Holiday

“Jingle bells, jingle bells…”

Yeah, don’t attack me if you don’t celebrate Christmas. That’s just a pretty generic holiday song. :/

If we’re done with all the disclaimers and such, I’d like to chat about holidays in literature.

The best example of holiday usage in fantasy would have to be in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. It takes place the days before and/or after Christmas (can’t remember). I liked it because it had connections to ancient beliefs about the holiday season. Please tell me if I’m butchering this, but this is what I remember: Those days were supposedly the ones where the powers of light and darkness were at their most powerful.

Madeleine L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet opens with the Murry-O’Keefe family celebrating Thanksgiving together. I don’t think there was much of a purpose other than that it gave the families an excuse to be together, as Mrs. O’Keefe wasn’t a very sociable person, to put it lightly…

And there’s also the Hanukkah celebration in the play version of The Diary of Anne Frank, which was very important, as it really established the Judaism of the two families hiding in the Secret Annex.

Holidays also serve good purposes in the Harry Potter series, as most of the series takes place at Hogwarts. It gives the kids a chance to be with their families.

Is your protagonist living with others? If so, do you explain their companions’ religious beliefs? This could influence how they celebrate holidays. I know I don’t celebrate the same holidays as some of my friends, or we celebrate it differently.

BTW, I really liked Dave Barry’s Thanksgiving Play he had in a column of his in the 80’s or 90’s (that wasn’t vague). He also did very good holiday columns in his book, Dave Barry is Not Taking This Sitting Down. Dave Barry’s hilarious!

Most holidays are religious, but then there are national holidays, too, like America’s Independence Day. I live in the US, but I do know of Bastille Day and Cinco de Mayo. If you set your story inside of a fantasy country, you might make this very important…

Happy (summer) holidays,
Swanktown