes care of all who are in need:” orphans and widows, the sick and the poor, prisoners and strangers, and the like (Roberts and Donaldson 1867, pp. 64–66).

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A Day of Rest Begins the Week Born around the same time as Saint Justin’s text was written, the Latin Christian author Tertullian added in chapter twenty-three of his treatise Concerning Prayer (1919, pp. 40–41) that “we, according to the tradition we have received, on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, and on it alone, ought to refrain carefully not only from this [kneeling], but from every attitude and duty that cause perplexity putting off even our daily business, ‘lest we give any place to the devil’ [Ephesians 4:27]. The same thing, too, at Whitsuntide, which is distinguished by the same solemnity of its rejoicing,” except that the solemn reintroduction of the kneeling banned since Easter (as though to draw out the joy of this original Sunday over fifty days) in Orthodox Churches now takes center stage at vespers. This is an evening service marking the feast’s end, but in practice, on Pentecost, it is usually held right after the morning liturgy. Otherwise, to this day, there is no kneeling on Sunday (except for Cross Veneration Sunday, the third one in Lent) in Eastern rite Churches, because of such a concern to uphold a dignified demeanor befitting the glorification of liberated mankind in its worship of God, reflected in the need to avoid servile labor and make time for this higher purpose. In the Latin West, Tertullian’s North African countryman Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) took the Sabbath rest from servile work on Sunday to mean abstention from sin. But more literal approaches were steadily gaining ground. In 300, the Council of Elvira decreed: “If anyone in the city neglects to come to church for three Sundays, let him be excommunicated for a short time so that he may be corrected” (Slater 1999). In 321, the Roman Emperor Constantine issued an edict calling on townspeople and craftsmen to refrain from work, and for magistrates not to sit “on the venerable day of the Sun,” a day sacred to both Mithraism and Christianity, for different reasons. It is not clear which of the two increas-

ingly popular Oriental religions the Roman Emperor was tacitly acknowledging (if not both) by making Sunday into a civic holiday, thus for the first time giving official standing to the seven-day planetary week that had become generally accepted throughout the Greco-Roman world over the previous couple of centuries (Rybczynski 1991, p. 70). If Constantine had still followed Roman tradition by allowing agricultural work on Sunday as on all other feasts (feriae), two centuries later, the Third Council of Orléans (538) deemed it “better to abstain” from it too, “so that people may the more readily come to the churches and have leisure for prayers” (Rybczynski 1991, p. 71). But it also denounced as a Judaizing practice the application to Sunday of Sabbath rules that had gone on being followed on Saturday by the Ethiopian and other Eastern Churches until they were officially forbidden in the twentyninth canon of the Synod of Laodicea (360s). For even in the Roman Church there were still those who claimed, like Saint Cæsarius of Arles (470–543), that the whole glory of the Jewish Sabbath had been transferred onto Sunday, so that Christians had to keep it holy in the same way as the Jews had their own day of rest. Other Church councils and imperial edicts though sought to restrict various activities on this day, especially public amusements in the theater and circus.

Christian Sabbath and Weekly Fair In the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the Roman Church insisted more and more on the obligation of Sunday rest, preceded by Saturday fasting. The latter practice was the earliest bone of contention with Eastern Churches, since they forbade such austerity on a day commemorating both the completion of Creation and Christ’s victorious Harrowing of Hell while he walked among the dead between his Crucifixion and Resurrection. As for the prohibition on work, it was meant to humanize the lot of a new underclass of rural

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serfs and laborers and to give them the opportunity to attend mass and absorb Christian teachings. From the eighth century onward, local councils forbade servile labor, public buying and selling, pleading in law courts, and the public taking of oaths. The breaking of the law of Sunday rest was punished like other crimes and misdemeanors in Saxon England. But it was not until the twelfth century that Sunday came to be referred to and earnestly thought of as the “Christian Sabbath,” with unnecessary work accounted a mortal sin and the clergy relying on civil laws to enforce an increasing number of sabbatarian regulations on Sunday and other holidays. Laypeople had long been taught that they had to hear mass and the preaching of the Word of God on Sundays in their parish church. But by the end of the thirteenth century, certain monastic orders began to teach that they might also do it in their own churches and private chapels, and this controversial new practice was eventually allowed by the papacy. Still, in the Middle Ages, as a regular time for people to meet for worship, Sunday was also the usual market day (the meaning of its Hungarian name vasárnap), taking over this function from the last day of an earlier eight-day Roman week. This was an occasion for both business and entertainment—be it as sports, jousts, plays, pageants, parish ales, or other public amusements. Open-air markets are still held on Sunday in many Catholic countries in Europe and elsewhere.

The Strictures of the Protestant Sabbath Much of the bustling, boisterous spontaneity of medieval Sundays, which the clergy had vainly tried to control, was lost with the advent of the Protestant Reformation. Its denial of sacred time as expressed in a regular cycle of festivals took different forms. For Calvin, no particular day was fitter than others for religious worship, but for practical reasons he maintained the ob-

servance of Sunday, and liked to go bowling after the service. But for Luther (Rybczynski 1991, p. 72), “everything is governed and ordained by the Gospel, baptism, and Sunday prayer”—which now carried the full weight of religious observance with the canceling or downplaying of a multitude of medieval feasts at the Church and parish level. There was now a renewed insistence on doctrine, which would be imparted to Lutheran adults in catechism classes after the Sunday service, as the first model of the Sunday schools later aimed at children in many denominations. On its part, the Catholic Counterreformation stressed attendance at Sunday morning mass, and even at Sunday evening vespers for a while in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Protestant states where the monarch was given tight control over the national Church, such as Sweden and England, had civil laws making attendance at Sunday services compulsory, and absence a punishable offence. In England, the Sunday Observance Act of 1677 was applied to the widest variety of trades and occupations. In 1781, any public entertainment charging an entrance fee was banned by a law that remained in force until the 1930s. It was after the blue paper on which an edict of this kind was issued that same year in New Haven, Connecticut that such “Blue Laws” came to be known in all of Britain’s former American colonies—even as the strict interpretation given to them by their Puritan founders began to lapse with the War of Independence. For Puritans referred to Sunday as “the Sabbath” and meant it to be as strict as the Old Testament suggested. The same Calvinist strain of sabbatarian intransigence also prevailed in Scotland until about fifty years ago, when people still spent their Sunday afternoons doing nothing but making sure nobody else did anything of any kind. But nowhere were the civil laws governing Sunday observance so severe as in Puritan colonies. In Virginia, failure to attend Sunday

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morning services and afternoon catechism was punishable with flogging and even death for repeat offenders. More common were the laws passed to enforce church attendance and prohibit work, travel, sports, and other frivolous pastimes in colonies such as Maryland and Massachusetts, where sabbatarian restrictions on various activities remain strongest, though they are also still found in some form in a majority of American states as well as countless municipalities. They may aim at a disconcerting variety of specific activities, such as bowling and bingo, pool and polo, boxing and wrestling, gambling and hunting, going to the movies or a dance, digging oysters, selling fresh meat, and especially drinking liquor.

The Pressures on the Catholic Sunday By contrast, few Catholic countries have ever instituted Sunday laws. In Spain for instance, it is on Sunday afternoon that bullfights are traditionally held. In Canada, a large Catholic population came under the jurisdiction of British Sunday laws with the conquest of this French colony in 1759. Their application was rather lenient until 1906, when a lobbying campaign by the Protestant Lord’s Day Alliance, aimed against streetcars, rail travel, public spectacles as well as commerce on Sundays, resulted in the full adoption of the proposed Lord’s Day Act. However, an amendment was made that left its enforcement to the discretion of the provinces, so that it remained a dead letter in mostly French Quebec. A Catholic Sunday League was formed in 1923 to combat this laxity and promote sabbatarian restrictions in that province—especially against movie theaters. But it remained the only one in Canada where they remained open on Sundays, as local politicians were well aware that the laity did not share the clergy’s censorious attitude in these matters. The only success of this Ligue du Dimanche was the abrogation of a provision of the law allowing Jews to do business on Sun-

day—since they already kept the original Sabbath as their day of rest. Quite aside from such petty bigotry, a main objective of many Catholic social reformers since the nineteenth century had been the restoration of Sunday rest for industrial workers, because employers paid it little heed and long insisted on making them work practically all week long. However, in the latter half of the twentieth century, the popularization of the weekend away from home and parish, or wholly given over to leisure in an increasingly secular consumer society, would prove even more disruptive of religious Sunday observance. Its collapse was nowhere as dramatic as in Quebec in the 1960s, where it signaled that of the Catholic Church’s long pervasive influence, along with the demise of the Ligue du Dimanche.

The Long Decline of the Lord’s Day From then on, the commercial pressures that have gradually imposed Sunday shopping in most of North America over the second half of the last century could meet with little resistance. In 1950 already, the Lord’s Day Alliance had lost a key plebiscite in Toronto, long the center of Canadian sabbatarianism, as baseball games were allowed on Sunday. In response to the enshrinement in the new Canadian Constitution in 1982 of American principles of separation of Church and State, the organization tried to shed its religious cast and to rely more on labor support in a short-lived new incarnation as “People for Sunday.” Its rearguard actions against Sunday shopping and related causes did not prevent its prompt demise after the Lord’s Day Act was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1985 as an unconstitutional abridgement of religious freedom. Interestingly enough, the last Canadian bastion of the traditional ban on Sunday shopping, reaffirmed by popular demand in a provincewide referendum in October 2004, is Nova Scotia, the Scotland of the New World. Otherwise,

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Canada tends to closely follow American patterns of Sunday behavior, only with a delay of a decade or so. See also Day of Assembly; Easter; Games (Rome); Kunapipi; Lent; Nineteen-Day Feast; Passover; Sabbath; Whitsuntide References Paul Laverdure. Sunday in Canada. The Rise and Fall of the Lord’s Day. Yorkton, Canada: Gravelbooks, 2004. Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds. Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, Vol. II: The Writings of Justin Martyr and Athenagoras. Tr. Rev. Marcus Dods, Rev. George Reith, and Rev. B. P. Pratten. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1867. Witold Rybczynski. Waiting for the Weekend. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991. Thomas Slater. “Sunday,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912 (Online Edition: Kevin Knight, 1999). Winton U. Solberg. Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. Tertullian. Concerning Prayer, with Concerning Baptism. Tr. Alexander Souter. New York: Macmillan, 1919.

◗ SUNDAY OF ORTHODOXY, SUNDAY OF SAINT THOMAS See Easter

◗ SUNDAY OF THE LAST JUDGMENT, SUNDAY OF THE PRODIGAL SON, SUNDAY OF THE PUBLICAN AND THE PHARISEE, SUNDAY OF THE TWO SAINTS THEODORE See Lent

◗ SUN-GAZING DANCE See Sun Dance

◗ SVIATKI See Christmas

◗ SWAN See Divali

◗ SWING (FESTIVAL OF THE), SWING FULL MOON See Holi

◗ SWITCHING DAY See Easter

T ◗ TANABATA NO SEKKU See Sekku

◗ TANGO NO SEKKU See Sekku

◗ TA’SUA See Ashura

◗ TEDUDU See New Yam Festival

◗ TENNÔ FESTIVAL See Gion Festival

◗ TEPEILHUITL See Rain Festivals

◗ TERMINALIA (ROME) On February 23, the festival of Terminalia marked both the temporal delimitation of the Roman religious year—from the early days when it started on March 1—the spatial delimitation of Roman territory politically as well as in terms of property.

Private Property’s Common Deity Upon the close of the Parentalia novena devoted to making peace with dead relatives, Ro-

man families turned to the living at the Caristia festival, putting aside their quarrels amidst good cheer to bring concord to the home. Then, the next morning, to preserve harmony between neighbors, a festival was devoted to Terminus. This minor god of boundaries (termini) personified the divine force they held and which made them sacred—literally intangible, from both sides of the fence. A law ascribed to King Numa Pompilius, who was also believed responsible for making January 1 the beginning of the New Year, declared sacer or cursed by a taboo whomever disturbed a terminus while plowing his fields, along with the oxen in question. The installation of such a marker required a ceremony in which the blood of a sacrifice was spilt in the hole dug out for it, along with other offerings. The collaboration of both owners of the lands it delimited required the ongoing cult of the common divinity dwelling in this stone or stump, in joint recognition of this boundary’s immutable and sacrosanct character. On Terminalia, they would each crown the god with a garland and give him a sacrificial cake. A woman would bring embers from the home fire to a makeshift outdoor altar, while a man would build a pyre. Beside him, a young boy would take some grain from a big basket to throw it into the flames three times, while a lit|

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Terminalia festival, February 23, painting by Vittorio Benisson, early 19th century. Owners of adjacent land gathered at a common boundary stone, and each garlanded his own side of the stone. Offerings were made, and a lamb or pig was sacrificed to the god Terminus. (The Art Archive/Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin, Italy/ Dagli Orti)

tle girl gave him honeycombs, and others brought wine. A sample of each offering was cast into the fire, as the white-clad neighbors looked on in religious silence, so as not to utter inauspicious words that might disturb the supernatural power thus invoked. The immolation of a lamb or a suckling sow would be followed by a sacred meal where the praises of Terminus would be sung; they went like this in Ovid’s rendition: “You confine peoples and cities and great kingdoms;/All land would be disputed without you” (Fasti 2:659–660, p. 47). This very basic civilizing function of Terminus was acknowledged not only in private agrarian rites, but also in public observances

that betrayed the archaic roots of Terminalia, such as a sheep sacrifice on the sixth milestone on the Via Laurentina. It was located about nine kilometers from the central Terminus of Rome (to which all roads led): the god’s ancient shrine on the Capitol. The temple of Jupiter, king of the gods, had to be built around it (with a hole in the ceiling as Terminus demanded open-air sacrifices) by the city’s last king, Tarquinius Superbus, who had closed down other shrines on the site to make room for this prestigious project. But the augurs had read into the flight patterns of birds that the god Terminus refused to be moved, which was taken as a sign of stability for the city (Livy, Ab urbe condita I,

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55). For Ovid (Fasti 2:673–676, p. 47), it was a pledge of the internal boundaries of private property: “Terminus, after this you lost the freedom to move./Remain on guard where you have been posted,/And surrender nothing to a neighbor’s demands/Lest you appear to prefer mankind to Jove” (another name for Jupiter). Was such stability truly compatible with Rome’s imperial destiny, then becoming manifest at the same time as the first Emperor Augustus Caesar (63–14 B.C.E.) combined the cult of his own genius or personal protecting spirit as new founder with that of the lares or ancestral spirits on Caristia, on the eve of Terminalia? Despite the massive expropriations of farmers also occurring in his lifetime, the great poet of the dawning era liked to think so: “For other nations the earth has fixed boundaries; Rome’s city and the world are the same space” (Fasti 2:683–684, p. 47).

A Square City Founded on a Round Pit by a Priest-King The jurist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was fond of relating the words “Rome” and Raum, German for “space,” since he defined political institutions as being meant to take hold of space, to portion it out, and to cultivate it. Schmitt had in mind Roma quadrata, the territory around Palatine Hill delimited by the city walls. According to legend, their outline had been plowed by Romulus after he became king, whereupon he hallowed this furrow with the blood of his twin brother and rival Remus by killing him when he dared to cross it in jest. Under the late Republic, shortly before the Common Era, this event came to be commemorated as the actual foundation or birthday (dies natalis) of Rome on the April 21 festival of Parilia, just when shepherds, facing the horizon before dawn, prayed their patron goddess Pales to be forgiven such transgressions—that is, those of which they or their sheep might be guilty for having trespassed in bushes or in brooks where gods and nymphs were thought

to dwell. On Terminalia itself, in parallel to the rededication of private property markers, a public sacrifice was performed on the sixth milestone of the Via Laurentina to reaffirm the symbolic limit of Rome’s earliest territory, thus securing civic space. A round sacrificial pit was also associated with the city’s foundation, as well as with Terminalia, and was said (according to one tradition) to have been the original location of the altar of the hearth goddess Vesta, later moved to her round temple housing Rome’s palladium or civic totem. Similarly, Vesta’s Greek counterpart Hestia was thought to have had her seat on the omphalos of Delphi—the round navel of the world. Much like the hole for a new country terminus, this civic hole contained samples of all good and licit things, except that it was closed with earth brought by the first settlers of Rome from their respective homelands. It was at this mundus rotundus or “round world” on the Comitium that, down to Imperial times, a sacrifice used to be offered on the public holiday following Terminalia by the King of the Sacred Rites, Rome’s high priest. His job done, this residual Roman king would flee from the Forum; hence the ancient ceremony’s name of regifugium. Sir James George Frazer has conjectured that an actual sacred king may have originally been running for office (and probably for his life) in an annual race where the incumbent was deposed whenever he proved to be past the peak of his vigor by failing to win it. He had to match the growing strength of vegetation in the budding spring as its king for the coming year, or else be done away with as the king of the dying year, just as in the execution of a winter carnival king in a lot of European folklore. Roman space thus appears to have squared with the close of a cycle of Roman time in the round sacrificial pit that the god Terminus filled with his mediating presence at the point when the killing of an ailing king would previously have cleared the air through his purifying absence.

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This would recall, channel, and defuse Rome’s foundational violence—still inscribed in the boundary-markers of private and public land, where it was most prone to erupt again between neighboring citizens, as between the rival kings of archaic folklore. See also Carnival; Days of the Dead (West); Eleusinian Mysteries; Games (Greece); New Year (West); Rogations; Saint George; Vestalia References Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Livy. The Rise of Rome: Books One to Five. Tr. T. J. Luce. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000. Giulia Piccaluga. Terminus: I segni di confine nella religione romana. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1974.

◗ TÊT See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ THAIPUSAM (HINDUISM) Tamils in Malaysia and other countries of South Indian emigration celebrate a festival of the god Murukan, featuring body-piercing vows long outlawed in peninsular India itself.

The Murukan Cult in India and Overseas When the full moon is in conjunction with the star Pusam in the month of Tai that straddles January and February, devotees of Shiva honor their god in the Thaipusam festival. But it has a more specific, even paramount significance when celebrated in temples of Murukan, a fertility god of the Tamils of South India, who have identified him with Shiva’s first-born son Skanda—another cannibalistic warrior-god from North India—and even with the Greek

god Dionysus in ancient times. The constellation segment of Pusam is also known by the name of Dandapani, alluding both to an ascetic’s staff and to a warrior’s army, which is used for Murukan as a subduer of spiritual passions as well as temporal enemies. Murukan is like Skanda in this and also as the lord of time who initiated its measurement, presiding over both the solar year and the lunar cycle, and even the current dark age or Kali Yuga, aside from the yearly coming of the rains and the blossoming of certain trees. Celebrated shortly after the Tamils’ winter solstice and harvest festival of Pongal, Thaipusam is a timely expression of the youthful virility and creativity of Murukan. But if his worship used to include orgiastic dancing in the distant past, it has more recently become notorious for the ecstatic states his devotees get into in order to commune with him as conqueror of base desires and malevolence, allowing them to fulfill a vow to pierce their bodies. In Tamil Nadu on Thaipusam, devotees of Karttikeya (as Skanda is also known) display their faith in his grace by walking unscathed on a path of burning coals instead. Otherwise, since Indian law forbids public self-mutilation, it is only in the Tamil diaspora—from Fiji to the West Indies—that Thaipusam rites may still be observed in their complete form. They are performed on the largest scale at the Sri Suhramaniaswamy temple (dedicated to Subrahmanya, another name for Skanda) outside Kuala Lumpur, capital of Islamic Malaysia, in the Batu Caves (from the word for “rock” in Bahasa Malaysia). Each year, a million pilgrims and tourists gather to witness the penitents’ spectacular austerities.

Ascetic Preparations and Worldly Distractions These slowly begin three weeks in advance as the penitents pray for spiritual progress and worldly help while they observe sexual abstinence and a fast that allows them only one meal a day, cooked to strict specifications. Their diet

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Malaysian Hindu devotees with pierced bodies walk to the Batu Caves Temple during the Thaipusam festival in Kuala Lumpur on February 5, 2004. Thousands of Hindus participate in the annual Hindu festival and subject themselves to painful rituals in a demonstration of faith and penance. (Zainal Abd Halim/Reuters/Corbis)

includes milk as the purifying substance also used to wash idols. It actually takes a month in time and (average) wages to build a kavadi, the 30-kilo portable shrine the penitent will carry at the festival. He is not to wear it until then, so a friend has to model it for him while it is being built. With the endless variations of their rich symbolism, no two kavadis are alike, aside from the picture of the god mounted on top. Meanwhile, during the three days prior to Thaipusam, the sleepy suburban road leading to the Batu Caves is transformed into a fairground, with all the loud, garish, at times unedifying at-

tractions this entails, for the benefit of the many visitors. The pilgrims among them have come assuming that what they ask of God will be granted, even if their offerings are not on the scale of the penitents’ vow to be pierced by representations and equivalents of vel—the spear that is Murukan’s most powerful weapon, which he uses to drive evil out of the world. By four in the morning of the first day, the faithful gather to wait for the god’s statue and escort its silver chariot more than eight kilometers to the incense-shrouded Batu Caves, which they will reach by midmorning. This human

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stream will go on for twenty-four hours, including both the fit and infirm from every walk of life and at all levels of seriousness, be it the curious bystander, the pious bearing small pots of milk as symbols of purity, or the devout—who may already be seen doing stunts like pushing ahead while weighted hooks pull them back. This is but a foretaste of the second day.

Divine Bliss through Bodily Ordeals Before dawn, devotees purify themselves by bathing in a sacred river. Though they often need little coaxing by now, this is when those who have made vows—wearing red bandanas—are placed in a trance-state by their respective gurus, who will only join them in it and skewer themselves after they have done this for all of their disciples. When the sun is up, frantic drumbeats accompany the screams of the possessed who dance wildly. Their weeks of concentration and purification have brought them to a point where they can utterly forget themselves and have no idea of what they are doing once they have let the spirit take over. God then helps the body become more ready, for if the dung ash that is regularly dusted on the skin helps stem the flow of blood, pain is only overcome by devotion, and any serious bleeding is seen as a result of faulty spiritual preparation. Conversely, the level of union with Murukan is felt to be proportionate to the extremity of the mutilations endured. Penitents often start by inserting a miniature vel through their tongue vertically and another one through their cheeks horizontally (thereby puffing up the latter in a way that makes them look like the monkey-god Hanuman who possesses some of them). Mutilations escalate as the day progresses, and the temperature sometimes rises to 40° C. The music pulsates hypnotically and votaries reel rapturously as more and more hooks are skewered into their bodies. Each hook may be weighted with a food offer-

ing, such as apples and oranges by the dozens. Some tow heavy chariots with chains tethered to the skin of their back. The standard practice is to have a kavadi, adorned with peacock feathers, fastened to one’s shoulders and back to walk the last couple of kilometers to the Batu Caves, with a relative such as a child carrying the symbolic milk pot. Supporters shout “Vel! Vel!” as the votaries ascend the 272 steps to the cave’s entrance, making their way in bliss rather than pain into the divine embrace of Murukan. The god receives them in the 122-meter high natural cathedral of limestone standing for the place where he first received the vel himself. It can hold crowds of up to a thousand, who come in wave after wave. Having reached the goal of their mystical journey, those who have vowed to come there as penitents are each relieved of their kavadi, given water, and gently slapped out of their trance. What remains is indescribable happiness, with no memory of pain. On the contrary: participants look forward to going through it all again every year as long as they still can, gaining more intimate union with God each time. See also Ashura; Dionysia; Matzu’s Birthday References P. V. Jagadisa Ayyar. South Indian Festivities. Madras, India: Higginbothams Ltd., 1921. Fred W. Clothey. “Chronometry, Cosmology, and the Festival Calendar in the Murukan Cult,” in Guy R. Welbon and Glenn E. Yocum. Religious Festivals in South India and Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Manohar, 1982, pp. 157–188. Bruce David Klein and Anja Baron (producers). Rituals of the World. (Television documentary for The Learning Channel.) Atlas Media Corporation in association with All American Fremantle, 1997.

◗ THANKSGIVING See Christmas, Martinmas, Mid-Autumn, New Year (China, Korea)

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◗ THARGELIA (GREECE) Peculiar to Ionia, a major festival of the Greek god Apollo was held on the sixth and seventh days of the month of Thargelion named after it in the calendar of Athens. This city was the home of the best-known version of Thargelia (aside from those of some Ionian cities and their colonies). Much older than the cult of the sun god, it is at base a vegetation ritual unto which has been grafted a ceremony of collective purification through the scapegoating of a couple of unpopular individuals.

First-Fruits In Athens, the entire month of Thargelion, devoted to purification, was sacred to Apollo because the seventh was his birthday, around the twenty-second of May. Its name comes from the word thargelos, which may refer to the fair season’s first-fruits. These would have been the boiled vegetables- and fresh bread from the new wheat, or the grain porridge or cake, that were offered in thanksgiving for the new harvest on that day. That same word may also have referred to the vessel in which these first-fruits were taken in a procession in honor of Helios and the Horai—the Sun and the Hours (or Seasons). This procession seems to have included eiresionai, which are known from the songs accompanying it to be olive or laurel branches bound with wool on which were suspended fruits of the season (including wine and oil flasks) and pastries, as on other festivals like the Panathenaea or especially the Ionian Pyanopsia on the seventh of Pyanopsion—the parallel October festival of Apollo that closed the season. But it is on Thargelia that some of these cakes are known to have been lyre-shaped—in honor of this god as patron of the arts and on account of the musical competitions at which the tripods given as prizes were first dedicated in one of his temples. The magical boughs themselves were hung over the door of every citizen’s house as boys sang a spell over it so as

to turn away famine; they were left there until they were replaced by new ones at the next year’s Thargelia. The official registration of adopted persons would follow this private agrarian rite going back to prehistory, long before the worship of the sun god Apollo. There were also offerings in honor of Demeter Chloe (“Greening Demeter”) that day.

Human Scapegoats In spite of the historic origin alleged by the third-century writer Helladios (Farnell 1907, pp. 270–271), the same may be said of the previous day’s “custom at Athens of leading two pharmakoi, one for the men and one for the women, to be a purification for the city. The one intended for the men had black figs hung around his neck, the other had white: and they were called Sivakkhoi. This purification was to avoid the troubles of plague, and arose from Androgeos the Cretan, for in consequence of his lawless death the Athenians were smitten with the plague, and so the custom prevailed always to purify the city with pharmakoi” on the eve of the ceremonies of the early harvest—also in order to remove any hindrance to it. A ram was sacrificed to the goddess Demeter on the sixth of Thargelion for similar purposes. The term pharmakos refers to one or two men (or a man and a woman), chosen among the ugliest. They were first led through the city and hit with squill stems and fig branches along the way to transfer unto them the miasma of defilements as well as to egg them on. They were thus finally driven out as scapegoats for the community’s guilt, thus diverting divine retribution for all its sins and impurities toward expendable, removable substitutes in which evil was first concentrated. This is a classic instance of the ritual transference of everything undesirable in a society on designated public enemies, as represented in many festivals of other cultures, from the ancient Hebrews’ Yom Kippur to the Naked Festi-

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val of Inazawa in Japan. No less typical is the ambiguity of this role as scapegoat, for the one who takes out evil also brings in the good and can thus also represent the deity. In this case, this would be the god of vegetation, as suggested by the figs. Occasionally, the pharmakoi were nonetheless even sacrificed on pyres of wild fruit trees or thrown into the sea in times of peril or calamity, but this is unlikely to have occurred on a regular basis on Thargelia in historical times. For one thing, we know that the execution of Socrates was postponed for several weeks after sentencing, because the sacred ship taking the theoria or delegation of Athens’ pilgrims who brought the first-fruits of the year’s new wheat to the pan-Hellenic shrine of Apollo at Delos had just set sail for the great festival of the god. (The Delia likely started on his birthday on the seventh of Thargelion, which was the second day of Thargelia, when, aside from being a condition set by Apollo to appease his wrath so he would relieve a famine plaguing the city, the eiresionai custom was related to the hero Theseus’ stop at Delos on his way back from killing the Minotaur in Crete.) As Lewis Richard Farnell (1907, pp. 278–279) has argued: This respite was given, not for the sake of mercy, but in order that the city might contract no stain, since as long as the ship was absent in the service of the ‘pure’ god, to whom contact with death was unclean, the city must remain ‘pure’ and no one could be put to death. Now it is difficult to dissociate this period of purity from that which was consummated by the pharmakoi on the sixth of Thargelion . . . Therefore those victims—in the time of Socrates at least—by public ordinance could not be slain. See also Anna Perenna; Busk; Dionysia; Naked Festivals; Panathenaea; Presentation of the Virgin Mary; Yom Kippur References Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith. The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources

and Controversies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Lewis Richard Farnell. The Cults of the Greek States. Vol. IV. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907. Robert Parker. Miasma. Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

◗ THEOINIA See Dionysia

◗ THEOPHANY See Epiphany

◗ THESMOPHORIA (GREECE) In ancient Greece, the agrarian festival of Thesmophoria was noted for its archaic rites, making it a pure example of the type (unlike the Eleusinian Mysteries of related origin): a fertility cult reserved to women because of their magical kinship with that side of life which is manifested in nature by the yearly cycle of death and renewal in vegetation. Its twin goddesses, Demeter Thesmophoros (an epithet possibly meaning “bringer of wealth”) and her daughter Persephone or Korê, were honored on this occasion by free married women of good repute in Athens and many other Greek cities, such as Thebes in southeast Boeotia or Syracuse near Argos in Laconia (there were also temples of Demeter Thesmophoros in Megara, Egina and Paros), though the Dorians of the Peloponnese did not have Thesmophoria, according to the ancient historian Herodotus (2:171). The festival originally lasted from the twelfth to the fifteenth days of the month of Pyanopsion (in late October), but in Attica it was eventually extended to five days, from the ninth to the thirteenth. In spite of its importance, these were still officially business days, as only women were directly involved in the celebration. Men

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could therefore still hold their political assemblies, though not necessarily in their usual venue, sometimes left to women for their exclusive ceremonies that day.

