About holiday names
Festivals arrive with cadence and customs, like "the Festival of Fire" every two years or "the Festival of Bravery" with its rights of passage and athletic competitions. Duration lines note how celebrations spill past their official days, a believable touch worth keeping. Anchor your calendar by spacing a few of these across seasons, then let plot deadlines collide with them.
How holiday names are built
This is not a name generator but a festival-entry builder. Two templates lay out an invented holiday: the main one names its cadence, the Feast of a chosen theme (175 entries), its mood, its origin, and four modern customs drawn from a 70-entry customs bank, while a second template adds an official duration and a caveat about how the celebration spills over. Bank outputs include "Across the warm half of the year, folk keep the Feast of Borrowed Names, marked by feasting that runs till morning. Where it began is argued over by the learned, though by now the day means little more than ferrying lanterns across the dark pond, letting the youngest lead the songs, feeding the first plate to the dead and marching to the grave-rows with candles." and "By the old reckoning the feasting lasts the better part of four days, though the children would happily make it a month."
Across the warm half of the year, folk keep the Feast of Borrowed Names, marked by feasting that runs till morning. Where it began is argued over by the learned, though by now the day means little more than ferrying lanterns across the dark pond, letting the youngest lead the songs, feeding the first plate to the dead and marching to the grave-rows with candles.
template: main entry + slots: cadence, festival name, mood, origin, and four customs
Across the longest weeks of winter, folk keep the Feast of the Quiet Loom, marked by more dancing than sleeping. Where it began is owed to a long-dead ruler, though by now the day means little more than dunking the bold into the river, feasting in silence until the bell, pouring out the last of the cider and settling quarrels before sundown.
template: main entry + slots: cadence + name + mood + origin + four customs
By the old reckoning the feasting lasts the better part of four days, though the children would happily make it a month.
template: duration line + slots: official length plus spillover caveat
Naming notes
The festival-name bank (175 entries) supplies the name, and the customs bank (70) fills the four associated-activities slots, so the same holiday can mix ritual, food, and procession (the Feast of Borrowed Names pairs lantern-ferrying with feeding the first plate to the dead). Anchor a calendar by spacing several across the seasons by their stated cadence (across every other spring, across the longest weeks of winter), then let plot deadlines collide with the official duration.
Questions about holiday names
- Does this generate holiday names or descriptions?
- Descriptions that include the name. One pull gives the full Feast of (name) line with cadence, mood, and customs; a second pull adds how long it officially runs and how it spills over.
- Can a holiday's four customs overlap?
- Each of the four custom slots rolls from the same 70-entry bank, so an entry usually mixes distinct activities, as the Feast of the Quiet Loom does with river-dunking, silent feasting, cider, and settled quarrels.
- How do I fit these into a setting calendar?
- Read the cadence (across every other spring, across the longest weeks of winter) and space several holidays across the seasons, then use the official duration line to set windows your plot deadlines can crash into.