CHRISTOTÉ


The Triple Cities

Religious Festivals

Name                            Date                Faith              Type

New Year                    1st Jan              Garrath             Universal

St Maskam's Feast       31st March       Garrath             Universal

Elso's Drarb                  14th Apr          Ellan                 Faith only*

Tukas Day                    11th June         Secular              --

High Summer's Day       21st July          Ellan                 Universal

Bruchers Eve                14th Aug          Torgun             Faith only*

Goldlint                         21st Sep          Ellan                 Faith only*

Garreday                      31st Sep          Garrath             Universal

Westel's Day                6th Dec            Ellan                 Universal

* Brucher's Eve and Elso's Drarb are public holidays across Dorlaf but only marked by religious rites by Torguns and Ellans respectively.  Goldlint is a normal day and services are held in the evening only.

New Year (1st January)

Pan-religious, though mainly Garran (in Garran church, officially the day of the God Artan); a standard mid-winter festival. Mainly drinking/partying, the most debauched of the main festivals. Also traditions of gift-giving, and illusion/masks/dressing up. Big bonfire held in Rykes Gardens.

St Maskham's Feast (31st March)

A major festival, second only in size to Garreday. Garran in origin, though universally acknowledged, officially marks the end of Winter, consequently as genuinely joyous as Garreday is defiantly so (though in fact, the weather is usually worst for St Maskham's). The usual drinking and (limited) feasting, main emphasis is on carnivals, fairs and processions. Cornerstones are the big processions which pass through each of the Cities at noon, always heading south-north and ending at the respective Harkanas Gates - the themes being Old Harkan driving out the Winter & chasing it away to the north. Old Harkan is a minor deity in the pantheon, the son of Garrath; rarely worshipped alone but as part of the Garran faith. As well as annually driving out winter, he is said to have aided St Maskham and, according to some stories, is actually his father). Traditions for the day include starting afresh & making resolutions for the coming months; linked with this custom of forgiveness, often a release of selected prisoners by the authorities. The first big sporting day of the year, various Five Crown athletics events, plus a number of races.

"St Maskham's Feast is more restrained <than Garreday>, and also more directly shaped by Garran theology.  In the weeks preceding it the devout eat through a vast array of symbolic foodstuffs, from cinnamon cakes to 'grass pie' (which is pretty much what it says.)  The streets of the Cities become caked with rose petals, scattered to celebrate the coming of spring.  And the day itself is geared around the great parades.  Long processions weave through all three cities, clad in spectacular, colourful costumes fashioned in images of all the various characters of Garran folklore.  Thousands of people line the streets to watch the parades.  They cheer at the gods and heroes and jeer at the demons, each reaction as trivial and automatic as laughter.  After the processions have passed by the onlookers surge out to follow them and everything culminates in an enormous all-night fair in Rand Park." (from A Shining Light)

 
Tukas Day (11th June)

The only major non-church oriented festival, established in 1079, a full holiday throughout Christoté. It is celebration of a mixture of events - the foundation of Christoté, the liberation from Erenland, the continued strength and prosperity of the country, and also remembrance of Tars Tukas himself. A big festival for flag-waving and processions, massive speeches in Parliament and, more importantly, the day for raising poor relief and public spending (an extension of the old tradition of largesse to the poor on festivals; a reminder that this is what Christoté is all about; a timely bribe on election years). Despite this last feature, the festival is still a reviled one amongst the dissatisfied, and burning something big & public down on Tukas Day is an established method of protest. The festival date is actually Tars Tukas' birthday; it was chosen over a number of other possible anniversary dates (e.g. start of the Twin Strike, signing of the Wasseldale Treaty, surrender of Erenland) mainly because it fell in June, and people fancied a festival then.

 
High Summers Day (21st July)

More of a central Dorlafan festival originally, of uncertain origin, though adopted now by the Ellan Church for their summer festival (elsewhere this generally comes at the start of August). Less exuberant than most, an emphasis on family gatherings, romantic liaisons, visits and day-trips etc. Also a political importance; (erroneously) regarded as the signing of the Wasseldale Treaty; the day when the Chancellor is elected, and final date for the selection of Barons/Emissaries. Big Guards parade in Yaleth in non-election years.

