Festivals. The word means either Woodstock or
Harvest to me. Woodstock was before my time and I have very fond memories of
the colourful celebrations at harvest time when I was a child. But of course,
there is more to it than that.
This last weekend my friendship groups were split
into two. One lot, the older group (I kid you not!) went to the V
Festival, which is an open air music festival. The other group - well let me be honest here, a generation younger than me - went to the Summer in the City Festival
at Alexandra Palace in London.
The only thing these events shared was the date.
The Summer in the City was a gathering of Youtubers, those new celebrities who
have made their name by posting videos of themselves online. There are
comedians, musicians, observationists, satirists and agony aunts. Probably many
more talents that I am unaware of. But they have all made their name, and made
a living, from Youtube. Just like books and blogging, festivals have moved into
new technological era.
So this is the new direction for festivals but
where did they start? The word simply means 'celebration' and therefore will
have been around since civilisation began. Like the Harvest Festival, faiths
all around the world have held celebrations for religious commemoration and
worship. Over the last century there have been film, motor, folk, arts and
literary festivals. Anything can be celebrated and therefore anything can have
a festival.
In Anglo-Saxon times the people celebrated more
than ever. With no books or television to pass the time and the prospects of a
short life, if there was anything worth celebrating there was a festival for
it. When Christianity came to the pagan kingdoms, the new festivals were embraced
while the traditional ones were maintained.
Some of my favourite festivals are the Bilberry
Sunday festival, when, at the end of July when all the bilberries have been
picked, there is a huge festival to celebrate the harvest. I imagine that there
were lots of bilberry pies and barrels of bilberry wine consumed. There will
have been music and dancing as well as feasting. Another is the Orchard
Visiting Wassail, the festival where people sing and drink in order to wake the
apple trees that are prized for their cider apples. The festivities are
supposed to scare away evil spirits and ensure a good crop. The folks try to
make as much noise as they can once the singing is over and a piece of bread
soaked in cider is left on the roots of the trees. This festival evolved into
the Apple Wassail during the sixteenth century but maintained the principle
ideas. My own version of this festival (albeit a wee bit more gory!) is in The
Dark Garden, which I am writing as a weekly serial.
Other favourites of mine include the Lantern
Festivals held in China, Thailand, Taiwan and other Buddhist countries.
Lanterns of every description are paraded through streets and set the sky
alight. Another Buddhist festival I like is the Songkran Water Festival. Here,
to symbolise the purity and cleansing of the spirit, a statue of Buddha is bathed
and then a huge water fight breaks out in the streets with hose pipes buckets
and water guns. Then there is the Grape Throwing Festival in Spain, the Dead
Cat Festival of Belgium (toy cats are thrown, no dead ones), Sandfest in Texas,
Glastonbury, Frozen Dead Guys Festival in Colorado and Harbin Ice and Snow
Festival in China.
The evolutionary process has taken the best from
the traditional celebrations and discarded the unpleasant, such as sacrifice
festivals (these used to be in November in Anglo-Saxon times). In some cases
they include the new, like the Summer in the City and film festivals. But,
overall, they haven't changed very much at all. They are mostly outdoors and
include eating, drinking and singing.
If I had to choose three things worth celebrating
it would probably be the three above: because they signify what it is to be
alive.
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