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
Famous quotes containing the word festival:
“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)
“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)
“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)