 
Garreday (30th September)

Garreday (pr. "Garday") is the most important day in the Church of Garrath, and a major event in the calendar of most Christotans. Assorted legends are tied up with it, but its most important association is with the ending of summer and the coming of winter. Garreday is the "last day of good weather", a final celebration before harsh times require the belt to be tightened. Its emphasis is therefore on unrestrained consumption of food and drink, and of festivities and general devil-may-care celebration to compensate for the thrift ahead. Garreday, furthermore, is associated with the last day of the harvest; when all vital duties should have been finished before the winter. It is this aspect, in urban areas, been translated into romantic, rather than agricultural matters; Garreday is traditionally the time when important affairs of the heart, be they marriages, engagements or simple courtships are begun or arranged. Garreday's counterpart is in St Maskham's Feast, on 31st March, which is officially the end of winter.

Seasons obviously have most meaning in the country, but the traditions of Garreday and St Maskham's Feast have been continued and amplified in the Triple Cities. Garreday is an official holiday, and all employees, bar the most necessary, are legally entitled to take the day off. With the emphasis on the seasonal, rather than religious, importance, Garreday has long spread from the church of Garrath to all sects. It is, however, more a Dorlafan event than anything else. Most of the Cities' human immigrants let themselves be swept into it, but the Kakranfan community tend to stay indoors and keep the curtains drawn. This tends to be held against them as one more instance of their excessively sober character, but the Kakranfans see nothing to celebrate in the coming of the winter (if the Cities' weather can be classed as "winter" in Kakranfan times). The Kakranfans celebrate only when winter ends, still keeping behind closed doors when they do so but with scenes of shocking drunkenness that would shatter a stereotype overnight if observed.

The Build-Up

"When Garreday is almost upon us the Cities are at their most true, perfect and unbearable.  Every year someone hangs a sign on one of the gates, "The Triple Cities are currently full.  Please try again later".  It must by now be another custom, as there is no point to it and it isn't funny, yet people still do it.  Garreday, according to the Erish writer Stotart, is when "Farmers from miles around journey to the towns to trade their harvest".  Perhaps that was the start of it, but only the start.  Farmers do still turn up in droves, plodding the roads in their creaking, mule-powered carts piled high with produce.  They tend to stay longer than the complexities of trade actually demand however.  And there are others whose farms are entirely self-sufficient or who conduct all sales through middlemen merchants and so have no real cause to go anywhere... but they roll up on Garreday nonetheless, the more conscientious bringing wives and children, the less just their genitals and having a fine old time of it.  Farmers, moreover, form only a small faction.  Itinerant merchants plan their trans-continental journeys to hit the Cities at a particular time of year.  Blacksmiths suddenly find a yearning to personally examine that new Forgar alloy everyone is enthusing over.  Distant academics become aware that the reference book they really need can only be found in Jalkin Library.  It is probably only gossip, but they do say that even the political refugees fleeing turbulence and oppression at home used to head for friendly Christotan lights with suspiciously seasonal timing.  From all over they come, to watch the sports and wave the flags and light the fireworks and browse the markets and gape at the fairs, to play the games and join the mad waltz of Garreday in the Cities, gliding with consummate ease on the brink of self-destruction.  But mainly they come to gorge.  Hundreds of years ago Garreday began in the then-backward farmlands of Dorlaf and Elsey as a ritual to regulate the gathering of the harvest and mark the end of summer. The grim winter months lay ahead, a period of hardship and privation.  A final day of feasting and relaxation was therefore initiated, to carry everyone's spirits through the long nights ahead.  And winter is never really conquered, and neither is hardship; so even if the fat of the land now has a crust ten inches thick, and if Garreday has changed from a day when none go hungry to one where gluttony and decadence run unchecked, what of it?  Garreday has transformed from a gesture of defiance to a celebration of what has been achieved, and this is deserved. 

