Introduction: Feast as a Mirror of Social and Cultural Changes Bożena Gierek Feasting seems to be an inseparable element of peoples’—especially their collective—lives. Moreover, it is “a primary, indestructible ingredient of human civilization; it may become sterile and even degenerate, but it cannot vanish” (Bakhtin [1965] 1984: 276). According to the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (Procter 1995: 508), feast, understood as a celebration, is “a day on which a religious event or person is remembered and celebrated,” and festival or festivity is “a special day or period, usually in memory of a religious event, with its own social activities, food or ceremonies, or an organized set of special events.” The social activities and special events, performed on days free from ordinary duties, “as an intermezzo, an interlude in our daily lives” (Huizinga [1938] 1980: 9; cf. Heers [1983] 1995: 6–7), comprise, among others, public gatherings, parades, manifestations, music and dance, games and entertainment, even debauchery (Caillois [1939] 1972: 145–147; Caillois [1958] 2001: 89), where “special types of attire” are also required (Turner 1982a: 12). Wearing special attire and symbols as well as home decoration are themselves a manifestation, such as for instance shamrock and green color on St. Patrick’s Day. According to Polish ethnologists Tadeusz Maciej Ciołek, Jacek Olędzki, and Anna Zadrożyńska (1976: 12), considering the form, feasts are spectacles that are “the most communicative way of transmitting information.”1 They involve all senses, draw in spectators, and make it possible for them to realize their own feelings. The authors propose to call the feast “an unordinary situation establishing a festive synthesis of ordinariness” (Ciołek, Olędzki, & Zadrożyńska 1976: 284). The Cambridge International Dictionary of English gives also another meaning of a feast, here understood as food: “a special meal with very good food or a large meal for many people” (Procter 1995: 508). Although this is the primary definition of “feast,” nowadays, it has a secondary meaning and points 1 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
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