Preparations: Abstinence and Obscenity In preparation for the Thesmophoria, Athenian women observed some rules of ritual purity such as abstinence from sexual intercourse for three days beforehand, and would not eat the seeds of pomegranates during it. For these fruits, associated with the promise of sex, were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Dionysus, another underworld divinity honored at the Thesmophoria, with characteristic revelry (including the foul language and obscenities common in fertility rituals as a way to purify oneself and ward off evils). They were indulged in with special glee if a man fell into the hands of Athens’ women as they went after dark in small groups to Cape Kolias in the Halimos deme or country borough for the first nocturnal mysteries, playfully demanding identification from each other as they met on the way. For men were only allowed to sponsor their wives’ participation in the festival as a public service known as a liturgy, while women chose two officials called archousai among themselves to run it, in the seclusion of a tent city they erected on the Pnyx sacred grounds for the duration, and called the Thesmophorion, where they slept on beds made of withy. This is a kind of willow that was said to dispel sexual impulses. The closed women’s assemblies, unique in the context of the exclusively male public life of Athens, provided Aristophanes with the topic of his seasonal comedy Thesmophoriazusae of 411 B.C.E., in which a spy in drag, sent by the tragic playwright Euripides (the object of the satire), is exposed as an old man, and nearly comes to grief for violating the secrecy of the women’s mysteries, including bloody sacrifices of which we know next to nothing. This was one of many

activities and attitudes normally forbidden to them that they could temporarily assume as part of this role reversal, as a rare reversion to a fantasized “prehistoric” wild stage prior to the establishment of patriarchal Greek civilization, which put the Thesmophoria in the same class of festivals of social inversion as the Chronia and their Roman counterpart the Saturnalia.

First Day: The Snake-Pit of Rotten Pigs The following day at the beach in Halimos was spent in purifying baths, with plenty of fun and games until another day came, and the laws of Demeter, the Thesmoi, were carried to Athens on the heads of sacred women. The festival was probably named on account of these “carriers of the things laid down,” and was held at the city’s Thesmophorion and another temple of the same name at its port, the Piraeus. This first day was known both as Kathodos (“going down”) and Anodos (“rising up” or “road up”), in reference to the sacred task of going down into the snake-infested caves of Demeter and Persephone to recover and bring up to the meeting grounds the decayed remains of the sacrificed pigs that had been thrown there either the previous year or possibly at another, early summer secretive women’s festival sometimes attributed to Demeter, called the Skirophoria. The “drawers” or “bailers” (antletriai) designated to fetch the pigs from the underworld (along with the dough figures of snakes, pigs, and human beings, and the pinecones also thrown in as fertility agents) clapped as they went down, to scare away the sacred snakes. This descent was their way of reenacting Demeter’s rescue of the spring goddess Persephone from the cold realm of Hades to which she had been carried off through this suddenly gaping chasm, along with the pigs of the swineherd Ebuleus, who happened to be there at the time. He was thus able to reveal Persephone’s fate to a grateful Demeter, from whom he would receive (along with his brother

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the wheat god Triptolemus) the gift of growing corn. This story may have been a rationalization of the central place of pigs at this corn festival, witness to an earlier stage of ritual and myth where the pig itself was the corn-spirit; was not its flesh partaken of at the Thesmophoria as if to commune with a divinity? It also happens that the pig is often likened to female genitals in classical Greco-Roman culture, as an ambivalent being that has power for both harm and good, and can stand for the lack of patriarchal control it most feared, yet allowed within the strictly delimited boundaries of festivals of social inversion like this one.

Second Day: Mourning for Persephone Whatever was left of the pigs from the cave (megaron) was mixed with seed, ceremoniously placed on an altar and kept there for the next day, when council meetings and law courts were suspended and prisoners were freed from their chains. On this twelfth day of the month (in the five-day version of the festival), devoted to fasting—Nesteia, the women took the part of Demeter in sitting on the ground to bewail the loss of Persephone to Hades. The Greek historian Plutarch (who lived from about 46 until some time after 119) already saw such mournful rites as a common heritage of the ancient Mediterranean world: The Greeks also enact, round about the same time, many ceremonies that are similar to those performed by the Egyptians in their sacred rites [of Osiris during Khoiak]. For the women at Athens fast in the Thesmophoria, sitting on the ground, and the Boeotians move the halls of Achaea, calling that festival one of grief because Demeter bewails the descent of Korê to the underworld. This month is indeed, at the time of the (setting of the) Pleiades, the season for sowing; the Egyptians call it Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, and the Boeotians Damatrius [named after Demeter] . . .

. . . At this time men saw the fruits entirely disappearing from the trees and failing, while others they planted themselves, though scantily and unskillfully, scraping the earth away with their hands and throwing it on again. They put the seed away with no certainty that it would be brought to fruition and reach full growth, and thus they did much that resembled burial and mourning ceremonies. (Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, pp. 227–229: 378D9-E16, 379A1–5 in par. 69–70)

Third Day: The Rebirth of Nature But then came the third day of Thesmophoria, that of “beautiful offspring” (Kalligeneia), whose name signals women’s hope of bringing into the world new generations of Athenian citizens and their mates. It was a day of joy at the resurrection of nature from winter—at the rescue of sweet Persephone from cold Hades by bountiful Demeter—pledged on the remains of her sacred pigs and cakes as they were taken from the altar to be scattered in the fields with the seed corn, in order to secure a good crop with the return of fair weather. A banquet was then offered, with light entertainment such as games and lascivious dances. No doubt women’s fecundity was also thought to be favored by the oblations and merriment evoked by the leader of the circle dance of the chorus in Aristophanes’ play (Aristophanes 2001, v. 947– 948, p. 109) Thesmophoriazusae: Come now, let us disport ourselves as is the custom for women in this place, when we faithfully celebrate the holy secret rites of the Two Goddesses at the sacred seasons

Parallels in European Folklore Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941) saw many analogies with classical Greece’s great autumn festival in the folk customs of preindustrial Western and Central Europe, from France to Hungary through Germany, wherever the corn-

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spirit was killed in animal form, to be partly consumed as a sacrament by the community and partly kept until the next harvest or sowing time as a token of renewal of the vegetative energies it stood for: So in the neighbourhood of Grenoble the goat killed on the harvest-field is partly eaten at the harvest-supper, partly pickled and kept till the next harvest; so at Pouilly the ox killed on the harvest-field is partly eaten by the harvesters, partly pickled and kept till the first day of sowing in spring, probably to be then mixed with the seed, or eaten by the ploughmen, or both; so at Udvarhely the feathers of the cock which is killed in the last sheaf at harvest are kept till spring, and then sown with the seed on the field; so in Hesse and Meiningen the flesh of pigs is eaten on Ash Wednesday or Candlemas, and the bones are kept till sowingtime, when they are put into the field sown or mixed with the seed in the bag; so, lastly, the corn from the last sheaf is kept till Christmas, made into the Yule Boar, and afterwards broken and mixed with the seed-corn at sowing in spring. (1985, p. 545) See also Candlemas; Carnival; Christmas; Dionysia; Eleusinian Mysteries; Khoiak and Heb-Sed; Lent; Saturnalia References Aristophanes. The Comedies of Aristophanes, Vol. 8: Thesmophoriazusae. Tr. and ed. Alan H. Sommerstein. Warminster, Wiltshire, UK: Aris and Phillips, 2001. Hugo Blümner. The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks. Tr. Alice Zimmern. London: Cassell, 1893; reprint New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966. A. M. Bowie. Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. One-Volume Abridged Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1985.

Plutarch. Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. Tr. J. Gwyn Griffiths. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970. Sarah B. Pomeroy. Goddesses, Wives, Whores, and Slaves. Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken Books, 1975. H. S. Versnel. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion. Vol. 2: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual. Leiden, Holland: E. J. Brill, 1993.

◗ THINGYAN See Water-Splashing-Festival

◗ THIRSTING DANCE See Sun Dance

◗ THREE FOR THE DEAD See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ THREE FOR THE LIVING See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan), Dragon Boat Festival

◗ THREE MIRACLES (FESTIVAL OF THE) See Epiphany

◗ THREE WEEKS See Tisha be-Av

◗ THREE YUAN See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ THYIA See Dionysia

◗ TIHAR See Divali

◗ TIJ See Ganesha Chaturthi

◗ TIKA PUJA See Navaratra and Dusshera

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◗ TIMQAT See Epiphany

◗ TISHA BE-AV (JUDAISM) The ninth day of the fifth month of Av (which can fall any time between June and August), known in Hebrew as Tisha be-Av, is classified as a minor festival. Though Jewish tradition holds that it will be the greatest festival of the time to come, in the meantime, it is actually a mourning fast. For it is supposed to be on a Ninth of Av that both the First and the Second Temples of Jerusalem were destroyed, and that several other historical disasters struck the Jewish people.

Three Weeks Between Two Ordeals Three weeks earlier, the fast of the seventeenth of Tammuz commemorates the day in 586 B.C.E. when the troops of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar made a breach in the walls of Jerusalem and took the city. The intervening period of mourning between this fast and Tisha be-Av as the commemoration of the subsequent destruction of the Temple is therefore called yeme ben hametzarim, which is Hebrew for “between two ordeals.” No weddings are to be performed while it lasts, and the New Moon blessing is omitted. In some communities, the devout will not shave or wear new clothes, nor eat meat or drink wine except on the Sabbath, when prophecies of doom from Isaiah and Jeremiah are read in the synagogue. The first nine days of Av are observed most strictly.

Mourning the Lost Temple and Recurrent Exile At the culmination of these Three Weeks on the Ninth of Av, it has become customary to sit on the ground in the synagogue and not to put on prayer shawls and phylacteries for the morning service as would be done any other day (though they are exceptionally worn at the

afternoon service). These are signs of mourning for the loss of the religious and national center of the Jews, the “eternal house” that used to be their one fixed place of worship. The sacrifices that could only be performed in the Temple have thus been replaced in Judaism by liturgical prayer and the study of the law. This profound transformation first began during the Babylonian exile of the Jews after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. The event is recalled in the scroll of Jeremiah’s Book of Lamentations which is read at the synagogue on this day at candlelight, along with elegies (qinot) about the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70, that allowed this process to be completed in the Diaspora of the Jews. For they were sent away from the Holy Land and had to resettle in distant places after the fall of Bethar and the collapse of the second Jewish revolt against Rome in 135. The next year, a pagan temple was established in Jerusalem, and Jews were banned from their own city. Both events are said in the Talmud to have taken place on a Ninth of Av, as is God’s decree centuries earlier that the Jews would wander forty years in the wilderness after Moses led them out of Egypt. There is also a tradition that the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 took place on that date as well. All these historical calamities are therefore jointly commemorated on the Ninth of Av. It is not surprising then that on this day, the thoughts of many Jews turn to their dead, and they go visit them in cemeteries. As a day of mourning, Tisha be-Av is second only to Yom Kippur, coming two months earlier with a fast that is just as rigorous (except for Reform Jews): it lasts from one sunset to the next, beginning on the eve of the ninth—unless it falls on a Saturday. In this case, the fast is postponed until the end of a Black Sabbath of mostly nominal mourning. Ever since the surviving portion of the Temple’s ruins, the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Arab quarter has been captured by the Israeli

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A Jewish man, lying on a mattress, reads from a prayer book late August 9, 2000, on the plaza before the Western Wall, Judiasm’s holiest site, as he and thousands of Jews mark the solemn fasting day of Tisha be-Av. (Reuters/Corbis)

army during the Six-Day War of June 1967, thousands of Jews every year have made a point of going on its esplanade to recite elegies on Tisha be-Av—each community according to its own rite, the way so many generations had done for centuries prior to Jordan’s conquest of the Old City in 1948. For the Wailing Wall has kept on functioning as a holy place of Judaism; according to a midrash or Bible commentary, through all the vicissitudes of Jewish history, “the divine presence has never left it” (Malka 1989, p. 97).

A False Messiah’s Birthday As for Tisha be-Av, it used to be a very festive occasion rather than one of mourning for the Dönmeh—a crypto-Jewish sect of staunchly loyal followers of the false messiah Shabbetai Tsevi, who was born on this day in 1626. Seven

years after his death in 1676, 300 Sephardic families of Salonica in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Thessaloníki in Greece), led by his successor Jacob Querido, converted to Islam in imitation of his shocking gesture of 1666, which had thrown into sudden disarray his numerous followers in the Jewish world, the Sabbatians. Like him, having seemingly renounced their ancestral faith, they became known as “apostates,” or dönme in Turkish, outwardly leading impeccable Muslim lives while remaining clandestinely faithful to their Jewish heritage, assumptions, and practices. Among their descendants, many played an important part in the emergence of the Turkish nationalist movement that would lead to the establishment of a secular republic after the fall of the sultanate in the aftermath of the First World War. They assimilated so well into the new Turkey that, a

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century later, Dönmeh customs and identity have all but disappeared. See also Rosh Hodesh, Sabbath, Yom Kippur References Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Gates of Prayer. New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1975. Victor and Salomon Malka. La Petit Retz du judaïsme. Paris-Retz, 1989. Bezalel Naor. Post-Sabbatian Sabbatianism: Study of an Underground Messianic Movement. Spring Valley, NY: Orot, 1999. Prayers for the Festivals. New York: Union of Sephardic Congregations, 1963.

◗ TITITL See Rain Festivals

◗ TOURNAMENT OF ROSES See Carnival

◗ TOXIUHMOLPILIA See New Fire Ceremony

◗ TOZOZTONTLI See Rain Festivals

◗ TRANSFIGURATION (CHRISTIANITY) The August 6 feast of the Transfiguration celebrates the luminous manifestation of Christ to three apostles on Mount Tabor as a foretaste of his eternal glory as God, which his Passion and Resurrection were meant to allow human beings to share with him fully upon his Second Coming. One of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Eastern Church, it was belatedly adopted in the West, but as a minor feast.

History The feast of the Transfiguration seems to have developed in the Eastern Churches by the seventh century, soon settling on an August 6 date. The Transfiguration of Christ was held

to have taken place forty days prior to his Rising from the dead at Easter, and its feast was appropriately set forty days before the Raising or Elevation of the Cross on September 14. The emphasis in the latter was on the Cross as a symbol of Christ’s triumph within history through the conversion of human society, just as the Transfiguration stands for the visible manifestation within earthly life of Christ’s invisible glory. Since this divine light is none other than the risen life of his Resurrection at Easter, which is followed by his Ascension to heaven in glory after forty days, the Transfiguration is likewise followed after the same interval by the Elevation of the Cross—yet another crowning vertical translation to a victorious position. However, the Transfiguration was also commemorated on the second Sunday of Lent early on in the West. Like Syrian Christians, Armenians, who may have invented this feast and observe it most solemnly over three days, still keep it as a movable feast on the seventh Sunday after Pentecost. The feast was already well established throughout the Eastern Roman Empire by the middle of the ninth century, when it appeared in Spain on August 6. Yet in spite of the efforts of the great French Benedictine abbey of Cluny to propagate it in the twelfth century, this feast long remained almost unknown in the Western Church at large. Then a Spanish Pope, Calixtus III, in thanksgiving for a victory over the invading Ottoman Turks before Belgrade on that date in 1456 (a high point of his otherwise unsuccessful campaign to retake Constantinople after the Eastern imperial capital fell to them in 1453), gave it official recognition in 1457, and in 1458 he even died on the very day of the new feast he had just instituted. Still, in the Roman Catholic Church, it is just a double of the second class, without an octave of special prayers for the following week. There were neither prayers nor readings for the Transfiguration in the Anglican communion for several centuries, until well into the last one. Some Lutheran

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bodies mark the Transfiguration on a Sunday after Epiphany.

Mystical Theology By contrast, the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor provides the key to the mystical theology of the Orthodox Church, being the feast of divine glory as such. This uncreated light without beginning nor end, beyond time, space, and the natural senses, shone through Christ’s humble human form to show his closest disciples Peter, James, and John that in him, in spite of appearances, it was God Himself who would voluntarily suffer death on the Cross. If, prior to the Resurrection, this light could only be seen by a chosen few of Christ’s apostles, through a miraculous transmutation of their physical senses, as an outer brilliance shining through his body, the sacrament of the Eucharist instituted by Christ at the Last Supper allows the faithful to be part of his risen body and discover (in whatever degree) the same light within themselves, in their heart. The goal of Orthodox contemplative life is to be able to actually see this inner, uncreated light, called precisely the Taboric light by those (chiefly monks and nuns) who strive for the grace to see it and be in turn “transfigured” by it through the ascetic discipline of the prayer of the heart. Monastics are therefore seen as the prophets of the New Covenant established by Christ, since they may already experience in their own beings the exchange mortal humans will make with God’s immortal glory at Christ’s Second Coming, first shown when he was transfigured on Mount Tabor, according to the Orthodox matins of the feast.

A Summer Epiphany The apostle Peter already seemed to suggest that the Transfiguration of his master on the Tabor was a glimpse of the Kingdom of God, recalling in his Second Letter (1:17) that “we had seen his majesty by ourselves. He was honored and glorified by God the Father, when the Sublime Glory

Transfiguration by Fra Angelico, 1438–1445. (Arte and Immagini srl/Corbis)

itself spoke to him and said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favor.’ We heard this ourselves, spoken from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain” (Jerusalem Bible 1968). This witness of the Father on behalf of the Son has a precedent in Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, when the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the shape of a dove as the same words were heard coming from heaven. Orthodoxy celebrates this event on the January 6 feast of Epiphany, calling it instead the Theophany, as a feast of the Trinity, since it marks the first time God became manifest as the unity of Three Persons. The August 6 feast of the Transfiguration echoes it in this respect, provided that the light shining out of the Son’s body and the bright cloud from which the voice of the Father came are both taken to be the Holy Spirit itself as God’s “Sublime Glory.” In this sense, the Transfiguration is a lot like Epiphany: a feast of Light as revealed in the Holy Trinity, for according to its exapostilarion in the Greek rite, in the manifestation of the Light of the Son as divine

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Word on Mount Tabor, the Father and the Spirit were also seen as Light, guiding as such all of Creation.

Greek Folklore Though the custom is also part of Christmas and Ascension folklore, it is appropriate then that many Greeks sit up all night on the eve of the feast of the Transfiguration in hopes of catching a glimpse of the divine light of the heavens as they burst open. They think any wish they make at this very moment is sure to be granted. Most of them take August 6 to be the date that puts an end to the dhrimes, which are a sequence of inauspicious days when evil spirits of the same name are active at the beginning of that month (as of that of March), so that certain activities are taboo. People prefer to refrain from cutting wood, washing their hair, bathing in the sea, and so on, and they make sure their children are not outdoors at noon, just to be on the safe side. Fishermen are the only people allowed to work on this day, because it is at sea that they will find omens about their success over the rest of the year. Cod or some other fish is the centerpiece of the day’s special meal, as a small festive departure from the two-week vegetarian fast that precedes the August 15 feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. The first baskets of grapes are also brought to church to be blessed after the service, and are then shared out among the congregation. Other fruits may be included in this thanksgiving ritual (probably taken over from an unknown pagan harvest festival) that is observed not just in Greece, but in Orthodox Christian communities throughout the world. See also Ascension; Assumption; Easter; Elevation of the Cross; Epiphany; Holy Week; Lent; Whitsuntide References Jerusalem Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1968. John Anthony McGuckin. The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986.

A. D. A. Moses. Matthew’s Transfiguration Story and Jewish-Christian Controversy. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Michael Ramsey. Archbishop of Canterbury, The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967.

◗ TRIETERIDES See Dionysia

◗ FEAST OF THE TRINITY, TRINITY SUNDAY See Whitsuntide

◗ TRO-BREIZ See Pardon

◗ TRUT See Water-Splashing Festival

◗ TSUKIMI See Mid-Autumn

◗ TU BI-SHEVAT (JUDAISM) The fifteenth of the month of Shevat, or Tu biShevat in Hebrew, is a minor Jewish festival that falls in January or early February. It is based on the fiscal year deadline for tithes (sacrifices of a tenth) on fruits that went to the priesthood or to the poor, depending on the year. According to the Talmud, this is the time when winter rains come to an end in Israel. The ancient Hebrews would take this opportunity to plant trees, and this tradition has been kept up in the Diaspora.

New Year for Trees Tu bi-Shevat is considered to be New Year for Trees. There also used to be a New Year for Animals on the day they were likewise tithed on the first day of the month of Ellul. On the pattern of an analogy between man and a tree that is found in the Torah, the fate of trees depends on an auspicious beginning on this Day of

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A young boy pats down the soil around a sapling he has just planted for the Tu bi-Shevat holiday in Herzlia, Israel. (Hanan Isachar/Corbis)

Judgment comparable to Rosh Hashanah— the New Year for Years from which they are counted in the system of four functional New Year’s days laid down by early rabbis in the Mishnah by the second century. By then, however, the New Year for Kings had lost its relevance as a way to date legal documents from their official accession on the first day of Nisan, since the Romans had already abolished the Jewish monarchy. But as for Tu bi-Shevat, coming at a point of the year when there is no water left in the ground and trees only live on their own sap, this New Year for Trees might still decide the amount they could expect to receive from the sky as rainfall, just as any New Year observance is seen to reflect upon the entire coming year in practically all of world folklore. It would therefore be inappropriate to fast on this day. Instead, the New Year wish for fruitfulness has been expressed since medieval times in

the Ashkenazi custom of partaking of fifteen varieties of the first fruits of the season on the fifteenth of Shevat. This was the date arrived at by Hillel the Elder at the turn of the Common Era, and handed down in the canonical law code, the Mishnah, for this critical point in the life of trees in the interior of Israel, where this doctor of the law was living. While this celebration has little impact on the synagogue’s liturgy (only the omission of some penitential prayers), the influence of the Kabbalistic school of Isaac Luria (1534–1572) has encouraged more elaborate home observances among Sephardi Jews than among Ashkenazis. They center on a special meal on the pattern of the Passover seder, where they ponder the inner meaning of the different fruits of the land and sing seasonal hymns called complas in the Ladino language of Spanish Jewry—scattered since the fifteenth century.

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Reclaiming the Promised Land Tu bi-Shevat acquired a new layer of meaning with the spread of Zionist agricultural colonies in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century. In this context, planting trees became a symbol of national rebirth and continuity, since they could stand for the Jewish people laying new roots in the land of Israel, to reclaim from the desert its promise of plenty. This frontier spirit has spread to the Diaspora; on this Jewish Arbor Day, families will make financial contributions to reforestation projects in Israel, while there, schoolchildren go out in groups to plant trees and sing songs. This festival of earth and nature was thus bound to become a day of environmental awareness for Jews by the late twentieth century. See also New Year (China, Korea); New Year (Japan); New Year (West); Passover; Rosh Hashanah

References Ari Elon, Naomi Mara Hyman and Arthur Waskow, eds. Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu b’Shvat Anthology. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1999. Lillian Ross, ed. The Judaic Roots of Ecology. Miami, FL: Central Agency for Jewish Education, 1983. Hayyim Schauss. Jewish Festivals. A Guide to their History and Observance. Tr. Samuel Jaffe. New York: Schocken Books, 1996.

◗ TWELFTH DAY, TWELFTH NIGHT See Epiphany

◗ TWELVE DAYS See Christmas, Epiphany

◗ TWELVE FEASTS See Easter

U ◗ UMKHOSI WOMHLANGA, UMHLANGA

◗ UPRIGHT SUN See Dragon Boat Festival

See Reed Dance

◗ URABON ◗ UNIVERSAL EXALTATION OF THE VENERABLE AND LIFE-GIVING CROSS See Elevation of the Cross

◗ UNLEAVENED BREAD (FESTIVAL OF)

See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ URIM See Hanukkah

◗ URNAP See Corpus Christi

See Passover

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V ◗ VAISHAKHA AND VAISAKHI (HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, SIKHISM) In much of the Indian subcontinent, the solar year begins in mid-April with the month known as Vaishakha in Sanskrit. But the latter has acquired a universal significance for two world religions having their roots there. The first day of this month in Punjab and North India, called Vaisakhi, marks the anniversary of the institution of the Khalsa as the community of Sikhs. The full moon of the lunar month of Vaishakha is regarded as the traditional date not only for the birth of the Buddha in the south of Nepal, where it is celebrated soon after the New Year, but for his enlightenment and death as well. All three events tend to be observed on an equivalent date by the followers of different Buddhist traditions, and since half a century as an ecumenical Buddha Day on the original date to manifest the universality of their founder’s teachings, called the Dharma, and their worldwide unity as a community, called the sangha. The custom of illuminating temples as centers of religious community is found in the Sikhs’ Vaisakhi as in the Buddhists’ Vesakha.

A Hindu New Year (Among Many) In April, the first day of the month of Vaishakha ushers in the solar New Year for a sizable pro-

portion of Hindus, though it is observed under a variety of names as the time when the spring harvest is ready to be either stored or sold. Vaisakhi is celebrated not only with partying and worshipping, but also with holy bathing. This is when the goddess Ganga is thought to have descended to earth in the mythical past, and many Hindus gather in her honor for ritual baths in the sacred river Ganges in North India, in the Tawi River at Jammu or in the Jhelum River at Srinagar (the winter and summer capitals of Jammu and Kashmir State in the country’s northwest frontier) or anywhere in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where great processions featuring caparisoned elephants are organized. In the southwest of the subcontinent, the festival is called Vishu in Kerala, and includes fireworks (like a Western New Year’s Eve), alms-giving and cash gifts from elders to dependents and younger relatives (also a custom of the Parsis’ Naw Ruz and the Chinese New Year), shopping for new clothes at the New Year fair or Vishuwela, as well as Vishukkani— Malayalam for the “lucky sight” of arrangements of auspicious items like flowers, grains, fruits, cloth, gold, and money that are ceremoniously placed before a lamp and should be viewed early in the morning to ensure prosperity over the coming year (rather like the Sofrah |

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Navrozi table of Parsis on their own March 21 New Year, or Naw Ruz). In the northeast, Poila Baishakh is observed with rites and customs for invoking wealth, as an official New Year holiday in both West Bengal and Bangladesh. In the east, in Assam, the festival is called Bohag Bihu or Rangoli Bihu and features massive feasts, music, and dancing, in addition to the associated Goru Bihu cattle festival, in which the beasts are bathed, decorated, and fed delicacies. Many Hindus hang brass, copper, or silver pots on top of poles wrapped in flags of gold-embroidered silk that they raise like maypoles in front of their homes. Children wear flower garlands and run through the streets singing wishes for many returns of the New Year.

