Holidays help shape the identity of a nation's citizens, strengthen the ties of the community, fortify national pride, mobilise patriotic emotions and actions, and legitimise the ruling authority. Conversely, they can also support the expression of political discontent. As long as national holidays represent a tool for the mobilisation of the masses, their capacity to control the behaviour of people flows from top to bottom, from the rulers to the ruled. But when holidays become a tool in the hands of the masses discontent with the ruling elite, events shift to flow from the bottom up, from the ruled to the rulers. Then, the symbolical significance of the holidays, similar to other symbols of the nation and/or state, helps the people to express their critical stance towards the authorities. When the governing ideology wishes to force its interpretations on the people by manipulating the official list of holidays, those citizens who are dissatisfied resist in various ways.
COBISS.SI-ID: 265970688
The book does not purport to present a new and perfect holiday calendar and typology; namely, the contemporary holiday landscape where a broad palette of very different holidays and even more ways of celebrating them coexist eludes these concepts in itself. It likewise does not seek out deeply rooted traditions or authenticity – with the exception of the authenticity of unpredictable human creativity – nor does it confirm the assertion of the national community's voice being harmonious with its typical culture. Holidays, their meanings, forms and settings change, just as the groups bound to them do: motives and practices of celebration in similar measure reaffirm as well as shift the identities of groups, in lasting or temporary ways. Holiday rituals hold the power to solidify conformity with the old and deep-rooted, while being at the same time capable of facilitating change. That is why they are liberating rather than enslaving. The ritual "openness" or transformative power generate the contemporary holiday landscape as a motley combination of the tradition-oriented and the innovative, memories of the past and aspirations for the future, the collective and the individual, global currents and local particularities. Altogether, the subject at hand tasks researchers with critical treatment that, once precisely executed, becomes yet another voice in the polyphony of interpretations of the holiday phenomena.
COBISS.SI-ID: 272378112
This article discusses selected ritual practices in Klagenfurt, the capital of the southern Austrian state of Carinthia. The first ritual is connected with 10 October, when the memory of the 1920 plebiscite is celebrated on the streets of Klagenfurt. In this plebiscite, the majority of people voted to stay in Austria, the successor state to Austria-Hungary. The second ritual is a more recent one, known as the Memorial Walk (Germ. Gedenk-gehen, Sln. Spominska hoja). Various cultural practices are analyzed, as well as the use of symbols and space, and media, state, and national discourses.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36488493
The article uses an analysis of local festivals in Janše to address the processes of the social construction of holidays and the performance of traditional ritual practices at the local level. Festivals in the countryside are usually connected with past agricultural tasks, crops, or the changing seasons. Ritual practices used to unite a community or had a magical meaning, but in their present form of performance they become cultural heritage which influences people’s feelings of affiliation, connects the inhabitants and also has considerable economic effects. At the same time, festivals may stimulate cultural creativity, develop ecological consciousness, and support the development of the countryside in line with the principles of sustainable development.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36609837