"Every inn, tavern, wineshop, cookhouse and eatery in the Cities was full.  Kenner visited backwater, unfashionable places which were quiet almost all year round and found them heaving to the rafters.  Meanwhile the scenes at popular ones, like the Calderdale or the Sun in Splendour, were unspeakable.  People fought for space, fought for room to expand their chests to breath; they spilled out onto the pavement seats and collided with passers by.  There were regular plop-plop-plops as the less sturdy collapsed through heat and lack of air.  They joined those overdosing on food and beer and the victims of drink-induced fighting in the hostels for the sick, which were also full.  And money tore through the Cities like a tidal wave.  Not all excuses to visit were spurious; from fireworks alchemists to gig drivers, from ballgown makers to overlarge bouncers, job vacancies opened up everywhere.  Queuing behind the farm wagons on the roads were exotic and travel-battered caravans full of weird and wonderful goods to be unloaded onto the festival markets.  The square in front of Ayresons Brewers in Jalkin was a constant chariot charge as drays thudded to and fro distributing barrels of their cheap, watery beer.  Meanwhile Brayhatch and Sons, the huge Forgar bakers, was never closed and filled the night air with the clonkings and grindings of its conveyor belts.  Furthermore, and through no coincidence, the landed gentry were back in town.  After the usual summer spent flitting from one country pile to another, they had migrated back to the Cities to spend winter in their town houses.  To the eternal joy of the likes of Myran Smithson, their arrival heralded the start of the Gossip Gales as news of their summer antics leaked out onto the streets.  The church bells rang out as gangs of people in smart robes and elaborate hats made various ill-advised, avaricious marriages; and the heavy thuds of printing presses sang their hosannas as Clothespeg, The Messenger and a host of other newsheets spewed out endless sarcastic and libellous stories about the Great and Good." (from City Hobgoblins)

The Night Before Garreday

"The blank white faces of the squat towers had vanished.  They were covered almost top to bottom with endless streams of paper, ribbons, tape; practically any disposable and colourful material hung from the eaves and windowsills.  By daylight the houses looked like a vertical, unchecked flowerbed, an unruly and exotic mass of primary colours.  Currently monochromed, the effect was rather eerie.  The street whispered a thousand rustles in the gentle wind, as if the paper had passed full circle and was transformed into the leaves of a midnight forest .  A rampant vine, the streamers weren't confined to the houses but spread everywhere, creeping along the tops of walls, stretching across alley mouths, winding around water pumps.  And the street glowed almost as bright as day.  The numbers of street lanterns are doubled by the Council every Garreday; yet more lanterns are loaned to those wishing to hang them over their doors.  Mixed with their white light were the orange glows of fires peeking out from open windows between the streamers, from the ovens and braziers of food sellers and the family parties who sprawled on the flat roof tops, and, of course, from the open doors and huge windows of the taverns.  The lights of Jakks Lane met with those from all across the Cities, casting a glow on the night clouds which was visible for miles. 

"The usual bands of drinkers staggered through the streets, calling to each other and singing ballads, but the crowd was still largely a daytime one.  Mothers were taking their children home from the Hawkers Market on Leighman Way, still excited and chattering about the sights of that great bazaar for curios from across the continent.  Street traders defied sore throats by persisting in shouting out their wares, advertising pasties, graf, fireworks, candles, masks and lucky charms.  A street theatre group was enacting a bawdy comedy, and close by a sole bongo-player staccatoed out his wild rhythms.  There was an irresistible suction to the proceedings; the more gregarious residents flung themselves into it while the reticent ones realised the only way to stay sane was to join in until the damn thing quietened down.  Old women and young men strolled together in gossiping groups, exchanging slander, building alliances and carelessly trashing reputations.  The hermits of the community put themselves on rare display whilst the leaders, women of Mrs Gowling's age and beyond, shuffled bickering between the stalls.  Boys and girls sauntered hand in hand, some with the air of defiance denoting an alliance only recently forged and being tested for the first time to public scrutiny.  From a few alleyways came the squeals and grunts of more advanced students of courtship.  And inevitably, as Jakks Lane widened into Mistletoe Square, the stalls grew more plentiful, the produce more exotic and a small fair broke out.  A rectangle of thick turf had been installed and roped off, so that for a small purse locals could brave ten minutes of acute contortions at the hands of a six-foot-by-six Zabric wrestler.  A young woman painted head to toe in tiger stripes leaped a wild dance to the rhythms of a troop of kettledrummers.  Two men tossed flaming torches between themselves while a crowd shouted encouragement; and a woman in a bewildering multi-coloured robe accosted passers-by with a deck of cards.  She might have been a fortune teller, she might have been a card trickster and it was possible that was both, depending on requests..."