Sikh Vaisakhi: Anniversary of the Pure In India’s northern states, the first of Vaishakha is celebrated with fairs, dances, and folksongs as a public holiday on April 13 (or 14 every thirtysix years), on account of their sizeable Sikh communities. Elsewhere in the country and overseas, each Sikh temple or gurdwara can choose to observe it on the following or preceding weekend. Vaisakhi (often spelled Baisakhi) is especially important in Panjab State as the homeland of the Sikhs. Their third Guru Amar Das first enjoined them to assemble in the presence of their spiritual leader on this day of the New Year over 450 years ago. The tenth Guru Gobind Singh, having abolished the masand order of deputies of the Guru in local congregations, asked Sikhs to contribute directly to his treasury on Vaisakhi. It was on this occasion in 1699 that he established the Khalsa as the new structure of the Sikh community, centered on individual initiation and adherence to a strict code of conduct symbolized by the five “k”s, since “k” is the first letter of the Punjabi names of five items (long hair, a comb, a steel bracelet, a sword, and a pair of shorts) to be worn by every male member, since Gobind maintained

that “where there are five, there am I.” The “Land of the Five Rivers” that Punjab’s name refers to is thus seen by Sikhs as a gift from their last human Guru, so that Sikh rule in Punjab is entailed as a political aim in the institution of the Khalsa—the “Pure” in Punjabi. This idea of forming a chosen people of warrior-saints has been the most powerful force in shaping Sikh identity ever since. The importance of the celebration of the Khalsa’s birth on Vaisakhi has only been underscored by a number of tragic events that have marred this festive occasion in the holy city of Sikhism. The 1919 Amritsar Massacre also helped convince many Indians of the need to end British rule of the subcontinent. On the same day in 1762, the Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Abdali even destroyed the main Sikh temple, the Harimandir, but the Sikh king of Punjab Maharaja Rajit Singh rebuilt it in the early nineteenth century as Amritsar’s famous Golden Temple. It is now illuminated on Vaisakhi, like many such gurdwaras wherever there are Sikhs. In most of them, the sacred “First Book” appointed by Guru Gobind Singh as his successor for all time: the Adi Granth, is read from cover to cover by a relay of readers (akhand paath) over two days. More kirtan hymns of praise are sung over this time than as part of regular worship, and as always, all are welcomed to eat together after services and during breaks at the “kitchen of the Guru” (Guru ka langar), as a demonstration of Sikh egalitarianism against Hindu caste segregation. This is also the time to clean the flagpole and raise a new flag. Elections are held for temple presidents and management committees, and new initiates young and old are inducted into the Khalsa brotherhood by the same five men who may walk in front of the holy book with swords drawn in parades to be seen in larger centers. They are spiritual elders chosen to represent the “Beloved Five” (Panj Piarey)—volunteers who formed the nucleus of the Khalsa by first answering their Guru’s call to sacrifice their lives and so went into a tent

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where he pretended to slay them, substituting a goat for each one out of the view of the others. These ceremonies are followed by feasting, music, and dance. In Punjabi villages, men perform the strenuous bhangra dance, depicting every stage of the agricultural process, from tilling the soil to celebrating the harvest.

Nepal’s New Year and the Buddha’s Birthday The first day of Vaishakha is also New Year’s Day for the Hindus of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, as well as in the neighboring Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, where Hindus and Buddhists coexist and largely participate in each other’s festivals. Like the Sikhs’ Vaisakhi, the Nepalese New Year is the only religious festival determined by a solar calendar system rather than a lunar-based one like all other feasts. It is celebrated in a host of different ways following local usage. The best known version is that of the Newars of Bhadgaon, called Bisket after the slaying of two snakes that used to come out of the nostrils of a princess to devour all her suitors until the coming of the victorious founder of a local dynasty. It is celebrated with the raising of a 27-meter-tall phallic maypole from which banners representing the two slain serpents are unfurled, as well as with the processions of idols of many gods. As the terrifying, destructive aspects of Shiva, Bhairava and his consort Bhadra are each carried in a huge temple-shaped chariot called a ratha, pulled by ropes through the streets of Bhadgaon (or Bhaktapur as the city is also known). At a certain square, crews from the rival upper and lower parts of town vie in a tugof-war for the good omen of inflecting its course toward their own quarter. Nepal’s New Year, or Nava Varsha, is soon followed by Buddha-Jayanti Purnima, that is the “Full Moon of the Buddha’s Birth” in Lumbini, a village now called Rummindei near the southern border with India that was then the capital of the Shakya kingdom. This feast is also widely

known as the “Triple Blessing,” since it is on the same date that, thirty-five years later, the Shakya Prince Gautama Siddhartha is said to have become the Buddha—the Enlightened One in Sanskrit—by meditating under the bodhi tree of “awakening” in Bodh Gaya, and to have passed away into nirvana, or liberation from death and rebirth, in Kushinagar around 483 B.C.E., at the age of eighty. As Nepalese Buddhists go on pilgrimage to the latter two Indian sites on this occasion, so Buddhists come from all over the world not so much to Lumbini as to Kathmandu. Some relics of the historical Buddha are said to be preserved there within the massive, lotus-bud-shaped, white-domed Swayambunath stupa, which is illuminated at night during this festival. It was actually built 2,000 years ago to cover the divine flame of light of the pre-eternal, “Self-Existent” (Swayambu) and “Primordial,” that is, Adi Buddha, of which the historical Shakyamuni Buddha was but one among an infinity of cyclical manifestations, according to some schools of Mahayana Buddhism. But this “Great Vehicle” represents a more recent strand of Buddhism than its original Theravada form, the “Way of the Elders” that experienced a revival in Sri Lanka from the tenth century. This was just when Buddhism ceased to be a significant presence in India with the onslaught of Islam. In the land of its first blossoming, Buddhists are now a small minority found in scattered pockets, as in the northeastern Tripura State enclaved by Bangladesh, where the Buddha’s birthday is celebrated on Vaisakhi Purnima.

From Theravadin Vesak to World Buddha Day Every full moon is considered holy by Buddhists, since it symbolizes the unobstructed fullness of enlightenment. But two of them have come to stand out as special occasions: that of the month of Asalha ushering in the rainy season’s monastic retreat on the anniversary of the Buddha’s first sermon in a Benares

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park, and that of Vaishakha. The latter is called Vesakha in the Pali language of the ancient Theravada canon, in which the “Great Chronicle” (Mahavamsa) of Sri Lanka’s history was written by the Buddhist monk Mahanama in the middle of the first millennium. It records the number of times Vesakha Puja was celebrated under the reigns of various kings from the time of Dutthagamani (101–77 B.C.E.), champion of the Sinhalese Buddhists against the Hindu Tamils from India who had taken over the country after the death of the early Buddhist convert King Tissa in 207 B.C.E. But this festival was probably observed on the island from the earliest years of the introduction of Buddhism and had become an established tradition by the fourth century, as an occasion for kings to make offerings of robes to the monks and of food and clothing to the poor. Nowadays, food and drink are brought to temporary alms halls by the devotees and sightseers who flock to temple rituals in greater numbers than on any other holiday to observe the “Eight Precepts” (asta-sila) out of the ten observed by monks. This is in contrast to the basic five normally followed by laypeople. Those who are taking on extra silas (with some combined to give eight) wear white attire for the day of the full moon and the next one, which is set aside for commemorative activities, while others attend to their many needs around the temples. Processions circle these three times (for the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha). For up to four days in bigger towns, there is extra traffic as large, happy crowds circulate to view the sights of Vesak. These include rows of coconut oil lamps of various sizes and shapes (some intricate and traditional, others fanciful and contemporary, for example, planes and spaceships) on temples and houses, street plays based on the life stories of Gautama Buddha and his previous incarnations or the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, impressive archways with panels illustrating these same stories and flashing lightbulb patterns, tableaux-vivants on

the same themes (plus the cautionary tales of Buddhist hells), and children’s devotional choirs. Sending colorful Vesak cards has recently become a widespread custom. Aside from the purchase of fish and birds to permit their release in memory of the Buddha’s compassion for all sentient beings, this festival is observed in similar ways as a public holiday in Southeast Asian countries whose national Buddhist traditions are offshoots of the Theravada form they adopted from Sri Lanka. In Thailand and Burma, Laos and Cambodia, it is thus known as Vesakha Puja. But in Sri Lanka itself, Vesak was cancelled as a public holiday in 1815 by British colonial authorities as part of a policy of undermining native culture, which was only reversed in 1885 with the reestablishment of its official status. It was in this context that the American Colonel Henry Steele Olcott, a co-founder of the Theosophical Society (with Madame Blavatsky) who became a Buddhist there in 1880, devised a Buddhist flag based on the five colors of the Buddha’s aura. They reflect the five energies of the awakened state as ultimate reality, with blue, yellow, red, white, and orange vertical bands, along with a sixth one repeating the same sequence horizontally, being their harmonious synthesis. This flag was adopted by Sinhalese Buddhist organizations for their flag-raising ceremonies, and especially for Vesak, when it also adorns temples, houses, and streets and features in solemn processions. On May 25, 1950, it was also unanimously adopted by the delegates of twenty-six nations at the annual congress of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, as the official flag of Buddhism. It was to be proudly displayed by Buddhists everywhere (especially on Vesak as Buddha Day) as the banner or right belief and a beacon of peace and harmony for all beings, beyond race and class distinctions and national and ideological allegiances. Thus, ever since the monk To Lien brought it back with him from Colombo to Vietnam in 1951, it has been raised

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in front of Buddhist temples over the objections of Communist authorities there. Nowadays, these colors are flown at Buddha Day ceremonies in over fifty nations, as well as at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, where, since 1976, Vesak is observed every year in the presence of many diplomats, academics, Buddhist monks of both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions, and the representatives of other world religions. In countries where most of them are either immigrants or converts, Buddhists gather in their temples or meditation centers to listen to lectures about the Buddha’s universal message and perform pious acts and express their devotion, be it with offerings of oil lamps, flowers, and incense before an image of the Buddha, or by lighting paper lanterns as in Sri Lanka.

Mahayana Variations from Tibet to Japan However, the many strands of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism observe this festival over a range of slightly different dates according to its many national calendars. Their adherents in non-Buddhist countries may then invite their fellow Buddhists of other traditions to their own celebrations and vice versa, since there is no conflict between them. Thus, in the Tibetan calendar, the Buddha’s birthday is commemorated around May on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, while his death and passing into nirvana are celebrated on the fifteenth (but sometimes on the same day in certain meditation centers). On this occasion in Tibet, pilgrims visit the monasteries to bring offerings and view religious paintings, while lamas perform symbolic dances in special costumes. The eighth day of the Fourth Moon is Buddha’s birthday in Korea, where it also used to be called “Buddha’s Bathing Day” (in reference to the local version of a custom known from Hong Kong to Japan, described next). People would visit temples and pray for the happiness of the dead while lighting lanterns. Some Buddhist temples are still spectacularly

illuminated with lanterns on this festival, though the influence of Buddhism has lessened under the staunchly Confucian Choson Dynasty that ruled the country from 1392 to 1910, when it was annexed by Japan. In that country, the Buddhist religion has always remained at the center of national life, and its founder’s birth in a flower bush according to a local account is celebrated on April 8 with Hana Matsuri, the Flower Festival. In front of every Buddhist temple, monks set up a temporary wooden shrine to hold a small black bronze statue of the young Buddha pointing to the sky with one hand and to the earth with the other, in the middle of a water basin. Both the basin and the shrine are covered with flowers, and beside them is a bucket full of a sweet green tea in which visitors can dip with a bamboo ladle to pour some on the Buddha’s head in a “baptism” ceremony called kambutsue. He is also offered flowers, and children dance before his image. Rice flour cakes are a festive treat. See also Gurpurb; Kathina; Matsuri; May Day; Naw Ruz; New Year (China, Korea); New Year (West) References Pategama Gnanarama. “Full Moon,” pp. 283–286, and Vinnie Vitharana. “Festivals,” pp. 228–234, in W. G. Weevarathi, ed. The Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Vol. V, Fascicle 2. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Government of Sri Lanka, State Printing Corporation, 1991. Harbans Singh. Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. Patiala, India: Panjabi University, 1992.

◗ VALENTINE’S DAY See Lupercalia

◗ VAPPU See May Day

◗ VASANTA-MAHOTSAVA See Holi

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◗ VASANTA NAVARATRI See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ VEIL (FEAST OF THE) See Protection of the Mother of God

◗ VENUS VERTICORDIA AND VIRILE FORTUNE (ROME) On the first day of April, which was the month of Venus, the women of Rome, whether they were respectable or not, “turned to” the goddess, and asked her to “turn their hearts” (verso corde) to virtue, at a festival accordingly called that of Venus Verticordia. It is Venus, too, they were invoking that same day at the misleadingly named festival of Virile Fortune, with the idea of preserving their beauty, along with their reputation and moral virtue.

Festivals of Feminine Force The two linguistic origins suggested by Ovid’s account of the festival of Venus Verticordia (“turning to Venus,” “turning to virtue”) reinforce one another. But since the Latin word virtus for “virtue” comes from vis for “force,” and is related as such to vir for “man,” Verticordia’s orientation toward virtue may link it to the festival of Virile Fortune. Its name refers to men, as opposed to Fortuna Muliebris as a force protecting women. Yet Virile Fortune too concerned women directly. Women of the people could use the men’s public baths for the day. There, they burned incense as they prayed Venus to give them the good fortune of keeping their physical imperfections a secret to men (viros).

Setting an Example of Virtue Following the poet Ovid and the historian Valerius Maximus, Venus came to get the surname Verticordia because of the change of heart she had caused in the women of Rome after a temple was built for her for this very purpose. Its

construction was decided as a result of a scandal that revealed how little virtue the city’s women had. In 114 B.C.E., three Vestal virgins were buried alive, as prescribed if they ever broke their vow of perpetual chastity. (This way, the stain of their presence was removed from the city, without violating the sacredness of their persons.) It appears that they were guilty of having committed sexual indiscretions with knights. At least, this is what the Cuman sibyl or prophetess maintained when she was consulted about a disturbing omen. A knight’s daughter had been struck by lightning on horseback; oddly enough, not only did she lose her life, but she was also stripped of her clothes on the spot. Matrons and prostitutes alike were urged from then on to look up to Venus for modesty. This was symbolized on April 1 by the myrtle crowns they wore as they bathed in her honor. The goddess Venus was said to have once reached for myrtle leaves to cover her hair while she was letting it dry on the shore of a river after bathing: she had just realized that satyrs (lewd goat-footed beings) were watching her. The marble image of Venus was also carefully washed (like the silver one of Cybele at the closing of her Spring Festival a few days before or in Greece the statue of Athena some six weeks later at Athens’ Plynteria) by Roman women on that day. Having first removed its rich ornaments and golden necklace, they would put them back on once the sculpture had been thoroughly dried. The women would then offer fresh roses to the sparkling effigy of Venus Verticordia. See also Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis; Vestalia References William Warde Fowler. Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic. An Introduction to the Study of the Romans. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1969. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

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◗ VESAK, VESAKHA See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ VESTALIA (ROME) On June 9, after the famous angling competition of June 8: the ludi Pescatorii, the ritual focus of the ancient Roman calendar shifted from water to fire at the high point of the Vestalia, a festival extending over nine unlucky days from June 7 to 15. Weddings were proscribed for two weeks prior to the purification of the temple of Vesta, with its eternal flame tended by the Vestal virgins. Bakers had a holiday in honor of their patron, the goddess of the hearth—at once fire and earth.

A Round Temple for Vesta, a Royal Palace for the Vestals Since time immemorial, the goddess Vesta had been worshipped in certain cities of Latium, such as Lavinium and Alba. Some Romans thought her cult had been brought from Alba to their city by the mother of its founder Romulus, the Vestal virgin Silvia. Others believed it was King Numa Pompilius who, forty years after Rome was founded in 753 B.C.E., had introduced Vesta’s cult there, housing her virgins of royal blood on the premises of his palace on the Forum. Representing Rome’s permanence, it survived the monarchy as the Atrium of Vesta, the convent of her six priestesses (standing for the original six princesses) beside the temple proper. The ruins of the temple of Vesta are among the most remarkable in Rome, because of its unusual round shape, echoing that of early Italian huts, and suggesting the private origins of the public hearth within.

The Invisible Goddess of Intangible Fire According to the poet Ovid (Fasti 6, p. 146), the reason for this shape was that the earth is round, and “Vesta equals Earth. Sleepless fire

underlies both;/Earth and hearth denote their own fixity” (267–268). For Vesta is “nothing but living flame” (291), kept in her temple by virgins (since this proud daughter of Saturn and Ops had remained unwed, unlike her two older sisters Juno and Ceres who had children). But “you see no substances born from flame” (292), giving or receiving seed. Nor could she be seen in a body as a statue like other gods, since “that temple encloses an undying fire/but no image of Vesta or of fire” (297–298, p. 147), even though Ovid himself had long assumed there was a statue hidden inside the round temple. This was because access to its inner sanctum, open to matrons who came barefoot during the festival between June 7 and 15, remained denied to males at all times. The only exception was the Great Pontiff, who was thus able to rescue from the flames that consumed the temple in 241 B.C.E. one of the sacred talismans on which Rome’s fate depended: the Palladium, a statue of Athena brought from Troy after its fall to the Greeks by the city’s mythical founding ancestors, led by Aeneas.

The Public Cult of Jupiter as Baker According to Ovid, Vesta had also played a crucial part in the rescue of Rome from the besieging Gauls after the disastrous defeat of the Allia in 390 B.C.E., when they finally became convinced the Romans would not give in for lack of food after being pelted by them with loaves of bread from Capitol Hill. This had been done on Jupiter’s counsel to his starving people, once he had addressed his half-sister thus: “Now make their dwindling corn appear plentiful,/Vesta, and do not desert your site./Have the hollow mill grind all their uncrushed grain,/hands soften it and hearth fires bake it” (Fasti 6:379–382, p. 149). Having leaned on the functions of Vesta, the king of the gods was henceforth annually honored by Romans at a shrine that was dedicated on her great festival day of June 9 to Jupiter Pistor or “Jupiter the Baker.” Vesta’s public cult was thus of vital importance

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to the city, even if the all-male citizenry was not a party to its essential acts and can tell us only so much about it. But we do know that the festival’s nine days of ill omen only came to an end once the sweepings from the ceremonial cleaning of the temple of Vesta on June 15 had been either put away at a special spot next to Capitol Hill or thrown into the Tiber.

The Private Worship of Vesta by Bakers The Vestalia had their roots in ancient private rites of which we know little more than the traces they left in such relatively late (second century B.C.E.) celebrations as those of the bakers’ corporation in honor of their patron goddess. They would not work on that day but would garland their idle grindstones with flowers and put collars of bread loaves around the necks of the donkeys that turned them the rest of the time. Though the bakers were by then using ovens to provide the population with bread, it is to the hearth goddess Vesta that they turned for protection. This was a holdover from the time when all households baked their own bread under the ashes of the home fire. It was so vital to placate this most familiar yet most impalpable of divinities that in Ovid’s day, at the turn of the Common Era, a small purified plate still used to be set aside by the hearth with food for Vesta. The name of this protector of all altar fires comes from an IndoEuropean root for “burning,” like that of her Greek counterpart Hestia; but whereas Hestia’s name was the first one to be invoked in Greek

prayers, Vesta’s was the last to be mentioned when Romans turned to their gods. There was among them a special patron for ovens too: the goddess Fornax, whose festival of Fornacalia was on February 17. See also Fordicidia and Parilia; Fornacalia and Quirinalia; Games (Rome); Hollyhock Festival; Terminalia References Georges Dumézil. Archaic Roman Religion, with an Appendix on the Religion of the Etruscans. Tr. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Ovid. Fasti. Tr. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 2000. Sir Thomas Cato Worsfold. The History of the Vestal Virgins of Rome. London: Rider and Co., 1932.

◗ VETERANS DAY See Martinmas

◗ VIJAY DASHAMI See Navaratra and Dusshera

◗ VIRGIN MARY DAY See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary

◗ VISAKHA, VISHU See Vaishakha and Vaisakhi

◗ VISITATION OF HOLY MARY See Sacred Heart

W ◗ WAKANA NO SEKKU See Sekku

◗ WALPURGIS NIGHT See May Day

◗ WATER-SPLASHING FESTIVAL (CHINA, THAILAND) The Tai Lue people, native to the southernmost part of China’s Yunnan Province as well as areas of northern Thailand, celebrates the Theravada Buddhist New Year from the twentyfourth to the twenty-sixth day of the sixth month of its traditional calendar. It falls in April, about ten days after the Qing Ming festival of China’s majority Han population. The People’s Republic of China has been promoting this event to tourists as the Water-Splashing Festival, after a practice central to its celebrations. This is only one of a number of typical seasonal games, aside from the dragon boat races known to all Chinese people. The legends relating to this festival deal with the fight against tyrants and with the purification needed to preserve peace in the community after their violence has had to be met with more violence.

First Day After the washing of Buddhist images to favor good crops, the festival begins with a dragon boat race between teams of young men wearing red turbans. The first team to reach the goal waves a flag as it disembarks. It is then rewarded with wine, fruits, and candy, as boys and girls dance on the shore to the sound of drums and gongs. This victory is meant to recall a kind of local equivalent of the Biblical story of David and Goliath. Once upon a time, a young man was challenged to a dragon boat race by the king of Sipsongpanna (or Xishuangbanna in the official Pinyin transliteration of Chinese, where Tai is written “Dai”). The tyrant said he would have the boy’s head cut off and thrown in the river to the fishes if he lost. This seemed a foregone conclusion, since the king’s boat was much bigger than the boy’s. But the Dragon King and the Heavenly King, moved by the latter’s courage, decided to help him out: the Dragon turned into a splendid boat, and the King into a strong, steady gust of wind. It propelled the young man’s boat to the finish line and threw the evil ruler overboard so that he drowned.

Second Day The demise of another legendary tyrant of Sipsongpanna is invoked as an explanation for the

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People of Tai ethnicity celebrate during the Water-Splashing Festival, 2002. (Liu Liqun/Corbis)

playful aspersion rites typical of the second day of the Tai Lue Water Festival (although similar ones are part of Pi Mai, the Laotian New Year, Trut, the Thai New Year, and Thingyan, Burma’s New Year, rooted in ancient rituals marking the onset of the monsoon season when all these festivals take place). A powerful demon wizard who oppressed the Tai Lue people was not afraid of anything—be it weapons, fire, or water. He was thus able to abduct seven women to keep them as his wives. They still hated him just as much as anybody else and wondered how to overcome him. The beautiful and clever seventh concubine managed to manipulate him into revealing his weak spot. That same night, she proceeded to take advantage of his sleep to get him in this way: by ripping off his head with one of his hairs tied around his neck. However, the head provoked a fire when it fell onto the ground. It

then rolled into the river, which started to boil, killing all the fish. They tried to bury the head, but from underground it spread a nauseating stink. So the seventh wife had to hold it, and the others took turns to relieve her when she was tired. Each wife threw water on the one she was replacing, because of the need to wash off the blood still streaming without cease from the fiend’s gaping neck. They have been at it ever since, in a god realm where a day lasts a full human year. In honor of the seven wives who are condemned to forever do the dirty job that somebody had to do, the Tai Lue soak each other with water. Just as their heroines keep on cleansing the stains of their act, they wash off the stains of the year gone by and try to bring better luck for a new one. Buckets and basins will generally do for these water fights, but a more delicate method is used with due respect for old people. As they sit motionless, the Tai

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Lue sing their elders’ praises, while pouring a few drops of clear water on their head or down their necks, with either a spoon or an olive branch. One way or another, everyone is soaked (not to mention a little tipsy) at the end of the day. This is when performances begin. To the sound of elephant-foot drums, gongs, and bamboo flutes, young and old can join in the xu-la-he dance. Some hearty villagers dress up for the famous Peacock Dance, impersonating the Tai country’s lucky symbolic bird. Zan ha singers relate seasonal tales as the song and dance go on into the night.

Third Day Then comes the Tai Lue New Year’s Day and its typical games. Gao sheng means “rocketlaunching” and refers to a powder-filled bamboo rocket containing five objects. These objects bring luck to everyone (especially children) who rushes to pick them up from the ground after the primitive missile explodes. Diu bao means “throwing ball,” namely a special diamond-shaped, cotton-filled ball with colored fringes, between two rows of players: one for boys and one for girls. The one who drops the ball must offer a fresh flower to the last thrower of the other gender, by way of an apology. Players take this opportunity to edge nearer every time. When a girl has the boy she likes within her reach, she grabs his knife and scarf without warning. Once she gets home that night, she prepares a nice meal, in expectation of the moment he comes to get his belongings back. Many marriages are decided this way on New Year’s Day among the Tai Lue of the upper basin of the Mekong River. See also Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan); Dragon Boat Festival; Easter; New Year (China, Korea) References Marie-Luise Latsch. Traditional Chinese Festivals. Singapore: Graham Brash, 1988.

Michael Moerman. “Ethnic Identity in a Complex Civilization: Who Are the Lue?” in American Anthropologist, Vol. LXVII (1965), pp. 1215–1230. Qi Xing. Folk Customs at Traditional Chinese Festivities. Tr. Ren Jiazhen. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1988.

◗ WEAVER (FESTIVAL OF THE) See Sekku

◗ WHEAT FESTIVAL See Assumption

◗ WHITE SUNDAY, WHITE WEEK See Easter

◗ WHITSUNTIDE (CHRISTIANITY) Whitsuntide is the name of the festive season surrounding Whitsunday, as Pentecost is also known in the British Isles. Its original Greek name identifies it as the “fiftieth day” after Easter, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus Christ’s disciples during the Jewish Pentecost or Shavuot, fifty days after his Resurrection during Passover. Beyond this celebration of the Church’s birthday, Whitsuntide is also the focus of a wide range of remarkably similar folkloric practices of pagan origin from one end of Europe to the other. They revolve around the ambiguous power of rain charms and vegetation spirits when summer is around the corner, much as on May Day a little earlier.

