Blue Moon Festival

History

The Blue Moon festival was first celebrated in 2045, in a small town in rural England. Three years later, a documentary was released on the celebration in 2048, and it went viral, causing celebrations to occur nationwide on the next occurrence in 2050. From there, the celebration only spread, becoming celebrated nearly worldwide by the early 22nd century.

In 2189, as part of the International Holiday Accord, the Blue Moon festival was formalised as an irregular holiday, or a holiday which followed astronomical phenomena as opposed to normal human calendars and as such had a variable date. As part of this classification, it was declared that the festival would be an official bank holiday, in part due to the festival’s disconnect from any major religion.

Execution

The festival is primarily celebrated by a fair or carnival with the public in town during the day, followed by a dinner with the whole family in the evening. Many families, especially those with school-age children, also go outside afterwards to go stargazing and look at the blue moon.

Components and tools

Many traditions for the Blue Moon Festival have come and gone over the years, from the baking of sugar cookies with blue dye in them to releasing blue paper lanterns. One thing that has persisted much longer the festival’s linguistic roots, however, is the connection with the colour blue. Almost every object or tradition associated with the festival is still some shade of blue.

Participants

While the Blue Moon festival is most commonly celebrated with a carnival in town followed by a nice dinner at home, and so therefore doesn’t make much use of any leadership figure, many places do have public figures - be they celebrities or politicians or even just particularly loud normal people - officially commence the celebrations.

Observance

The Blue Moon festival is celebrated, quite literally, once in a blue moon - a blue moon being, of course, the second full moon to occur in a given month. As such, it can sometimes be that many years pass between celebrations, but somehow the tradition has persisted.