Her: "What's the number one thing humans tend to do when they are celebrating?" Me: "Drink." Her: "We tend to sing!" Me: "Right yes, we sing, yeah that. Singing. Mhm"

Came here for a D&D video, left with a degree in sociology and anthropology. Loved every minute of it!

The lesson I feel Dael is trying to teach: Celebrations exist as a separate set of differing social customs we abide by that contradict or stand away from the mundane procedural social customs we perform in daily life. Neither sets are cosmically dictated or forced upon as as the laws of societies and celebrations are only put upon by each other. Ultimately we are playing two different games, the game of society, and the game of celebrations, and we perceive time differently in each. What I'm hearing: Nothing you do actually MATTERS, go commit crimes! Jog around the mall! Go in restricted sections! Mulled wine...whenever!

Chronos is a strict progression of cause to effect, and kairos is more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff

Broke: I’m always late because I’m irresponsible Woke: Keeping track of the linear flow of time is difficult for me because my ADHD-PI causes time blindness and memory issues BESPOKE: I AM A CONDUIT FOR THE WILL OF KAIROS

It's wild that holiday episodes came in last. My absolute favorite thing to run in D&D is a _stealth holiday episode_ where the players don't figure out it's a holiday episode until the end. My players know this now, but it only makes it more challenging. I've gotten away with it more times than you'd think.

Ah yes, the three worst things that can happen to someone: birth, death, and marriage.

Did anyone else find the phrase, “freshly minted fictional festival” strangely satisfying? I don’t know...maybe I’m just a maniac for alliteration masterfully managed.

I love the way you enunciate your name, as though to differentiate yourself from that annoying Dael Emperorsbakery people are always confusing you with.

Midsummer usually is a happy celebration, but what if we use the opposite of Xmas & Hanukkah & make it a pseudo-Halloween? if, at the shortest day of the year, the celebration of light happens; at the longest day, the decay of light is mourned, so it becomes a long family day where dinners are served very late, for every hour of sun must be enjoyed with the people that they love. because of that, the idea of having already achieved one's life summit, and one can only go down can be expressed with "this was my life's midsummer".

A few months ago I was working on an Arctic setting for D&D and had a couple of holidays called First Light and Last Light. Just thinking about the whole idea of months of daylight and darkness thing. Last Light was a mixture of Mardi Gras, Halloween and Krampusnacht that was celebrated the last week before Winter with the hopes of both preparing everyone for the dangers of winter mentally and emotionally (big fun party with pranks and boasts and wild behavior) as well as trying to scare off the evil spirits that haunt the darkness during the next few months.

This will certainly improve my afternoon. Also, I love the idea of liminal time. A lot of my worlds have a day or a few days that are non-days. Days that exist between calendar days, etc. They are a non-time.

Off to go write an esoteric holiday celebrating the liminal transition of when a hill becomes a mountain!

Re: winter solstice and other seasonal holidays - the DragonMech setting is interesting there, because its seasons aren't based on "hot months, cold months, and transitional months" like that, but "high water on the flood planes, low water, and the transitional seasons." Which also makes me ask: IRL, what are the seasonal holidays from cultures that divide it into, say, monsoon season or dry season? Or any near-equatorial. DragonMech I was able to wrap my head around the seasonal differences because high water and low water correlate with the nomadic traders. Which makes them holidays of plenty (harvest festival?) and holidays of want - a solemn time awaiting the next haul. You did help me consider how to better flesh out the Highwater Festival: - Since it's different nomadic merchants crossing paths again for the first time it years, this could be a story swap time. Games of telling tall tales are traditional. Maybe even improv games, where each teller has several random prompts to incorporate. Heck, if the prompts are generated by literally throwing darts at a board full of ideas. Maybe your dart-throwing/archery skills pick your opponent's prompt, so you can try to screw them over with a hard prompt. But only if you're skilled enough at darts. - Since it's various nomads, fusion cuisine is typical. A dwarvish spin on a halfling dish. Lembas bread piled high with orcish BBQ.

born before the first freeze? all those people celebrate their birthday at first harvest. born before the first flower? all them celebrate midwinter. after first flower? celebrate first flower. born during the heat? you celebrate on traditional hottest day...as calculated by wizards with their Hg thermometers. So everyone has the same ageday. Also, helpful for figuring out your characters aging. What if half elves grew up as quickly as humans (the human curse) but stayed elderly for an extra century? They'd have a ton of ways, not to cheat death, but to make old as fun!

