feast
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- Also called:
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feast, day or period of time set aside tocommemorate, ritually celebrate or reenact, or anticipate events or seasons—agricultural, religious, or sociocultural—that give meaning and cohesiveness to an individual and to the religious, political, or socioeconomiccommunity. Because such days or periods generally originated in religious celebrations or ritual commemorations that usually includedsacred community meals, they are called feasts or festivals.
The terms feast and festival usually—though not always in modern times—involve eating or drinking or both in connection with a specific kind of rite: passage rites, death rites,sacrificial rites, seasonal observances, commemorative observances, and rites celebrating the ending of fasts or fast periods.Fasting, the opposite of feasting, has often been associated with purification rites or as a preparatorydiscipline for the celebration of feasts and associated rites. Festivals often include not only feasting but also dramatic dancing and athletic events, as well as revelries and carnivals that at times border on thelicentious. Depending upon the central purpose of a feast or festival, the celebration may be solemn or joyful, merry, festive, and ferial.
Another term associated with the events and activities of days of sacred significance is “holy day,” from which is derived the wordholiday. This term has come to mean a day or period of special significance not only in religious calendars (e.g., the ChristianChristmas and the JewishHanukkah) but also in thesecular (e.g.,May Day in Russia andLabor Day in theUnited States and Canada, both of which holidays celebrate especially the accomplishments of the working class).
This section, though it will concentrate on feasts and festivals in the history of religions, will also give attention to the holidays of what has been termed the secular (or profane) sphere. Most secular holidays, however, have some relationship—in terms of origin—with religious feasts and festivals. The modern practice ofvacations—i.e., periods in which persons are “renewed” or participate in activities of “recreation”—is derived from the ancientRoman religious calendar in a reverse fashion. More than 100 days of the year were feast days dedicated to various Roman gods and goddesses. On the days that were sacred festivals, and thus holy days, persons rested from their routine daily activities. Days that were not considered sacred were calleddies vacantes, vacant days, during which people worked. In modern times, however, vacations (derived from the termdies vacantes) are periods of rest, renewal, or recreation that may be sacred or secular holidays—or simply periods of time away from everyday work allowed by modern business or labor practices.
Feasts and festivals, originating in the dim past of man’s social, religious, and psychic history, are rich in symbols that have only begun to be investigated in the 19th and 20th centuries by anthropologists, comparative folklorists, psychoanalysts, sociologists, historians ofreligion, and theologians. Such investigations will not only elucidate mythological, ritualistic, doctrinal,aesthetic, and psychic motifs and themes but will also provide educative insights to modern people, who have been caught up in social and religious forces that they have found difficult to understand. Feasts and festivals in the past have been significant informational andcohesive devices for thecontinuity of societies andreligious institutions. Even when the feasts or festivals have lost their original meanings in doctrinal or mythological explanations, the symbols preserved in the rites, ceremonies, and arts (e.g., pictorial, dramatic, or choreographic) have enabled persons in periods of crisis or transition to preserve anequanimity despite apparent evidences of disintegration within theircultures or societies. Thus, the scholarly investigations of the many and various facets of feasts and festivals will provide different forms of information that will be of help to modern people in achieving an understanding of their origins, identities, and destinies.
Nature and significance
Concepts ofsacred times
By their very nature, feasts and festivals are special times, not just in the sense that they are extraordinary occasions but more so in the sense that they are separate from ordinary times. According toMircea Eliade, a Romanian-American historian of religion, festival time is sacred; i.e., it participates in thetranscendent (or supernatural) realm in which the patterns of man’s religious, social, or cultural institutions and activities were or are established. Through ritualistic re-enactment of the events that inform man about his origin, identity, and destiny, a participant in a festival identifies himself with the sacred time:
Religious man feels the need to plunge periodically into this sacred and indestructible time. For him it is sacred time that makes possible the other time, ordinary time, the profane duration in which every human life takes its course. It is theeternal present of the mythical event that makes possible theprofane duration of historical events.
In religions and cultures that view time as cyclical—and this applies to most non-monotheistic religions and the cultures influenced by them—man understands his status in the cosmos, in part, through special times (e.g.,New Year’s festivals) celebrating the victory of order in nature overchaos. New Year’s festivals have been celebrated in recorded history for more than five millennia. In ancientMesopotamia, for example,Sumerians andBabylonians celebrated the renewal of the life-sustaining spring rains in the month of Nisan—although some cities of Mesopotamia retained an ancient custom of celebrating a second similar festival when the rains returned in the month of Tishri (autumn).Sacrifices of grain and other foods were dedicated to the gods Dumuzi (or Tammuz) or Marduk, majorfertilitydeities, at aziggurat (tower temple), after which the people participated in feasting, dancing, and other appropriate ritualistic activities.
In the 20th century, the view that New Year’s Day is a time significant in the victory of order over disorder has been celebrated, for example, in areas influenced byChinese religions. In order to frighten thekuei (evil or unpredictable spirits), which are believed to be dispersed by light and noise, participants in the New Year’s festival light torches, lanterns, bonfires, and candles and explode firecrackers. In 1953, when the first day of the lunar New Year coincided with asolar eclipse, the government of the People’s Republic ofChina (which has been anti-religious in itspropaganda and official activities) expressed an anxiety that the repressed “religious popular superstitions” might encourage some form of anti-government activity. According to the views ofConfucius (6th–5th centuriesbc) andMencius (4th–3rd centuriesbc), two of China’s great religious teachers, whose social andethical influences have extended into the 20th century, a solar eclipse during the New Year’s festival is a sign of a coming disaster and of a lack of favor by Shang Ti, the Heavenly Lord, who sends omens to indicate his disapproval of man’s evil activities.
In religions and cultures that conceive of time as linear, progressing from a beginning toward anend time, when the whole cosmos will be renewed or changed, people understand their status (i.e., origin, identity, and destiny) in relationship to particular events in history that have a significance similar to those expressed in themyths of people who view time as cyclical. Jews understand their status as members of the “people of God,” who were “chosen” during the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt in the 13th centurybc to be witnesses to the liberating love of Yahweh (their God). Being the chosen “people of God” is celebrated especially during thePassover festival—in which the Exodus is ritually re-enacted and commemorated—in the month of Nisan (spring). Similarly, theChristian understands his status as a member of the “new people of God.” He believes that he has been chosen by Christ, who was crucified and resurrected by God in the 1st centuryad, to work for theKingdom of God that was inaugurated in the first advent of Christ and will beconsummated at the Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ as king and judge. The festival of the Resurrection, orEaster, is ritually re-enacted every year in order that the believer may participate in the present and future kingdom of peace. Theeucharistic feast (the Holy Communion), though celebrated at many and various times during the year, originated in the event (namely, theLord’s Supper onHoly Thursday preceding Christ’s Passion) that has been interpreted as a commemoration of the crucifixion and Resurrection. Just as the New Year’s festivals of the religions that interpreted sacred time as cyclical incorporated both remorse and joy in their celebrations, so also the feasts of the Passover and the Resurrection include sorrow for the sins of the individual and of mankind and joy and hope for the salvation of man and the world (see alsocalendar: Ancient and religious calendar systems;Jewish religious year;church year).