(from City Hobgoblins)

Festivities

Most celebrations, obviously, are small-scale affairs, involving family gatherings, street parties & the like, the general emphasis being on stuffing self silly and getting drunk, though how rigorously this is carried out varies from person to person. The general mood, however, tends to be more of the families-gathering-together cordiality than the more riotous revelry of St Maskham's Feast or New Year. For those not going to the Games a large carnival is set up elsewhere in Ryke's Gardens, involving most of the normal things carnivals do and then some; smaller fairs can be found in Ansell Square (Yaleth), Praetor Square (Forgar) and Vellers Square (Jalkin). Most of those in the poorer districts throw neighbourhood parties in the squares or corners where their streets meet, though split back into family units when light fails. The middle classes keep in said units, though tend to treat the occasion as a time for branches of the family tree to mix together in large parties. Most of the aristocracy go to the Games, but come into their own come evening. Thence is held the society event of the year, the Chancellor's Ball, held at the Town Hall in Jalkin, specially converted for the event. Despite tickets costing a fortune (profits are put into the funds to help poor relief in the coming winter) the Chancellors Ball is an unmissable occasion for anyone who is, or wants to be, anyone in Dorlaf and most of Christoté; its importance is shown by the fact that even the elusive Tomas Listel is a regular attendee.

 The Garreday Games

Held in the Ruarn Arena just outside Yaleth, the Games are when the annual Five Crowns Championships are decided. Beginning at noon and lasting until late afternoon, twenty men and women athletes compete in their respective events for the title of the Five Crowns.  The name comes from the fact that five separate events have to be contested and a winner decided on aggregate scores.  Men compete in javelin, sprint, horse-riding, wrestling and distance running; women the same except archery instead of wrestling.  The Games are immensely popular, and the Ruarn Arena is packed for them, cheap and expensive seats alike. Their appeal is partially due to a lack of other alternatives. There are few organised sporting events in the Cities, though the sprawling & unruly games of football have been imported from the countryside to the poorer districts. The Games - together with the single-event championships held at other times in the war - are really the replacement for gladiatorial combat. This was, after all, what the Ruarn Arena had been built for originally, and though stamped on very heavily by Tukas & Bennet, the gladiator spectacle remains a part of Dorlafan culture. The link is made even stronger by the occasional gladiator from the Kakranfan arenas coming south to try his luck, though the shipping in of Carlin L'Janiar, the current king of the Kakranfé scene, for the 1334 Games was an unprecedented step.

A popular side-event to watching the athletes is betting on them - the Games are the major event for bookmakers as well as sports fans. The build-up proper to Garreday begins with the publishing of The Matterchack's Almanac, a single-sheet pamphlet which gives descriptions and form guide to all the athletes, and the odds given on them by The Matterchack Men, the Cities' major bookies (Forgar-based). Inevitably, betting leads to attempts of fixing - things have been tightened up recently, but there was a major scandal in 1321, when the banker Kierlan Estel, amongst others, was found to have nobbled the two favourites in the male Championships.

The athletes themselves come from various walks of life, though most from poor backgrounds. The notorious Lord Gladings won the Crowns in 1229, prior to his career as a Baron Elective and Principle Secretary; but current champion, Ferent Harks, is more typical, the son of Erish immigrants who scrape a living from Forgar's textile trade. Women athletes are even more uniformly working class, with the status carrying a measure of stigma and perceptions of being "unfeminine"; all part of the hopelessly mixed standards in the Cities. Staycey Kerritz, daughter of a Schallic farmer, has been undisputed champion for the past 4 years (Harks has a less sure grip on the men's title, winning for the first time in 1333). Risks to athletes are fairly low, especially when compared to gladiators, but careers are often wrecked through injury in the arena. The athletes, on the whole, compete for fame, prestige and pride. They are fairly poorly paid beyond the hefty prize money winning brings, and their careers generally only last around 10 years, but some security comes from the syndicate system which organises the Games. These syndicates, numbering some half a dozen and controlled by local nobility or businessmen, generally have nine or ten athletes on their books, and, in return for controlling their careers, pay their wages (not just for participating in games, but also for training time and maybe publicity appearances), give them security and training facilities, and often help find them jobs when not competing or after retirement. The syndicates are sometimes accused of raking in hefty rewards for their actions, but their profits are generally minimal; they are really the good old patronage system in another guise.