Just a note on "solstice" holidays: They are usually celebrated some number of days after the actual solstice or equinox is seen to happen. This is due in part to the fact that how we measure time, and when the solstice/equinox happen, are not always in sync.

In my world, there’s like, two main holidays that most folks celebrate, revolving around the exploration of the world and the processes necessary: in summer, it’s a time for traveling and meeting new people and exchanging ideas and celebrating the new, while in winter they return home with their spoils from adventures and give them as gifts and celebrate being back home and the familiar. I did this both to make the vastness of the world historically and culturally relevant to the people involved and also because I’m a sucker for Christmas and any analogue I can fit into my world so my characters can celebrate it is a winner for me lol

atla's fried dough festival added so much depth to the worldbuilding so I agree wholeheartedly with how important festivals are

On celebrating funerals... Some cultures that is a more intuative association than others: e.g. wakes in Ireland or the Southern US...

In my world I have two unique holidays fleshed out so far. An island culture celebrates the “blood tide” once a year. During the beginning of spring, there are massive blooms of red algae. This algae works its way up the food chain and is toxic to humans. These people fast for a few weeks, eating only from their food stores and the few edible plants in the ecosystem. They see this time as a period of reflection and punishment. Another culture, significantly more inland, celebrates the one time a year that a specific mushroom sprouts amoung the forests. These medicinal fungi are harvested on a single day before they wither and die. The coming of this curative mushroom is seen as a blessing from nature and a reward from their praise

I love this and was working on one the other day. My concept is for a secondary location that is meant to feel much more old-fashioned to my players. The holiday is a hunting festival that doubles as a time of courtship. In a very sex-segregated society, this festival is a time for the young people to work closely together in processing the pelts/ curing the meat. The young men string necklaces from the teeth of their prey and present these necklaces to the girls they fancy. It is a way of flattering the young ladies but also of demonstrating what sort of resources they possess. At the close of the festival, there is a feast where the whole community gathers together to eat the meat and have a mass wedding for all of the young couples.

When you said we let holidays colonize spaces, I was immediately reminded of the speech by comedian David Mitchell about how every December, Britain undergoes occupation by the nation of Christmasland.

big brain time boils down to this: Hollidays be special. we like. Christmas time is magic time.

This is really good timing. I have been working on a homebrews pantheon, thanks to your video on the subject and others, and holidays are something I was just about to work on.

I like the inclusion of funerals here as a form of holiday because when we think about it most of the celebratory aspects you mention as the second half of the worksheet apply too. Decorations can be flower wreaths and religious symbols, clothing can be wearing black (or another colour), artistic can be traditional hymns or something like the New Orleans marching bands, generosity can be making donations in someone's name to a charity they cared about, and of course also through food in that many cultures have a tradition of bringing food to people in mourning (where I'm from it's baked casseroles and other easily-reheated simple meals).

I liked the idea of the first bloom of a particular plant being a holiday, but instead as you suggested of it becoming a static date. The festival doesn't start til the bloom is found. So the party could come across a village where the children and adults with some free time are all scampering about looking through underbrush and around trees etc. The frantic chaos might have some fun campaign hijinks

I have that sweater too!! It’s my favorite Christmas sweater, I agree it’s super hot but worth it!

Dael I know this is a D&D channel, but I watched this video back when it first came out and I regularly think about, and appreciate it. I’ve gotten pretty jaded about holidays in general - seeing them as mostly a waste of time and money. But this video really made me appreciate them again for what they are and get excited about celebrating again. Thanks for all your energy and life and excitement.

Great video! As it applies to tabletop RPG'ing - a good immersion tool might be the inclusion of a commodity (wheat let's say) as the driving force behind the celebration. The players can then collect or compete to acquire it for bakers or brewers to kickstart the holiday while feeling included in the purpose behind it. Before the orcs attack, of course

sometimes, you start to forget just how dang smart Dael is, and then she's right back to remind ya

...hold up Dael, Australian Monopoly money is made of plastic‽ Jokes aside I am running a very holiday heavy campaign so I am watching this twice and it is really helpful.

