I've spoken before about the way that my connection to the Good Folk has influenced my approach to holy days, specifically by changing my focus from solar/lunar scheduling to a calendar based on the yearly cycle of the Pleiades. This in itself was a seismic change and has altered my entire view of what holy days are. Coming from a more generally neopagan viewpoint of 'its all about the cycle of the natural world/agrarian life' to one that sees holidays a dance of co-celebration with the Holy Powers on a cyclic journey through time and reality which waxes and wanes in connection to alignment with the stars.
That all said however there are other ways that my understanding has changed when it comes to every holiday and celebrating them, particularly how the Othercrowd approach this topic. While there is a cycle of different reasons to celebrate, and ergo foci, for each individual celebration there is also a fairly similar format and approach to every holy day that is far more constant than the human neopagan view. I am not advocating that humans adopt this approach necessarily but I wanted to share what I've learned in case it resonates with anyone else. So, things I've learned about how the Other approach holy days:
- 'Day' is a loose term by which they generally seem to mean something closer to 'period of time'. This may be several days or several weeks. This is not however a predictable fixed period of time and it tends to wax and wane based on many variables.
- A holy day must have a feast. That feast must be shared. Food and sharing of food is a pivotal aspect of any holiday and one of the crucial things that marks the celebration. This doesn't mean breaking your budget to have excessive extravagance but it means doing the best you can to make the meal special. I'd compare it to the US ideas around food on Thanksgiving for example.
- Holy days mean celebration, celebration means joy, and joy means sex (for the adults). Not necessarily or even primarily procreative sex, and not sex as duty or sex as symbolic act/sympathetic magic but sex for pleasure. They don't seem at all interested in this the way that some neopagans have equated certain spring holidays to 'celebrating fertility in spring in union with the earth planting cycle' and it isn't the base fetishization of it that we see in some places, its sex as a way to celebrate the happiness of the holy day (let me however mention here that the entire concept of sex is different to them, as I've previously discussed here)
- Their push to re-enchant the human world, or to place themselves more strongly into it, means a re-wilding of the energy which in turns means a very particular intensity around these times. The more you connect to this the more I believe you will feel that energy.
- Many of the general rules and expectations of behaviour are softened or ignored at these times, both in good ways that allow more leniency and in bad ways that open more avenues up for things to go sideways.
- These times are seen as truly sacred in a way that I'm not sure humans can fully comprehend. They are points when energy is harnessed by joint effort to strengthen community bonds and achieve group goals. They are essential. They create a transcendence of spirit that binds the Other together.
- Celebrations are full of food, music, dance, sex, wild magic, and ecstatic experience
