The Festivals and Holy Days

This category holds the festivals and holy days of the religious calendars: fixed and movable feasts, fasts, new years, solstice and equinox observances, and commemorations of events and figures. Each entry records the tradition, the calendar by which the date is reckoned, and what the day marks.

Holy days give a religion its year, a repeating cycle of remembrance and renewal that structures communal life. Some commemorate an event held to be historical or mythic; others mark a turn of the season or the calendar; others are set aside for fasting, penitence or joy.