4 Bożena Gierek the feast finds its justification and motivation. This tradition shapes societies and preserves specific forms of rituals and customs suitable for the contemporary way of social life for which special institutions representing the ruling classes are responsible. They tend to preserve the old3 by bestowing on it “special emotional value” (Czarnowski [1936] 1956: 121). As long as the value embodied in the tradition is important for a group, the need to sustain and celebrate the feast lasts. Decay of the ideology, weakening of the faith, as well as the belief in the traditional values presage decay of the feast. The old feast can be replaced by another or it can be transformed; for instance its religious, mythical, metaphysical meaning can be substituted for purely secular cultural national, regional, or ethnic values. The reformed feast can become one more form of spending free time. Reasons for changing feasts and changes in feasts are economic, technological, and cultural. Cultural changes are affected by the changes in: living conditions of people, socio-economic and occupational structures, political systems, and social awareness. Changes in the occupational structure are reflected not only in the dedication of the feast to a guild (e.g., in the Middle Ages) or a working class4 (e.g., in a communist or socialist state), but also in the place the representatives of the occupation take. Changes in social awareness are expressed in the changes in the value system of the group. Ideological changes and changes in social structures influence changes in the feasts. Very often a feast retains old elements, but a new meaning is given to them (cf. Żygulski 1981). A very good example of this is the harvest festival (dożynki) in Poland, especially its celebration during the communist period when the festival was infused with communist ideology and it included the ritualization of political behavior. The feast was an arena for rivalry—the achievements of the leaders at work were announced and they were awarded by the state leaders (cf. Gierek 2014). The harvest festival is an example of the feast transformed into “a lesson of patriotism and subordination” (Heers [1983] 1995: 213). As the Polish sociologist Stefan Czarnowski put it: We unceasingly change our attitude towards the old by still working on its transformation, […] so that it becomes the present. For the old lasts 3 The Polish sociologist Stefan Czarnowski used the Polish noun dawność, referring to something old, therefore I translate it as “the old,” not “the past”; the latter would be przeszłość in Polish. 4 In Poland, over 30 occupational groups celebrated their own feasts, which was an effect of specialization of work that led to specialization of feasting (Ciołek, Olędzki, & Zadrożyńska 1976: 266).
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