The Garreday Bonfires

"In the middle of the road a large pile of, well, things had been assembled.  Old clothes, waste paper, wheat stalks, twigs, leaves (though the Gods knew where they had come from), broken crates, legless tables, no doubt the occasional piece of excrement or dead dog thrown in for good measure.  The Dung Dusters have easy shifts around Garreday.  Virtually all household rubbish is hoarded up to form the great bonfires which are held on every street and square on the night of the carnival itself.  A growing number of men and women were assembling around the lump.  Some were poking stray pieces into place, some were locked in earnest discussion and others were merely giving the pile long, calculating stares.  It is naturally unthinkable that to create a bonfire you simply heap a lot of rubbish together and put a light to it.  You can't do that in the Cities; certainly not on Garreday.  Bonfire building has become an art form and each street tries to create the most complex structures to be ignited.  Garreday Eve is a night of torturous labour for these amateur craftsmen and their apprentices - no earlier, to prevent passing saboteurs prematurely torching their creation.  It is a frenzied bustle of prodding and balancing and cursing and ramming the impractical materials together with only flickering lamplight to see by.  Some use cane frames to give their structures shape, others drape specially woven tapestries over the finished mound.  Sap or glue is often used to help substances stick together; though Kenner personally didn't believe the rumour that the great Fire of Forgar in 1177 was caused by an ill-informed soul fixing his bonfire together with tar.  On a similar note, the final ingredient of the bonfires is often the streamers, the house fronts being swept clean to stop the paper setting alight whilst still hanging from someone's porch.  Kenner had seen some sights over the years.  An enormous man-shaped figure in Rykes Gardens a few years ago, an elaborate replica bridge in Jakks Lane which had burnt so the flames roared along its span from one end to the other.  Not to mention the celebrated Wodelan Square artistes, who year after year produce an endless variety of orcs, griffins, eagles, dragons and horses.  All look quite a lot like each other, admittedly, and also quite a lot like a lumpy mess, but all are rightly acclaimed given the extremely rudimentary materials.

"He wasn't expecting anything of this order from Ashel Street, however.  Kenner had seen their efforts in recent years and knew they were citizens who followed but one model, that of Huwdone House.  It is after all the most popular shape of bonfire.  It is easy to build; simply fashion a large cube and hollow out the top.  And it constitutes a symbol, the act of building a replica of the seat of government and then burning it to the ground, which is entirely appropriate for Garreday.

"The Garreday bonfires are a memorial of an event which happened three hundred years ago.  Christoté had then been a country barely more equal or enlightened than any other.  The Erish had been driven out, the Confederacy had been formed, but for most people all this meant was the timeless exchange of one set of oppressors for another.  Then in 1037 a group of impoverished indentured labourers on the Central Plains set fire to the Garreday harvests they had gathered.  They decided they preferred to see the whole crop burn than let their overlords cream virtually all of it off for their own larders.  It was maybe a malicious act and certainly a desperate one, but has rarely been bettered as a symbol of inspiration.  The burning of the harvests ignited (to use the well-worn metaphor) the class conflict which had been steadily growing for decades.  Twenty years of on-and-off struggles followed, which sometimes petered away into nothing and sometimes seemed to engulf all of Christoté.  Twenty years of hangings and lynchings and stonings and spectacularly bloody pitched battles and an awful amount of talking; an epic confrontation between lords and workers from which, amazingly, the workers emerged victorious.  Christoté developed the laws, the political framework and, above all, the will to change itself, pioneering forms of power, distribution and productive relationships never seen before in the world.  Garreday has many meanings, and for those who live in neighbourhoods like the Tonelays and Jakks Lane, one is a remembrance of victory."

