Ekhmeni New Year’s Festival
Natively called the “Khiratsha Mu-Ultakhim” (Festival of Changing Times, or Changing Years Festival), and also sometimes referred to as the “New Year’s Candle Festival,” the Ekhmeni New Year’s Festival is a week-long celebration held all across Ekhmenet as the last week of the year, technically separate from the three traditional Ekhmeni calendrical seasons. It celebrates the end of a (hopefully) bountiful harvest season, and in turn heralds the start of the next year’s flood season.
Execution
As a sort of harvest festival, feasts are an important part of the celebrations during the week of the festival. Each day of the week ends with a feast, with each separate feast showcasing traditional food and drink that has been saved from the beginning of the harvest season specifically for the festival. Dancing and music is also incredibly common; many families hold their feasts and parties on their flat rooftops with friends and neighbors, and it is not an unusual sight for the rowdiest of these parties to spill into the streets.
Traditionally, each of the feasts is different in size and composition as follows:
Traditionally, each of the feasts is different in size and composition as follows:
- The first day’s feast is the second-largest, with most of the drinks being made from the first fruits of the season as much as possible and with spicy meats being common as a joyful recollection of the recent harvest.
- The second day’s feast is smaller than the first’s, but not by much. Some of the meat begins to be replaced with hearty vegetable meals.
- The third day’s feast is smaller and humbler than the second’s, with most of the drinks being the more perishable kinds and with the meals predominantly field-grown rather than animal products.
- The fourth and fifth days’ feasts are the smallest and simplest as a harbinger of the flood season to come, according to tradition. Practically speaking, however, these comparatively humble feasts (which for most families that can afford to do so, are still definitely feasts far larger than ordinary meals) are a relative breather that allows families to prepare for the very last feast of the week.
- The sixth, last meal of the week, is the absolute biggest of the entire festival. It is so big, in fact, that it is incredibly common for several families to pool resources together for it and the party that typically accompanies it. It is considered a “last hurrah” of sorts for the past year, and an eager welcome to the next. The best of the best each family can afford and provide is saved for this feast, even if the first feast had seemed to have the best.
Components and tools
Each night’s feast, traditionally, is accompanied and lit by special ceremonial candles created specifically for the festival. These candles, often large and scented with rich spices, typically sit displayed in a prominent location—either at the feast table or in a front window of the home (or both). And the number of candles in the display changed from night to night as a countdown—six the first night, five the next night, and so on, until the final night is lit by a single, floatable ceremonial candle that the family then brings out for the midnight celebration.
Observance
The week of the Ekhmeni New Year’s Festival occurs at the very end of the year. The week is considered separate from any of the months and the three Ekhmeni seasons, but by the Torithian reckoning of seasons, it falls at about the end of spring and the beginning of summer. As for the individual feasts themselves, they traditionally begin at sundown, when the night starts to get cool.
Primary Related Location
Related Ethnicities
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In response to the prompt When do the cultures celebrate the new year in your world? What does it involve?
