FEAST As a Mirror of Social and Cultural Changes

10 Bożena Gierek bonds between the celebrating people are formed because they have a common aim—to enjoy themselves here and now. “The emotional attraction of feast days” has been weakened by the modern style of life and “the modern conception of freedom of an individual” (Żygulski 1981: 243), which means that now in the center is the individual, not the collective. Holidays, vacations—as a family-recreational time—take the place of feasts and festivals, and diminish their meaning as a time of relaxation. Both bring a break in ordinary, everyday obligatory work. However, there are essential differences between them. The old religious festival represented the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in the mythical past, in illo tempore, at a certain time in the year. Its celebration was necessary to guarantee harmony in the universe, even its existence (cf. Caillois [1939] 1972; Eliade [1957] 1959, 1963). At present, especially in Western cultures, the festival is stripped of that deep sacred meaning due to processes of secularization. Although many festivals have a long tradition, it is not correlated with the sacred. It is perceived merely as a commemoration of an old tradition, a nice event transmitted from generation to generation, a part of local or national culture. The feast, the sense of which was inherent in the collective action of the members of a particular group, now devoid of that action, has been turned into one more performance, no matter how artistic, magnificent, and impressive in its external form. Such an attitude leads to indifference to the past and diminution of historical awareness (cf. Żygulski 1981: 244). The dates of vacations are individual and quite fluid, and may change from year to year. They are awaited, but this awaiting is different from the awaiting of the whole community for the old periodical festival at a more or less fixed day. There was a special time for preparations, which were set and had to be followed carefully. It was “a durable, violent phenomenon with such a magnitude” that it is difficult to compare it with “the evanescent days of carefully measured out pleasures that present civilizations can indulge” (Caillois [1939] 1972: 215). The festival and vacations both require a break in the work, but in the case of the vacations it is “a phase of relaxation and not of paroxysm” ([1939] 1972: 161). Caillois regards vacations as a contradiction to the ancient festivals because they concentrate on the individual, not on the community ([1939] 1972: 215–216). It is not a time of the gathering of crowds; on the contrary, it is a time of their dispersion far away from urban centers. This form of escapism and lack of willingness, or even indisposition, to celebrate feasts is a result of the diminution of social bonds. It seems that the evolved society became more complicated, there are no interludes

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