My approach has been to try to have each holiday target one value. “Humans can achieve phenomenal things”, “Civilization is fragile”, “Cached thoughts sneak up on you”. Time of year and trappings I pick downstream from the core idea. It’s tricky because, if it works, it will stick even if the value isn’t good, or stops being good in the future, so I think it’s necessary to be pretty careful with what values you pick. (Also I haven’t gotten anyone else to collaborate with, and it’s definitely not a one-person job; relatedly I have no successes yet.)
Generally I think good holidays should have a very small core of essential trait/ritual, preferably explicitly marked to organizers, and the rest can accrete, be discarded, accrete again differently, vary from one instance to the next, etc.
For Solstice (or, as I internally label it, “Brighter Night”) I consider the core to be the three-part arc (dim > dark > light), with the candle-lighting ritual if at all possible, and the Speech of Darkness. The rest is nonessential. (Even my favorite parts, primarily the choir.)
Petrov Day doesn’t have a core beyond “take a minute to not destroy the world”, which is not a useful core. I think that is related to why it keeps going badly—people trying to add a core, without carefully thinking about the effects of the addition will be.
My approach has been to try to have each holiday target one value. “Humans can achieve phenomenal things”, “Civilization is fragile”, “Cached thoughts sneak up on you”. Time of year and trappings I pick downstream from the core idea. It’s tricky because, if it works, it will stick even if the value isn’t good, or stops being good in the future, so I think it’s necessary to be pretty careful with what values you pick. (Also I haven’t gotten anyone else to collaborate with, and it’s definitely not a one-person job; relatedly I have no successes yet.)
Generally I think good holidays should have a very small core of essential trait/ritual, preferably explicitly marked to organizers, and the rest can accrete, be discarded, accrete again differently, vary from one instance to the next, etc.
For Solstice (or, as I internally label it, “Brighter Night”) I consider the core to be the three-part arc (dim > dark > light), with the candle-lighting ritual if at all possible, and the Speech of Darkness. The rest is nonessential. (Even my favorite parts, primarily the choir.)
Petrov Day doesn’t have a core beyond “take a minute to not destroy the world”, which is not a useful core. I think that is related to why it keeps going badly—people trying to add a core, without carefully thinking about the effects of the addition will be.