9 Introduction: Feast as a Mirror of Social and Cultural Changes There are groups of people, whose incentives are purely commercial, that want to attract outsiders; these people are often local decision-makers. The outsiders are tourists for whom feasts and festivals, being parts of different cultures, are exotic and they very often influence their choices in holiday destinations (cf. Mielicka 2009: 11–21). Since ancient times, tourism6 has been one of the bigger contributors to the local and national economy, therefore endeavors were undertaken in order to attract tourists and their money at any possible occasion. The economic aspect is very significant here, but we must not forget that it lies also at the roots of the feasts, especially those linked with turning points in nature. Prosperity in every area of the life of an individual and a group has always been desired. Thus, in order to ensure it, rituals were conducted on various occasions. Feasts and festivals were rituals sensu stricto. However, nowadays, economic incentives seem to influence every area of life. People have become their slaves, as well as slaves of time perceived as money and calculated by money, especially in industrial and secular countries, in which every feast day, every day off, means a loss of millions. Therefore, if some feasts and festivals could not be eliminated, they had to be included in the business plan and turned into profitable events in commerce and the market. Every feast recalls and communicates something (Pełka 1989: 55). It allows people “to reflect on their own existence and to pay attention to what is the most important and meaningful in life” (Mielicka 2006: 243). The question is, how many people take this opportunity, find time for reflection, or would even consider it in a world where everybody is rushing and there are so many distractions—even in the feast itself, to mention its performative aspect. Feasts are great occasions for mass consumption supported by mass media. In the whirl of shopping and the thrill of chasing meaningless pleasures, with which we are bombarded by mass media, we lose the true meaning of the feast. Mass media are taking the place of the traditional celebration, in the sense that they offer its new forms to those who choose to stay at home in isolation from communitas. Because mass media are a common means of globalization, a feast is therefore a performance not only for spectators participating in it in situ, but also for those millions watching it on the screen. Most contemporary feasts and festivals gather random people who are not permanently bound with each other in their daily lives. The temporary 6 On the links between tourism and festivals, cf. Picard and Robinson (2006). On food and wine festivals as part of regional and national tourism strategies, cf. Hall and Sharples (2008).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE5NDY5MQ==