A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival.
Among many religions, a feast is a set of celebrations in honour of God or gods. A feast and a festival are historically interchangeable. However, the term "feast" has also entered common secular parlance as a synonym for any large or elaborate meal. When used as in the meaning of a festival, most often refers to a religious festival rather than a film or art festival.
In the Philippines and many other former Spanish colonies, the Spanish word fiesta is used to denote a communal religious feast to honor a patron saint.
In the Christian liturgical calendar there are two principal feasts, properly known as the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord (Christmas) and the Feast of the Resurrection, (Easter). In the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican liturgical calendars there are a great number of lesser feasts throughout the year commemorating saints, sacred events, doctrines, etc.
Read more about Festival: Etymology, Function, Types of Festivals, Ancient Egyptian Festivals
Other articles related to "festival, festivals":
... Palme d'Or (Cannes Film Festival) Eternity and a Day (Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα, Mia aioniotita kai mia mera), directed by Theodoros ...
... The Xclamation Festival or X Fest is an annual festival that takes place on the streets of downtown Modesto, California from 9th to 12th between J and H Streets, usually on the first Saturday in August ... that go into the late evening hours, and a motto of "Good Times, Downtown." The festival features 50 bands on 8 stages over the course of 8 hours ... The festival is 21 and over only, and has boasted crowds that average 15,000 people, the capacity limit set by the City of Modesto ...
... Important festivals include the wine-and-food September festival, Friuli D.O.C ... and the biggest European festival of popular East Asian cinema, the Far East Film Festival, in April ...
... The biggest festival held in Brno is the fireworks festival Ignis Brunensis (Latin for "Flame of Brno") ... It is part of a festival with a bold name "Brno - City in the Centre of Europe" ... The next international festival is the Cinema Mundi (a Latin name which means something like "the Cinematography of the World") it shows about 60 films competing for Oscar ...
... Most Ancient Egyptian festivals were religious, but others were not such as one festival established by Rameses III to celebrate his victory over the Libyans ... Festivals were large celebrations with plenty of food available ... In one festival in the 12th century BC, 11,341 loaves of bread and 385 jars of beer were given to the public ...
Famous quotes containing the word festival:
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Sabbath. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)