End of Year celebrations in Kavis
Across Kavis’ northern regions, midwinter celebrations are a common feature of life. The need for people to gather amid the coldest parts of the year and find warmth and community is common across cultures, and a variety of feasts and events take place – though with very different emphases in different cultures.
Some regions are less bound to midwinter: Camahay is more equatorial and tend to track seasonal rains more than wider climatic shifts, whereas in the Oak Islands, Sterne, the southern ports of Alasia, Starshore, Corravan, Mav, Kesrata, and Tabnire, the equinoctial celebrations are more important.
In the Heirophancy – Watermasque
The Heirophancy may not have the dramatic blizzards of Cenica or the dwarf Republics, the cold rains of Serraty or the deep ground-frosts of Alasia, but parts of the state are nonetheless cloaked in white come winter and the continental climate can provide heavy cold in some years. The primary celebration is Watermasque, one of the few parts of Heirophantic religion that requires activity (if not full participation by any means) from the common folk as well as the Heirophants.
The winter tends to be more associated with Beyi, the cosmic force of slowness and permanence: so Watermasque is a chaotic festival of masked dances, singing, and feasting, intended to add activity and change into a season that seems to last forever.
In Cenica, Ruvia and the Republics – Cridalin/the Winter Bear/the Cloaked Bear
Across the northernmost and easternmost parts of the continent of Chardil, the winter cold in the mountains or on the craggy Cenican coasts is a major feature of annual life. The figure of the Winter Bear, known in Cenica as Cridalin Tuan, or at times as the Cloaked Bear, is the folkloric midwinter figure across all of these regions. The favour of the Winter Bear is supposed to be important for getting people through the winter, and the ritual preparations of meat and feasts are especially important in the celebrations around his passage through the winter world.
In Serraty – Jack O’ Deer
Midwinter in Serraty is a time of misrule, of overturning the established order and bringing change for the year ahead. The fenlands’ spirit for the season is Jack O’Deer, a tusked fey man-deer spirit whose revels. Jack-nights, as they are known, are a time for petty revenges, especially of poor folk against the wealthy: “’a mun be Jack’s doing” is treated as an entirely valid legal defence for vandalism in this period of the year.
In Alasia – Syeis’ Coalbiting
One of Alasia’s favourite winter stories is of how Chith, the coalbiter, revived Syeis, the maiden deity of spring and of warriors, by telling her stories at the fireside through the coldest months of winter. In imitation of this, storytelling and midwinter fires are core parts of feasting and celebrations across Alasia. Young men often go courting at this time to other villages, with storytelling becoming a way of auditioning to prospective brides: all are welcome at the fire, though outsiders should be sure to bring a story with them to get a warm welcome. Roast duck is a traditional part of the Coalbiting meal, and by the waterways across Alasia duck-netting becomes a traditional village activity in the month or so before the Coalbiting proper.
In some newer versions, more radical priests of Chith have reduced Syeis’s role in the tale to that of a human maiden or a more simple analogy for spring, but these ideas have not been taken up much outside the larger settlements and some of the monastic communities of central and northern Alasia, and might get a disgruntled reaction if expressed to most common folk.
In Tullactara – Godsfather Trees
The Palictarans tend to focus on midsummer more than midwinter as a focal point for celebrations, but in the northern Tullactaran mountains their cousins, especially the more dwarf-heavy cities among the Tuls, have a strong tradition of celebrating midwinter. Midsummer is seen as a time where people are closer to the sky, and midwinter closer to the earth: so in midwinter cut and polished tree-roots may be hung around homes, with the imagining of them being at the roots of a great tree the flowers of which will be smelled by the gods themselves. Gifts of winter fruit are given to children, with popular imaginings of hedgehogs and moles as the creatures that put them into boxes and carry them.