Things like seasonal or calendar events is a large part of why I enjoy the pacing in Gritty Realism

8:40 The scene in A Christmas Carol (the one with Patrick Stewart) which is a montage of different groups all over Britain and beyond singing “silent night”

As for public vs private holidays, look at the medieval tradition of saints days. It was a public list of days in which Catholics celebrated the lives of specific saints with common celebrations, but you also chose your PERSONAL saint to celebrate as your namesake. So it was like a second birthday of sorts as well.

Thank you for making this video! I loved your deep elaboration into the aspects and patterns between holidays. I'd been rolling ideas about time, seasons, and holidays in my head for a while - especially when we're talking about D&D races who probably have different senses of time and have vastly differing lifespans (e.g. elves, dwarves, etc.).

You tackled a big one there. Good job. The theory you explained here was part of the "religion and phylosophy in early childhood education" course i had in school and it surely wasn't easy to grasp for a lot of my fellow students. On another note: One of my favourite fictional holidays is from the first pen and paper game I played. In this one (DSA, a german system), the year is divided amongst The Twelve, each getting the domain over 30 days, starting at the equivalent of July is the leader of the pantheon, the sun god. And then it goes on and on through the whole pantheon. But! But there are 5 days left, 5 days after the twelfth god had her turn and before the new year starts again. 5 days without a patron, 5 days without a name. How fitting that the big bad amongst all the gods, The Nameless One, claims these 5 days. Tradition amongst most cultures demands that you will offer shelter to any traveller who otherwise would face these five nameless days on the road. Only a fool would plan a journey, by foot, horse or ship, over the course of these days without a secure plan to spend these days indoors. The weather will get unpredictable, freak storms plague the seas, it might be unseasonably cold for summer, the sun might not be seen at all. It is the time for all evil does to do their rituals and offerings, unsuspecting folks might find themselves at the wrong end of a ritual dagger. But it's also the time for community to band together, share food and shelter and tell stories of better times or for the more daring ones, creepy scary stories of curses and ghosts. No surprise that on the first day of the sun god's month the biggest gaudiest shinding is thrown all over the continent. Because, whew we made it again to another year.

Dael was always obviously very knowledgeable, but in this she shifted gears from "here are some neat facts about mythology" to "here are some sociological, academic insights into the human experience of time" and I'm not ashamed to admit I was a little intimidated. I understood, don't get me wrong, but I haven't had to access those parts of my brain since college ended.

I'm watching this at 11 at night. The talk about time made me very confused. I'll watch again tomorrow morning when I'm less tired.

Amazingly timed, I also love holidays in my setting and as I am doing prep for the session next Saturday we have stumbled on a convergence of such times. The city they have been in for a while celebrates an event called The Halcyon Days Festival, which is a big party honoring when the cities initial construction was completed despite a massive storm threatening it at the time. The Festival itself takes place over 4 days concluding on the full moon. The final day also happens to be the summer solstice. So there is a lot of opportunity. (The city is called The Drift and was built on the open sea. First from salvaged ship parts and donated functioning ships, then bonded two a massive coral reef that was grown by druids and raised to near the surface. The two sections anchor each other and the city serves both continental surface races and "merid" aquatic races with various levels of the city both above and below the surface. Its been expanded and built upon since) Soldiers of The Hierarchy in my setting celebrate the Long Feast during the summer solstice and the Long Fast during the winter solstice, marking the turning points in the war between the twin (dnd) gods of Heironeus and Hextor. I maintain that as Heironeus (who is good) gains ground the days get longer, but as Hextor (who is evil) begins to win the days get shorter. Another odd one is with the Kingdom of Terras, a human nation, they are extremely lawful culturally, to appease their primary (dnd) deities of Wee Jas and St Cuthbert, they use the summer solstice as a Day of Judgement, executing those guilty of heresy by burning them on pyres. The common folk also honor another deity with the Right of Yielding , which encourages forgiveness and empathy. This was adopted by the government to appease the public by issuing 1 pardon for each hour of sunlight, as long as the offended invokes the Right of Yielding on the inmates behalf.

