Ancestor Day (working title) - A Halloween Alternative?

If you're familiar with "King's Day" you should already have an idea where I'm going to go with this one. With the game officially released I think it's high time we started founding some more New Britannia holidays and traditions.

The basic idea, is to organize themed events around holidays that might occur in New Britannia run by many in the community at large.

A secondary goal I'm going for here is to get a regular group together to achieve this (rather than continuing to go at it on my own).

So all that said.. Ancestor Day or.. Day of the Ancestor was first suggested by @Mugly Wumple in early discussions on the topic of potential holidays.

"Day of the Ancestor where candles and offerings are placed at ruins and the family tree is recited."

For me and I envisioned it might be a broader day of remembrance. The idea was expanded on to visiting family grave sites or ancestor shrines (both public and private) if you couldn't visit an actual grave for example. It could be a time also of family gatherings to celebrate family elders and family in general.

I think the idea goes particularly well with Spirituality in Britannia / New Britannia and while it was suggested at one point that such a holiday should occur in September, I'd like to see it as a Halloween alternative.

And so, I am putting out the call for events / discussion for the first annual Day of the Ancestor (including alternative names for the occasion). Events to be held in late October.

General themes: Spirituality and the honoring of family both past and present.

To avoid: the usual "Halloween" stuff.

In the future, I will be pushing for more such events in the community with an initial 3 month planning time. Anyone interested in helping to plan regular New Britannia holiday-style events please drop me a line.

 

Great idea! And fits very well with my character's background.

I will probably host a blot for the occasion anyways, would love to put it under the banner of your general festivities.

 

Day of the dead stuff then?

 

To be perfectly honest I had to look this up but from what I just read, yeah Day of the Dead / Día de Muertos sounds about right (though I personally would prefer not so many skulls) but with a New Britannia flare and feel free to expand on the idea.

 

@Bowen Bloodgood

Or like this Bon Festival , Ghost Festival , Qingming Festival , Pitru Pashka , All Souls' Day

 

So, just my personal input on this. I haven't attended any of the King's Day festivals, but I always liked the concept, and the concept of creating holidays native to New Britannia...

I like the idea, but making it about the player character's family tree seems a bit dry to me, because it means players have to commit to a certain role-playing angle regarding their characters for the festival to resonate, or it has to be about real life family. Whereas for King's Day its something I think everyone has common no matter how they were playing the game and it dealt with something common to not only the real world but also to the game world. Plus, the 'Ancestors', as represented by the Ancestor tombstones represent ourselves as pledgers, Kickstarter backers.

So, to resonate in a broader way, I might put more emphasis on the spiritual aspects of the festival in ways that are more visceral and convey feeling, pathos. One way to do this might be to borrow from some Eastern holidays as referenced and use hanging lanterns, to represent the spirits of the ancestors as they're present in the world. We have those in the game, so they're tools we can use. Another way might be to have actual 'ancestral trees', ie something like the 'epic' trees, supposedly old in age, that people gather around to tell their stories. The ancestral trees might have runic decorations or other things to help establish their spiritual purpose and significance. They might even have grave-sites around them.

Storytelling, it seems to me, could also include recollection of past history in New Britannia, of characters that were here and now are lost (players who quit playing, or devs who have quit the dev team), worlds that had existed (Old Britannia, Serpent Isle, and other worlds we've been to) and now are lost, and other things that once were here and now are lost (cave wrasse). Its a way to have the role-playing be rooted in the game world, but at the same time help transcend it and touch players on a personal level.

Besides storytelling, might also be a time to share and recite elegies for people lost, times lost, worlds lost.

 

I've never taken it that way. Especially since you chose what name you want to appear on that tombstone.

How you want to handle it is up to you. I'm not suggesting the community at whole must restrict themselves to a limited idea of how it must be done. I'm only suggesting a broad theme for event organizers. If you want to RP it for yourself that's great too but as with any individual how you celebrate a holiday is entirely up to you.

This is actually part of my thinking personally as with the lighting of candles and ancestral shrines and also why I was excited to have hanging lanterns. Now if only we could get floating candles and flying lanterns... I would absolutely love to have something where we could light a candle and float them down a river or something but that might be a bit too much from a technical standpoint.. not enough bang for the buck..

 

hmm only a couple months to go.. how about a little brainstorming session? Anyone have any interesting ideas? (or even uninteresting ones?)

I myself am planning on maybe a shrine.. decorating my town with candles.. maybe have a chest where people can leave "in memory of.." messages that can be put up on display at the town entrance..

 

Just for inspiration: My character is viking (yes I'm breaking LB's lore), and during gatherings would usually drink a round called "minnifull" where everyone speaks a toast to friends or family that have passed away before drinking. It is a very nice RL tradition that I brought to the game. Perhaps you'd like to adopt something similar? So yeah I like redfish's storytelling thing.

It is also a good night for divination as the spirit world is so close and communication with those that linger is easiest. Necromancers and spirit speakers throughout the realm surely have their special rituals that night.

But of course dressing up as spooky creatures is more fun and gives Port more cash' so that element should somehow be incorporated into the holiday.

 

Outlandish day!

 

The description of Ancestor's Day sounded very reverent and so feels more 'Veteran's Day' than 'Halloween' to me. With Halloween now more associated with 'masquerading' than solemn spirituality, I'd wonder about Ancestor's day 'sticking' on a day most associate with 'fun'. But if the event was a 'Day of the Dead' Halloween-style parade, where everyone marches in costume with music, maybe that works.

Can we have an 'Avatar's Fools Day' too? …….

 

If we were just going to do an Earth Halloween party there wouldn't be much point then would it? The idea is it's a New Britannian holiday.. not an Earth holiday. Though I see no reason why we can't do something fun with it.