Pentecost: The Descent of the Holy Spirit Early Christians referred to the entire fifty-day period following Easter as Pentecost. The last day was merely the formal closing of the “seven weeks” of Paschal joy when kneeling and fasting were therefore not allowed, according to Saint Irenaeus of Lyon. There would then be a con-

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tinuous reading of the Acts of the Apostles to remind the faithful of what God had accomplished through his Church. The latter’s founding (as described in chapter two) when the Holy Spirit descended on Christ’s disciples fifty days after his Resurrection and ten days after his Ascension, only became the focus of a distinct feast on the fiftieth day in the last third of the fourth century in Constantinople. In Rome, the descent of the Spirit that bestows grace in Christ was likened to the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. Rabbis had recently made this the main focus of the original Jewish Pentecost or Shavuot, coming fifty days after Passover. This is the Jewish feast during which Christians believe Jesus died and rose again, and the basis for their own Easter celebration. If baptism used to be administered both at the beginning (Easter) and end (the day of Pentecost) of the Paschal season, Pentecost eventually came to be favored for this over Easter in Northern Europe. While the Roman Catholic Church dissociated the feast’s vigil from baptism in 1955, the feast itself is still commonly called Whitsunday in English, after the special white garments worn by the newly baptized. Attested (as hwitan sunnan daeg) in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1067, the term was soon borrowed in Norway and Iceland, then in the process of full conversion to Christianity by largely English clergy. With the separation in the Western Church around the same time of the gift of the Spirit from baptism—as the new independent sacrament of confirmation, it became customary for Catholic children to receive it (as a kind of rite of passage) toward the age of puberty on a Pentecost Sunday. This was after all the anniversary of the original descent of the Holy Spirit and hence that of the Church of which they now became active members. Thus, a century ago, children could still be seen all dressed up riding with their godparents through Vienna’s thoroughfares in carriages decorated with white lilacs and roses, down to their two horses. In France for most of

the second millennium, Whitsunday or Whitmonday were also days for electing the captains of youth, where it was organized into a hierarchical society. A million pilgrims from all over the world (including close to a hundred specialized lay brotherhoods) still trek through the coastal marshlands east of the Andalusian port of Huelva on jeeps, horses, and carriages decorated with flowers of many colors to the shrine of the Virgen del Rocío (the “Virgin of the Dew”—an ancient symbol of the descending, vivifying Spirit in liturgical language), for the statue’s hectic annual Whitsunday night rosary procession in the petal-strewn streets of the village of Almonte, starting with a mad crush of young men to touch her when she is first taken out. To the east in the village of Peñas de San Pedro in La Mancha on Whitmonday, the bearers of an articulated statue of Christ in a crossshaped coffin run with it to a shrine located fifteen kilometers away. From Italy to Rumania, Whitsunday is often popularly known by names derived from the ancient Roman festival of Rosaria or Rosalia, which may help explain the role that roses and other flowers frequently play in its customs. In the Catholic Church, roses are sometimes thrown to symbolize the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles in the guise of tongues of fire. This symbolism may also account for the red color of liturgical vestments for Whitsunday in the Anglican communion, where it is followed in the church calendar by two Red-letter Days (indicating important feast-days), not to mention Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday as Ember Days of fasting and prayer. In England, the Pentecost procession was long the occasion for parishioners to make yearly payments to their local church or diocesan cathedral on the basis of the number of chimneys on their houses— hence the term “Smoke Money” often used for these “Whitsun Farthings” or “Pentecostals.” It is to the Sunday following Pentecost, as the full revelation of the Holy Spirit, that the

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recitation of the Office of the Holy Trinity composed in the early tenth century by Bishop Stephen of Liège was initially assigned in some places. This date was retained by Pope John XXII when he instituted a mandatory Catholic feast called Trinity Sunday in 1334, only with a new office composed in the previous century by the Franciscan John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury. Trinity Sunday started out as a double of the second class, but was upgraded to a primary of the first class by Pope Pius XI on July 24, 1911. Its mass features the ancient preface by the late fifth-century Pope Saint Gelasius distinguishing canonical scriptures from apocryphal writings and three series of three readings taken from the Books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Proverbs. In certain Spanish villages just north of Portugal, people (mostly children) who have survived some mortal peril over the past year get to be carried inside caskets in a Trinity Sunday procession to thank Saint Martha for their new lease of life. If Anglican and Lutheran churches count the following Sundays as “Sundays after Trinity,” up to 1969, the Roman Catholic Church reckoned them until the start of Advent in their order as “Sundays after Pentecost,” as is still done in the Eastern Church until the start of Lent. There, however, Whitsunday itself is often referred to as the Feast of the Trinity (which it specially manifests alongside Epiphany and the Transfiguration), unless the term is reserved by local use for Whitmonday, otherwise dedicated to the Holy Spirit. Though the one Orthodox prayer to the Holy Spirit, with which every other prayer and service begins, is taken from the Pentecost vespers that immediately follow Whitsunday’s Divine Liturgy, this divine Person is otherwise only alluded to in the seven lengthy prayers said by the priest at intervals during this service as the people kneel with him. These prayers are addressed either to the Father, to the Son, or to God in general (understood as the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit), to ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit as on the original Pente-

cost, kneeling in penitence to set the tone for the rest of the Church year, until the next fiftyday season of joyful Easter celebrations, when it is forbidden. In Greece, wherever churches are named after the Holy Trinity, lambs are sacrificed for a large communal meal on this Kneeling Sunday, which may also be the final opportunity for graveside meals and offerings to the dead, such as rice pudding and sour milk. For not only is this the one time of the year when the Orthodox liturgy includes prayers for all the dead since the beginning of the world (even including suicides and other lost souls in hell), but there is also a belief that the souls of the dead are released from Hades following Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday and roam the earth freely for fifty days afterwards (or alternatively forty days to Ascension, up until the moment Resurrection hymns are sung for the last time). While they are thus “on parole,” the deceased enjoy the sweets that the living set aside for them. To make sure the dead do not meet their relatives’ gaze and risk becoming unable to bear parting from them again, some Greek villagers cover their eyes with leaves or rose petals and bow their heads very low during the particular kneeling invocations for the repose of the departed, while others light candles in front of them as they kneel to light the latter’s way back to the beyond. During these kneeling prayers, Serbian women weave wreaths of tall grasses; they will decorate the home with foliage, in addition to the church as is the practice in many Eastern European cultures—down to covering the floor with grass among some like the Carpatho-Rusyn, in which women also used to throw roses into rivers that evening. Whitsunday is thus often actually known as Green Sunday in Slavic Churches.

Whitsuntide: Rain-Charms and Tree-Spirits This is usually explained in terms of the role of plants in the celebration of Jewish Pentecost as

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a feast of first-fruits, which after all the Apostles were probably observing like the rest of the Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the occasion, when they received the Holy Spirit that now set them apart, with a Pentecost of their own as the fruition of the new Christian dispensation. And indeed, from East to West, the gathering of produce and other food to be blessed in a church full of greenery confirms that Pentecost very much remains a harvest festival along Jewish lines. Yet abundant folklore betrays another source for the Whitsuntide greening of churches, in the seasonal pagan worship of vegetation spirits. In Saxony and Thuringia, this was the time for “fetching the Wild Man out of the wood,” into which a leaf-clad lad would hide and let other boys seek and capture him for a mock execution and resurrection, before they would parade him through the village, expecting gifts at every house—usually eggs as an obvious fertility symbol, in endless variations of this ceremony throughout Central Europe on Whitsunday or Whitmonday. These often involved the cutting, parading, decoration, and erection of a May-tree as another object of contest, sometimes directly connected to the slain leaf-clad man as its counterpart: the personified tree-spirit, like Attis in the Spring Festival of Cybele in ancient Rome. Another common practice, “the drenching of the Pfingstl [from German Pfingst for Whitsunday] with water and his wading up to the middle into the brook are, therefore, no doubt rain-charms,” as Sir James George Frazer has argued in the chapter on “The Whitsuntide Mummers” that opens his discussion of “The Killing of the TreeSpirit” in The Golden Bough, his classic “Study in Magic and Religion” (Vol. 4, 1935, p. 211). The Leaf King or Grass King was selected by (often equestrian) contests, only to be symbolically killed and replaced by a fresh representative of vegetation. But in Bohemia for instance, he was sometimes accompanied by a Hangman or Frog-Flayer who actually hanged or beheaded frogs. This was a rain charm that finds

parallels throughout Europe as well as in South and Central America, where, on the Aztec rain festival of Etzalqualitzli, priests used to swim around in a lake imitating frogs in honor of the rain goddess Chalchihuitlicue, the “Emerald Lady.” Hungary is one country where there is still a custom of electing a Whitsun Queen, whose attendants carry her from door to door throwing petals (as is done for a May Queen), and lifting her up before each house as they wish the owners that their hemp grow just as high (a kind of analogy that governs many Midsummer customs). In Silesia, the Whitsuntide Bride was the sweetheart of the lad who had reached the top of a smooth maypole to bring down the prize that made him Whitsuntide King, much as a May King was elsewhere matched by contest to a May Queen on May Day. In parts of Denmark, a little girl and boy were dressed up as a Whitsun Bride and Groom and escorted by the other children, also adorned with flowers and ribbons of many colors, as they collected from all the farmhouses the food (starting with eggs) needed for the wedding feast, at which they would all dance in their clogs until the dawn of Whitmonday. In Russia, it was on the previous Thursday that villagers fetched a birch tree in the wood, dressing it up in women’s clothes and colorful ribbons for a feast, at the end of which they took it to one of their houses as an honored guest. All would visit “her” there until Whitsunday, when “she” was thrown into a stream along with the season’s garlands, like Morena (as a dummy often carried by girls on a pole) or Green George (usually in the guise of a tree) at other times in other Slavic lands, and countless other embodiments of tree-spirits across Europe around Whitsun. It may not be too far-fetched to count among them the magic flagpole, or steag, used for their secret oath by the C˘alus¸ari, a men’s society of Whitsuntide dancers found in the rural areas of southern Rumania (and in the past well into Bulgaria); for in parts of Oltenia, they too would throw it

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in the water at the end of their annual rites. They used to be active for a full week after Whitsunday, until the pressures of modern life gradually reduced this period to a couple of days. In Rumanian, the word Rusalii is synonymous with both the feast of Pentecost and all of Whitsuntide as a period when beautiful white-clad fairies also known as Rusalii (or just iele, which is the feminine form of “they”) are most dangerous. Aside from C˘alus¸ari who disobey some of their own rules, “they” will possess fertile women who transgress certain taboos peculiar to this period, like that on cleaning house or oneself (in time for spring cleaning), that on work in the fields and with animals (just when it starts in earnest), or on climbing trees (as they begin to be fruitful). At this delicate time of transition between winter and summer (rather like May Day), nature spirits can still turn either way, and they demand to be treated with fear and trembling, or else people fall ill with a kind of epilepsy, “possessed by the C˘alus¸.” In contrast to the rest of the year when people can come to sorceresses for their ailments, this one can only be cured by the dancers embodying the C˘alus¸ as male counterparts of the Rusalii. Their name is also that of a similar winter ritual exclusive to Macedonian men, but related to Bulgaria’s Carnival Kukeri processions and those of Rumanian mummers during Yuletide, while only women fall into trance at the Whitsun Rusalje processions of northeastern Serbia. Eastern Slavs think the rusalki live in streams, ponds, and lakes, and have the power to cause storms. Likewise, many Rumanian C a˘ lus¸ ari receive their power from these water fairies, and indeed, some of their societies take their ritual oath by immersing their hands in a body of water on Whitsunday Eve. Reminiscent of the flower-bedecked flagpole Greeks carry from door to door the weekend after Easter, singing folksongs called Roussalia, the flag the C a˘ lus¸ ari then raise is magically empowered by placing within a red

cloth bundle at the top wormwood and garlic as protection against evil (which they also wear in their belts) and sometimes also a bottle of dew (which in many places is endowed with the power to beautify the face on May Day). In this case, the dew is collected at the beginning of preparations for Rusalii, often as far back as Mid-Pentecost. Among Albanian Christians, this minor Orthodox feast (known to them as Rusicat), based on the Jewish Sukkot but placed at the midpoint of the Paschal time between Easter and Pentecost (Rushajet, in their language), is actually reserved for women, who may then sleep over on monastery porches in the old country or visit each other between parishes all through Eastertide in the New World. In Rumania, women speak with deceased relatives in long tearful laments during meals at their graves that begin before dawn on Rusalii as a major collective day of mourning (as the pagan Rosalia likely was), though it is still only one of several private and public days of the dead when such a pomana or food offering is held. This one takes place so early because, in Rumanian folklore, all spirits can only be fully active and on the move from sunset to sunrise, as we all know from the vampire film genre drawn from the Dracula story about Nosferatu, meaning “undead” in Rumanian parlance for such restless dead people. The same rule applies to the dead these black widows seek out to bring them comfort and keep them quiet, and to the C˘alus¸ embodied by the white-shirted male dancers who eventually join them in village cemeteries early that morning. The latter are otherwise not allowed to have any intimate contact with women during Whitsuntide and may even stay together in one house just to be on the safe side. Protracted preparations, secrecy, seclusion, and sexual abstinence also characterize the allmale katchina dancers’ societies of the Pueblo village of Zuñi in New Mexico at the annual November celebration known as Shalako, after the ten-foot tall embodiments of rain spirits,

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whose accidental fall would spell disaster for the community. The same is true of the C˘alus¸ari’s flag, and its raising and other preparations are as taboo to outsiders as those surrounding the katchina, with comparably dire consequences for any transgression. Just as among the latter in their tours of the village, there are oddly masked, kilt-wearing fools notorious for their obscenity and exhibitionism, the C˘alus¸ari are often led by an androgynous mute character—the only dancer wearing a mask (usually wooden and bearded, but sometimes a gas mask, or even a kind of Indian feather headdress!), who likes to flash from under his skirt a red wooden phallus as he chases women and children. Ritual silence is observed by the other C˘alus¸ari at various points of their ceremonies, as it often was in European folklore involving the early morning collection of magical “speechless water” on Easter or New Year’s Day. Sometimes, the mute’s phallus is diplomatically replaced by a stick sculpted with a horse’s head, which makes it even more reminiscent of the hobbyhorses that would playfully chase people and invade houses on May Day or Saint George’s Day in Britain. Alternatively, the more serious v˘ataf, master of the order and holder of its secrets, would figure prominently and instead carry a stick called a cioc, or “beak,” also known as iepure (“rabbit”) after the animal whose pelt is pulled over it. This too is an obvious phallic symbol, since the rabbit represents fertility throughout Eurasia. It is usually connected as such with a moon goddess like the Greek Artemis or the Roman Diana, models of Irodeasa, the so-called “patron saint” C a˘ lus¸ari pray to for protection from her attendants or iele (or “they”) who must not be named: the Rusalii. Rabbits were seen as a form witches took on May Day in Irish and Manx folklore. Similarly, the rabbit stick is kept at a secret burial site (somewhat like feathered prayer sticks in the course of Shalako) at the crossroads “they” are said to inhabit, because of its potential to harm mortals by causing them to be possessed,

as well as to cure them from this trance state. The latter is what the C˘alus¸ari use the stick for on people who fall possessed during Rusalii. They otherwise perform their suggestive comic plays and elaborate spirit dances (some of which others may join in) in all courtyards, and engage in a ritual fight or contest wherever two groups happen to cross paths in a village, as when they later on go from one village to the next in a competitive spirit.

Decline and Fall of English Whitsun Actual brawls long went had in hand with the rough traditional games (including blood sports such as dog or cock fights and badger or bull baiting) that used to be played at Whitsuntide feasts in English villages. This is where they would hold competitions between each other’s Morris “sides”—troupes of Morris dancers also seen on May Day and other festive occasions (depending on local custom) since the Middle Ages, but mostly associated with Whitsuntide by the nineteenth century. Like Romania’s C a˘ lus¸ ari (or other Balkan sword and stick dancers such as Bulgaria’s Kukeri), they wore hats and a white shirt crossed with bands. At the Kirtlington Lamb Ale for instance, these bands were the same pink and blue ribbons that adorned (along with flowers and other plants) the “forest feathers” (wooden clubs carried by the two men who closed their procession), as well as the season’s finest, first-born lamb carried by the man who opened it and the selected Whitsun Lord and Lady, whose badges of office were called “maces.” The latter were followed by a Squire—a fool who prodded the crowd and cleared space for the dancers with a long staff (strung with a cow’s tail at one end and a bladder at the other), much like the mute with his phallic rod in Rumania. There, a similar role was played by his colleague the v˘ataf, who in turn had an equivalent in the foreman of Morris sides. In the latter’s Lancashire version, the Leader clearly stands aside to call the

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Whitsun celebrations at London’s Hamstead Heath, 1921. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

figures with the help of a whistle, while the men carry ropes or short sticks bound with colored ribbons, though they never strike the sticks together as in the more widespread Cotswold Morris. Pink and blue ribbons also adorned the maypole that was raised before Whitsuntide (sometimes on the previous “Holy Thursday”—a term used in England for Ascension a week earlier—as well as during Holy Week), as was the C a˘ lus¸ ari’s ribboned flagpole before Rusalii. In this case, the pole was provided by the Duke of Marlborough, along with the Bowery, “a shed made of green boughs set up on the village green, where the ale previously brewed was sold during the nine days of the feast without a license, the proceeds going towards the expenses incurred” (P. Manning, in Howkins 1973). Such events were therefore called “Whit

Ales,” except in other parts of Oxfordshire where instead a “Youth Ale” followed the “Whit Hunt,” which originated in a common right of local villagers to go within the bounds of the old Royal Forest around Wychwood to get a deer for the occasion. Yet there as elsewhere in England, the old Whit Ales had disappeared by the second half of the nineteenth century. Tamer versions of some customs lived on in their wake. Children might still go from door to door with maces or garlands to collect pennies or dance around a maypole. A dwindling number of local Morris sides were sometimes replaced by more regional Morris troupes in the twentieth century. Over that time, as in Rumania later on, Whitsuntide celebrations were gradually reduced to three or four days, and then to a single holiday, as recommended by the Bank Holidays Act of

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1871, which included among these Whitmonday. This was replaced by the last Monday in May in the 1980s (although shops still close on Whitmonday in France and Denmark). But in addition, these festivities also changed in character and became sober, orderly, respectable affairs, as the Anglican Church tightened its control over rural parish life, and the puritanical influence of dissenting groups like the Baptists and Methodists also spread. The latter had long made a point of holding “camp meetings” (open-air evangelical gatherings) in direct competition to wakes, fairs, and feasts such as Whitsun. Representing an early cooperative form of social welfare on a local and increasingly national scale, “the growth of friendly societies in the countryside was another major influence, and so far as Whitsun was concerned the most directly important, since they ‘expropriated’ Whitsun and turned it into their ‘Club’ day. There can be little doubt that the gentry and clergy, who played a large part in promoting them, saw the Friendly Societies as active agencies of social control,” slowly but surely spreading “the change in manners which swept through the upper classes in the last half of the eighteenth century . . . over the whole society. The change in Whitsun took place unevenly and in stages, first by the rise of Club Day and the Clubs, then by the change in their character, as temperance and ‘rational recreation’ gradually encroached. The rise of the [national] affiliated orders shifted the focus of Whitsun from the village to the district fete or rally. Whitsun as a village festival was on its way out when the clubs began to disappear, when the survivors stopped marching through their own villages behind their own village bands, to sing and dance till the early hours of the morning, and when the Foresters and Oddfellows [national “friendly” orders], banners triumphant, marched into Headington Hill Hall for their annual fete and sports day, to run, jump and

parade with nary a drop to drink or a bit of fatty bacon to eat” after the formal procession to the Whitsunday or Whitmonday “club” service at the parish church (Howkins 1973, p. 62). For even this formal procession was abandoned by clubs and churches alike in favor of the fundraising afternoon fete, “offering a more controlled and elevating alternative to the general village feast,” according to rural historian Alun Howkins, who recalled from his own mid-twentieth-century Oxfordshire childhood that “Whitsun was indistinguishable from two things: the Buff[aloes]s outing, and the Sunday School treat. The club outing replaced club day in the course of the 1920s, by which time too the Sunday School treat often took the form of an outing,” the prospect of which was dangled in advance as a carrot to bribe children into behaving, or a stick if they failed to behave, as they risked being left behind. (Howkins 1973, pp. 58–59). Throughout Europe, Whitsuntide has always been, and largely continues to be, a favorite time for country outings for the entire family. See also Ascension; Carnival; Christmas; Days of the Dead (West); Dionysia; Easter; Elevation of the Cross; Epiphany; Holy Week; Lent; May Day; Midsummer; New Year (West); Rain Festivals; Sacred Heart; Saint George; Saint Lucy; Samhain; Shalako; Shavuot; Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis; Sukkot; Sunday; Transfiguration References Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough, Vol. 4: The Dying God. New York: Macmillan 1935. John Gunstone. The Feast of Pentecost: The Great Fifty Days in the Liturgy. London: Faith Press, 1967. Alun Howkins. Whitsun in Nineteenth Century Oxfordshire. Oxford [Ruskin College]: History Workshop Pamphlets No. 8, [1973]. Gail Kligman. C˘alu¸s Symbolic Transformation in Romanian Ritual. Foreword by Mircea Eliade. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

w h i t s u n t i d e | 497 Arthur Peck. The Morris and Sword Dances of England. Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, UK: The Morris Ring, 1978. A. R. Wright. British Calendar Customs. England. Vol. I: Movable Festivals. London: The FolkLore Society, 1936.

◗ WOMEN’S NEW YEAR See New Year (Japan)

◗ WORLD DAY OF ORTHODOX YOUTH See Candlemas

◗ WREN (DAY OF THE) ◗ WOMEN’S FESTIVAL See Cowherd and Weaving Maid

See Christmas

X ◗ XIA YUAN See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ XOCOTL HUETZI See Days of the Dead (West)

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499

Y ◗ YAM CUSTOM, YAM FESTIVAL See Adae

◗ YAMA DWITITYA See Divali

◗ YANAYER See New Year (Islam)

all Jewish people, regardless of religious and political differences. It comes on the tenth day of the month of Tishri (straddling September and October), at the culmination of several weeks of penitential preparation. The faithful spend most of this day at the synagogue saying confessional prayers, singing thanksgiving hymns, and asking for God’s favor over the coming year.

◗ YANDATSA See Days of the Dead (West)

◗ YAWM AL-JUM’A See Day of Assembly

◗ YEME BEN HAMETZARIM See Tisha be-Av

◗ YOM HA-BIKKURIM See Shavuot

◗ YOM HA-DIN, YOM HAZIKKARON, YOM TERU’AH See Rosh Hashanah

◗ YOM KIPPUR (JUDAISM) Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement” (meaning literally “covering over” in Hebrew), is the most solemn High Holy Day of the calendar for

Sacrifice and Scapegoat The Yom Kippur service describes the feast’s origin (known from Chapter 16 of Leviticus) in a purification ceremony for the First Temple of Jerusalem and its priesthood in view of the fall festival of booths or Sukkot. A Talmudic treatise entitled Yoma (Aramaic for “Day”) is devoted to the rules that used to govern this “sacred service” of the High Priest. This was the only day of the year where he could publicly say aloud God’s Unutterable Name, encrypted in the Tetragram as YHWH, and enter the Holy of Holies—the most sacred part of the Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The incense he took to burn inside the shrine symbolized by its fragrance God’s forgiveness of the sins of Israel. Most important though was the blood of a goat he sprinkled on and before the Ark’s mercy seat and then on the altar just outside the Holy of Holies. For this life substance is |

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ary critic René Girard argued in his widely influential 1972 book Violence and the Sacred.

Personal Penitence

Jews on synagogue steps on Yom Kippur, New York City, ca. 1910. (Library of Congress)

what restored the bonds of community between Yahweh and His people of Israel, obtaining His forgiveness for its sins and those of the priests. Yet this first sin offering was apparently not enough to ritually take the community out of harm’s way. Popular pressure seems to have imposed the practice of drawing lots between two goats: one to be sacrificed to God, and the other to be sent to the devil called Azazel, meaning “to carry away a goat.” The people’s sins were laid on the head of the second goat with the hands of the priest as he confessed them again, so that they could physically be expelled by sending the beast away to die in the wilderness, and so join the demon Azazel. If this was the literal scapegoat, singled out to receive and take away the evils threatening the community, it was far from being original, as such “scapegoating” rituals, though named after this Biblical example, are well known in all cultures. They may have provided the ambiguous sacrificial foundation for human society, as French liter-

Yet the God of the Bible came to privilege a more original sense that ritual observances alone cannot secure atonement, since He ordained “as a perpetual law” that His people “fast and refrain from work” on this day in order to be “clean of all [their] sins” (Leviticus 16:29–31). This is why, even though it may fall on a weekday, Yom Kippur is always treated as the “Sabbath of Sabbaths,” as the Bible calls it. According to a second century B.C.E. Bible commentary on Yom Kippur, “the Day of Atonement, on which there is no food or drink, the Torah states that one must honor it with clean clothes.” These are often white, as they stand for both purity from sin and the white linen robes worn by the High Priest as he entered the Holy of Holies, like the kippelot also worn by Orthodox Jews. Tradition has extended prohibitions to sexual intercourse, to all washing except for ritual ablutions, to the use of cosmetics and oils to anoint oneself, and to the wearing of shoes with leather soles or heels (since it would not do to ask forgiveness for oneself while standing on another creature’s skin). In this spirit, it used to be on the Yom Kippur of a jubilee year, which occured every fifty years (Leviticus 25:9–10), that all debts were canceled just as sins were forgiven, so that tenant-farmers became owners of their land, and even slaves were given back their freedom. A trace of this practice survives in the special Yom Kippur synagogue collection, when people pledge to make a given material contribution for the needy. The strict twenty-four-hour fast (from sunset to sunset) is the only one still observed in some form by a majority of Jews throughout the world. But in consideration of its hardships, Yom Kippur is not celebrated over two days in the Diaspora like the other biblical Jewish festivals.

y o m k i p p u r | 503

It is largely after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. that what had begun as a cosmic ritual of expiation came to be internalized as a day of personal repentance. In this ethical format, it marks the end of the tenday penitential season, which was ushered in by the blowing of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and that is brought to a close by the sound of this horn during the neila service peculiar to Yom Kippur. The latter goes back to the ancient evening prayers said by the laity throughout Israel while sacrifices were being made at the Second Temple or on public fasts. The neila is above all the most solemn service of the yearly liturgical cycle, as it marks the symbolic closing of heaven’s gates, when the judgment of God on sinners is ratified. The whole process of critically looking inward and turning to God in repentance was actually initiated even before the New Year, with the selihot prayers of the preceding month of Ellul, the last one of the year gone by. By the time of Yom Kippur, Jews are supposed to take care of forgiving others’ transgressions and being forgiven their own by them, so they can now focus on their remaining sins against God on this day for facing Him. Though the liturgy proper is hardly any longer than that of the Sabbath, the five Yom Kippur services go on from the morning to the evening of the tenth of Tishri. This is due to the many additional materials that are interpolated to sustain the moment, be it Torah readings, selihot, yizkor memorial prayers for the recently deceased, or optional piyyutim, poems for the festivals, collected in mahzorim. The largest mahzor is for the Ten Days of Penitence (Aseret Yeme Teshuva) between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Proclamation of a People The opening of the Day of Atonement is proclaimed by the whole congregation at the evening service on the ninth of Tishri. All are standing in front of the Ark of the Law, from which the scrolls have been taken out. Two re-

spected “pillars” of the community hold them up on either side of the rabbi. An eighthcentury Aramaic text is then sung, starting with the words Kol nidre (“All vows”) to express repentance for all unfulfilled vows, oaths, and promises made to God over the past year. It is read out three times over, so latecomers can hear it too. It is important that no Jews be left out—so much so that, in the Middle Ages, the Roman community added a sentence aimed at the victims of forced conversions to Christianity or to Islam. Many of them would pray in hiding on Yom Kippur, but those who dared to come to the synagogue could thus hear these comforting words of solidarity and trust in divine mercy: “We proclaim that it is permitted to pray together with those who have transgressed.” The plaintive medieval melody used for the Kol nidre proclamation in the Ashkenazi rite has such wide appeal that it has been taken as the basis for classical compositions by Max Bruch and Arnold Schoenberg. The power of its meaning in the face of the many trials of Jewish people’s loyalty to their heritage finds a compelling witness in the German religious thinker and Bible translator Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). After an intense discussion with his philosopher colleague Eugen Rosenstock (also born a Jew) through the night of July 7, 1913 in Leipzig, he decided to take the same step his friend already had and convert to Protestantism. However, he insisted on going through it not as a pagan, but as a Jew, coming to the consummation of his faith, which he barely knew at this point. On October 11 of that year, to test out his idea, he decided to attend the High Holy Day services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin before undergoing baptism. But the Kol nidre got through to him. He came out realizing that, as a Jew, he was already with God and did not need to seek Him elsewhere than within his own heritage, with its keen awareness of human sinfulness and responsibility, of divine love and forgiveness—

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central themes of the Yom Kippur service. Rosenzweig decided to recover this Jewish tradition for himself and for others like him who had lost touch with it in a Gentile and secular environment. His theology would revolve around the Jewish liturgical cycle and its calendar of festivals as the record of God’s revelatory intrusions into human history. It is true that the Day of Atonement is the only one of the Jewish festivals that is not based on a historical event. Yet it does supremely reveal and highlight their common premise: the healing efficacy of the acknowledgment of misdeeds in turning toward God for justice and mercy, both personally and as a community. See also Akitu; Rosh Hashanah; Sabbath; Sukkot References René Girard. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Mitch and Zhava Glaser. The Fall Feasts of Israel. Chicago: Moody Press, 1987. Philip Goodman. The Yom Kippur Anthology. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1992. Jules Harlow, ed. Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. New York: Rabbinical Assembly of America, 1972.

Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1968.

◗ YOM KIPPUR KATAN See Rosh Hodesh

◗ YOUNG HERBS (FESTIVAL OF) See Sekku

◗ YU LAN PEN See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ YUAN SHUO See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ YUAN XIAO See Lantern Festival

◗ YUAN ZHENG See New Year (China, Korea)

◗ YULETIDE See Christmas

Z ◗ ZAGMUK See Akitu

◗ ZHONG YUAN JIE See Days of the Dead (China, Korea, Japan)

◗ ZWÖLFER See Epiphany

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APPENDIXES

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APPENDIX I: Main Hindu Festivals and Buddha Day in North India 2001–2031 N.B.: Vikram years are grouped according to the sequence of months dictated by the irregular presence and varying location of an intercalary lunar month (Adhik Maas) in this lunisolar calendar.

