In monotheistic cultures the holidays are fairly well regimented. Festivals and other events and rituals happen on a well understood cadence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what of a world filled with magic, where a multitude of gods are real? What does a holy day look like? On whose schedule does it fall? Is it recognized by the local authorities or just individuals? And who exactly celebrates it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A simple exercise: Count up all of the deities in the various pantheons of a world. Each of them have holy days, festivals, and solemn rituals devoted to them. Some of these will overlap with each other. In any large city with a diverse enough population, you can easily find some group engaged in some holy day or festival for any given god, demigod, and even a few elementals and fiends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These events are so common, in fact, that it comes as no surprise when your favorite spice merchant has closed shop on a random day with a cryptic sign about the “blood moon” on their shop window. Or when the local constabulary seem a bit jumpy because this week that one trickster god’s worshippers are pulling well-orchestrated and dangerous pranks throughout the city. Or when you’re awakened some random summer morning before the cock crows by a loud procession of drummers who are both literally and figuratively beating the world to life on behalf of their god.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just as the old saying goes\u2026 it’s five o’clock somewhere\u2026 well, every day is a holy day\u2026 somewhere. And it’s very likely that somewhere is exactly where you are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In monotheistic cultures the holidays are fairly well regimented. Festivals and other events and rituals happen on a well understood cadence. But what of a world filled with magic, where a multitude of gods are real? What does a holy day look like? On whose schedule does it fall? Is it recognized by the local…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,157],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-57374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming","category-worldbuilding","tag-worldbuilding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57375,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57374\/revisions\/57375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}