(from City Hobgoblins)

 

Bruchers Eve (14th August)

A key date in the calendar of the Church of Torgu, and whilst this may mean a no-holds barred celebration in places like Norisca, it is one of the more contentious celebrations in the Cities.  Brucher, or The Brucher, is an important figure in Torgun mythology, allegedly a warrior priest who led the humans against the Elder Race and was responsible for the purging of the lands now occupied by Norisca.  Like most Torgun characters Brucher was something of a mixed bag - his end comes as a message against pride and over ambition, with him sailing into the Northern Ocean to find new lands to conquer, never to be seen again - but Bruchers Eve marks his finest moment.  This was when he called his warriors temporarily away from the slaughter of the Elder solely because their - the warriors', not the Elder's - wives and children needed them to return home.  For reasons far too complicated to go into here, this break subsequently helps the warriors when they resume battle.  The message is a familiar one of Torgu, the equal importance of family and battle (and, by extension, work and earning a living), the impossibility of one being successful without the other also working, and also the necessity of keeping the spheres separate.  Rather contrary to the barbarian image of the Torgun church, Bruchers Eve is accordingly seen as a time of family gatherings and good will, often with an emphasis on giving presents to or doing favours for other family members.

Never an official holiday on the Dorlafan calendar, Bruchers Eve might simply have been a quiet evening celebration by the minority Torgun church, unnoticed by most, but for the stubbornness of that church and the course of history.  By the 1100's the Torguns were a geographically scattered but socially united feature of the Cities, and feeling a more than usual sense of discrimination; excluded from spiritual influence by the Ellan and Garran churches, often black-balled from paid work and the fact that many were non-Dorlafan settlers didn't help.  A day off on Bruchers Eve was rarely granted by employers whilst the festivals of the other churches caused the whole place to grind to a stand still.  Added to this discontentment was increasing social turmoil which marked the earlier stages of the class reforms and something of a fight back from the aristocrats and wealthy merchants to preserve their advantages.  In a slow burning but increasingly bitter stand off, workers and rulers in the Cities and beyond clashed in a series of strikes, arrests, demonstrations, tool-wreckings, trials and dismissals.  The Torguns were one of the most militant of the workers' groups, and the right of a holiday on Bruchers Eve was one of many bones of contention.  It had a unique twist in that many of the rank and file, and some in higher positions, of the Christotan Guards tended to be Torguns.  By the 1120's Guardsmen were badly paid, harassed and increasingly being used to control and arrest workers and land labourers they felt some affinity for - in short, the mood was increasingly mutinous.  The spark came on Bruchers Eve 1128, in the Dydsan Shore Regiment (then the VIII); ordered to contain a major demonstration that day, half the Regiment, including three whole Units, refused, some deserting, the others shutting themselves in a Torgun chapel a few miles along the coast.  The demonstration ran rather out of hand and so did the fate of the soldiers; the Regiment Commander subsequently gathered the rest of his troops together, marched on the chapel and demanded those who hadn't yet fled to surrender their arms.  Those who did were promptly lynched for mutiny; the rest were burnt alive when the church was fired, or cut down trying to escape.  A horrified Huwdone House promptly relieved the Commander of his duties when they found out, but the incident helped spark off the increasing turbulence and anarchy which led to Elriak Lendle's brief coup and the two civil wars.

After the dust had settled, Bruchers Eve was given a certain amount of wary respect by the government.  By 1160 all the States had passed allowing followers of Torgu to take it as a holiday, though any sort of political activity tended to be banned.  The New Ecumencalist Acts of 1205 finally saw Bruchers Eve established as a holiday for all, in Dorlaf at least, and is now a generally observed summers break.  Its chequered history in Christoté have fired it with political significance, but in general Bruchers Eve has remained faithful to its original intention, a time of family gathering and family troubles.

Minor Festivals

There are a plethora of these, none of them public holidays, few commemorated to any extent and most belonging to the Church of Garrath.  Each of the Garran gods and saints has a day devoted to them and their number is legend.  The Feast of St Micham is one well-attended one, marked by numerous markets and fairs during the day and grand society balls in the evening.  Its popularity stems from its date; lying on 16th February it helps break up the grim, chilly month.  The festival of St Jonach is more typical, celebrating an obscure saint no-one knows anything about and thus with no attendant ritual.  Velb's Day, on 20th. April, celebrates the deity of plants and is chiefly noted for holding the Dorlaf Games.  Landsong, 18th August, belongs to the Church of Narlan although is also supposed to mark the first landing of human ships on Teraf.  (No-one has any idea when the date of this actually was).  It is celebrated along the coastal rim but rarely in the Cities.