HINDU FESTIVALS Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami Ganesha ChaturthI Pitripaksha To ADHIK MAAS EXTRA MONTH From To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (forms part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2057 2001

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2076 2020

Monday Wednesday Friday Monday Monday Monday Monday Saturday Sunday Wednesday Sunday Monday Lunar Tuesday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Thursday

29-01-2001 21-02-2001 09-03-2001 26-03-2001 26-03-2001 02-04-2001 02-04-2001 04-08-2001 12-08-2001 22-08-2001 02-09-2001 17-09-2001 Calendar 18-09-2001 16-10-2001 17-10-2001 25-10-2001 25-10-2001

Thursday Saturday Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Thursday Thursday Monday Wednesday Saturday Thursday Thursday Lunar Friday Friday Saturday Saturday Thursday

30-01-2020 22-02-2020 10-03-2020 25-03-2020 25-03-2020 02-04-2020 02-04-2020 03-08-2020 12-08-2020 22-08-2020 03-09-2020 17-09-2020 Calendar 18-09-2020 16-10-2020 17-10-2020 24-10-2020 22-10-2020

Friday Wednesday 2058 Thursday Monday

26-10-2001 14-11-2001 15-11-2001 07-05-2001

Sunday Saturday 2077 Sunday Thursday

25-10-2020 14-11-2020 15-11-2020 07-05-2020 (Continued on next page)

(Appendix I Cont.)

HINDU FESTIVALS

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2058 2002

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2059 2003

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2061 2005

Vikram Year: 2062 Gregorian Year: 2006

Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi

Sunday Wednesday Thursday

17-02-2002 13-03-2002 28-03-2002

Thursday Saturday Monday

06-02-2003 01-03-2003 17-03-2003

Sunday Tuesday Friday

13-02-2005 08-03-2005 25-03-2005

02-02-2006 26-02-2006 14-03-2006 15-03-2006

Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami

Saturday Saturday Sunday Sunday Thursday Friday (Smarta sect) Saturday (Vaishnava) Saturday Tuesday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Sunday

13-04-2002 13-04-2002 21-04-2002 21-04-2002 22-08-2002 30-08-2002 31-08-2002 31-08-2002 10-09-2002 21-09-2002 06-10-2002 07-10-2002 15-10-2002 13-10-2002

Wednesday Wednesday Friday Friday Tuesday Wednesday

02-04-2003 02-04-2003 11-04-2003 11-04-2003 12-08-2003 20-08-2003

Saturday Saturday Monday Monday Friday Saturday

09-04-2005 09-04-2005 18-04-2005 18-04-2005 19-08-2005 27-08-2005

Thursday Sunday begins on Tuesday as the Full Moon, celebrations on Wednesday Thursday Thursday Thursday Thursday Wednesday Wednesday

Sunday Wednesday Friday Saturday Saturday Thursday Sunday

31-08-2003 10-09-2003 26-09-2003 27-09-2003 04-10-2003 02-10-2003 05-10-2003

Wednesday Sunday Monday Tuesday

07-09-2005 18-09-2005 03-10-2005 04-10-2005

Sunday Friday Friday Saturday

27-08-2006 08-09-2006 22-09-2006 23-09-2006

Wednesday Tuesday

12-10-2005 11-10-2005

Tuesday Monday 2059 Tuesday Sunday

15-10-2002 04-11-2002 05-11-2002 26-05-2002

Saturday Sunday 2060 Sunday Friday

25-10-2003 26-10-2003 26-10-2003 16-05-2003

Wednesday Tuesday 2062 Wednesday Monday

12-10-2005 01-11-2005 02-11-2005 23-05-2005

Sunday Friday Saturday Monday Saturday 2063 Sunday Saturday

01-10-2006 29-09-2006 30-09-2006 02-10-2006 21-10-2006 22-10-2006 13-05-2006

Krishna Janmashtami Ganesha Chaturthi Pitripaksha To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (forms part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

30-03-2006 30-03-2006 06-04-2006 06-04-2006 04-08-2006 16-08-2006

HINDU FESTIVALS

Vikram Year: 2060 Gregorian Year: 2004

Vikram Year: 2063 Gregorian Year: 2007

Vikram Year: 2066 Gregorian Year: 2010

Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi

Monday Wednesday Saturday

26-01-2004 18-02-2004 06-03-2004

Sunday Sunday Tuesday Tuesday Lunar

21-03-2004 21-03-2004 30-03-2004 30-03-2004 Calendar

19-03-2007 19-03-2007 27-03-2007 27-03-2007 Calendar

Wednesday Friday begins on Sunday, celebrations on Monday Tuesday Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Lunar

20-01-2010 Monday 12-02-2010 Wednesday 28-02-2010 Friday 01-03-2010

Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami ADHIK MAAS EXTRA MONTH From To Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami Ganesha ChaturthI Pitripaksha To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (forms part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

Tuesday Friday begins on Saturday as the Full Moon,celebrations on Sunday Monday Monday Tuesday Tuesday Lunar

16-03-2010 16-03-2010 24-03-2010 24-03-2010 Calendar

Sunday Monday Monday Monday

18-07-2004 16-08-2004 30-08-2004 06-09-2004

Thursday Friday Tuesday Tuesday

17-05-2007 15-06-2007 28-08-2007 04-09-2007

Thursday Friday Tuesday Thursday

Saturday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Thursday

18-09-2004 28-09-2004 13-10-2004 14-10-2004 22-10-2004 21-10-2004

Saturday Thursday Thursday Friday Saturday Thursday Friday

15-09-2007 27-09-2007 11-10-2007 12-10-2007 20-10-2007 18-10-2007 19-10-2007

Friday

22-10-2004

Sunday

Friday 12-11-2004 Friday 2061 Saturday 13-11-2004 2064 Saturday Tuesday 04-05-2004 Wednesday

Vikram Year: 2079 Gregorian Year: 2023

Vikram Year: 2082 Gregorian Year: 2026

22-01-2018 14-02-2018 02-03-2018

Thursday Sunday Wednesday

26-01-2023 19-02-2023 08-03-2023

Friday Monday Tuesday

23-01-2026 16-02-2026 03-03-2026

Sunday SundayTo Monday Monday Lunar

18-03-2018 18-03-2018 26-03-2018 26-03-2018 Calendar

Wednesday Wednesday Thursday Thursday Lunar

22-03-2023 22-03-2023 30-03-2023 30-03-2023 Calendar

Thursday Thursday Friday Friday Lunar

19-03-2026 19-03-2026 27-03-2026 27-03-2026 Calendar

15-04-2010 14-05-2010 24-08-2010 02-09-2010

Wednesday Wednesday Sunday Monday

16-05-2018 13-06-2018 26-08-2018 03-09-2018

Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Thursday

18-07-2023 16-08-2023 30-08-2023 07-09-2023

Sunday Monday Thursday Friday

17-05-2026 15-06-2026 27-08-2026 04-09-2026

Saturday Friday Thursday Friday Saturday Thursday Friday

11-09-2010 24-09-2010 07-10-2010 08-10-2010 16-10-2010 14-10-2010 15-10-2010

Thursday Tuesday Monday Tuesday Thursday Tuesday

13-09-2018 25-09-2018 08-10-2018 09-10-2018 18-10-2018 16-10-2018

Tuesday Saturday Saturday Sunday Monday Saturday

19-09-2023 30-09-2023 14-10-2023 15-10-2023 23-10-2023 21-10-2023

Monday Sunday Saturday Sunday Tuesday Sunday

14-09-2026 27-09-2026 10-10-2026 11-10-2026 20-10-2026 18-10-2026

21-10-2007

Sunday

17-10-2010

Friday

19-10-2018

Tuesday

24-10-2023

Wednesday

21-10-2026

09-11-2007 10-11-2007 02-05-2007

Friday 2067 Saturday Thursday

05-11-2010 06-11-2010 27-05-2010

Wednesday 2075 Thursday Sunday

07-11-2018 08-11-2018 29-04-2018

Sunday 2080 Monday Friday

12-11-2023 13-11-2023 05-05-2023

Sunday 2083 Monday Friday

08-11-2026 09-11-2026 01-05-2026

23-01-2007 16-02-2007 03-03-2007 04-03-2007

Vikram Year: 2074 Gregorian Year: 2018

(Continued on next page)

(Appendix I Cont.) HINDU FESTIVALS Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

Monday Thursday begins on Friday as the Full Moon, celebrations on Saturday Hindu New Year Sunday Ramayana Week Sunday To Monday Ramanavami Monday Raksha Bandhan Saturday Krishna Janmashtami Sunday Ganesha Chaturthi Wednesday Pitripaksha Tuesday To Monday Navaratra Tuesday To Wednesday Sarasvati Puja Monday (forms part of Navaratra) Tuesday Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Thursday Divali Tuesday Vikram New Year 2065 Wednesday Buddha Day (Vaishakha) Monday

2064 2008

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2065 2009

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2067 2011

11-02-2008 06-03-2008 21-03-2008 22-03-2008

Saturday Monday Wednesday

31-01-2009 23-02-2009 11-03-2009

Tuesday Thursday begins on Saturday, celebrations on Sunday

08-02-2011 03-03-2011 19-03-2011 20-03-2011

06-04-2008 06-04-2008 14-04-2008 14-04-2008 16-08-2008 24-08-2008 03-09-2008 16-09-2008 29-09-2008 30-09-2008 08-10-2008 06-10-2008 07-10-2008 09-10-2008 28-10-2008 29-10-2008 19-05-2008

Friday Friday Friday Friday Wednesday Friday Sunday Saturday Friday Saturday Sunday Friday Saturday Monday Saturday 2066 Sunday Friday

27-03-2009 27-03-2009 03-04-2009 03-04-2009 05-08-2009 14-08-2009 23-08-2009 05-09-2009 18-09-2009 19-09-2009 27-09-2009 25-09-2009 26-09-2009 28-09-2009 17-10-2009 18-10-2009 08-05-2009

Monday Monday Tuesday Tuesday Saturday Monday Thursday Tuesday Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Monday Tuesday Thursday Wednesday 2068 Thursday Tuesday

04-04-2011 04-04-2011 12-04-2011 12-04-2011 13-08-2011 22-08-2011 01-09-2011 13-09-2011 27-09-2011 28-09-2011 05-10-2011 03-10-2011 04-10-2011 06-10-2011 26-10-2011 27-10-2011 17-05-2011

HINDU FESTIVALS

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2068 2012

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2087 2031

Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi

Saturday Monday Thursday

28-01-2012 20-02-2012 08-03-2012

27-01-2031 20-02-2031 09-03-2031

Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami ADHIK MAAS EXTRA MONTH From To Ganesha Chaturthi Pitripaksha To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (forms part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

Friday Friday Sunday Sunday Thursday Friday Lunar Saturday Sunday Wednesday Sunday Monday Tuesday Tuesday

23-03-2012 23-03-2012 01-04-2012 01-04-2012 02-08-2012 10-08-2012 Calendar 18-08-2012 16-09-2012 19-09-2012 30-09-2012 15-10-2012 16-10-2012 23-10-2012

Monday Thursday begins on Saturday, celebrations on Sunday Sunday Sunday Monday Monday Saturday Sunday Lunar Tuesday Tuesday Saturday Wednesday Thursday Friday Friday

23-03-2031 23-03-2031 01-04-2031 01-04-2031 02-08-2031 10-08-2031 Calendar 19-08-2031 16-09-2031 20-09-2031 01-10-2031 16-10-2031 17-10-2031 24-10-2031

Wednesday Saturday Friday 2088 Saturday Tuesday

22-10-2031 25-10-2031 14-11-2031 15-11-2031 06-05-2031

Sunday 21-10-2012 Wednesday 24-10-2012 Tuesday 13-11-2012 2069 Wednesday 14-11-2012 Sunday 06-05-2012 or Saturday 05-05-2012

(Continued on next page)

(Appendix I Cont.)

HINDU FESTIVALS Vikram Year: Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami Ganesha Chaturthi Pitripaksha To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (forms part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

2069 Gregorian Year: 2013

Vikram Year: 2070 Gregorian Year: 2014

Vikram Year: 2071 Gregorian Year: 2015

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2072 2016

Vikram Year: 2073 Gregorian Year: 2017

Friday Sunday Wednesday Thursday Thursday Saturday Saturday Wednesday Tuesday Wednesday

15-02-2013 10-03-2013 27-03-2013 11-04-2013 11-04-2013 20-04-2013 20-04-2013 21-08-2013 20-08-2013 28-08-2013

Tuesday Friday Monday Monday Monday Tuesday Tuesday Sunday

04-02-2014 28-02-2014 17-03-2014 31-03-2014 31-03-2014 08-04-2014 08-04-2014 10-08-2014

Saturday Tuesday Friday Saturday Saturday Saturday Saturday Sunday

24-01-2015 17-02-2015 06-03-2015 21-03-2015 21-03-2015 28-03-2015 28-03-2015 29-08-2015

Friday Tuesday Wednesday Friday Friday Friday Friday Thursday

12-02-2016 08-03-2016 23-03-2016 08-04-2016 08-04-2016 15-04-2016 15-04-2016 18-08-2016

Wednesday Saturday Monday Tuesday Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Monday

01-02-2017 25-02-2017 13-03-2017 28-03-2017 28-03-2017 05-04-2017 05-04-2017 07-08-2017

Sunday

17-08-2014

Saturday

05-09-2015

Thursday

25-08-2016

Tuesday

15-08-2017

Monday Friday Friday Saturday Sunday Friday

09-09-2013 20-09-2013 04-10-2013 05-10-2013 13-10-2013 11-10-2013

Friday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Wednesday

29-08-2014 09-09-2014 24-09-2014 25-09-2014 03-10-2014 01-10-2014

Thursday Monday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Tuesday

17-09-2015 28-09-2015 12-10-2015 13-10-2015 21-10-2015 20-10-2015

Monday Saturday Friday Saturday Monday Saturday

05-09-2016 17-09-2016 30-09-2016 01-10-2016 10-10-2016 08-10-2016

Friday Thursday Wednesday Thursday Friday Wednesday

25-08-2017 07-09-2017 20-09-2017 21-09-2017 29-09-2017 27-09-2017

Monday

14-10-2013

Saturday

04-10-2014

Thursday

22-10-2015

Tuesday

11-10-2016

Saturday

30-09-2017

Sunday 2070 Monday Saturday

03-11-2013 04-11-2013 25-05-2013

Thursday 2071 Friday Wednesday

23-10-2014 24-10-2014 14-05-2014

Wednesday 2072 Thursday Sunday

11-11-2015 12-11-2015 03-05-2015

Sunday 2073 Monday Saturday

30-10-2016 31-10-2016 21-05-2016

Thursday 2074 Friday Wednesday

19-10-2017 20-10-2017 10-05-2017

HINDU FESTIVALS

Vikram Year: 2075 Gregorian Year: 2019

Vikram Year 2077 Gregorian Year: 2021

Vikram Year 2078 Gregorian Year: 2022

Vikram Year Gregorian Year:

2080 2024

Vikram Year 2081 Gregorian Year: 2025

Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami Ganesha Chaturthi Pitripaksha To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

Sunday Tuesday Thursday Saturday Saturday Sunday Sunday Thursday Friday (Smarta) Saturday Monday Saturday Saturday Sunday Monday

10-02-2019 05-03-2019 21-03-2019 06-04-2019 06-04-2019 14-04-2019 14-04-2019 15-08-2019 23-08-2019 24-08-2019 02-09-2019 14-09-2019 28-09-2019 29-09-2019 07-10-2019

Tuesday Friday Monday Tuesday Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Sunday Monday

16-02-2021 12-03-2021 29-03-2021 13-04-2021 13-04-2021 21-04-2021 21-04-2021 22-08-2021 30-08-2021

Saturday Tuesday Friday Saturday Saturday Sunday Sunday Thursday Friday

05-02-2022 01-03-2022 18-03-2022 02-04-2022 02-04-2022 10-04-2022 10-04-2022 11-08-2022 19-08-2022

Wednesday Saturday Monday Tuesday TuesdayTo Wednesday Wednesday Monday Monday

14-02-2024 09-03-2024 25-03-2024 09-04-2024 09-04-2024 17-04-2024 17-04-2024 19-08-2024 26-08-2024

Sunday Wednesday Friday Sunday Sunday Sunday Sunday Saturday Saturday

02-02-2025 26-02-2025 14-03-2025 30-03-2025 30-03-2025 06-04-2025 06-04-2025 09-08-2025 16-08-2025

Friday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Thursday

10-09-2021 21-09-2021 06-10-2021 07-10-2021 14-10-2021

Wednesday Sunday Sunday Monday Tuesday

31-08-2022 11-09-2022 25-09-2022 26-09-2022 04-10-2022

Saturday Wednesday Wednesday Thursday Saturday

07-09-2024 18-09-2024 02-10-2024 03-10-2024 12-10-2024

Wednesday Monday Sunday Monday Wednesday

27-08-2025 08-09-2025 21-09-2025 22-09-2025 01-10-2025

Saturday Tuesday

05-10-2019 08-10-2019

Tuesday Friday

12-10-2021 15-10-2021

Sunday Wednesday

02-10-2022 05-10-2022

Thursday Sunday

10-10-2024 13-10-2024

Monday Thursday

29-09-2025 02-10-2025

Sunday 2076 Monday Saturday

27-10-2019 28-10-2019 18-05-2019

Thursday 2078 Friday Wednesday

04-11-2021 05-11-2021 26-05-2021

Monday 2079 Tuesday Monday

24-10-2022 25-10-2022 16-05-2022

Friday 2081 Saturday Thursday

01-11-2024 02-11-2024 23-05-2024

Tuesday 21-10-2025 2082 Wednesday 22-10-2025 Monday 12-05-2025

(Continued on next page)

(Appendix I Cont.) HINDU FESTIVALS

Vikram Year: 2085 Gregorian Year: 2029

Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi ADHIK MAAS EXTRA MONTH From To Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami Ganesha Chaturthi Pitripaksha To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (forms part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

Friday Sunday Thursday Lunar Friday Friday Saturday Saturday Monday Monday Thursday Saturday Tuesday Sunday Sunday Monday Monday Saturday

19-01-2029 11-02-2029 01-03-2029 Calendar 16-03-2029 13-04-2029 14-04 -2029 14-04-2029 23-04-2029 23-04-2029 23-08-2029 01-09-2029 11-09-2029 23-09-2029 07-10-2029 08-10-2029 15-10-2029 13-10-2029

Tuesday Monday 2086 Tuesday Sunday

16-10-2029 05-11-2029 06-11-2029 27-05-2029

HINDU FESTIVALS Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri Holi Hindu New Year Ramayana Week To Ramanavami Raksha Bandhan Krishna Janmashtami Ganesha Chaturthi Pitripaksha To Navaratra To Sarasvati Puja (forms part of Navaratra) Vijay Dashami (Dusshera) Divali Vikram New Year Buddha Day (Vaishakha)

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2083 2027

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2084 2028

Vikram Year: Gregorian Year:

2086 2030

Thursday Saturday Monday Wednesday Wednesday Thursday Thursday Tuesday Wednesday Saturday Thursday Wednesday Thursday Friday

11-02-2027 06-03-2027 22-03-2027 07-04-2027 07-04-2027 15-04-2027 15-04-2027 17-08-2027 25-08-2027 04-09-2027 16-09-2027 29-09-2027 30-09-2027 08-10-2027

Monday Wednesday Saturday Monday Monday Monday Monday Saturday Sunday Wednesday Monday Monday Tuesday Tuesday

31-01-2028 23-02-2028 11-03-2028 27-03-2028 27-03-2028 03-04-2028 03-04-2028 05-08-2028 13-08-2028 23-08-2028 04-09-2028 18-09-2028 19-09-2028 26-09-2028

Thursday Saturday Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday Friday Friday Tuesday Wednesday Sunday Thursday Friday Saturday Saturday

07-02-2030 02-03-2030 20-03-2030 03-04-2030 03-04-2030 12-04-2030 12-04-2030 13-08-2030 21-08-2030 01-09-2030 12-09-2030 27-09-2030 28-09-2030 05-10-2030

Wednesday Saturday Friday 2084 Saturday Thursday

06-10-2027 09-10-2027 29-10-2027 30-10-2027 20-05-2027

Sunday Wednesday Tuesday 2085 Wednesday Monday

24-09-2028 27-09-2028 17-10-2028 18-10-2028 08-05-2028

Thursday Sunday Saturday 2087 Sunday Friday

03-10-2030 06-10-2030 26-10-2030 27-10-2030 17-05-2030

These tables are based on those appearing on the award-winning website hinduism.co.za (http://www.hinduism.co.za/newpage3.htm), first published on the Internet on June 24,1998.

APPENDIX II: Main Muslim Festivals 2001–2050 A.H.

Day of the Hegira

Ashura

Mawlid

Ramadan

Eid-al-Fitr

Eid-al-Adha

A.H.

Day of the Hegira

Ashura

Mawlid

Ramadan

Eid-al-Fitr

Eid-al-Adha

1422 1423 1424 1425 1426 1427 1428 1429 1430 1431 1432 1433 1434 1435 1436 1437 1438 1439 1440 1441 1442 1443 1444 1445 1446 1447

26-03-2001 15-03-2002 05-03-2003 22-02-2004 10-02-2005 31-01-2006 20-01-2007 10-01-2008 29-12-2008 18-12-2009 18-12-2010 27-11-2011 15-11-2012 05-11-2013 25-10-2014 15-10-2015 03-10-2016 22-09-2017 12-09-2018 01-09-2019 20-08-2020 10-08-2021 30-07-2022 19-07-2023 08-07-2024 27-06-2025

05-03-2001 25-03-2002 15-03-2003 03-03-2004 20-02-2005 10-02-2006 30-01-2007 20-01-2008 08-01-2009 28-12-2009 28-12-2010 07-12-2011 25-11-2012 15-11-2013 04-11-2014 25-10-2015 13-10-2016 02-10-2017 22-09-2018 11-09-2019 30-08-2020 20-08-2021 09-08-2022 29-07-2023 18-07-2024 07-07-2025

05-06-2001 25-05-2002 15-05-2003 03-05-2004 22-02-2005 12-04-2006 11-04-2007 21-03-2008 10-03-2009 27-02-2010 17-02-2011 06-02-2012 25-01-2013 15-01-2014 04-01-2015 25-12-2015 13-12-2016 02-12-2017 22-11-2018 11-11-2019 30-10-2020 20-10-2021 09-10-2022 28-09-2023 17-09-2024 06-09-2025

17-11-2001 06-11-2002 27-10-2003 15-10-2004 04-10-2005 24-09-2006 13-09-2007 02-09-2008 22-08-2009 11-08-2010 01-08-2011 20-07-2012 09-07-2013 29-06-2014 18-06-2015 07-06-2016 27-05-2017 16-05-2018 06-05-2019 24-04-2020 13-04-2021 03-04-2022 23-03-2023 11-03-2024 01-03-2025 18-09-2026

17-12-2001 06-12-2002 26-11-2003 14-11-2004 03-11-2005 24-10-2006 13-10-2007 02-09-2008 21-09-2009 10-09-2010 31-08-2011 10-08-2012 08-08-2013 29-07-2014 18-07-2015 07-07-2016 26-06-2017 15-06-2018 05-06-2019 24-05-2020 13-05-2021 03-05-2022 22-04-2023 10-04-2024 31-03-2025 20-03-2026

25-02-2002 13-02-2003 03-02-2004 22-01-2005 11-01-2006 01-01-2007 21-12-2007 10-12-2008 29-11-2009 18-11-2010 08-11-2011 27-10-2012 16-10-2013 06-10-2014 25-09-2015 14-09-2016 03-09-2017 23-08-2018 13-08-2019 01-08-2020 21-07-2021 11-07-2022 30-06-2023 18-06-2024 08-06-2025 28-05-2026

1448 1449 1450 1451 1452 1453 1454 1455 1456 1457 1458 1459 1460 1461 1462 1463 1464 1465 1466 1467 1468 1469 1470 1471 1472 1473

17-06-2026 07-06-2027 25-05-2028 15-05-2029 04-05-2030 23-04-2031 12-04-2032 01-04-2033 21-03-2034 11-03-2035 28-02-2036 17-02-2037 06-02-2038 26-01-2039 16-01-2040 04-01-2041 24-12-2041 14-12-2042 03-12-2043 22-11-2044 11-10-2045 31-11-2046 21-10-2047 09-10-2048 28-09-2049 17-09-2050

27-06-2026 16-06-2027 04-06-2028 25-05-2029 14-05-2030 03-05-2031 22-04-2032 11-04-2033 31-03-2034 21-03-2034 10-03-2036 27-02-2037 16-02-2038 05-02-2039 26-01-2040 13-01-2041 03-01-2042 24-12-2042 13-12-2043 01-12-2044 21-11-2045 10-11-2046 31-10-2047 19-10-2048 07-10-2049 27-09-2050

27-08-2026 16-08-2027 04-08-2028 25-07-2029 14-07-2030 03-07-2031 22-06-2032 11-06-2033 31-05-2034 21-05-2035 09-05-2036 29-04-2037 18-04-2038 07-04-2039 27-03-2040 16-03-2041 05-03-2042 23-02-2043 12-02-2044 01-02-2045 21-01-2046 10-01-2047 31-12-2047 19-12-2048 07-12-2049 27-11-2050

08-02-2027 28-01-2028 16-01-2029 06-01-2030 26-12-2030 15-12-2031 04-12-2032 23-11-2033 12-12-2034 02-11-2035 21-10-2036 11-10-2037 30-09-2038 19-09-2039 08-09-2040 28-08-2041 17-08-2042 07-08-2043 26-07-2044 16-07-2045 05-07-2046 24-06-2047 13-06-2048 02-06-2049 22-05-2050 12-05-2051

10-03-2027 27-02-2028 15-02-2029 05-02-2030 25-01-2031 14-01-2032 03-01-2033 23-12-2033 12-12-2034 02-12-2035 20-11-2036 11-10-2037 30-10-2038 19-10-2039 08-10-2040 27-09-2041 16-09-2042 06-09-2043 25-08-2044 15-08-2045 04-08-2046 24-07-2047 13-07-2048 02-07-2049 21-06-2050 10-06-2051

18-05-2027 07-05-2028 25-04-2029 15-04-2030 04-04-2031 23-03-2032 13-03-2033 02-03-2034 19-02-2035 09-02-2036 28-01-2037 18-01-2038 07-01-2039 27-12-2039 16-12-2040 05-12-2041 24-11-2042 14-11-2043 02-11-2044 23-10-2045 12-10-2046 01-10-2047 20-09-2048 09-09-2049 28-08-2050 08-08-2051

Dates of Mi’raj 1997–2020: 28 Nov 1997; 17 Nov 1998; 06 Nov 1999; 26 Oct 2000; 15 Oct 2001; 04 Oct 2002; 24 Sep 2003; 12 Sep 2004; 01 Sep 2005; 22 Aug 2006; 11 Aug 2007; 31 Jul 2008; 20 Jul 2009; 09 Jul 2010; 09 Jun 2011; 17 Jun 2012; 06 Jun 2013; 27 May 2014; 16 May 2015; 05 May 2016; 24 Apr 2017; 13 Apr 2018; 03 Apr 2019; 22 Mar 2020.The dates of Mir’aj are taken from the web page http://www.holidayfestival.com/Islam.html (© Brian Prescott-Decie, 1998,1999),last modified on Sunday,28 April,2002. Other dates,except for corrections,are taken from the table provided in Michel Coireault,Les Fêtes.Judaïsme, Christianisme, Islam. Paris:Éditions du Cerf,1994,pp.192–195.

