When my mother lived in India she had a friend who jokingly used to say he didn’t do any work because he enjoyed participating in everyone’s festivals and each one meant a day off. The festivals of so many religions and sects are bountiful in India but all over the world people celebrate. Celebrations can be lovely things and they bind communities together in traditions that sometimes seem obscure and exclusive to those outside the community. In fact some celebrations are only for the select community and you are forbidden to participate, but the best festival are those that encompass any passing stranger because they have the core element that people enjoy, look for fun and simply delight in celebrating.
The fact that even serious celebrations are afterwards complemented by food or dancing or some other simple pleasure show how committed people are to making ‘observance’ as fun as possible. And, yes, let us say it – when we see what other people take as normal we do raise an eyebrow now-and-then and wonder how on earth such traditions get started (and in the mists of the past some got started for very bad reasons) yet once established people are loathe to give them up.
Like my mother’s friend all those years ago if we had the chance, who would not take six days off a week to have fun with other people.