I don’t think that’s a fair description of most holidays, and it’s definitely not a requirement for new ones.
The biggest source of inspiration I have used in my own designs is the Neopagan/Wiccan holidays; Beltane, Imbolc, Luggasnadh , etc. Whatever their proponents may claim, these are de novo holidays they assembled from whole cloth with only scraps of historical practice and misinterpreted or outright fabricated mythology to back them up. And, despite being entirely novel, they’re sticky and genuinely emotionally impactful. In the whole eight points of the wheel of the year, only Yule (winter solstice) can really be construed as “earned”. (Via the standard “we have brought back the Sun” winter solstice narrative. YMMV on how much this actually applies to celebrations of Yuletide.)
So given that, I don’t think holidays need to commemorate things. And actually I think they generally shouldn’t, because a commemoration is backward-looking. We are an extremely forward-looking movement/community, and our holidays should reflect that. Which isn’t to say we should ignore the past—Solstice cares a lot about the past, and how we’ve dug ourselves out of a hole nature made for us, and this is good—but we should focus on the future and the present, doing collective values affirmation and trying to establish a tradition that can sustain us across a couple generations. Values I’ve considered include ‘be ready for tail risks’ (“Prepper’s Night”), ‘community connection’ (“Day of Warmth”), ‘humanity’s potential is enormous’ (“High Summer” or “Awe Summer”), and ‘appreciate skill’/‘share skill’ (“Day of Achievement”).
On the other hand, the holidays quanticle points out are “more successful” than the ones you bring up, in that they are holidays that have existed for longer and are celebrated by more people, so there is likely something going on where there is something strongly gained from making a holiday more earned.
That doesn’t follow. Traditions are self-perpetuating; the more entrenched a holiday is, the more momentum it has to keep being entrenched. Therefore, an old holiday tells us merely that it had something major going for it at some point in the past.
I don’t think that’s a fair description of most holidays, and it’s definitely not a requirement for new ones.
The biggest source of inspiration I have used in my own designs is the Neopagan/Wiccan holidays; Beltane, Imbolc, Luggasnadh , etc. Whatever their proponents may claim, these are de novo holidays they assembled from whole cloth with only scraps of historical practice and misinterpreted or outright fabricated mythology to back them up. And, despite being entirely novel, they’re sticky and genuinely emotionally impactful. In the whole eight points of the wheel of the year, only Yule (winter solstice) can really be construed as “earned”. (Via the standard “we have brought back the Sun” winter solstice narrative. YMMV on how much this actually applies to celebrations of Yuletide.)
So given that, I don’t think holidays need to commemorate things. And actually I think they generally shouldn’t, because a commemoration is backward-looking. We are an extremely forward-looking movement/community, and our holidays should reflect that. Which isn’t to say we should ignore the past—Solstice cares a lot about the past, and how we’ve dug ourselves out of a hole nature made for us, and this is good—but we should focus on the future and the present, doing collective values affirmation and trying to establish a tradition that can sustain us across a couple generations. Values I’ve considered include ‘be ready for tail risks’ (“Prepper’s Night”), ‘community connection’ (“Day of Warmth”), ‘humanity’s potential is enormous’ (“High Summer” or “Awe Summer”), and ‘appreciate skill’/‘share skill’ (“Day of Achievement”).
On the other hand, the holidays quanticle points out are “more successful” than the ones you bring up, in that they are holidays that have existed for longer and are celebrated by more people, so there is likely something going on where there is something strongly gained from making a holiday more earned.
That doesn’t follow. Traditions are self-perpetuating; the more entrenched a holiday is, the more momentum it has to keep being entrenched. Therefore, an old holiday tells us merely that it had something major going for it at some point in the past.