APPENDIX III: Main Jewish Holidays in Israel 2001–2050 JEWISH HOLIDAYS

5762/2001–02

5763/2002–03

5764/2003–04

5765/2004–05

5766/2005–06

5767/2006–07

5768/2007–08

5769/2008–09

5770/2009–10

5771/2010–11

Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur Sukkot To Hoshana Rabba Simhat Torah Hanukkah To Purim To Passover Shavuot

18-09-2001 27-09-2001 02-10-2001 07-10-2001 08-10-2001 09-10-2001 10-12-2001 17-12-2001 09-03-2002 10-03-2002 08-04-2002 28-05-2002

07-09-2002 16-09-2002 21-09-2002 26-09-2002 27-09-2002 28-09-2002 30-11-2002 07-12-2002 26-02-2003 27-02-2003 28-03-2003 17-05-2003

27-09-2003 06-10-2003 11-10-2003 16-10-2003 17-10-2003 18-10-2003 20-12-2003 27-12-2003 18-03-2004 18-03-2004 17-04-2004 06-06-2004

16-09-2004 25-09-2004 30-09-2004 05-10-2004 06-10-2004 07-10-2004 08-12-2004 05-12-2004 07-03-2005 08-03-2005 06-04-2005 26-05-2005

04-10-2005 13-10-2005 18-10-2005 23-10-2005 24-10-2005 25-10-2005 26-12-2005 02-01-2006 25-03-2006 26-03-2006 24-04-2006 13-06-2006

23-09-2006 02-10-2006 07-10-2006 12-10-2006 13-10-2006 14-10-2006 16-12-2006 23-12-2006 14-03-2007 15-03-2007 13-04-2007 02-06-2007

13-09-2007 22-09-2007 27-09-2007 02-10-2007 03-10-2007 04-10-2007 05-12-2007 12-12-2007 04-03-2008 05-03-2008 03-04-2008 23-05-2008

30-09-2008 09-10-2008 14-10-2008 19-10-2008 20-10-2008 21-10-2008 22-12-2008 29-12-2008 21-03-2009 22-03-2009 20-04-2009 09-06-2009

19-09-2009 28-09-2009 03-10-2009 08-10-2009 09-10-2009 10-10-2009 12-10-2009 19-10-2009 10-03-2010 11-03-2010 09-04-2010 19-05-2010

09-09-2010 18-09-2010 23-09-2010 28-09-2010 29-09-2010 30-09-2010 02-12-2010 09-12-2010 28-02-2011 29-02-2011 30-03-2011 08-06-2011

JEWISH HOLIDAYS

5772/2011–12

5773/2012–13

5774/2013–14

5775/2014–15

5776/2015–16

5777/2016–17

5778/2017–18

5779/2018–19

5780/2019–20

5781/2020–21

Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur Sukkot To Hoshana Rabba Simhat Torah Hanukkah To Purim To Passover Shavuot

29-09-2011 08-10-2011 13-10-2011 18-10-2011 19-10-2011 21-10-2011 21-12-2011 28-12-2011 20-03-2012 21-03-2012 19-04-2012 08-06-2012

17-09-2012 26-09-2012 01-10-2012 06-10-2012 07-10-2002 09-10-2012 09-12-2012 16-12-2012 08-03-2013 09-03-2013 07-05-2013 27-06-2013

05-09-2013 14-09-2013 19-09-2013 24-09-2013 25-09-2013 27-09-2013 28-11-2013 05-12-2013 24-03-2014 25-03-2014 26-03-2014 15-05-2014

25-09-2014 04-10-2014 09-10-2014 14-10-2014 15-10-2014 17-09-2014 17-12-2014 24-12-2014 16-03-2015 17-03-2015 15-04-2015 04-06-2005

14-09-2015 23-10-2015 28-09-2015 03-10-2015 04-10-2015 06-10-2015 07-12-2015 14-12-2015 05-03-2016 06-03-2016 04-04-2016 24-05-2016

03-10-2016 12-10-2016 17-10-2016 22-10-2016 23-10-2016 25-10-2016 25-12-2016 01-01-2016 24-03-2017 25-03-2017 23-04-2017 12-06-2017

21-09-2017 30-09-2017 05-10-2017 10-10-2017 11-10-2017 13-10-2017 13-12-2017 20-12-2017 12-03-2018 13-03-2018 11-04-2018 31-05-2018

10-09-2018 19-10-2018 24-09-2018 29-09-2018 30-09-2018 02-10-2018 03-12-2018 10-12-2018 01-03-2019 02-03-2019 31-03-2019 20-05-2019

30-09-2019 09-10-2019 14-10-2019 19-10-2019 20-10-2019 22-10-2019 23-12-2019 30-12-2019 21-03-2020 22-03-2020 20-04-2020 09-06-2020

19-09-2020 28-09-2020 03-10-2020 08-10-2020 09-10-2020 11-10-2020 11-12-2020 18-12-2020 10-03-2021 11-03-2021 09-04-2021 29-05-2021

( Continued on next page)

(Appendix III Cont.) JEWISH HOLIDAYS

5782/2021–22

5783/2022–23

5784/2023–24

5785/2024–25

5786/2025–26

5787/2026–27

5788/2027–28

5789/2028–29

5790/2029–30

5791/2030–31

Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur Sukkot To Hoshana Rabba Simhat Torah Hanukkah To Purim To Passover Shavuot

07-09-2021 16-09-2021 21-09-2021 26-09-2021 27-09-2021 29-09-2021 29-11-2021 06-12-2021 26-03-2022 27-03-2022 28-03-2022 17-05-2022

26-09-2022 05-10-2022 10-10-2022 15-10-2022 16-10-2022 18-10-2022 19-12-2022 26-12-2022 17-03-2023 18-03-2023 16-04-2023 05-06-2023

16-09-2023 25-09-2023 30-09-2023 05-10-2023 06-10-2023 08-10-2023 08-12-2023 15-12-2023 07-03-2024 08-03-2024 06-04-2024 26-05-2024

03-10-2024 12-10-2024 17-10-2024 22-10-2024 23-10-2024 25-10-2024 26-12-2024 02-12-2025 24-03-2025 25-03-2025 23-04-2025 12-06-2025

23-09-2025 02-10-2025 07-10-2025 12-10-2025 13-10-2025 15-10-2025 15-12-2025 22-12-2025 14-03-2026 15-03-2026 13-04-2026 02-06-2026

12-09-2026 21-09-2026 26-09-2026 01-10-2026 02-10-2026 04-10-2026 05-12-2026 12-12-2026 03-03-2027 04-03-2027 02-04-2027 22-05-2027

02-10-2027 11-10-2027 16-10-2027 21-10-2027 22-10-2027 24-10-2027 25-12-2027 01-01-2027 23-03-2028 24-03-2028 22-04-2028 11-06-2028

21-09-2028 30-09-2028 05-10-2028 10-10-2028 11-10-2028 13-10-2028 13-12-2028 20-12-2028 12-03-2029 13-03-2029 11-04-2029 31-05-2029

10-09-2029 19-09-2029 24-09-2029 29-09-2029 30-09-2029 02-10-2029 02-09-2029 09-09-2029 02-03-2030 03-03-2030 31-03-2030 20-05-2030

28-09-2030 07-10-2030 12-10-2030 17-10-2030 18-10-2030 20-10-2030 21-12-2030 28-12-2030 19-03-2031 20-03-2031 18-04-2031 07-06-2031

JEWISH HOLIDAYS

5792/2031–32

5793/2032–33

5794/2033–34

5795/2034–35

5796/2035–36

5797/2036–37

5798/2037–38

5799/2038–39

5800/2039–40

5801/2040–41

Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur Sukkot To Hoshana Rabba Simhat Torah Hanukkah To Purim To Passover Shavuot

18-09-2031 27-09-2031 02-10-2031 07-10-2031 08-10-2031 10-10-2031 10-12-2031 17-12-2031 09-03-2032 10-03-2032 08-04-2032 28-05-2032

06-09-2032 15-09-2032 20-09-2032 25-09-2032 26-09-2032 28-09-2032 28-11-2032 05-12-2032 26-02-2033 27-02-2033 27-03-2033 16-05-2033

24-09-2033 03-10-2033 08-10-2033 13-10-2033 14-10-2033 16-10-2033 17-12-2033 24-12-2033 05-03-2034 06-03-2034 14-04-2034 03-06-2034

14-09-2034 23-09-2034 28-09-2034 03-10-2034 04-10-2034 06-10-2034 07-12-2034 14-12-2034 25-03-2035 26-03-2035 04-04-2035 24-05-2035

04-10-2035 13-10-2035 18-10-2035 23-10-2035 24-10-2035 26-10-2035 26-12-2035 02-01-2036 13-03-2036 14-03-2036 24-04-2036 13-06-2036

22-09-2036 01-10-2036 06-10-2036 11-10-2036 12-10-2036 14-10-2036 14-12-2036 21-12-2036 13-03-2037 14-03-2037 12-04-2037 01-06-2037

10-09-2037 19-09-2037 24-09-2037 29-09-2037 30-09-2037 02-10-2037 03-12-2037 10-12-2037 01-03-2038 02-03-2038 31-03-2038 20-05-2038

30-09-2038 09-10-2038 14-10-2038 19-10-2038 20-10-2038 22-10-2038 22-12-2038 29-12-2038 21-03-2039 22-03-2039 20-04-2039 09-06-2039

19-09-2039 28-09-2039 03-10-2039 08-10-2039 09-10-2039 11-10-2039 12-12-2039 19-12-2039 10-03-2040 11-03-2040 09-04-2040 29-05-2040

08-09-2040 17-09-2040 22-09-2040 27-09-2040 28-09-2040 30-09-2040 30-11-2040 07-12-2040 28-02-2041 29-02-2041 29-03-2041 18-05-2041

JEWISH HOLIDAYS

5802/2041–42

5803/2042–43

5804/2043–44

5805/2044–45

5806/2045–46

5807/2046–47

5808/2047–48

5809/2048–49

5810/2049–50

5811/2050–51

Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur Sukkot To Hoshana Rabba Simhat Torah Hanukkah To Purim To Passover Shavuot

26-09-2041 05-10-2041 10-10-2041 15-10-2041 16-10-2041 18-10-2041 18-12-2041 25-12-2041 17-03-2042 18-03-2042 16-04-2042 05-06-2042

15-09-2042 24-09-2042 29-09-2042 04-10-2042 05-10-2042 07-10-2042 08-12-2042 15-12-2042 06-03-2043 07-03-2043 05-04-2043 25-05-2043

05-10-2043 14-10-2043 19-10-2043 24-10-2043 25-10-2043 27-10-2043 27-12-2043 03-01-2044 26-03-2044 27-03-2044 25-04-2044 14-06-2044

22-09-2044 01-10-2044 06-10-2044 11-10-2044 12-10-2044 14-10-2044 15-12-2044 22-12-2044 13-03-2045 14-03-2045 12-04-2045 01-06-2045

12-09-2045 21-09-2045 26-09-2045 01-10-2045 24-10-2045 04-10-2045 04-12-2045 11-12-2045 03-03-2046 04-03-2046 02-04-2046 22-05-2046

01-10-2046 10-10-2046 15-10-2046 20-10-2046 21-10-2046 23-10-2046 24-12-2046 31-12-2046 22-03-2047 23-03-2047 21-04-2047 10-06-2047

21-09-2047 30-09-2047 05-10-2047 10-10-2047 11-11-2047 13-10-2047 14-12-2047 20-12-2047 12-03-2048 13-03-2048 11-04-2048 31-05-2048

08-09-2048 17-09-2048 22-09-2048 27-09-2048 28-09-2048 30-09-2048 30-11-2048 07-12-2048 28-02-2049 29-02-2049 29-03-2049 18-05-2049

27-09-2049 06-10-2049 11-10-2049 16-10-2049 17-10-2049 19-10-2049 20-12-2049 27-12-2049 18-03-2050 19-03-2050 17-04-2050 06-06-2050

17-09-2050 26-09-2050 01-10-2050 06-10-2050 07-10-2050 09-10-2050 10-12-2050 17-12-2050 08-02-2051 09-02-2051 07-04-2051 27-05-2051

Dates are taken from the table provided in Michel Coireault,Les Fêtes.Judaïsme, Christianisme, Islam.Paris:Éditions du Cerf,1994,pp.184–187. Some Minor Jewish Holidays 2000–2015: Tu bi-Shevat: 5760:Sat.22 January 2000 5761:Thu.8 February 2001 5762:Mon.28 January 2002 5763:Sat.18 January 2003 5764:Sat.7 February 2004 5765:Tue.25 January 2005 5766 :Mon.13 February 2006 5767:Sat.3 February 2007 5768:Tue.22 January 2008 5769:Mon.9 February 2009 5770:Sat.30 January 2010 5771:Thu.20 January 2011 5772:Wed.8 February 2012 5773:Sat.26 January 2013 5774:Thu.16 January 2014 5775:Wed.4 February 2015. Lag ba-Omer: 5760:Tue.23 May 2000 5761:Fri.11 May 2001 5762:Tue.30 April 2002 5763:Tue.20 May 2003 5764:Sun.9 May 2004 5765:Fri.27 May 2005 5766 Tue.16 May 2006 5767:Sun.6 May 2007 5768:Fri.23 May 2008 5769:Tue.12 May 2009 5770:Sun.2 May 2010 5771 Sun.22 May 2011 5772 Thu.10 May 2012 5773 Sun.28 April 2013 5774:Sun.18 May 2014 5775:Thu.7 May 2015 Tishah be-Av: 5760:Thu.10 August 2000 5761:Sun.29 July 2001 5762:Thu.18 July 2002 5763:Thu.7 August 2003 5764:Tue.27 July 2004 5765:Sun.14 August 2005 5766: Thu.3 August 2006 5767:Tue.24 July 2007 5768:Sun.10 August 2008 5769:Thu.30 July 2009 5770:Tue.20 July 2010 5771:Tue.9 August 2011 5772:Sun.29 July 2012 5773 Tue.16 July 2013 5774:Tue.5 August 2014 5775:Sun.26 July 201 Dates generated with the HaYom© On-Line Hebrew Calendar program (http://www.hayom.com).

APPENDIX IV: Main Moveable Feasts of the Western Church 2001–2050 Year

Ash Wednesday

Palm Sunday

Easter

Ascension

Pentecost

Year

Ash Wednesday

Palm Sunday

Easter

Ascension

Pentecost

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

28-02-2001 13-02-2002 05-03-2003 24-02-2004 09-02-2005 01-03-2006 21-02-2007 05-02-2008 25-02-2009 17-02-2010 09-03-2011 21-02-2012 13-02-2013 05-03-2014 18-02-2015 09-02-2016 01-03-2017 14-02-2018 06-03-2019 25-02-2020 17-02-2021 02-03-2022 22-02-2023 13-02-2024 05-03-2025

08-04-2001 24-03-2002 13-04-2003 04-04-2004 20-03-2005 09-04-2006 01-04-2007 16-03-2008 05-04-2009 28-03-2010 17-04-2011 01-04-2012 24-03-2013 13-04-2014 29-03-2015 20-03-2016 09-04-2017 25-03-2018 14-04-2019 05-04-2020 28-03-2021 10-04-2022 02-04-2023 24-03-2024 13-04-2025

15-04-2001 31-03-2002 20-04-2003 11-04-2004 27-03-2005 16-04-2006 08-04-2007 23-03-2008 12-04-2009 04-04-2010 24-04-2011 08-04-2012 31-03-2013 20-04-2014 05-04-2015 27-03-2016 16-04-2017 01-04-2018 21-04-2019 12-04-2020 04-04-2021 17-04-2022 09-04-2023 31-03-2024 20-04-2025

24-05-2001 09-05-2002 29-05-2003 20-05-2004 05-05-2005 25-05-2006 17-05-2007 01-05-2008 21-05-2009 13-05-2010 02-06-2011 17-05-2012 09-05-2013 29-05-2014 14-05-2015 05-05-2016 25-05-2017 10-05-2018 30-05-2019 21-05-2020 13-05-2021 26-05-2022 18-05-2023 09-05-2024 29-05-2025

03-06-2001 19-05-2002 08-06-2003 30-05-2004 15-05-2005 04-06-2006 27-05-2007 11-05-2008 31-05-2009 23-05-2010 12-06-2011 27-05-2012 19-05-2013 08-06-2014 24-05-2015 15-05-2016 04-06-2017 20-05-2018 09-06-2019 31-05-2020 23-05-2021 05-06-2022 28-05-2023 19-05-2024 08-06-2025

2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035 2036 2037 2038 2039 2040 2041 2042 2043 2044 2045 2046 2047 2048 2049 2050

18-02-2026 10-02-2027 01-03-2028 14-02-2029 06-03-2030 26-02-2031 10-02-2032 02-03-2033 22-02-2034 07-02-2035 26-02-2036 18-02-2037 10-03-2038 23-02-2039 14-02-2040 06-03-2041 19-02-2042 11-02-2043 02-03-2044 22-02-2045 07-02-2046 27-02-2047 18-02-2048 03-03-2049 23-02-2050

29-03-2026 21-03-2027 09-04-2028 25-03-2029 14-04-2030 06-04-2031 21-03-2032 10-04-2033 02-04-2034 18-03-2035 06-04-2036 29-03-2037 18-04-2038 03-04-2039 25-03-2040 14-04-2041 30-03-2042 22-03-2043 10-04-2044 02-04-2045 18-03-2046 07-04-2047 29-03-2048 11-04-2049 03-04-2050

05-04-2026 28-03-2027 16-04-2028 01-04-2029 21-04-2030 13-04-2031 28-03-2032 17-04-2033 09-04-2034 25-03-2035 13-04-2036 05-04-2037 25-04-2038 10-04-2039 01-04-2040 21-04-2041 06-04-2042 29-03-2043 17-04-2044 09-04-2045 25-03-2046 14-04-2047 05-04-2048 18-04-2049 10-04-2050

14-05-2026 06-05-2027 25-05-2028 10-05-2029 30-05-2030 22-05-2031 06-05-2032 26-05-2033 18-05-2034 03-05-2035 22-05-2036 14-05-2037 03-06-2038 19-05-2039 10-05-2040 30-05-2041 15-05-2042 07-05-2043 26-05-2044 18-05-2045 03-05-2046 23-05-2047 14-05-2048 27-05-2049 19-05-2050

24-05-2026 16-05-2027 04-06-2028 20-05-2029 09-06-2030 01-06-2031 16-05-2032 05-06-2033 28-05-2034 13-05-2035 01-06-2036 24-05-2037 13-06-2038 29-05-2039 20-05-2040 09-06-2041 25-05-2042 17-05-2043 05-06-2044 28-05-2045 13-05-2046 02-06-2047 24-05-2048 06-06-2049 29-05-2050

Dates are taken from the table provided in Michel Coireault,Les Fêtes.Judaïsme, Christianisme, Islam. Paris:Éditions du Cerf,1994,pp.188–189.

APPENDIX V: Gregorian Dates of Orthodox Easter 1875–2124 A) By Year Year 1875 1878 1881 1884 1887 1890 1893 1896 1899 1902 1905 1908 1911 1914 1917 1920 1923 1926 1929 1932 1935 1938 1941 1944 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959

Date 4/25 4/28 4/24 4/20 4/17 4/13 4/9 4/5 4/30 4/27 4/30 4/26 4/23 4/19 4/15 4/11 4/8 5/2 5/5 5/1 4/28 4/24 4/20 4/16 4/13 4/9 4/5 5/6 5/3

Year 1876 1879 1882 1885 1888 1891 1894 1897 1900 1903 1906 1909 1912 1915 1918 1921 1924 1927 1930 1933 1936 1939 1942 1945 1948 1951 1954 1957 1960

Date 4/16 4/13 4/9 4/5 5/6 5/3 4/29 4/25 4/22 4/19 4/15 4/11 4/7 4/4 5/5 5/1 4/27 4/24 4/20 4/16 4/12 4/9 4/5 5/6 5/2 4/29 4/25 4/21 4/17

Year 1877 1880 1883 1886 1889 1892 1895 1898 1901 1904 1907 1910 1913 1916 1919 1922 1925 1928 1931 1934 1937 1940 1943 1946 1949 1952 1955 1958 1961

Date 4/8 5/2 4/29 4/25 4/21 4/17 4/14 4/17 4/14 4/10 5/5 5/1 4/27 4/23 4/20 4/16 4/19 4/15 4/12 4/8 5/2 4/28 4/25 4/21 4/24 4/20 4/17 4/13 4/9

Year 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019 2022 2025 2028 2031 2034 2037 2040 2043 2046

Date 4/29 4/25 4/21 4/18 4/14 4/10 4/6 5/8 5/4 4/30 4/26 4/23 4/19 4/15 4/11 4/8 4/4 5/5 5/1 4/28 4/24 4/20 4/16 4/13 4/9 4/5 5/6 5/3 4/29

Year 1963 1966 1969 1972 1975 1978 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 2014 2017 2020 2023 2026 2029 2032 2035 2038 2041 2044 2047

Date 4/14 4/10 4/13 4/9 5/4 4/30 4/26 4/22 4/19 4/15 4/18 4/14 4/11 5/5 5/1 4/27 4/24 4/20 4/16 4/19 4/16 4/12 4/8 5/2 4/29 4/25 4/21 4/24 4/21

Year 1964 1967 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2018 2021 2024 2027 2030 2033 2036 2039 2042 2045 2048

Date 5/3 4/30 4/26 4/29 4/25 4/22 4/18 4/14 4/10 4/7 5/1 4/27 4/30 4/27 4/23 4/19 4/15 4/12 4/8 5/2 5/5 5/2 4/28 4/24 4/20 4/17 4/13 4/9 4/5

Year 2049 2052 2055 2058 2061 2064 2067 2070 2073 2076 2079 2082 2085 2088 2091 2094 2097 2100 2103 2106 2109 2112 2115 2118 2121 2124

Date 4/25 4/21 4/18 4/14 4/10 4/13 4/10 5/4 4/30 4/26 4/23 4/19 4/15 4/18 4/8 4/11 5/5 5/2 4/29 4/25 4/21 4/17 4/14 4/17 4/13 4/9

Year 2050 2053 2056 2059 2062 2065 2068 2071 2074 2077 2080 2083 2086 2089 2092 2095 2098 2101 2104 2107 2110 2113 2116 2119 2122

Date 4/17 4/13 4/9 5/4 4/30 4/26 4/29 4/19 4/22 4/18 4/14 4/11 4/7 5/1 4/27 4/24 4/27 4/24 4/20 4/17 4/13 4/9 5/3 4/30 5/3

Year 2051 2054 2057 2060 2063 2066 2069 2072 2075 2078 2081 2084 2087 2090 2093 2096 2099 2102 2105 2108 2111 2114 2117 2120 2123

Date 5/7 5/3 4/29 4/25 4/22 4/18 4/14 4/10 4/7 5/8 5/4 4/30 4/27 4/23 4/19 4/15 4/12 4/9 4/5 5/6 5/3 4/29 4/25 4/21 4/18

( Continued on next page)

(Appendix V Cont.) B) By Date 4/3 4/4 4/5 4/6 4/7 4/8 4/9 4/10 4/11 4/12 4/13 4/14 4/15 4/16 4/17 4/18 4/19 4/20 4/21 4/22 4/23 4/24 4/25 4/26 4/27

none 1915 1885 1980 1912 1877 1882 1904 1909 1931 1879 1895 1906 1876 1887 1971 1903 1884 1889 1900 1911 1881 1875 1908 1902

2010 1896 1942 1953 2037 2048 2105 1991 1923 1893 1966 1920 1936 1890 1901 1917 1922 1892 1982 1914 1919 1946 1979 1916 1927 1886 1970 1913

2075 1934 1939 1977 1999 2015 1947 1963 1928 1933 1898 1993 1925 1930 1957 1984 1995 1938 1897 1981 1924

2086 2007 1950 1988 2004 2026 1958 1974 1990 1944 1955 2055 1987 1941 1968 2063 2006 1949 1943 1992 1997

2018 1961 2061 2083 2099 1969 1985 2001 2017 1960 2066 1998 1952 2041 2074 2079 2011 1954 2065 2003

2029 2091 1972 2034 2045 2056 2102 2113 2124 2067 2072 2094 2031 1996 2012 2023 2039 2077 2009 2014 2047

2042 2058 2085 2028 2050 2088 2020 2025 2052

2053 2064 2110 2121 2069 2080 2115 2096 2107 2123 2071 2036 2109

2112 2118 2082 2093 2104 2120

2090 2022 2033 2044 2095 2101 1965 1976 2038 2049 2060 2106 2117 2076 2008 2087 2092 2098

4/28 4/29 4/30 5/1 5/2 5/3 5/4 5/5 5/6 5/7 5/8 5/9

1878 1883 1899 1910 1880 1891 1975 1907 1888 2051 1983 none

1935 1894 1905 1921 1926 1959 1986 1918 1945

1940 1951 1967 1932 1937 1964 2059 1929 1956

2019 1962 1978 1994 1948 2043 2070 2002 2040

2030 1973 1989 2005 2021 2054 2081 2013 2108

2035 2000 2016 2027 2111

2046 2062 2089 2032 2116

2057 2068 2103 2114 2073 2084 2119 2100 2122

2024 2097

2078

From the web page http://www.smart.net/~mmontes/OrthEasttbl.html by Marcos Montes, April 12,1997.

APPENDIX VI: Dates of Chinese Lunar New Year's Day 1995–2020 Chinese Year

Zodiac Animal

Gregorian Calendar

4693 4694 4695 4696 4697 4698 4699 4700 4701 4702 4703 4704 4705 4706 4707 4708 4709 4710 4711 4712 4713 4714 4715 4716 4717 4718

Boar Rat Ox Tiger Hare/Rabbit Dragon Snake Horse Ram/Sheep Monkey Rooster Dog Boar Rat Ox Tiger Hare/Rabbit Dragon Snake Horse Ram/Sheep Monkey Rooster Dog Boar Rat

January 31,1995 February 19,1996 February 7,1997 January 28,1998 February 16,1999 February 5,2000 January 24,2001 February 12,2002 February 1,2003 January 22,2004 February 9,2005 January 29,2006 February 18,2007 February 7,2008 January 26,2009 February 10,2010 February 3,2011 January 23,2012 February 10,2013 January 31,2014 February 19,2015 February 9,2016 January 28,2017 February 16,2018 February 5,2019 January 25,2020

Adapted from L.E.Dogget.Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac,P.Kenneth Seidelmann,editor,with permission from University Science Books,Sausalito,CA 94965,for an online exhibit on calendars by the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA),©2003 Michael Douma Productions,LLC,at http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-chinese.html.

