Festivals, or FEASTS, a term denoting certain periodically recurring days and seasons set aside by a community for rest from the ordinary labour of life, and more or less hallowed by religious solemnities. These may be joyful occasions commemorating the lives of heroes, or general days of humiliation for disasters. But even when sorrow was to be expressed the mortification of the body did not always suffice, but plays, songs, dances, and processions full of boisterous mirth were resorted to—as in the festivals of Isis at Busiris, of Mars at Papremis, in the Adonia of Egypt, Phœnicia, and Greece—because the divine wrath or sorrow was, like that of man, to be changed into satisfaction. Festivals have also helped onward the progress of civilisation itself. Besides helping to knit together into unity the body politic, they stimulated the artistic sense to emulation in music and the dramatic art, and thus laid the foundations of the greatest æsthetic triumphs. Enthusiastic, wild, metaphysical Egypt invested the countless days consecrated to her deified stars, plants, animals, and ideas, to the Nile, to Ammon, Kneph, Menes, Osiris, to Horus, to Neitha, to Ptah, with a mystery, sensuality, and mournfulness always exaggerated, sometimes monstrous. The Hindu, no longer daring to offer human sacrifices, shows his odd and cruel materialism by throwing into the waves, on his festival of rivers, some of his costliest goods, gold, jewels, garments, and instruments; while in the licentiousness and debaucheries perpetrated on the festival of Siva, the god of procreation, or on the Bacchantics of the goddess Bhavani, he exceeds even those of the Egyptians on their Neitha feasts at Bubastis, and the Greek worship of Aphrodite in her Cyprian groves.
The ancient Persians alone of all nations had no festivals, as they had no temples and no common worship. These 'Puritans of Polytheism,' who worshipped the sun only, and his representative on earth, fire, scorned show and pomp and large religious gatherings. A striking contrast to them is formed, in another hemisphere, by the ancient Mexicans, who were found to possess one of the most richly developed calendars of festivals, scientifically divided into movable and immovable feasts. As a strange and singular phenomenon among festivals we may also mention here that 'of the Dead' or 'of Souls,' celebrated among the wild tribes of North America. At a certain time all the graves are emptied, and the remains of the bodies buried since the last festival are taken out by the relatives, and thrown together into a large common mound, amid great rejoicings and solemnities, to which all the neighbouring tribes are invited.
Greece had received the types of civilisation, religion, and art from Egypt and the East, but she developed them all in a manner befitting her glorious clime and the joyous genius of her sons. At the time of the Iliad two principal festivals only—the harvest and the vintage—seem to have been celebrated (ix. 250); but they soon increased to a very large number. The religious part of the festival—homage offered to personified ideas—consisted mostly in the carrying about of the deity of the day to the sound of flute, lyre, and hymns, and in a sacrifice, followed by a general meal upon certain portions of the animal offered. Then followed scenic representations symbolising the deeds of the gods; after which came games and matches of all kinds—foot, horse, and chariot races, leaping, boxing, throwing, and wrestling. Separate accounts are given of some of the more remarkable Greek festivals under BACCHUS, MYSTERIES, and PANATHENÆA, and of the 'Holy Games' proper, the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian, under these heads. As all these festivities were provided out of the public purse the individual did not suffer more than a welcome interruption of his usual business, and under that genial sky the penalty to be paid for occasional indolence was not too heavy.
Rome adopted and acclimatised the foreign deities as she went on from conquest to conquest, exactly as, with her usual prudence and practical sense, she conferred her right of citizenship on the nations subjected to her rule. Her yoke was thus less galling to the new provinces, while at the same time the populace at home found sufficient distraction in the many ancient and newly imported festivals, with their quaint rites and gorgeous pageantry. Yet the Romans never exceeded in their festivals a hundred in a year, and in these, again, a distinct line was drawn between civil and religious ones. Some of the principal religious festivals were the Sementinæ, on the 25th of January—the rural festival of the seed-time; the Lupercalia, in honour of Pan; the Cerealia; the night festival of the Bona Dea; the Matronalia; and the Minervalia. To the purely civil ones belong the Janualia, the 1st of January and the New-year's Day, when the new consuls entered upon their office, and friends used to send presents (strenæ) to each other; the Quirinalia, in memory of Romulus, deified under the name of Quirinus; and the Saturnalia, in remembrance of the golden age of Saturn, beginning on the 19th of December. The celebration of these festivals was in all respects imitated from the Greeks, with this difference only, that the games connected with them became with the pre-eminently bellicose Romans terribly lifelike images of war. Their sea-fights; their pitched battles between horse and foot, between wild beasts and men; their so-called Trojan games, executed by the flower of the nobility; their boxing-matches (with gloves that had lead and iron sewed into them); circus, arena, and amphitheatre, gave, especially in later times, the greater satisfaction the greater the number of victims.
