Now that Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is just around the corner, I’m thinking of how important holidays are to world building. I think it’s the difference between creating a place and creating a culture. A place is made up of street names and buildings, but a culture is made up of religion, ethnicities, politics, personalities, and attitudes. When you create a holiday you’ll be developing the culture of your place.
Even if you’re writing a contemporary novel without any fantasy elements, adding information about a holiday will make your story come alive.
If you’re serious about creating a holiday for your world, grab a piece of paper and a pen and start answering the questions below. By the end of it, you’ll have a holiday with some depth and even find that you know more about your characters than before you started.
1. What is your holiday commemorating? Is it a religious holiday like Christmas? Or is it a National holiday like Independence Day? It can be somewhere in between the two, but for now keep it broad.
Let’s say that the story involves pagans, and therefore we want to develop a holiday that promotes fertility (closer to ancient holidays than contemporary ones).
2. Now, what season does your holiday fall under? This will have a great impact on what kind of traditions are associated with it, and also what foods people prepare. Then, think about what day of the year the holiday falls under. Is it always on the same day? The fourth Thursday of November (like Thanksgiving), or perhaps the day of the Full Moon nearest the midpoint between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice (as some say Beltane was celebrated on).
I’m going to say that the holiday is celebrated on the eve of the summer solstice (June 19-23). For now, I’m going to call it Midsummer’s Eve.
3. Okay, you’ve already written down what your holiday commemorates, but now think of the secondary meaning, or another way to look at it is what has the holiday become? For instance, the literal meaning of Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth. However, it has come to mean Santa Claus comes to town and brings gifts to the children.
My Midsummer’s Eve holiday celebrates fertility, but since I envision the people wearing costumes, a secondary meaning for the day is that it’s a day when the people come out in public wearing costumes and party.
4. Is there a controversy surrounding your holiday? Put another way, what about your holiday causes some to argue against it? There are some people in the U.S. who refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving, because while Native Americans gave the people of Plymouth food, the colonists gave the Natives blankets contaminated with smallpox. The controversy doesn’t need to be so harsh, however, to be effective. It can be as simple as the attitude that some have that Christmas has lost it’s meaning because of commercialization.
I’m going to steal the Christmas example and say that the fundamentalist Pagans believe that the costume parties interfere with the meaning of Midsummer’s Eve (Remember it’s perfectly okay to steal ideas from holidays you know well).
5. This should lead quite well into the next question, which is who celebrates it and who doesn’t? Are there certain aspects of the holiday that only pertain to children?
Midsummer’s Eve is celebrated by everyone from the fundamentalist Pagans to the Pagan-lights (the eight days a year pagans), but isn’t celebrated by non-pagans. In fact, it’s rumored by people who practice other religions that Midsummer’s Eve is a giant orgy (not true, though that would make an interesting holiday). There’s some friction between the highly religious pagans and those who are more interested in the costumes and fun than the rituals.
6. What kind of food is eaten? Personally, I think this is the most important part of a holiday. What would Thanksgiving be without Turkey? This is also where you can move into character development. Everyone has a dish that is special to his or her family or something they look forward to. For instance, Thanksgiving at my grandmother’s house wouldn’t be the same without her homemade pumpkin pie (the kind where the crust is a little bit burned around the edges). Maybe your character hates pumpkin pie or turkey, and so your character can’t stand Thanksgiving. Don’t forget to consider what season your holiday falls under. You don’t want to make a fresh peach pie the traditional dessert for a holiday in December—Peaches are only in season for a short time in the summer. Likewise you won’t want to have sweet potato casserole featured in your July holiday, since sweet potatoes won’t be around until the fall.
Since I’ve got a sort of carnival feel for my Midsummer’s Eve holiday, and since it marks the beginning of summer I’m thinking of barbecue meats served on sticks so they’re easy to eat and walk around with. Also, lots of fresh fruit kabobs, and for desert there’s homemade ice cream topped with strawberries and raspberries and blackberries.
7. Now our fictional holiday is feeling a lot closer to a real one. So, let’s fill out the details. There are always special things you do around certain holidays that you wouldn’t do at any other. For instance, Independence Day in the U.S. is about the fireworks. Christmas involves putting lights on the outside of your house, and also decorating dead trees (it also has traditional colors—red and green). This is where you want to think about music, decorations, and activities that are specific to your holiday. Do they sing carols? Dance around bonfires? Put wreaths on their doors? What colors are associated with your holiday?
I think instead of simply answering each question, this is the time when brainstorming techniques are useful. Start writing down ideas as quickly as they come to you without editing or being critical. That will come later. If you’re having trouble getting started, you can think of a holiday that you know that is closest to the one you want to create and start writing down everything you can think of associated with that holiday. You’ll be amazed at how many different things you will come up with just for one holiday.
Here are some words that I came up with for my Midsummer’s Eve holiday from brainstorming:
Dancing, Rituals, Bonfires, Ribbons, Games, Masks, Booths, Cotton Candy, Royal Blue & Red, Long Dresses, Men in Suits, Popping Illusions, Fireworks, Carts with stuff to sell, Live Music, Fire Eaters, Acrobats
The more details you can think of the more real your holiday will be to yourself, and then when you go to write about it you can do so with conviction.
8. You should have a good, but broad, sense of your holiday. Now, let’s make it more specific to your characters. If you ask ten of your friends to describe the same holiday, I bet they’ll have different answers. Some may hate the holiday in question, and others may love it, and in all cases their experiences with the holiday will be quite different. Take the main characters in your story and ask them how they feel about your holiday. What foods do they look forward to every year? What memories do they have of the holiday? Are they positive or negative? Maybe they no longer celebrate the holiday as an adult, but they did as a child. Ask the character why they no longer celebrate it. I think you’ll find that at the end of this exercise you’ll know more about your characters, and even find some conflicts that you didn’t realize were there. It’s no surprise that there are a huge number of novels, movies, and television shows where the plots involve the holidays.
If I used the characters from my novel I would have to say that one of my side characters dreads Midsummer’s Eve. He’s barely an adult now, and as a child and teenager his parents couldn’t afford to buy him a costume, and didn’t bother to try to make him one. His way of coping with this was to act as though he didn’t want to wear a costume, and to tell his friends he feels the custom is juvenile. My main character, on the other hand, has wonderful memories of the holiday. She loves wearing costumes, but her favorite part of the holiday is the food. She’s always got a kabob in her hand or a bowl of ice cream. Her love of the holiday dissipates slightly as she gets older and finds there’s pressure on her to live up to a certain image.
Now you have a holiday that is unique to your story, so go ahead and put it to use. You probably won’t be able to use all of the ideas you’ve come up with, but your readers will appreciate the details you do include and feel that your world is just that—a world, and not merely a place where your characters live.
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