APPENDIX VII: Comparative Table of Main Festival Entries for Each Cultural Area by Time of Year N.B.: Festivals unrelated to the seasonal cycle, like those of Islam, do not appear in this table, while Naw Ruz appears under “Miscellaneous.” ANCIENT GREECE & ROME

WINTER

ANCIENT NEAR EAST

JUDAISM

CHRISTIANITY

Heb-Sed

Hanukkah

Christmas, Feast of Fools

Bear Festival, New Year (Japan)

Epiphany

Day of Mankind, Laba Naked Festival of Inazawa,New Year (China,Korea) Naked Festival of Okayama, Lantern Festival

Carmentalia, Lenaea Tu bi-Shevat

Fornacalia & Quirinalia, Lupercalia, Caristia Anthesteria, Terminalia, Matronalia Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries,Liberalia, Anna Perenna, Quinquatrus

Candlemas

HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, FAR EAST JAINISM & SIKHISM

Thaipusam, Vasant Panchami Mahashivaratri

Purim

Carnival

Lent

Holi

Doll Festival

Spring Dragon, Kasuga Festival

AMERICAS

Capac Inti Raymi & Huarachicu, Tititl Potlatch,Izcalli Midwinter

Atlcaulo

AFRICA

MISCELLANEOUS

New Year (West)

ANCIENT GREECE & ROME

SPRING

ANCIENT NEAR EAST

CHRISTIANITY

HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, FAR EAST JAINISM & SIKHISM

AMERICAS

Spring Festival of Akitu Cybele and Attis, City Dionysia, Venus Verticordia & Virile Fortune Fordicidia & Parilia

Annunciation

Nyepí

Totoztontli

Isthmian Games, Floralia

Saint George, Palm Sunday, Holy Week

Argei

Thargelia

Vestalia, Matralia,Small Quinquatrus

Beautiful Festival of the Valley

JUDAISM

Vaisakhi

Passover

Easter

Lag ba-Omer

Rogations, Ascension

Shavuot

Whitsuntide

Vaishakha

Qing Ming, Matzu's Birthday Water-Splashing Festival,Cherry Blossom Festival, Children's Day Asakusa Shrine Festival,Hollyhock Festival Rice-Transplanting Festival

AFRICA

MISCELLANEOUS

Naw Ruz

Ridvan,Kunapipi May Day

Kokuzahn

Etzalqualitzli

Dragon Boat Festival ( Continued on next page)

(Appendix VII Cont.) ANCIENT GREECE & ROME

ANCIENT

JUDAISM

CHRISTIANITY

NEAR EAST

SUMMER

Tisha be-Av Carneia Panathenaea Olympic Games, Pythian Games Greater Eleusinian Mysteries, Roman Games

Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur

FALL

Sukkot

Corpus Christi

Festival of the Weaver

Sacred Heart Transfiguration Assumption Birth of the Virgin Mary Elevation of the Cross

Janmashtami Ganesha Chaturthi, Paryushana Dashalakshana

Gion,Bon,Naadam Cowherd and Weaving Maid Chung Yuan Chrysanthemum Festival Mid-Autumn

Protection of the Mother of God

Navaratra & Dusshera

Double Nine

Kathina Divali,Guru Nanak's Birthday

Jidai Matsuri

Oschophoria Thesmophoria

Apaturia, Nemean Games, Plebeian Games

Country Dionysia, Saturnalia

Khoiak

HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, FAR EAST JAINISM & SIKHISM

Martinmas, Presentation of the Virgin Mary Saint Nicholas, Saint Lucy Conception of the Virgin Mary

AMERICAS

AFRICA

MISCELLANEOUS

Inti Raymi, Sun Dance, Powwow

Midsummer

Busk

Lugnasad

Tepeilhuitl

Òsun Festival, Reed Dance Geerewol, New Yam Festival

Situa Adae Kese Samhain, Days of the Dead (West)

Seven-Five-Three

Shalako Kasuga Wakamiya Grand Festival, Dong Zhi

Atemoztli, Kukulcan Festival

APPENDIX VIII: List of Full Festival Entries by Cultural Area ANCIENT GREECE & ROME: Anna Perenna,Apaturia,Argei,Caristia,Carmentalia,Carneia, Dionysia,Eleusinian Mysteries,Floralia,Fordicidia & Parilia,Fornacalia & Quirinalia,Games (Greece), Games (Rome),Liberalia,Lupercalia,Matralia,Matronalia,Noumenia,Panathenaea,Quinquatrus, Saturnalia,Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis,Terminalia,Thesmophoria,Thargelia,Venus Verticordia & Virile Fortune,Vestalia

FAR EAST: Bear Festival,Cherry Blossom Festival,Chiao,Cowherd and Weaving Maid,Days of the Dead,Dong Zhi,Double Nine,Dragon Boat Festival,Gion Festivals,Hollyhock Festival,Kasuga Festivals,Laba,Lantern Festival,Matsuri,Matzu’s Birthday,Mid-Autumn,Naadam,Naked Festivals, New Year (China,Korea),New Year (Japan),Sekku,Seven-Five-Three,Spring Dragon,WaterSplashing Festival

ANCIENT NEAR EAST: Akitu,Beautiful Festival of the Valley,Khoiak & Heb-Sed,KI.LAM

AMERICAS: Busk,8 Monkey,Inti Raymi & Huarachicu,Izcalli,Kukulcan,Midwinter,New Fire Ceremony,Potlatch,Powwow,Rain Festivals,Shalako,Situa,Sun Dance

JUDAISM: Hanukkah,Lag ba-Omer,Passover,Purim,Rosh Hashanah,Rosh Hodesh,Sabbath, Shavuot,Sukkot,Tishah be-Av,Tu bi-Shevat,Yom Kippur CHRISTIANITY: Annunciation,Ascension,Assumption,Candlemas,Carnival,Christmas, Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary,Corpus Christi,Easter,Elevation of the Cross,Epiphany,Feast of Fools,Holy Week,Kermis,Lent,Martinmas,Palm Sunday,Pardon,Presentation of the Virgin Mary, Protection of the Mother of God,Rogations,Sacred Heart,Saint George,Saint Lucy,Saint Nicholas, Sunday,Transfiguration,Whitsuntide ISLAM, ZOROASTRIANISM & BAHA’ISM: Ashura,Day of Assembly,Eid,Mawlid,Mi’raj,Naw Ruz,New Year (Islam),Nineteen-Day Feast,Ridván,Ramadan HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, JAINISM & SIKHISM: Divali,Ganesha Chaturthi,Gurpurb,Holi & Vasant Panchami,Janmashtami,Kathina,Mahashivaratri,Navaratra & Dusshera,Nyepí,Paryushana & Dashalaksana,Thaipusam,Vaishakha & Vaisakhi

AFRICA: Adae,Geerewol,Kokuzahn,Osun Festival,New Yam Festival,Reed Dance MISCELLANEOUS: Days of the Dead (West),Kunapipi,Lugnasad,May Day,Midsummer,New Year (West),Samhain

INDEX

A Actian Games. See Games (Rome) Adae (Akan), 1–4, 317 Adhik Maas, 305 Adults’ Day, 332 Advent Candlemas and, 42 carols during, 66 Christmas and, 247, 417 commemorating the dead and, 93 flowers and, 69 France and, 64 Lucia songs, 413 overview, 62 Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple and, 374 restrictions during, 262 Saint Lucy and, 411, 414 Africa, 1–4, 20, 180–183, 526–529 Agon, 161, 166, 170 Agones. See Games (Rome) Agrania. See Dionysus Agrionia, 106 Ah-Dake’-Wa-O, 35–39, 451 Akan, 1–4, 317 Akitu (Mesopotamia), 5–8, 311–312, 397, 448 Akwasidae, 1, 4, 317 ’Alá, 338–339 All Hallows’ Eve, 92 All Saints, 92–97, 351, 420, 422, 424 All Souls, 95–99, 305, 420, 424 Ambarvalia, 393 Ambrosia, 102 Americas, comparative table of festivals, 526–529 Analipsis. See Ascension Ananta-Chaturdashi, 358 Anastenaria, 108–109 Anastenarides, 109 Ann, Saint, 355 Anna Perenna (Rome), 8–9

Annual events (Japan), 197, 217, 267, 327, 427 Annunciation date of, 249, 446 fasting and, 247 foretelling in, 62 as Marian feast, 23 Matzu and, 271 overview, 9–13 Protection of the Mother of God and, 376 Virgin Mary and, 374 Anodos, 467 Anthesteria, 93, 100, 103–104, 148, 321, 374 Aoi no Matsuri, 197, 269 Apafram, 4 Apaturia (Greece), 13–14 Apellai, 13 Apokreos, 49 Apollinarian Games, 169–170 Apostles’ Fast, 247 Appearance Day of Srila Prabhupada, 215 April Fool’s Day, 333 Arafat, Day of, 20 Arbaiin, 21 Arbor Day, 476 Argei (Rome), 14–15, 280, 429, 441 Armistice Day, 264 Asakusa Shrine Festival, 269 Ascension Assumption and, 24 Bahá’i, 392 Easter and, 122, 201 games and, 174, 176 Greece and, 148, 414, 474 Mi’raj and, 296–298 overview, 15–18 Palm Sunday and, 351 Rogations and, 124, 393–395 Transfiguration and, 472 Whitsuntide and, 490, 495 Ascension of Bahá’ullah. See Ridván

|

531

532 | i n d e x Ascension of the Bab. See Ridván Ash Wednesday Busk and, 35 Carnival and, 49, 51 Ember Weeks and, 246 European folklore and, 469 Lent and, 245 restrictions on, 248 Shrove Tuesday and, 43 See also Lent Ashura (Islam), 19–23 Ass, Feast of the. See Feast of Fools Assembly, Day of, 85–87, 130, 339 Assumption (Christianity), 23–26, 77, 176, 252 Atemoztli, 384 Atlcaualo, 383 Atonement, Day of. See Yom Kippur Awukudae, 1–2, 317 Aztecs Izcalli, 211–212 New Fire Ceremony, 35, 37, 276, 315–317, 337, 342 Rain Festivals, 383–384

B Bab’s Birth, 392 Bab’s Declaration, 392 Bab’s Martyrdom, 392 Bacchanalia, 100, 107–108 Baekjung, 91 Bahá’ism, 311–315, 338–340, 391–392, 529 Bahá’ullah’s Birth, 392 Baisakhi, 480 Bank Holidays, 420, 495–496 Basanti Puja, 310 Basil the Great, Saint, 145, 334–335 Bayram, 130–131 Bear Festival (Japan), 27–30 Beautiful Festival of the Valley (Egypt), 30–34 Befanata, 144 Beginning of the Month, 319 Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 24, 73 Beltane, 252, 276, 337, 409, 423 Bénichons, 77 Besta Berri, 78 Bhai Bij, 113 Bhai Tika, 113 Bhratri Dwitiya, 113 Bianu, 20

Big Sunday, 236 Bijoya, 310 Binche Carnival, 50 Binding of the Years, 315–316 Birth of Bahá’ullah, 392 Birth of the Bab, 392 Birth of the Mother of God. See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary Bisket, 481 Black Friday, 71 Black Sabbath, 470 Blowing the Horn, Day of. See Rosh Hashanah Blutritt, 176, 394 Bohag Bihu, 480 Bon. See Days of the Dead Bon Festival, 88, 91–92 Book Day, 408 Booths, 446–447 Boxing Day, 71–72 Boxing Night, 68 Boys’ Festival, 428 Bride, Saint, 43 Bridget, Saint, 43–44 Bright Week, 123, 128 Brumalia. See Saturnalia Buddha Day, 479, 482–483 Buddha’s Birthday, 244, 481, 483 Buddhism, 218–221, 237–238, 479–483, 526–529 Buhe, 25 Bull run, 176 Bullfight, 177 Buri Diali, 112 Burning of Clothes Festival, 87–88 Busk, 35–39, 451

C Calèna. See New Year Calends of January, 65, 334–335, 425–426 Calends of March, 337 Calumet, 369, 371 Canada Day, 290 Candlemas (Christianity) Epiphany and, 146 European folklore and, 469 groundhogs and, 256 Holi and, 192 Lupercalia and, 255 as Marian feast, 10, 23 overview, 41–45

i n d e x | 533 rights of pasture and, 252 weather indications and, 324 Yule log and, 70 Caniculares Dies. See Assumption Capitolia, 170 Carême, 246 Caristia (Rome), 45–46, 266, 459, 461 Carmentalia (Rome), 46–47 Carneia (Greece), 47–48 Carnival burning and, 310, 333 caricatures and, 176 Christmas and, 66 Fastnachtspiel, 67, 244 Feast of the Ass, 152 fertility rites and, 195 festive instruments, 290 gourds and, 12 Greece and, 93 Holi and, 192 Inti Raymi and, 210 Jewish, 378–379 Lent and, 153, 246, 248 Martinmas and, 264 Naw Ruz and, 312 North African, 20 overview, 48–56 Parentalia and, 94 Saturnalia and, 425–426 Shrove Tuesday and, 43 Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis, 443, 445 Terminalia and, 461 Whitsuntide and, 493 Cask-Opening. See Dionysus Cat Nights, 26 Catherine, Saint, 417 Celts, 251–254 See also Samhain Ceres, Games of, 170, 174, 251 Cerialia, 174, 443 Certamen, 170 Chalanda Marz, 337 Cheesefare, 49 Cheesefare Sunday, 126, 246 Cheesefare Week, 66, 246–247 Cherry Blossom Festival (Japan), 56–58 Chi Ch’iao T’ien, 81–82, 429 Ch’i Chieh, 82 Chiao (China), 58–61 Childbirth, 46–47, 81–82, 235, 265–266

Childermas, 71, 151–152 Children’s Carnival, 153 Children’s Day, 56, 427–428, 432 Children’s Festival, 240, 243 Chilseok, 81 China Chiao, 58–61 Cowherd and Weaving Maid, 81–83 Days of the Dead, 87–92 Dong Zhi, 115 Double Nine, 116 Dragon Boat Festival, 116–119 Laba, 237–238 Lantern Festival, 8, 90, 240–244 Matzu’s Birthday, 270–273 Mid-Autumn (See Mid-Autumn) New Year, 319–325 Spring Dragon, 442–443 Water-Splashing Festival, 487–489 Choai, 103 Chong Yang, 116 Chongjiu, 116, 428 Choyo no Sekku, 427 Christianity Annunciation, 9–13, 23, 62, 75 Ascension (See Ascension) Assumption, 23–26, 77, 176, 252 Candlemas (See Candlemas) Carnival (See Carnival) Christmas (See Christmas) comparative table of festivals, 526–529 Corpus Christi, 77–81, 123, 205, 209–210 Easter (See Easter) Elevation of the Cross, 26, 139–143, 472 Epiphany (See Epiphany) Feast of Fools, 151–154 gladitorial games and, 171–173, 175 Holy Week (See Holy Week) Kermis, 221–222 Lent (See Lent) main moveable feasts, 522 Martinmas, 52, 261–264, 290, 421 Palm Sunday (See Palm Sunday) pardon, 355–356 Protection of the Mother of God, 375–377 Rogations (See Rogations) Sacred Heart, 406–407 Saint George, 67, 142, 279, 281, 408–411, 494 Saint Lucy, 70, 411–415 Saint Nicholas (See Saint Nicholas)

534 | i n d e x Sunday (See Sunday) Transfiguration, 472–474, 491 Whitsuntide (See Whitsuntide) Christmas (Christianity) Advent and, 247 Annunciation and, 10 Ascension and, 15 baptisms and, 123 as big event, 320 Candlemas and, 44 caroling and, 148 community and, 290 date for, 419 Epiphany and, 143–146 fasting before, 24 Feast of Fools and, 151 Feast of the Ass and, 152 folk traditions and, 333 gifts and, 335 Greece and, 17, 285, 414, 474 Hannukah and, 189, 191 kallikantzaroi and, 321 Lent and, 417 Martinmas and, 261–262 Mawlid and, 275 Meeting of Our Lord and, 42 as Milaad, 274 overview, 61–72 pious observance of, 336–337 popular culture and, 95 potlatch and, 366 Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple and, 374 Saint Lucy and, 411–412 Saint Nicholas and, 415 Saint Romanos and, 376 Samhain and, 420 Saturnalia and, 426 set-night before, 43 thirteen and, 334 year-end parties and, 327 Zagmuk and, 6 See also Twelve Days of Christmas Chronia, 467 Chrysanthemum Festival, 427–428 Chun Jie, 320 Chung Ch’iu, 282 Chung Yu, 88 Chung Yuan, 90–91 Church New Year, 73–75

Chuseok, 282, 285 Chushu Kangetsu, 283 Circumcision, 334 Circus Games, 173–175 Circus Maximus, 168–169, 174 Clean Monday, 49 Colacho “Baby-Jumping” Festival, 80 Cold Food Day, 87–89 Color, Festival of. See Holi Colosseum, 173 Coming of the Masked Gods, 433–435 Compitalia, 94 Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary, 72–77 Conception of Saint Ann, 73 Conception of Saint John the Baptist, 10, 74 Constantine, Saint, 108–109 Constitution Memorial Day, 56 Consualia, 173–174, 425 Corpus Christi Blessed Sacrament and, 123 Inti Raymi and, 205, 209–210 May Day and, 278 overview, 77–81 Rogations and, 395 Sacred Heart and, 406–407 Cowherd and Weaving Maid, 81–83, 429 Cross Veneration Sunday, 455 Cuaresma. See Lent Culture Day, 431 Curasma, 246 Cybele, 170 Cybele and Attis, Spring Festival of, 443–446

D Daeboreum, 241, 244 Dahihandi, 214 Damba, 275 Dano, 117 Dapaa, 1–2 Dasain, 306, 308–310 Dashalakshana. See Paryushana and Dashalakshana Dasius, Saint, 426 Day of Arafat, 20 Day of Atonement, 501, 503–504 See also Yom Kippur Day of Blood, 444–445 Day of Blowing the Horn, 396 Day of Judgment, 7, 395, 397, 474–475 Day of Mankind, 427–428

i n d e x | 535 Day of Mourning for Martyrs, 20–22 Day of the Dead, 19–20 Day of the First-Fruits, 438 Day of the Rat, Feast of the. See Sekku Day of the Wren, 71 Days of the Dead beans and, 374 China, 87–92 Hinduism and, 304–305 Korea, 87–92 lights and, 414 West, 92–99 Whitsuntide and, 493 See also Navaratra and Dusshera Deacons’ Day, 71 Decennial Games, 173 Declaration of Bahá’ullah’s Mission, 391 Declaration of the Bab’s Mission, 392 Dedication, Festival of the, 139–140 Deepawali. See Divali Delia, 466 Demetrios, Saint, 410 Deposition of the Most Pure Veil of the Holy Mother of God of Blachernes, 375 Désalpe, 77 Devils, Festival of, 90 Dhanteras, 110–111 Dia de los Tres Reyes, 145 Dia de Muertos, 95–99, 177, 305 Dies Natalis, 46 Dionysia, 55, 100–109, 137 Dionysus, 100, 146, 173, 467 See also Dionysia Divali, 109–114, 186 Divali Tihar, 111 Djunggawon, 233 Dodecahemeron, 70, 335 Dog Days, 26 Dola Purnima, 196 Dolayatra, 196 Doll Festival, 307, 427, 429–431 Dominion Day, 370 Dong Zhi (China), 115, 319 Dormition of the Mother of God, 23, 93, 474 Double Five, 117 Double Nine, 116, 287, 428 Dragon Boat Festival Children’s Day and, 427 Chuseok and, 244 mugwort and, 287

overview, 116–119 saining and, 336 Spring Dragon and, 442 Three for the Living, 88 Dreamguessing, 292–293 Dreams, Festival of. See Midwinter Duanwu, 117 Duanyang, 117 Dumb Week. See Palm Sunday Durbars, 4 Durga Puja. See Navaratra and Dusshera Dusshera. See Navaratra and Dusshera Dzawuwu, 317

E Easter (Christianity) Annunciation and, 11 Ascension and, 15–17 baptism and, 244 Busk and, 35 Candlemas and, 42 Carnival and, 48 community and, 290 date of, 446 equinox and, 290 folk traditions and, 334 Great Saturday and, 93 gregorian dates, 523–524 Holy Week and, 198–200, 203 kneeling and, 455 Lent and, 12, 62, 245 Lupercalia and, 256 mummering, 67 overview, 121–129 Palm Sunday and, 349, 351 Paschal lamb and, 359 Quadragesima and, 246 resurrection and, 227 Samhain and, 422 Transfiguration and, 472 water and, 288 Whitsuntide and, 489–491, 493–494 Eguberri, 66 Egypt, 30–34, 223–229 Eid (Islam), 129–133 Eid-al-Adha, 129, 131–133 Eid-al-Fitr, 129–131, 385–386 8 Monkeys, 133–135 8 Yarn, 134

536 | i n d e x Eleusinian Mysteries, 93, 102, 135–138, 466 Elevation of the Cross (Christianity), 26, 139–143, 472 Eligius, Saint, 261 Ember Days, 490 Ember Weeks, 142, 246, 411 Entry of Mother of God into the Temple, 372–375 Epidauria, 137 Epiphany (Christianity) Annunciation, 10 baptisms and, 62, 123, 244–245 blessings on, 281 Carnival and, 49, 54, 153 Feast of Fools, 151 Feast of Lights, 42 folk traditions and, 335 as Great New Year, 333 lucky bean, 63, 97 Nativity and, 15 overview, 143–149 Saint Lucy and, 412 Saint Nicholas and, 44 Saturnalia and, 426 shifting customs to, 337 spirits and, 70 starring, 66 thirteen and, 334 Transfiguration and, 473 Twelfth Night, 43 Whitsuntide and, 491 Equirria Martis, 171 Ethiopia, 142, 149 Etzalqualitzli, 283, 384, 492 Evangelismos, 11 Ewe people, 317–319 Exaltation of the Cross, 139–140, 142, 281

F Falling of Fruit, 97 Falling of the Waters, 384 Farja, 20 Fasching, 49 Fast of Esther, 377 Fast of the Firstborn, 358 Fastelavn, 52 Fastnacht, 49, 67, 244, 379 Fat Sunday, 52 Fat Tuesday. See Carnival; Mardi Gras Feast of Flowers, 103

Feast of Fools, 20, 71, 151–154, 158, 333, 425 Feast of Indiction, 73 Feast of Lights, 42, 76, 147–148 Feast of Lots, 377 Feast of Pots, 104 Feast of Sacrifice, 20, 129, 131 Feast of the Ass, 152 Feast of the Break of the Fast, 129 Feast of the Day of the Rat, 429 Feast of the Dead, 97 Feast of the Holy Innocents, 71 Feast of the Pitchers, 103 Feast of the See of Saint Peter, 46 Feast of the Trinity. See Whitsuntide Feast of the Veil, 375 Feralia, 45, 94 Féria, 177 Fermin, Saint, 176 Festa della Sensa, 17 Festin dei Cougourdon. See Annunciation Festival of Booths, 447 Festival of Color, 195 Festival of Devils, 90 Festival of Dreams, 291 Festival of Freedom, 359 Festival of Gathering, 400 Festival of Hungry Ghosts, 88 Festival of Ingathering, 447 Festival of Joy, 445 Festival of Lanterns. See Lantern Festival Festival of Lights, 68, 112, 114, 189–190 Festival of Naked Youths, 47 Festival of Osiris, 227 Festival of Osiris Khenti-Amentiu, 224 Festival of Pure Brightness, 88 Festival of the Dedication, 139, 189 Festival of the Fifth Moon. See Dragon Boat Festival Festival of the First Principle, 240 Festival of the Gate-House, 229 Festival of the Month, 229 Festival of the Mountains, 384 Festival of the Ploughing of the Earth, 224 Festival of the Snake, 429 Festival of the Swing, 196 Festival of the Three Miracles, 146–147 Festival of the Weaver, 267, 427, 429 Festival of Unleavened Bread, 358–360 Festival of Young Herbs, 428 Fest-noz, 356 Fête des Rois, 145

i n d e x | 537 Fête Nationale, 75, 290 Fête-Dieu, 78–79 Fifth Moon, Festival of the. See Dragon Boat Festival First Day of the First Month, 319 First Easter, 350 First Full Moon, 244 First of the Five. See Sekku First Principle, Festival of the. See Lantern Festival First-fruits Adae and, 2 Anthesteria, 103 Busk, 35, 37–38 Egypt and, 32 Martinmas and, 264 New Yam Festival, 318 Saint Peter in Fetters and, 252 Shavuot and, 438–439 taboo on, 25 Thargelia and, 465–466 Whitsuntide and, 492 Flag Day, 290 Flora, 170 Floralia (Rome), 50, 155–156 Flower Festival, 483 Flower Sunday, 140, 351 Flowers, Feast of. See Dionysia Flower-Viewing Festival, 56 Fools, Feast of, 20, 71, 151–154, 158 Fordicidia and Parilia (Rome), 157–158 Forgiveness Sunday, 245–246, 356 Fornacalia, 157–158, 486 Fourth of July, 452 France, 64, 127, 142, 384 Freedom, Festival of. See Passover Fronleichnam, 79 Fugarena, 263 Full Moon, 303, 331

G Gadjeri, 236 Gahanbar, 312 Games (Greece), 161–167, 269, 353–354 Games of the Victory of Caesar, 172 Games (Rome), 155–156, 166–177, 253, 382, 443 Ganestha Chaturthi (Hinduism), 178–180 Ganging Days, 394 Ganjitsu, 328 Ganna, 67 Gantan, 328

Garuda Panchumi, 113 Gathering Festival, 282 Gatka, 187 Gaura Purnima, 196 Geerewol (Wodaabe), 180–183 General Salvation, 90–91 Genesia, 92 George, Saint. See Saint George Ghost Month, 90–91 Gion Festival (Japan), 183–185, 329 Girls’ Day, 431 Giveaway, 366, 371–372 Gladitorial games, 171–173, 175 Gobhardan Puja, 112 Goelaoust, 252 Golden Week, 56–58 Good days, 189 Good Friday Annunciation and, 11 austerity and, 249 Busk and, 35 Days of the Dead and, 93 Elevation of the Cross and, 139 fasting and, 24 holy fire and, 122 Holy Week and, 198–203 processions and, 25 Goru Bihu, 480 Goulaoust, 252 Gourd Dance, 371 Great Festival of Peret, 224 Great Games, 167 Great Hosanna, 448 Great New Year, 144, 333 Great Peace Ceremony, 35 Great Week. See Holy Week Greatly Prized Ceremony, 291 Greece Apaturia, 13–14 Ascension and, 148, 414, 474 Carneia, 47–48 Carnival and, 74 Christmas and, 17, 285, 414, 474 comparative table of festivals, 526–529 Dionysia, 100–109 Exaltation of the Cross, 142 games, 161–167, 269, 353–354 Independence Day, 11–12 Lent and, 24 New Year, 145

538 | i n d e x Noumenia, 340 Panathenaea, 101, 105, 181, 353–355, 424, 465 Protection of the Mother of God and, 376 Thargelia, 101, 465–466 Thesmophoria, 137–138, 466–469 Green Corn Ceremony, 35, 38, 291 Green Corn Dance, 37–38 Green Sunday, 351 Green Thursday, 200 Greenery Day, 56 Grosse Neujahr, 143 Groundhog Day, 41, 45 Groundhogs, 256 Guajxaquíp Báts, 134 Guijie, 90 Gules of August, 251–252 Gunabibi. See Kunapipi Gurpurb (Sikhism), 140, 186–188 Guru Gobind Singh’s Birthday, 186 Guru Nanak’s Birthday, 186 Guy Fawkes Day, 422 Gwyl Awst, 252 Gymnopaidiai, 47

H Hadaka Matsuri, 302–303 Hag, 447 Hag ha’asip, 447 Hag Haaviv, 358 Hag Haherout, 359 Hag Hamatzot, 358 Hag Haposah, 358 Hag ha-Qatzir, 438 Hag has-sukkot, 447 Halloween Days of the Dead and, 92, 94–97 fire and, 333 Holy Saturday and, 203 Martinmas and, 261–262 May Day and, 276 mummering, 67 Samhain and, 252, 420–423 set-nights and, 43 witches and, 414 Hana Matsuri, 483 Hana Taue, 268 Hanami, 56–57

Hanshi, 88 Hanukkah (Judaism), 68, 189–191 Hare Krishna movement, 214–215 Harvest Feast, 438 Harvest Festival, 38 Harvest Moon Festival, 283 Heb-Sed. See Khoiak and Heb-Sed Hegira, 19–20, 326–327 Helen, Saint, 108–109 Hidrellez, 281 Hijra, 326 Hilaria, 445 Hillula de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, 240 Hinduism comparative table of festivals, 526–529 Divali, 109–114 Ganestha Chaturthi, 178–180 Holi and Vasant Panchami, 192–197 Janmashtami, 213–216 Mahashivaratri, 193–194, 257–260 main festivals, 509–517 Navaratra and Dusshera, 180, 304–311 Nyepi, 341–343 Thaipusam, 462–464 Vaishakha and Vaisakhi, 479–483 Hittites, 229–230 Hola, 196 Holi, 186, 192–197, 333 Hollyhock Festival (Japan), 197–198, 269 Holy Cross, 77, 142, 334 Holy Saturday, 25, 122, 203–204, 248 Holy Thursday, 15, 245, 495 Holy Week (Christianity) Ascension and, 15 Corpus Christi and, 79 Lent and, 245, 248 overview, 198–204 Palm Sunday and, 349, 352 Whitsuntide and, 495 Homowo. See New Yam Festival Honnonouaroia, 291 Horses’ Easter, 245 Hoshana Rabba, 448 House of Whistling. See Sun Dance Huarachicu, 384 Hueymiccaihuitl, 97 Hui, 58 Hungry Ghosts, Festival of. See Days of the Dead Hypapanti, 41–42

i n d e x | 539

I Imbolc, 43, 45, 252 Immaculate Conception, 72–73, 75–76, 406 Incas, 80, 205–211, 440–442 Independence Day, 11–12, 290, 370 India, 193, 195–196, 257–260 Innocents’ Day, 71, 151–153, 426 Intermediate Days, 358, 448 Inti Raymi and Huarachicu (Incas), 80, 205–211 Invention of the Holy Cross, 139 Iris Festival, 427 Iroquois, 291–295 Islam Ashura, 19–23 comparative table of festivals, 529 Day of Assembly, 85–87 Eid, 129–133 main festivals, 518 Mawlid, 273–276 Mi’raj, 295–298 Naw Ruz under, 314 New Year, 326–327 Ramadan (See Ramadan) Isthmian Games, 161, 163–165 Izcalli (Aztecs), 211–212

J Jainism, 109–114, 356–358, 526–529 Janmashtami (Hinduism), 213–216 Japan Annual events, 197, 217, 267, 327, 427 Bear Festival, 27–30 Cherry Blossom Festival, 56–58 Cowherd and Weaving Maid, 81–83 Days of the Dead, 87–92 Gion Festival, 183–185, 329 gods, 267–270 Hollyhock Festival, 197–198, 269 Kasuga Festivals, 217–218 Little New Year, 8, 303, 331, 333 Matsuri, 184, 267–270 Mid-Autumn (See Mid-Autumn) Naked Festivals, 302–303, 465–466 New Year, 8, 156, 327–332 Sekku, 427–431 Seven-Five-Three, 428, 431–432 Jidai Matsuri, 269 Jinjutsu, 428 John, Saint, 70, 288–290, 423

