Many people started wishing to cross-reference their vacations in another country according to the local festivals. For me, attending the local festivals means immersing myself in the historical background of the celebration and its current interpretation. It is one of the best possibilities to develop your tourism experience on a high level. You can do anything at once at the festival: try local food, meet people, and learn about history. With the help of modern technologies, you can enter as many events as possible for your rhythm of life and material possibilities. Moreover, in current times festivals can be held among people with the same values and beliefs.
Studying out the question of the festival according to its definition, morphology, and phenomenon, I sympathize with the definition suggested by Cundy (643). Still, in my opinion, it was possible to add a couple of words that mark the bright emotional coloring of festivals because their main destiny nowadays is to bring joy and fellowship to people’s life.
The classification of rites (ritual acts, the main idea of festivals in the past) demonstrates the primary difference between previous and current attitudes in organizing the festival activities (Falassi, 4-5). In ancient times, festivals and rites were full-blown by religious occasions, while nowadays, it turns out to be only the data basis for vacations for most people. Cundy (649) also noted the various typologies of festivals based on essential criteria such as location, attitude to religion, season, theme, etc. In my opinion, the most convenient typologies include the theme of the festival or its outreach (home-grown, tourist-tempter, or big bangs).
I want to allocate the two most significant factors of festive popularity during the 20th or 21st centuries. The first supposes to be mass immigration, and the next wish is to cognize the culture. The second one – while hard work and high payment become the main aim of the person’s activity, people eagerly search for the sources of pleasure and joy to fulfill and recover themselves from stress and pressure.
With the social development, there appear to be many more occasions and reasons for celebrations and remembering dates; events have many more options related to art, education, tourism, etc. (Cundy, 649). This fact leads to the conclusion that during various times, independently to surround occasions and opportunities, festivals remain to be the reason for a society to allow themselves to let all doubts slip away. For me, it is much easier to start the incidental communication with the stranger during the festival than in an ordinary everyday routine. These events bring calmness to people’s hearts, regardless of the hardness and pressure of current issues.
Works Cited
Cundy, Waldemar. The Phenomenon of Festivals: Their Origins, Evolution, and Classifications. Anthropos, Bd. 109, H. 2., 2014, pp. 640-656.
Falassi, Alessandro. Festival: definition and morphology. In Falassi (ed)Time out of time: essays on the festival. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1987, pp. 1-10.