Dale the editor, thank you for your eloquent summary of what you were trying describe take 1. I feel that the focus on player investment rarely even addresses the topic of intuitively associative authenticly within shared imagined environments. Collective player investment through shared intuition in worlds only imagined is more easily built than actively maintained. It appears to me that cohesion often correlates to the personal depth each player's life experiences and expectaions with unconscious and recognized associations spanning all strata of human activities. Doing One's best to create a collective narrative with other people through means of only words can often be very difficult. I as a GM now only notice that my festivals and other rp cultural events have been difficult to describe in games while maintaining active, immersivive, and collective imaginative experiences. Love the shoutout to the shorthand. Lore written out is always a very different thing than the experience of of its subject.

The audio bits during editing really added to my experience of time while watching this video :)

I love this stuff , definitely going to toy around with the ideas in this video! In my own sorry excuse for a home campaign I introduced one of the "big themes" through a holiday of sorts: one of the PCs looks sort-of like a "father christmas" kind of figure. Which leads to confused but overjoyed reactions in every village they visit: children start singing songs and softly implied that they are hoping for presents, even though it is "out of season", but regardless, the welcome is always warm, and the PCs are treated like heroes by default. And, of course, there is going to be a plot twist, because there always is, but so far it's made for a couple of really amusing social encounters :-)

I love this video, especially your checklist for determining the flavor of the holiday. I think i'll use this to improve some of my own work :D Also, sweet potatoes and yams are actually two different plants, but they are often used interchangeably. Yams are the "poor man's sweet potatoes", but they're plenty good in my opinion.

I always liked the idea of using a holiday as a framing device for a session zero/ session one to give the characters a way to introduce their personalities with how they'd celebrate the event. A holiday I've come up with is a cross between the Kentucky derby and the highland games. So maybe the rogue is trying to rig the horse race while the barbarian is showing off at the caber toss and the wizard is haggling with vendors.

Sat down for a D&D video. Got a graduate level lecture in anthropology. Well played.

You gotta stop apologizing for going on too long! I love longer videos, so many ideas and information I get! I love it! :D

So, the hardest part of this video is that I (as an American) didn’t know what a bunch of the less world-wide holidays she mentioned were

Made a festival to go along with my Dwarven city that was the product of a PC seeking out a new mountain for his clan to move to. It’s a 3 day celebration that begins with “new homes day” and ends with “new friends day” originally it was just the dwarves holiday and it was obviously a day to remember the bravery of that PC who founded the city, and traditionally its a day you announce big decisions like professing love, breaking up, leaving a job for another, or literally moving homes. The new friends day came later because despite the leadership of the city and the local tribe that had existed in the mountains before were on good terms, the peoples were not as quick to accept they’re neighbors as friends, so the more tribal leader encouraged a day where the two would get together and share a meal where you’re encouraged to sit with someone you’ve never met before (I get that it’s hokey, but it fits the personality of the leader to a T). A century or two later and they still get together to race goats, eat quiche, and drink way too much.

OMG so happy you're back and healthy! This is so appropriate since I've been building the two calendars the world uses and did the holidays in a vague way to build around. My players are rolling for their birthdays too. So this is cool :D

The world I'm working on now - a sort of cross between Theros, Brothers Grimm, and the Otherverse by wildbow - has a holiday in the starting town at the end of harvest where all the women and kids get a break from reaping the crops to make, essentially, a giant pizza, which is cooked open-air, then consumed by everybody in the town for dinner. (also there's a local witch who emerges from her forest domain who takes the opportunity to paint luck spells and health spells and peace spells and perception filters into the pizza with a jar of sundried tomato paste which doesn't run out until she's done)

now I understand why I love snacks during nightly entertainment. Its a celebration of conquering that day, ty!

A fantasy horror that takes place during a festival. Some newbies in town aren't familiar with the festival but hear it's a great time. They assume like any normal person would that the "Kairos" version of time is happening, that the time and space they are in are changed because everyone collectively agrees that it's a different experience. However... It's actually the opposite. The festival is to worship an eldritch god that can literally manipulate time and space... The visitors cannot leave no matter how hard they try, and the entire event is on an infinite loop.

