Interstellar Celebrations

When it comes to traveling the stars the way festivals work gets a bit more complicated than it does planetside. Festivals that span star systems or go interstellar come with their own challenges and their own drawbacks. Thus they need to be handled differently, as both time and space need to be accounted for when creating such a wide spanning festival.

Before we can dive into interplanetary or interstellar festivals we have to talk about calendars. I know it is a common sci-fi trope to have one calendar often with dashes and decimals as the ‘standard calendar’ that everyone uses often because it makes it easier, and adds to the normalization of the interstellar politics. For any properly interplanetary or interstellar festivals would end up using this ‘standard calendar’. I will note that planets may end up with their own calendars and own local festivals, take that into consideration when building the whole universe.

Interplanetary or interstellar festivals are still festivals, meaning everything else we have talked about during this month; applies. The more interesting part is making sure the planets are organized, and the festival maintains its identity across worlds. As the standard calendar is likely a: fits some, used by most solution. It means that any fixed date, or fixed season celebrations will float around the different year lengths of the different planets. The more divergent the standard calendar the more things can change.

For some festivals like the founding of a nation, or the ending of a war, that may be fine. Does the signing of treaty X have to be during the spring, or fall, or summer? Not really. On the other hand when a festival is tied to a season things get messy. A winter festival that only stays in winter on a handful of planets will change its status on the ones where it moves. We can partly see this on Earth, when Christmas comes around in southern hemisphere it’s the middle of summer. Very different set of connections and activities, as I don’t think many would think to hold a Christmas party in the back yard in the northern hemisphere. Christmas isn’t about the winter; for many of us it is connected to winter due to when it falls in the solar year. This movement across the seasons can be a boon for religious holidays, as the moving of the festival around the solar year will weaken any connections to the season, and thus leave it tied to the religion more purely. The obvious exception is any religion with seasonal festivals. Then each planet may need to spin off its own version of the religious calendar to make sure said festivals align with the season they belong in.

This leads to the second issue to deal with interplanetary or interstellar festivals, planets choosing to create local versions outside of seasonal requirements. Once again Christmas can provide an example. Most of the world places Christmas on Dec. 25^th as that is where it sits in the Gregorian Calendar. Orthodox Churches, and a few others, use the Julian Calendar which places it on January 7^th. This calendar difference highlights the fact that the Pope, especially Gregory XIII, has little to do with the Orthodox Churches celebration of Christmas. Now converting to a local calendar, or creating a local version of a festival, may be a measure of practicality; or it may be due to wanting to reject the authority of some far off place. Both explanations build up the local version of the festival and gives it more character.

Using one or both of these in a story is straight forward. Lets take our Autumn Ball into space, lets say on the planet where the Autumn Ball started it was always in the Autumn. Our story is on another planet, and thus it moves around. Meaning this year it’s in the spring. The Autumn Ball being in spring, how does the change of season affect the characters? How does the difference between the name and the season affect people? Likewise because the ball moves though out our planet’s solar year the supporting structures can and will be harder to establish. Using what I went over on Wednesday it becomes clear this traveling nature will lighten the festival and have it be more compressive and destructive overall. Which would layer on more stress for everyone involved, as the patterns around the festival can’t be as well warn. If our planet we are on creates its own version of the Autumn ball, then there becomes an expectation vs. reality like with Wednesday’s informal festivals. This adds another layer to the festival in the minds of the characters as the question, “Will this one be like the ones I know?” floats around. Which should help put more pressure on them during the festival when it finally arrives. Now if everything lines up like it is supposed to those leavers don’t vanish. A planet can have the same year but be off set, meaning summer there is fall here, or a planet is so far removed they just do their own thing. Giving one a universe of possibilities.

As festivals spread out across the stars things have to change. Calendars drift, causing seasons to miss-align, and the locals are forced to adapt. Rather than sanding these problems down and forcing a solution, use the mess. Every choice, if it’s a standardization or local adaption reveals something. From who has the authority, to how much strain society is under. Either way interstellar festivals gain weight not from perfection but from the mess. Whether it is a different version on every planet or the locals adaptions to the festival marching across the year those choices add flavor. Treat time, distance, and local opinions as intentional constraints with choices to be made. The friction will ground the festival in the world, and put the characters and plots safely in its orbit.

I hope you’ve been enjoying the theme. Wednesday we will be closing it out this month, finish the stack with variations on festivals. If you’ve found value in using festivals as a tool to ground your worlds and apply narrative pressure, let me know down below. If you think I’ve earned it, do I have a tip jar.