Lore:Holidays of the Iliac Bay

The region of the   has a rich history, and not surprisingly, a number of   unique to it because of this history. The   and the   cultures have many similarities, but just as many distinctions. An analysis of the holidays is one way to study the people.

As any schoolchild could tell you, the Redguards are a relatively new culture to Tamriel. Their arrival from   is actually well recorded, though it   several thousand years ago, in the  th year of the 1st Era. Hammerfell was a great desert encompassed by almost impassable mountains -- unclaimed and unwanted. Many of the holidays extant in modern Hammerfell seem to be direct translations of older Redguard festivals before their migration to Tamriel.

The orgiastic seasonal celebrations seem unusual in a province with few changes in the weather from month to month. Yet on the 28th of Suns Dawn, the Redguards of the Banthan jungle celebrate   to relieve the wintertide lethargy; on the 1st of Mid Year, the people of   celebrate   in honor of the sun, which no normal Redguard worships in this day; similarly, on the 29th of Suns Height, the festival in the Desert called  , seems almost perverse in such an environment; the   on the 11th of Last Seed in   has been translated as a harvest thanksgiving, though many scholars have suggested that it was once a springtide holiday; similarly, the   in the   on the 14th of Last Seed was probably once a religious holiday to a Tiger God, instead of a thanksgiving.

Other old Redguard holidays have either been acknowledged as part of the old culture or adjusted to fit with the climate of Hammerfell. The  , for example, of   is patently an old festival honoring a Serpent God of the homeland who evidently did not survive the journey to Hammerfell. The significance of the date, the 3rd of Suns Dusk, has been lost with the Serpent Priests.  , on the 18th of Evening Star, and  , on the 24th of the same month, are both New Years festivals. Most likely, they have been moved from their original dates to correspond with the notion of the year defined in Tamriel.

The Bretons have been in Tamriel since before recorded history. Their holidays have remained almost unchanged since primitive times, though new holidays have been created to replace those which have lost popularity.

The oldest holidays still observed in   must include  , on the 18th of Morning Star, when the people of the   wake the spirits of nature after the winter, very nearly in the tradition of their more reverential ancestors.  , held on the 25th of First Seed in the smaller villages of High Rock is most likely just as old or older. The old cult of the flower is also remembered as   in   on the 1st of Rains Hand. Daggerfall's  , on the 13th of Rains Hand, suggests the ancestor worship that marked the Breton religion of antiquity. Finally,  the ancient goddess of the moons,  , is remembered in the   in   on the 8th of Suns Dusk, just as the nights begin to grow longer.

The more recently created holidays of High Rock are those like  ,  "Tibers Day," celebrated every 24th of Mid Year in honor of  's most famous, son,  . Likewise,    on the 5th of Suns Dawn is held in honor of the first and most illustrious Baron of  . In quite extreme contrast,    on the 9th of Second Seed, is a solemn holiday, immortalizing the lessons of the equally solemn 1st Era  prophet  . My favorite of the modern Breton festivals has to be  , held in mock honor of the most eccentric  of the  .   was, after all, a prince of   before he became King of  , and then Emperor  of Tamriel. The Bretons like to boast that it was his time in High Rock that drove him mad.