John the Baptist, Saint. See Saint John the Baptist Jomi, 429 Joseph, Saint, 248 Joseph the Craftsman, Saint, 280 Joshi no Sekku, 427 Joulu, 70 Joyday, 93 Judaism comparative table of festivals, 526–529 Hanukkah, 68, 189–191 Lag ba-Omer, 238–240 main holidays, 519–521 Passover (See Passover) Purim, 67, 189, 377–379, 404 Rosh Hashanah, 7, 74, 363, 395–398, 475 Rosh Hodesh, 396, 398–400 Sabbath, 85, 87, 396, 398–406 Shavuot, 189, 238, 359, 438–439 Sukkot, 189, 358, 400, 438, 446–450 Tisha be-Av, 397, 470–472 Tu bi-Shevat, 474–476 Yom Kippur (See Yom Kippur) Judgment Day, 7, 395, 397, 474–475 Juhannus, 290 Jul, 70 Junggu, 116 Jungwon, 91

K Kadjari, 236 Kag Bali, 111 Kalends of January. See Calends of January; Saturnalia Kali Chaudas, 111 Kali Puja, 310 Kalligeneia, 468 Kalwadi, 236 Kama-Mahotsava, 193 Kaman Vila, 194 Kamana Panduga, 194 Kanto, 429 Karneia, 47–48 Karneval, 49–50 Karwadi, 236 Kasuga Festivals (Japan), 217–218 Katchina Festivals, 433, 493–494 Kathina (Buddhism), 218–221 Kathodos, 467 Käyri, 420

540 | i n d e x Kekri, 420 Kenpo Kinen Hi, 56 Kermis (Christianity), 221–222 Khitroi, 104 Khoiak, 34, 146, 224, 468 Khoiak and Heb-Sed (Egypt), 223–229 Khrishna’s Birthday, 213–216 KI.LAM (Hittites), 229–230 Kneeling Sunday, 491 Knut, Saint, 146, 412 Kodomo no Hi, 56, 428 Kokowawia, 433 Kokuzahn (Voodoo), 231–232 Korea Cowherd and Weaving Maid, 81–83 Days of the Dead, 87–92 Double Nine, 116 Dragon Boat Festival, 116–119 Lantern Festival, 240–244 Mid-Autumn (See Mid-Autumn) New Year, 319–325 Koshogatsu, 303, 327, 331 Kreuzmontag, 394 Krishna Jayanti, 213 Krishnashtami, 213 Kukulcan Festival (Mayas), 232–233 Kunapipi, 233–236 Kurban, 133 Kurban Bayram, 131

L Là crosta na bliana, 71 La désalpe, 77 Laba (China), 237–238 Labor Day, 280 Lag ba-Omer (Judaism), 238–240 Lailat-ul-Qadr, 384 Lakshmi Puja, 111–112, 310 Lambri, 128 Lammas, 251–252, 286 Lantern Festival Chung Yuan, 90 Kanto, 429 Matzu’s Birthday, 272 New Year and, 8, 319, 325 overview, 240–244 Spring Dragon and, 442 Larentalia, 94 Lazaritsa. See Palm Sunday

Lazarus Saturday, 198, 245, 349–350 Lemuria, 15, 94–95, 280, 304 Lenaea, 100, 102–103 Lent abstinence and, 125 Advent and, 62 Buddhist, 218–219 Busk and, 35 Carnival and, 43, 49, 153, 378, 426 Cheesefare Week, 66 Cross Veneration Sunday, 455 as Flower Sunday, 140 Forgiveness Sunday and, 356 France and, 127 Greece and, 24 Holy Week and, 198–200 Mardi Gras and, 51 Mothering Day, 10 Nativity and, 64 overview, 244–251 Palm Sunday and, 349 restrictions during, 201, 247 Saint Philip and, 416 Soul Saturdays and, 93 Whitsuntide and, 491 Liberlia (Rome), 206, 250–251 Light, Feast of. See Epiphany Lights, Festival of. See Divali Lille Jul, 412 Little Christmas, 143, 412 Little New Year (Japan), 8, 303, 331, 333 Loppiainen, 143 Lord’s Day, 454, 457 Losar, 320 Lots, Feast of, 377 Lou Festin dei Cougourdoun, 12–13 Low Monday, 129 Low Sunday, 129 Lucia, 412 Lucy, Saint, 70, 411–415 Ludi, 167, 170, 443 Ludi Pescatorii, 485 Lugnasad (Celts), 251–254 Lupercalia (Rome), 254–256, 302 Lupercus, 255

M Madonna del Ponte, 76, 257 Mahalaya Amavashya. See Navaratra and Dusshera

i n d e x | 541 Mahanavami, 308 Mahashivaratri (Hinduism), 193–194, 257–260 Mahavira’s Birthday, 357 Maikrahv, 278 Maimuna. See Passover Mamandabari-maliara, 236 Mankind Day of. See Sekku Mardi Gras, 44, 49, 51, 53–54, 379 See also Carnival Mark, Saint, 393, 423 Martin, Saint. See Martinmas Martinmas (Christianity), 52, 261–264, 290, 421 Martyrdom of Gurus. See Gurpurb Martyrdom of the Bab, 392 Masqal, 142 Matralia (Rome), 264–265 Matronalia (Rome), 256, 265–267 Matsuri (Japan), 184, 267–270 Matzu’s Birthday (China), 270–273 Maundy Thursday, 15, 78, 128, 199–202 Mavra, Saint, 277 Mawlid (Islam), 273–276 May Day (West) burning and, 26 France and, 384 Green Man, 409 Holi and, 192 Lugnasad and, 252 Midsummer and, 286, 288 New Year and, 337 overview, 276–282 Whitsuntide and, 489, 492–494 Mayas, 232–233 Meatfare Sunday, 246 Meatfare Week, 49 Meeting of Our Lord, 41, 44 Memorial Day, 290 Menas, Saint, 416 Mesopotamia, 5–8, 311–312, 397, 448 Miccailhuitontli, 97 Michaelmas, 290, 410, 420 Mid-Autumn, 88, 117, 125, 244, 282–286 Mid-Lent, 153, 248 Midori no Hi, 56 Mid-Pentecost, 493 Midsömmer, 290 Midsummer (West) auspicious beginnings and, 336 bonfires and, 66 crop growth and, 492

Gahanbar festivals, 312 Khoiak and Heb-Sed, 224–225 Martinmas and, 262 overview, 286–291 Shavuot and, 438 tribal ceremonies, 451 Midwinter, 35, 291–295, 312 Milaad, 273–276 Miliargousa, 44 Mimouna, 362–363 Mi’raj (Islam), 295–298 Mischief Night, 422 Monday of Saint Thomas, 129 Mongolia, 176, 299–302 Month, Festival of the, 229 Moon Viewing, 282–283 Most Excellent Faith, 291 Mothering Day, 10 Mothering Sunday, 248 Mother’s Day. See Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary; Lent Muertos, Los. See Days of the Dead Mulid, 273–276

N Naa Damba, 275 Naadam (Mongolia), 176, 299–302 Naked Festivals (Japan), 302–303, 465–466 Namahage, 328 Naming of the Prophet, 275 Nanakusa no Sekku, 427 Narak Chaturdashi, 111 Natalis Soli Invicti, 68 National Aboriginal Day, 290 Nativity of Christ Ascension and, 16 Candlemas and, 41 Christmas and, 61–65, 68 Circumcision and, 334 darkness and, 286 Epiphany and, 10, 15, 42, 146–147 mawlids and, 274 Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple and, 374 Nativity of John the Baptist, 75, 287 Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 23, 72, 74, 76–77, 280, 410 Nativity of the Invincible Sun, 68 Nativity of the Prophet, 273

542 | i n d e x Nava Varsha, 481 Navaratra and Dusshera (Hinduism), 180, 304–311 Navu Varsh, 112–113 Naw Ruz, 311–315, 335, 363, 479–480 Near East, 526–529 Nemean Games, 161, 163, 165 Nemesia, 92 Nenchu gyoji, 197, 217, 267, 327, 427 Nenohi no En, 429 Nepal, 193, 195 Neronia, 170 Nesteia, 468 Netjeryt, 227 Neujahr, 295 Nevroz, 311 New Fire Ceremony (Aztecs), 35, 37, 276, 315–317, 337, 342 New Friday, 128 New Monday, 128 New Moon, 362, 396, 399–400, 404, 447–448, 470 New Thursday, 128 New Tuesday, 128 New Yam Festival, 2–3, 25, 36, 275, 317–319, 441 New Year Akitu, 5–8 Annunciation and, 9 Ashura and, 19 Aztecs and, 316, 383 Busk, 35 calends of January, 65 caroling and, 148 China, 90, 115, 243, 319–325, 525 Church, 73–75 Chuseok and, 282 Divali, 112 Egypt and, 31 8 Monkeys, 133, 135 Epiphany and, 143–145 Father Time and, 66 Feast of Fools, 151–153 festive instruments, 290 fruitcakes and, 63 gifts and, 335 Greece, 145 Hebrews, 8 Incas, 205, 207–208 India, 114, 310 Iroquois and, 292, 294–295 Islam, 314, 326–327 Japan, 8, 156, 327–332

Khoiak and Heb-Sed, 228 Korea, 319–325 Laba, 237–238 Lemuria and, 95 Lupercalia and, 256 Mahashivaratri, 257 Matsuri and, 267 mooncakes and, 125, 284 Mummer’s Parade, 67 Naw Ruz, 311–313, 315, 391 Nepal, 113 New Yam Festival, 319 noisemaking ritual, 123 North Africa, 20 Odwira purification, 1–4 overview, 333–338 Panathenaea and, 355 Paryushana and, 357 Rosh Hashanah, 395–397, 503 Samhain and, 420 Saturnalia and, 425 Sekku, 428 set-nights and, 43 Spring Festival and, 45, 117 taboos, 71 Terminalia, 459 Three for the Living, 88 Tu bi-Shevat and, 475 as turning point, 423 Vaishakha and Vaisakhi, 479–481 Vasant Panchami and, 192–193 visiting on, 418–419 Water-Splashing Festival, 487–489 Whitsuntide and, 494 New Year for Animals, 474 New Year for Kings, 363, 475 New Year for Trees, 474–475 New Year for Years, 475 Nexiuhilpilitzli, 315 Ngurlmak, 233 Nicholas, Saint. See Saint Nicholas Night of Onions, 227 Night of Power, 384–385 Night of Sha’baan, 19 Night of Shiva, 257, 260 Night of the Principle, 240 Nineteen-Day Feast, 338–340 Ninth Day, 428 Ninth of Av, 470 Noruz, 311

i n d e x | 543 Noumenia (Greece), 340 Nu Yah, 294–295 Nuntariyashas, 229 Nyepi (Hinduism), 341–343

O O-Bon. See Days of the Dead October horse, 173 Odile, Saint, 415 Odwira purification, 1–4 Oenach, 253 Okeepa ceremony, 451 Okhi Day, 376 Okunchi, 428 Old Christmas, 43, 68, 143 Olenzaro, 66 Olympic Games Actian Games, 170 funerary games and, 253 Isthmian Games and, 165 modern era, 166 overview, 163–164 Panathenaea and, 353 Panhellenic Games, 161 Omer, 238–239, 359 On-Matsuri Festival, 218 Onna Shagatsu, 331 Opalia, 425 Opet, 31 Òrunmilà, Festival of, 346 Oschophoria, 100–101 Osiris, Festival of. See Khoiak Òsun Festival (Yoruba), 346–348 Our Lady Mesosporitissa, 374 Our Lady Polysportissa, 374 Our Lady’s Herb Day, 25 Our Lady’s Thirty Days, 26, 77

P Pai-pai, 270–272 Palio, 176–177 Palm Sunday (Christianity) Flower Sunday, 140 Lazurus Saturday and, 198 Lent and, 245 light and, 412 maypole and, 409 overview, 349–353

Switching Day and, 128 Panathenaea (Greece), 101, 105, 181, 353–355, 424, 465 Pancake Tuesday. See Carnival; Mardi Gras Panchak Yama, 111 Panhellenic Games, 161–166, 170 Pardon (Christianity), 355–356 Parentalia, 42, 45, 93–94, 255 Parilia, 410, 461 Party, 366 Paryushana and Dashalakshana (Jainism), 356–358 Pascha. See Easter Passion Week, 349 Passiontide, 349 Passover (Judaism) Easter and, 122, 125 8 Monkey and, 133 full moon and, 447 Lag Ba-Omer, 238 observation during, 475 overview, 358–363 as pilgrim festival, 446 release of prisoners and, 200 Rosh Hodesh and, 399 Shavuot and, 438 Whitsuntide and, 490 Patrick, Saint, 44, 276 Paul, Saint, 25, 247 Pentecost All Saints and, 95 All Souls and, 93 Ascension and, 15–17 baptisms and, 123 Corpus Christi and, 77 Denmark and, 124 Ganging Days and, 394 Holy Saturday, 203 pilgrim festivals and, 359 Sacred Heart and, 407 Shavuot and, 438 timing of service, 455 Transfiguration and, 472 Whitsuntide and, 489–493 Perchtentag, 144 Period Festival, 269 Periodic Games, 166 Pesah, 358, 360 Peter, Saint, 25, 247, 287 Peter in Fetters, Saint, 252 Pfingst, 492

544 | i n d e x Phalgun Krishna Pratipad, 195 Philip, Saint, 247 Pi Mai, 488 Pig feasts, 51 Pilgrim festivals, 358–359, 438, 446 Pitcher Feast, 103 Pithoigia, 103 Pitripaksha, 113, 304–305 Plebeian Games, 167, 170 Plynteria, 484 Poila Baishakh, 480 Pokrov, 375 Polycarp, Saint, 46 Pongal, 462 Poseidonia, 416 Potlatch, 90, 99, 253, 364–369, 371, 421–422 Pots, Feast of. See Dionysia Powwow, 366, 369–372, 452 Presentation of Christ in the Temple, 10, 41 Presentation of the Virgin Mary, 372–375 Priests’ Day, 70 Principle, Night of the, 240 Propsonî, 49 Protection of the Mother of God (Christianity), 375–377 Pudu, 91 Pure Brightness, Festival of, 88 Purification of the Virgin Mary, 10, 41–43, 206 Purilli, 229 Purim (Judaism), 67, 189, 377–379, 404 Puskita, 35 Pussy Willow Sunday, 350 Pyanopsia, 101, 374, 465 Pythian Games, 161, 163–166

Q Qing Ming, 87–91, 487 Qoyllur Riti, 80 Quadragesima, 246 Quaresima, 246 Quasimodo, 121, 129 Quinquagesima, 49, 246 Quinquatrus (Rome), 171, 381–382 Qurinalia, 158

R Rain Festivals (Aztecs), 383–384 Raising of the Cross, 139–142, 472

Rakhi Bandhan, 112 Raksha Bandhan, 113 Rama Navami, 310 Ramadan (Islam), 19–20, 129–131, 315, 338, 384–388 Ramayana Week, 310 Rangoli Bihu, 388, 480 Ra’s el’aa’am, 326 Ras el’aa’am el-’aajmi, 326 Ras el’aa’am el-’hijri, 326 Red Thursday, 200 Red-Letter Days, 490 Reed Dance, 388–391 Remembrance Day, 264, 397 Révellion, 333 Rice-Transplanting Festival, 268 Ridván (Bahá’ism), 391–392 Risshun, 328 Robigalia, 393 Rogations (Christianity), 79–80, 124, 174, 252, 393–395 Rois, Fête des, 145 Romaia, 157 Romanos the Melodist, Saint, 249, 375–376 Rome Anna Perenna, 8–9 Argei, 14–15, 280, 429, 441 Caristia, 45–46, 266, 459, 461 Carmentalia, 46–47 comparative table of festivals, 526–529 Dionysia, 100–109 Floralia, 50, 155–156 Fordicidia and Parilia, 157–158 games, 155–156, 167–177, 253, 382, 443 Liberalia, 206, 250–251 Lupercalia, 254–256, 302 Matralia, 264–265 Matronalia, 256, 265–267 Quinquatrus, 171, 381–382 Saturnalia (See Saturnalia) Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis, 443–446 Terminalia, 342, 394, 459–462 Venus Verticordia and Virile Fortune, 484 Vestalia, 485–486 Romulus and Remus, 255 Rosalia, 128, 490, 493 Rosaria, 128, 490 Rosh Hashanah (Judaism), 7, 74, 363, 395–400, 448, 475, 503 Rosh Hodesh (Judaism), 396, 398–400, 404

i n d e x | 545 Royal entry, 75, 79 Rumania, 435, 445 Rumina, 255–256 Running of the Bulls, 177 Rusajet, 493 Rusalii, 493–495 Rushajet. See Whitsuntide Rusicat, 493 Ruume circle dance, 181

S Sabbath (Judaism) Day of Assembly and, 85 overview, 401–406 Rosh Hashanah and, 396, 398 Rosh Hodesh, 399–400 Sunday and, 87, 453–457 Tisha be-Av and, 470 Yom Kippur and, 502 Sacred Heart (Christianity), 406–407 Sacred marriage, 7 Sacrifice, Feast of, 20, 129, 131 Sad-halda, 112 Saidaij Eyo, 302 Saint Ann, 355 Saint Basil the Great, 145, 334–335 Saint Bride, 43 Saint Bridget, 43–44 Saint Catherine, 417 Saint Dasius, 426 Saint Demetrios, 410 Saint Distaff Day, 144 Saint Eligius, 261 Saint Fermin, 176 Saint George, 67, 142, 279, 281, 408–411, 494 Saint John, 70, 288–290, 423 Saint John the Baptist Beheading of, 24, 73 Canada, 290 Carnival and, 210 Conception of, 10, 74 date of, 286 Saint Jordan’s Day, 148 Saint Joseph, 248 Saint Joseph the Craftsman, 280 Saint Knut, 146, 412 Saint Lucy, 70, 411–415 Saint Mark, 393, 423 Saint Martin. See Martinmas

Saint Mary’s Feast of Harvest, 26 Saint Mavra, 277 Saint Menas, 416 Saint Nicholas Candlemas and, 44 Epiphany, 144 Feast of Fools, 151 Innocents’ Day, 152 Martinmas and, 261–262 miracle stories and, 277 New Year and, 145 New York and, 295 overview, 415–419 sailors and, 271 Saint Lucy and, 414 Saint Odile, 415 Saint Patrick, 44, 276 Saint Peter, 287 Saint Peter in Fetters, 252 Saint Philip, 247, 416 Saint Polycarp, 46 Saint Romanos the Melodist, 249, 375–376 Saint Stephen, 70–71, 420 Saint Thomas, 128–129 Saint Valentine, 81, 255 Saint Vincent, 108 Saint Walburga. See May Day Saint-Éloi, 261 Saints Constantine and Helena, 108–109 Saints’ Days, 249 Saints Peter and Paul, Feast of, 25, 247 Saints Theodore, Sunday of the Two, 245 Samhain (Celts), 95, 252, 276, 333, 365, 420–424 San Giuseppe. See Lent San Rocco, 263 Sanfermines. See Games (Rome) Sanja Matsuri, 269 Sankthans, 290 Santa Cruce, Feast of, 142 São João, 287 Sarasvati Puja, 309 Sarvapitri Amavashya, 305 Saturnalia (Rome) Carnival and, 51 date of, 173 Divali and, 113 Holi and, 192 Midsummer and, 288 mock king of, 145 New Year and, 20

546 | i n d e x overview, 424–427 Thesmophoria and, 467 Scholars’ Festival, 238 Secular Games, 168 Sed. See Khoiak and Heb-Sed See of Saint Peter, Feast of the, 46 Segavecchia, 248 Seijin-no-Hi, 332 Sekku (Japan), 427–431 Sensa, Festa della, 17 Seol, 320 Septuagesima, 246 Set-nights, 43 Seven National Festivals, 428 Seven-Five-Three (Japan), 428, 431–432 Seventeenth of Tammuz, 432, 470 Sexagesima, 246 Shabbat, 401–404 Shalako (Zuñi), 48, 432–437, 493–494 Shang Yuan, 90, 240 Shao Yi Jie, 88 Shavuot (Judaism), 189, 238, 359, 438–439, 446, 489–490 Shemini Atzeret, 448–449 Shichi Go San, 431 Shiites, 20–22 Shivaratri, 257 Sho Puja, 111 Shogatsu, 329 Shrove Tuesday, 42–43, 49–51, 94, 245, 425 Sigillaria, 426 Sikhism comparative table of festivals, 526–529 Divali, 109–114 Gurpurb, 140, 186–188 Holi and Vasant Panchami, 192–197 Vaishakha and Vaisakhi, 479–483 Simhat Torah, 448–449 Situa (Incas), 440–442 Skirophoria, 467 Slaughter of the Innocents, 71 Snake, Festival of the, 429 Sotiria, 165–166 Soul Saturday, 93 Special Sabbaths, 404 Spring Break, 248 Spring Dragon (China), 442–443 Spring Festival, 45, 117, 320, 323, 325, 358 Spring Festival of Cybele and Attis (Rome), 104, 279, 443–446, 484, 492

Srétenye, 41 Standard Month, 329 Star Festival, 429 Stephen, Saint, 70–71, 420 Students’ Day, 238–240 Sugô Festival, 184 Sukkot (Judaism), 189, 358, 400, 438, 446–450, 493 Summer Festival, 117 Sun Dance, 450–453 Sunday (Christianity) Day of Assembly and, 85 Days of the Dead and, 93 Easter and, 121, 124, 128 Epiphany and, 146 Lent and, 245, 249 overview, 453–458 Sabbath and, 87 Sunday of Orthodoxy, 245 Sunday of Saint Thomas, 128 Sunday of the Last Judgment, 246 Sunday of the Prodigal Son, 246 Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, 246 Sunday of the Two Saints Theodore, 245 Sun-Gazing Dance, 450–453 Sviatki, 66 Swan, 111 Swing, Festival of the, 196 Swing Full Moon, 196 Switching Day, 128

T Tammuz, Seventeenth of, 432, 470 Tanabata Festival, 430 Tanabata Matsuri, 429 Tanabata no Sekku, 81, 331 Tango no Sekku, 56, 427 Ta’sua, 19 Tedudu, 317 Temps des Fêtes, 44 Tennô Festival, 184 Tepeihuitl, 384 Terminalia (Rome), 342, 394, 459–462 Têt, 320 Thailand, 487–489 Thaipusam (Hinduism), 462–464 Thanksgiving as big event, 320 Black Friday, 71 Iroquois and, 291, 294

i n d e x | 547 Lantern Festival and, 240 Martinmas and, 261, 264 Mid-Autumn and, 282–283 Thargelia (Greece), 101, 465–466 Theodore, Sunday of the Two Saints, 245 Theoinia, 101 Theophany, 143, 147–149, 473 Thesmophoria (Greece), 137–138, 466–469 Thingyan, 488 Thirsting Dance, 450–453 Thomas, Saint, 128–129 Three for the Dead, 88, 90, 117 Three for the Living, 88, 117 “Three manly games,” 299–302 Three Miracles, Festival of the, 146–147 Three Weeks, 470 Three Yuan, 90 Thyia. See Dionysia Tihar, 113 Tij, 178–180 Tika Puja, 310 Timqat. See Epiphany; Theophany Tisha be-Av (Judaism), 397, 470–472 Tititl, 384 Tournament of Roses, 54 Toxiuhmolpilia, 315 Tozoztontli, 384 Transfiguration (Christianity), 472–474, 491 Trieterides, 106–107 Trinity Sunday, 77, 491 Tro-Breiz, 355–356 Trut, 487–489 Tsukimi, 262, 283 Tu bi-Shevat (Judaism), 474–476 Twelfth Day, 143 Twelfth Night, 43, 143–144, 261, 412 Twelve Days of Christmas, 144, 146, 148–149, 335 Twelve Feasts, 121, 373, 472

U Umhlanga, 388, 390 Umkhosi Womhlanga, 388 Universal Exaltation of the Venerable and LiveGiving Cross, 139–142 Unleavened Bread, Festival of, 358–360 Upright Sun, 117 Urabon, 91 Urim, 190 Urnap. See Corpus Christi

V Vaisakhi, 114, 186–187 Vaishakha and Vaisakhi, 479–483 Valentine, Saint, 81, 255 Valentines, 256 Vappu, 277 Vasant Panchami, 192–197 Vasanta Navaratri. See Navaratra and Dusshera Vasanta-Mahotsava, 194 Veil, Feast of the, 375 Venus Verticordia and Virile Fortune (Rome), 484 Vesak, 482–483 Vesakha, 482 Vestal virgins, 373 Vestalia (Rome), 485–486 Veterans Day, 264 Vijay Dasami, 310 Vincent, Saint, 108 Virgin Mary, 10, 72–77 Virgin Mary Day, 76 Virile Fortune, 484 Visakha, 482 Vishu, 479 Visitation of Holy Mary, 406 Voodoo, 231–232

W Wakana no Sekku, 428 Walburga, Saint. See May Day Walpurgis Night, 277, 414, 423 Water-Splashing Festival, 487–489 Weaver, Festival of the, 267, 427, 429 Wheat Festival, 26 White Sunday, 129 White Week, 128 Whitsuntide (Christianity) Féria, 177 May Day and, 278–279 overview, 489–497 Rumania and, 435, 445 Sunday and, 455 Wife-swapping, ceremonial, 235 Wodaabe nomads, 180–183 Women’s Festival, 82 Women’s New Year, 303, 331–332 World Day of Orthodox Youth, 44 Worso, 182–183 Wren, Day of the, 71

548 | i n d e x

X Xia Yuan, 90 Xocotl Huetzi, 97

Y Yakke charm dance, 181 Yam Custom, 2 Yam Festival, 3 Yama Dwititya. See Divali Yandatsa. See Days of the Dead Yawm al-Jum’a, 85 Yeme ben hametzarim, 470 Yom ha-Bikkurim, 438 Yom ha-din, 397 Yom ha-Zikkaron, 397 Yom Kippur (Judaism) Annunciation and, 10 Hegira and, 19 Judgment Day and, 7, 395 New Year and, 8 overview, 501–504 Rosh Hodesh and, 398

Sukkot and, 448 Temple and, 373 Thargelia and, 465 Tisha be-Av and, 470 Yom Kippur Katan, 399 Yom Teru’ah, 396 Yoruba people, 346–348 Young Herbs, Festival of, 428 Yu Lan Pen, 88, 91 Yuan Shuo, 319 Yuan Xiao, 90, 240, 242 Yuan Zheng, 319 Yule log, 193, 286, 321, 329, 337 Yuletide, 54, 66, 69, 244, 420, 493

Z Zagmuk, 6 Zhong Yuan Jie, 88 Zoroastrianism, 311–315, 529 Zuñi, 432–437 Zwölfer, 143

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C

HRISTIAN ROY was born in Quebec City in 1963. He studied German and History at McGill University in Montreal and obtained his Ph.D. in History there in 1993, specializing in contemporary European intellectual history. He soon gained international recognition for his research on the French personalist tradition and related “third way” political movements in the twentieth century. In 1996–1997, he was Hoover Fellow in Applied Ethics at the Centrum voor Economie en Ethiek of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. His dissertation, an intellectual biography of Alexandre Marc (1904–2000), a French personalist pioneer of European federalism, was published in 1999 in Nice, France, where he has lived several years. He has published numerous papers and articles, mostly on French intellectual life and its international connections (for example, in Germany and the Low Countries), on Scandinavian literature, and on Canadian political thought. Roy has also contributed entries to several reference works: the Historical Dictionary of World War II France: The Occupation, Vichy, and the Resistance (1938–1946)

(1998) and the Historical Encyclopedia of Christian Politics, 1789–Present (2005), both published by Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), and Personalisti nel XXmo secolo (2005) published by Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane (Naples). Among the not-yet-published topics covered are Roy’s contribution to Ian Angus, ed., Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and his general editorship of the complete works of Belgo-Canadian Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck (1906–1965) for Quebec City’s Université Laval. He is also a member of the latter's international Projet Tillich as one of the translators of the early German works of Paul Tillich (1886–1965) for a French edition (Paris: Cerf and Geneva: Labor et Fides) of the main works of this American Protestant thinker. Roy earns his living as a freelance translator from most Western European languages (especially German and Dutch) to either English or his native French. He is now pursuing a Master’s degree in Orthodox theology at the Université de Sherbrooke's campus in Longueuil, the Montreal suburb where he is currently based.