Today I have pulled a writing prompt from a stack of cards I found at a thrift store a while back. It asks me to make up a weird holiday with the relevant celebrations and foods.
Okay, first we need a circumstance they’re celebrating. Most holidays build off of a seed. Then they add on from there. Let’s say this is a holiday in a similar age of modernity to our own and this is a holiday that started a thousand years ago or so. We could do a significant birth or death or a celebration around a specific phenomenon or family tradition, but I think this time I’m going to go from a specific event. There was a town that was going through a drought or other famine experience. It was nearly time for the fish to return from the sea that they counted on to get them through the winter but they weren’t sure they would make it there. Then… hm, I wanted to say a plant grew but there’s not a lot of plants that grow that fast. What if I say they discovered a vine they thought was just a weed was discovered to actually be nutritious? No, they would’ve eaten it before then. How about it’s like nightshade and related plants, part of it is poisonous? The leaves and vines were poisonous but grew a lot and were decorative, so they were never taken down. Then someone realized the roots were nutritious and delicious and so they ate most of the town’s supply of these roots and it got them through to when the fish arrived.
Okay, so this is a celebration of a miracle. How are people celebrating it now?
Food: Obviously, the root of the… tralya vine is an important part of the meal, and then they mix it with fish. So a dish of mashed tuber with fried or steamed fish is traditional. People have of course added in other dishes. Gravy, special recipes for how to prepare the fish, sometimes people make fried pancakes instead of the traditional mash. There’s a dessert like a yule log that has a decorative vine wrapped around it but made of sugar or frosting or similar, not the actual tralya vine because, you know… poisonous. The week leading up to the feast day, people traditionally eat smaller and smaller meals and commonly go around the table to name things they’re grateful for or could give up, depending on the household and family traditions.
Decor: The vine has distinctive purple and red leaves, so those are the traditional colors. People added in sequins and glitter to look like fish scales. Originally people cleared out their houses a lot to represent the famine then made one room festive to represent the miracle of plenty and survival. A vine of trelya was often put over the door (put up with gloves please) but that’s been mostly replaced with plastic or otherwise synthetic. In the equivalent of the Victorian or Elizabethan, rich people would use a different vine that had been dyed. Now, the decor has spilled out of the one room in most households. Figures of fish, hunters, gatherers, and fishers are common. Spatulas and spoons began being strung into the garlands several hundred years ago and now they’re very decorative and not at all usable.
What other weird additions would there have been? The Lady of the Trelya began to be a thing about a hundred years after, mostly an inflated version of the woman who discovered her pig? (if that survived that long?) Yes- there we go. She was going to eat her last two pigs who were supposed to repopulate her pig farm but when she went out, she discovered they’d broken out of their pen and were eating trelya vine roots. She decided to try it out and hooray, it was delicious. Now she’s become a mythic figure who rides a cart pulled by hogs, wearing draping clothing made of trelya leaves. She is a strong figure in the decor. Also piglets representing plenty. A while back there were processions where a woman would drive a cart with trelya vines strung around it and people would follow singing carols (or proceed pulling the pigs who were harnessed to the cart). Later she began distributing trelya root cakes. Then it just turned into parades. The candies thrown are purple and red.
Happy Tralfest, y’all! Hope your new years are full of wonders and plenty.
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
Feel free to share via link
Do not copy to other websites or skim for AI training