I enjoy watching your videos for the kind of manic energy you bring when you talk about the subjects you enjoy. It's always fun and nice to listen to people talk about and explain things they like.

I don't actually play D&D but I just really wanted to watch something so on a whim, I put on this video because I watch your myth videos and I'm really glad I did! I had no clue I would get to watch a super interesting discussion of the liminal and abstract concepts of time. :D

Dael, this was brilliant -- probably one of your best videos to date. You've clearly got a lot of passion for this subject, and since so many tables tend to ignore or downplay the role of holidays except as the occasional adventure hook, your content stands out even more.

I cant stop coming back to your videos!!! Along with the great info your personality is great! It feels like im listening to a friend talk about there passion! Also your smile is captivating seeing how much love and energy you ha e behind everything you say (sorry for bad spelling if any, dyslexic and atuo check has given up on me :') )

I loved all the information and the passion you had talking about this! I want to use this in my campaign!! Might be my favorite one of you videos!

This couldnt have come at a better time. Im currently working on a murder mystery quest revolving around a fall festival. Thanks as always for the fun deep dive!

I could watch/listen to this woman talk all day. No joke.

I just discovered you today and have been binging your channel since. I didn't think I'd care about creating fictional holidays when I started this video, but man you were just so psyched about it! You completely sold me on it and now I want to start my campaign with holiday preparations. This was awesome to watch haha (also I'm now subscribed because of this video)

Holy shit, I love this video! I could literally sit and listen to you talk all day Dael! love the way you explain things and delve deep into detail. You sound like an amazing person to play D&D with and I’d love to have a video of you sharing some of the adventures that you’ve made.

RE your point around 8:00 - Look at the movie Christmas With The Kranks. It does show how those unspoken rules of festival time function by showing it being broken. ⚠️ SPOILER ⚠️ An entire community neighborhood has a long list of rituals that, while agreed upon in the beginning, become individual actions of community. When the Kranks decide to skip Christmas and plan on a cruise vacation instead, it is seen as strange and an attack on the community. But once the plans change and the Kranks have to put on their holiday party on short notice, the community not only bands together, but they switch into an unspoken agreement on what needs to be done. Jaime Lee Curtis’ character hears their daughter is coming home, and her first reaction is to put on a sweater she wears every year. They get the Hickory Honey Ham they were missing, the Frosty on the roof goes up, and the only coordinated activity they need to discuss are the things that AREN’T normal, like delaying Blair and her fiancé from arriving.

I could listen to you talk enthusiastically about the particulars of worldbuilding for hours. As far as I'm concerned, you don't ever worry about taking your time on this kind of thing! I loved this video!

Once again, you amaze us with your ability to both understand and express to laypersons. Love your videos (both the D&D and mythology ones).

Awesome episode, Dael! Going to be using this to figure out the specifics of my celtic-inspired festivals.

Great video. I’ll definitely be re-watching this later. I’m really enjoying your channel. It’s superb.

This has been such great inspiration Dael! I've been working on this Homebrew race for a while now and I think this is a great way to help me flesh them out! I probably never would have thought to add marriage rituals and other cultural holidays without this. I'm so hyped now!

I love the intellectual and thoughtful approach you bring to your videos. Kudos as always!

I love this. I've recently begun thinking about what kinds of holidays that various monster tribes would celebrate. This gives me a starting place to go from. Thanks!

Excellent video! Your material never ceases to inspire and elevate my own concepts. My players are about to experience an eclipse viewing holiday and the difference between kairos and chronos is definitely going to feature prominently!

So I thought to myself "I want to create some fictional holidays but first I need to understand what makes a holiday a holiday. I should search for Dael's video about it, there ought to be one!"

Dael, that Jesus that you made this video, because I'm revamping the holidays in my D&D setting right now and this is so much help.

Great content as always. Evocative and important to denote how different parts of the world also experience different holidays in a different way

This could not have come at a better time. The Feast of Deedsday is coming up this Saturday. Now it's the Feast of Deedsday but a lot better

Dang I love these perspectives on world building. Makes me try to dive deeper into stories I want to write or participate in

This was entirely more than I had hoped for when I clicked on, thank you for your effort Dael!