With the first and strictest monotheists, the Hebrews, the remembrance of their liberation from Egypt, and the momentous period of preparation in the desert which followed it, mingled with almost all their religious observances, and especially their festivals, and infused into them all a tone of deep and fervent gratitude; while at the same time it held ever before their eyes the cause of their nationality, and their aim and destiny 'to be a kingdom of priests and a holy people.' The Hebrew festivals, too, are of an historical, agricultural, astronomical, and political nature; but they mostly combine all these characteristics, and are always hallowed by the same religious idea. Connected with their festivals were no plays and no representations of a god's deeds, no games and no cruelty, no mystery and no sensuality, but the sacrifice of the day, and a special occupation with the divine law. The influence of the number Seven (q.v.) is seen in the recurrence of many of the Jewish solemnities. The Sabbath, the first and most important of these septenary festivals, is treated of under its own head. The most exalted of new-moon festivals was that of the first day of the seventh month, 'the day of remembrance of the sounding' or 'of trumpets' (Lev. xxiii. 24), to which in later times, when the Seleucidian era was introduced, the name of Rosh hashana (New Year) was given; notwithstanding that in Exodus (xii. 2) Nisan is spoken of as the first month of the year. After a period of six years of labour the earth, too, was to celebrate a Sabbath-year; what it produced spontaneously belonged to the poor, the stranger, and to animals. After a revolution of seven times seven years the year of Jubilee or Jobel was to be celebrated, in which all the Hebrew slaves were set free, and all land which had been sold in the interval was restored to the former owners, in order that the original equilibrium in the families and tribes should be maintained intact. The pre-eminently agronomical and historical festivals were the three Chaggim—viz. Pesach (Passover, q.v.), Schabuoth (Feast of Weeks), and Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles), on which three every male was obliged to go up to Jerusalem and offer some of the first fruits, besides the prescribed sacrifices. Post-Mosaic and exclusively historical were the feasts of Purim, of Haman, and of the Maccabees.
Only a cursory glance can be here taken of the Christian festivals, which are treated separately under their various names. They were for the most part grafted, in the course of time, upon the Jewish and Pagan ones, but always with a distinct reference to Christ and other holy personages. The weekly day of rest was transferred from Saturday to Sunday, and called the Day of Joy or Resurrection. For a long time both Saturday and Sunday were celebrated, especially in the East. Two separate celebrations took the place of the Jewish Passover: the Pascha Staurosimon was the festival of the Death, the Pascha Anastasimon of the Resurrection of our Lord (see EASTER); and the festival of Pentecost, or the law-giving at Sinai, became the festival of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost and of the inauguration of the New Covenant.
In the course of the 4th century two new festivals were introduced: Epiphany (q.v.), which originated in the East; and that of the Nativity or Christmas (q.v.). Circumcision, Corpus Christi, the festivals of the Cross, of the Transfiguration, of the Trinity, and many others are of still later date. The veneration felt for Mary as the 'Mother of God' found its expression likewise in the consecration of many days to her special service and worship; such as that of her Presentation, Annunciation (Lady Day), Assumption, Visitation, Immaculate Conception (q.v.), and many minor festivals, over and above the month of May and the Saturdays, which in some parts were entirely dedicated to her, in order that the Mother might have her weekly day like the Son. Besides these, there were festivals of Angels, of Apostles, Saints, Martyrs (on the supposed anniversary of their death, called their birthday, dies natalis), of Souls, Ordinations, &c. Some were of special importance owing to special circumstances; thus St Patrick's Day (March 17th) is especially sacred to Irishmen, St Andrew's Day (November 30th) to Scotchmen, and St George's Day (April 23d) to Englishmen. In the United States we find corresponding festivals in Washington's Birthday (February 22d), Independence Day (July 4th), Decoration Day (q.v.; observed in 1889 as a legal holiday in twenty-two states), and Thanksgiving Day (usually the last Thursday of November).
Celebrated at first with all the primitive simplicity of genuine piety, most of the church's festivals were ere long invested with such pomp and splendour that they surpassed those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Burlesque, even coarse and profane representations, processions, mysteries, and night-services were in some places, although unauthorised by the general church, connected with them, and voices within the church loudly denounced these 'pagan practices.' Ordinances forbidding mundane music and female singers for divine service were issued, the vigils were transformed into fasts, days of abstinence and penance were instituted, partly as counterpoises, but with little result. Nor did the prodigious increase of these festive occasions, and the rigour with which abstinence from labour was enforced in most cases, fail to produce the natural results of indolence and licentiousness among the large mass of the people. But it was only after the most decided and threatening demands, as by the German Diet of Nuremberg in 1522, that Pope Urban VIII. was prevailed upon to reduce the number for Catholic Christianity (1642). Benedict XIV. (1742) and Clement XIV. (1773) followed in the same direction.
The Christian festivals have been divided variously into feriæ statutæ (returning annually at fixed times), indictæ (extraordinary, specially proclaimed), duplicia (double remembrance, or of higher importance), semiduplicia (half double), &c. It was long the custom to recite the office of the Feria in addition to that of any feast chancing to fall on it. Hence, on the more important solemnities, a double office had to be recited, one of the feriæ, another of the feast. Semi-doubles were those in which the two offices were made into one. The church celebrates certain festivals till the octave or eighth day after they fall due. Another division is into weekly and yearly feasts, these latter being subdivided into greater and minor, or into movable and immovable. There is also a distinction made between integri (whole days), intercisi (half-days), &c.
The only trace of the ancient manner of dating a festival from the eve or vespers of the previous day—a practice discontinued since the 12th century, when the old Roman way of counting the day from midnight to midnight was reintroduced—survives in the 'ringing in' of certain days of special solemnity on the night before, and in the fasts of the vigils.
Some of the principal Mohammedan festivals (see MOHAMMEDANISM) are partly based upon those of the Jews and Christians, such as the weekly Friday (the Jewish Day of Atonement); others are the Birthday of the Prophet, that of Hussein, of Mohammed's granddaughter Zeynab, of the Night of the Prophet's Ascension to Heaven, and Bairam (q.v.). See HOLIDAY.
See BREVIARY, and works on this subject by Buxtorf, Lightfoot, De Wette, Baumgarten, Mai; also Thomassin, Traité des Festes; Gavantus, with Merati's Notes; and Probst, Brevier u. Brevier-gebet.