Roy Christian. Traditional Festivals - a multicultural encyclopedia

ABC-Clio, PDF, 564 p.
Since The Beginning of time, and despite the advent of modernity as the reduction of the latter to the linear progress of secular history, the life of most human societies has usually unfolded within the sacred cycle of a strict succession of festive observances. Interrupting daily routine, they temporarily loosen and rearrange the social fabric — the better to reaffirm its underlying pattern of beliefs and assumptions, hopes and fears, founding myths and redemptive visions.