"There is no Dana. There is only Zool.": the holiday version

[mrissa]

I will never tire of Midsummer and Midwinter. By which I mean, I will never tire of Midwinter, and I acknowledge that I have to have Midsummer with it for balance. (Like Arlo says, you can't have the thing without the other thing.) But sometimes it is not time for another fantasy novel Midwinter festival. Or Midsummer festival. Or even spring or fall equinox. Sometimes it is time for there to be a special thing that happens to magic once a year that isn't about light and darkness, warmth and cold, but is about magic's own thing. Sometimes it is time for there to be a holiday for the birthday of the first king, or the invention of the seed press, or the defeat of the horrible horrible enemy at the Battle of Wherever.

Midsummer and Midwinter have resonance. They have immense myffic whatsis. And I have leaned on that whatsis in the past, and will again. But what they do not have, so much, is texture. "This non-equatorial culture has a Midwinter Festival!" You don't say. Golly, just imagine. But if you say, yes, of course, Midwinter and Midsummer, harvest and planting, rhythms of life and all, but also, also, also the day when this nation cut loose from their neighbors to the west. Or the day when the founders landed on the barren bit of rock. Or the day when one subculture observes one thing while another is up to something completely different and the two of them are not entirely pleased with each other for doing it wrong and ruining the whole thing. Or the day when the decadent cityfolk drink and dance, but this is serious to the farmers! this is hard work!

And it's all being character again: you know something about my mother if I tell you she tends to observe Arbor Day whenever possible, as a suburban person in a non-agrarian culture. Similarly you will know something about Lord Wossname of Thatplace if you know that he does not give the servants the day off for the festival of fools and has lost two cooks over that point but will not yield, despite his sister's shouting on the subject. Do people know songs for Brewer's Thirdday, or is it a non-singing holiday? It's not about treatises. It's about what drops into the lines as you go.

It makes it nubbly. Sometimes you want things to flow past your fingertips without catching, but sometimes being able to feel and see the stitches is just what makes it interesting, and maybe a little beautiful. And also sometimes where your fingertips catch is where you've dropped a stitch, and you need to go in and repair it or rip out that row before you get any further, and that's all right, too, because it is worth doing right.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Yay for knitting metaphors!

I agree about being able to spot character from knowing both what a culture generally does for holidays and also what a specific family does within the culture, because I've seen it so clearly with my in-laws. It probably helps that their holidays and mine are an overlapping but nonidentical set - we share the civil but not religious ones.

Sometimes you even need to go beyond the what to the why. For instance, you know something about my husband's family if you're told that Christmas is not a singing holiday for them; they don't actually have any singing holidays. (I was shocked and disappointed. I sing even when it's someone else's holiday.) But you know more when you learn, as I did only last month, that this is not in spite of my grandmother-in-law's having been a music teacher but because of it; she hated to hear anyone singing things *wrong*. (It's probably a good thing I only knew her in old age when she had mellowed a bit.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am told that my dad's mother used to make them sing the table grace at supper until they got the four-part harmony right, so if you were in bad voice that day, everyone's green beans would get awfully cold. But I think I like that approach to wanting to get things right better: not to be unable to bear it the wrong way, just to need to fix it. Maybe I like it better because that trait got passed down a bit.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why, thanks! I'm afraid I don't feel like Ursula Le Guin when I write, "myffic whatsis," but maybe if she was on lj and had fallen headfirst into book, she would write about myffic whatsis as well.

[redbird]

And the bits where some people insist no, this is a serious holiday and we need to think about and remember what it means, and some think "hey, fireworks!" and some think it's an excuse for 30% off sales at the big stores. And the first group doesn't think much of the second, and they both think the third are missing the point because they want to make all holidays just that sort of excuse.

(Among other factors, I just read a novel, written and set in the early 1970s, which is in significant part about World War I veterans and their memories.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, part of what I wrote last night was the "I r serious majishun, this r serious hollyday" faction. WWI Vets on the 4th. Some -- but happily nothing like all -- flavors of Christian on Christmas. Etc.