Winter holidays: We need more.

[nanila]

I love Halloween. Dressing up - and I sincerely think this may be a big reason why people have children, so they can put them in adorable costumes - carving pumpkins, making pie, eating candy. I love Thanksgiving, too, in spite of its appalling cultural associations. "Hey! Let's celebrate slaughtering and stealing the land of native peoples!" CRIKEY. But I do love the way the celebration is executed - it almost makes up for the origins of the tradition. It's not just the mountain of delicious food (although I confess I usually substitute chicken for turkey as I don't care much for turkey), it's that everyone makes a special effort to invite people, even ones they don't know very well, to their house for Thanksgiving. So unless you really don't want to have Thanksgiving dinner, you'll be able to choose to partake in someone's. Also, I enjoy having a special time carved out each year to express gratitude for the good things and to the good people in my life.

I love Non-Sectarian Festival Holiday aka Christmas, because mince pies, mulled wine, and my favourite British tradition, getting drunk at lunchtime with my work colleagues whilst wearing a stupid hat. New Year is fun too. But...why are these things all in a row? After that there is nothing in the Western calendar other than Valentine's Day, which can frankly go jump in a lake with boulders tied to its feet, until Easter. And there's still a lot of winter to get through.

I think we need to invent or adopt some more food-based festivals in January, February and March.

This post prompted by the amazing awesomeness sparked by the collision of Halloween and Diwali. (Photo not by me.)



ETA: Three favourite pumpkin-based videos.

• Muppet Labs Experiment 2Q975: Carve-O-Matic
  
• Carven der Pumpkin I shall be doing this later. No bazooka though.
  
• Vincent Price gives Kermit vampire acting lessons Bitey bitey!

Comments

[weaverbird]

That is the coolest Ganesh ever!

I think we need to invent or co-opt some more awesome food-based festivals in January, February and March.

How about adopting Imbolc(1 Feb) and Ostara(21 March)?

[kake]

There's a reason why I put the Croydon Fun Weekend at the end of January :)

[ironed_orchid]

Pumpkin Diwali!!!!

I think I'm in love.

[nanila]

I like the dates of these festivals! The important question is, of course, what particular type of delicious food are or should be associated with them?

[nanila]

Confirming once again that Kake Is Wise. :)

[nanila]

It is genius. Gorgeous, edible genius.

[weaverbird]

Feasting is a pagan specialty, particularly on holidays! *g* A couple pages of suggestions (on about.com of all places): for Imbolc, and for Ostara will do as jumping-off places.

[recessional]

We are not able to express our delight at All Hallows Ganesh.

[hunningham]

Yes, a food festival at the beginning of February would be wonderful. January can be a miserable month - it's still dark, weather is miserable, everyone spent too much at Christmas and now the credit bills are coming in and everyone is broke, and it's a long time until spring, and there is nothing to look forward to.

I would declare first Friday in February to be CAKE Friday. And then we could all moan about our families having unrealistic cake expectations, and media could generate all this cake-related stress, and we'd get people saying "cake friday is really for the children" or "Nigel and I always celebrate Cake Friday in Umbria where their traditions are so much more natural"

[ironed_orchid]

I was about to correct you on the date of Imbolc, until I remembered about hemispheres.

[nanila]

He is splendid. I also like that he appears to be holding a bowl of Maltesers.

[nanila]

Wonderful idea. Additional stress could then be generated in years when Pancake Day is quite early in February.

[nanila]

I now desire hot cross buns, candied carrots and fish and chips. Not necessarily in that order. :D