This was so informative as well as useful. Excellent job. Thank you!

This is actually perfect timing. Players in my Rise of the Runelords game are about to hit a year-long downtime and I was thinking about what holidays they're going to pass during that time. Thanks Dael!

Thank you! This video came out just in right time -- in the campaign I run there will be samhain just the next session

Thanks, I've written more notes down during this video than any single day in school. And I actually feel like I'll use it all.

I'm literally just writing holidays for my world and I've been stuck on them for so long. I have them, but I couldn't think of what to do with them. this video came at the precise right time

I was just pointed in your direction last night on a DND subreddit and decided to check out this video first. All I can say is I really wish I had watched this video 2 weeks ago before running a "coming of age" backstory session with one of my players. There's so much I hadn't considered that you touched on here, it's just brilliant.

This is a fabulous video. Going deep on world building is my jam

So I came here expecting some basic worldbuilding advice and hoping for a nice story or example Dael came up with. Instead, I was shown a conceptualisation of time in relation to holidays. Not only does this channel never disappoint, it regularly surpasses even my hopes for what it can be. Thank you very much, this is great!

Don't worry Dael, we like that you like talking about this.

at first i thought you were wearing the sweater just because it was a holiday-themed costume, but when you got around to christmas in summer i realized you actually are heading into winter down in the southern hemisphere

I'm from the UK and holiday here is a more common term for 'vacation'. So when I read 'Realistic Fictional Holidays' I was picturing some strange D&D session where the adventurers all take a break from their adventures to go and lay on a beach somewhere.

This one is a REALLY good one. Very useful for new and old worldbuilders alike, love this.

Another thing to consider with regard to holidays and celebrations is the scale of the celebration itself. Is it just the village/city celebrating something which might expand to smaller villages if it's a bigger city and the surrounding area, is it national, regional, or what. Having a founding day celebration for a village and a coronation day for a country are things that fit rather well and might have traditions there. Hell, you could even have a play with things for a Coronation Day thing where the traditions might shift by the gender of the monarch...

I ran PF2E adventure during the final day of the setting's "Burning Blades" festival, a devotion to Sarenrae. I had flaming-sword dance exhibitions (canonical) and evening feasting (inspired by Ramadan, since Sarenites are kinda Golarion's not-Muslims), but I totally didn't think about *decorations.* (And the Burning Blades feast was, in fact, a nice break-point from the adventure clock, just as Editing-Dale said.) Nice video, Dale!

At around 6:30 you do a great job of synthesizing the bakhtinian Chronotope! I really want to do a video some day of how language and chronotope help establish genre/narratives and can be useful for verisimilitude in d&d and roleplay. You do a really good job of this already it would just be neat to tie in some literary theory and linguistic anthropology. Love your stuff!

Wonderful video! Thank you for brightening my day!

In my world, I previously have not had many holiday events... so this video blew my mind and now my mind is churning out ideas! Thanks!

This explanation of "fictional festivals somewhat similar to what I already know" was helped greatly by the constant references to Australian holidays.

YESS LONG VIDEO One of my favorite things to do for holidays at my table is to cook food to serve my players, capitalizing on the fictional kairos as an excuse to mesh the real and fictional world. Also, I find that matching the timing of a real-world holiday to a fictional one works best for me, like having 'holiday episodes' around that holiday (around Halloween we always play a spooky one-shot or campaign session), but the idea that the players emotionally relax because of a fictional holiday is a really cool idea.

Thanks that was actually really helpful actually even manage to think of a holiday while listening to this it's a winter holiday called candle bright where everybody lights candles and praise for the return of spring to Ray the everlight

Another top marks tutorial for DM's doing world building - or simply enhancing packaged worlds (like I am wont to do).

19:20 this awkwardly reminded me of how people criticize Tolkien for presenting too much alien information and describing them too thoroughly and, on the other hand, critize Sapkowski for example, for stealing too many ideas from the real world and saying his writing is "cliche". I guess my train of thought shows too things: being a fictional writer is f*n hard and people are never satisfied anyway.

I think my favourite type of holiday has to be "the world/a bunch of people tried to kill us but we survived, lets eat about it"

amazing video as always