by Eric Weiss
Ah, the holidays. A time to gather around the Christmas tree with family to participate in shared traditions that everyone enjoys.
Unless you don’t celebrate Christmas. Or don’t like your family. Or forgot to get a tree. Or for some other normal and relatable reason.
Now let’s talk about holiday worldbuilding!
In December, Christmas can start to feel inevitable. The endless barrage of Hallmark movies, mall Santas, and Mariah Carey is designed to convince you that everyone experiences the season in a similar way.
The thing is, the traditions we take for granted are loaded with all kinds of assumptions – up to and including the misconception that everyone celebrates one holiday in the first place. Things that seem universal very rarely are, whether you’re a non-Christian in a Christmas world, or even if you’re just enjoying a white Christmas in Canada while your friends in Florida spend it at the beach.
Holidays are interesting because they happen at the same time every year (and if they don’t, that fact is noteworthy in its own right). They also happen whether or not you personally celebrate them. This year, the first day of Hanukkah falls on Christmas. December 25 may look different in my household (I’m Jewish) than it does in yours, and those real-world differences can be an insightful lens for fictional storytelling as long as two or more cultural groups exist in your world.
(Quick aside: yes, your world should probably have at least two distinct groups. True monocultures are exceedingly rare, and even then there may be competing subgroups. Cultures where everyone feels the exact same way about everything just aren’t terribly interesting from a storytelling perspective.)
The point is that a major event for one group can be a culture clash for those who don’t participate. Other people now have to navigate a public space that has been set up for a specific purpose. That doesn’t have to translate to open conflict, but there is likely to be tension if each group is approaching the situation with different expectations. What if one culture likes to celebrate the beginning of a new year, while the other prefers to mourn the death of the old one? The mourners may not appreciate a festive atmosphere, while the celebrants may resent the mourners for souring the mood.
Holidays like Christmas (or the equivalent in your world) have a way of amplifying those differences. Christmas is a monolith – an idea with iconography that most people recognize even when they don’t share it themselves. Everything else stands in contrast to that monolith. Someone's opinions about Christmas will tell you a lot about their status, their personality, and how they relate to the broader culture and the people in it.
With that in mind, try creating a holiday for your world, and then figure out how each character feels about the festivities. You can start by exploring the differences between cultures, as in the New Year example above. You can also explore differences within a culture. Maybe your main character hates the holidays because of a tragic event that happened when they were young. Maybe they’re just a Grinch. Maybe they like the traditional trappings, but can’t make it home this year for reasons beyond their control.
What about cross-cultural relationships? I celebrate Hanukkah, while my partner celebrates Christmas. Do your protagonist’s s in-laws make them feel welcome and invite them to participate, or do they close ranks and exclude outsiders?
No two people have the same holiday experience, so there are an infinite number of ways to unpack the holidays in your story. If you want to do some holiday worldbuilding, pick one of the cultural groups in your world and try to answer the following questions:
- What are the group’s stated values?
- What are their major holidays, festivals, or celebrations? When do they happen, and why do they happen at that time of the year?
- How do those holidays correspond to their stated values?
- What do those holidays look like? Are there any clothes, foods, or objects associated with each holiday? How much do people decorate?
- Is this group the dominant group in their area, or a minority existing next to another faction? How do the people who don’t celebrate feel about this tradition? How does the dominant group treat those who don’t participate?
If you want to go further, our Culture Keyholes Expansion has some fantastic prompts that can help you figure out more details of your holiday and your world. Celebrations are powerful expressions of culture, so don’t overlook the holidays if you want your world to feel more alive!
Thanks for reading! We wish you all the best this holiday season - whatever that looks like for you!