Holidays and Festivities in United Merion

United Merion celebrates four major holidays over the course of the year, each one taking place on one of the seasonal equinoxes and solstices, and each one effectively lasts for a full twenty-four hours. All four holidays are linked to one of the major elements, and local Knights of the corresponding Academe steward the festivities as they see fit. However, the other Knight orders often contribute in some way, bringing something that their school is more equipped to provide. Additionally, every instructor and most of the students from the hosting Academe goes out to help with the preparations, and those left behind have traditions on how to spend their free time. While the general ideas and practices of each holiday are fairly consistent across Merion, the specifics will vary depending on where in the kingdom one goes to celebrate.

Other festivities and commemorations are also celebrated throughout the year and across the kingdom in regions and towns that have smaller and more personal holidays.

## The Vernal Equinox (The Twentieth of Towermoon)

The Vernal Equinox is celebrated as a kind of Earth Day or non-religious Easter equivalent and presided over by the Knights of Water. Being both scientists and historians, the Water Knights created and oversee a holiday that celebrates both the natural and the historical worlds, combining celebrations of a kind of independence day and nature with a large science fair.

Other Knights contributions are as follows:

* Knights of Air: Dangerous scavenger hunts and other grim games, typically favored by bolder members of the young peasantry.
* Knights of Earth: Performance of a symphony or equivalent production (during the day).
* Knights of Fire: Performance of a farce (during the night).

Water Academe students, who typically have a sense of humor about themselves, spend their spring week off pretending, with mock terror, that they're not going to be able to survive with their instructors away and have a whole host of in-jokes to that effect, which they play to the hilt. They also catch up on reading and take advantage of the relative lull to show off to each other the less conventional work they've been doing in a kind of drunken, engineering trade/talent show called The Great Gizmodium.

## The Summer Solstice (The Twenty-First of Marksmoon)

A Mardi Gras kind of celebration, the Summer Solstice is presided over by the Knights of Fire who take the chance to put their fun performative attitude on full display.

Other Knights contributions are as follows:

* Knights of Air: The Masquerade (Air Knights show up and enjoy the festivities alongside everybody else, but are masked so their true identities are not known. This practice has become primarily ceremonial).
* Knights of Earth: Music!
* Knights of Water: Silly games!

In the height of summer, the students stuck in the Fire Academe in the blazing saltflats near House Silverdawn perform a large amount of skinny dipping, in either of the two rivers that are supposed to be their charge, and engage in a large amount of sexual activity (which is otherwise discouraged when the instructors are around). They also write rude songs and plays mocking each other for such sexual activities and cook elaborate feasts for each other.

## The Autumnal Equinox (The Twenty-Second of Redmoon)

Most comparable to Thanksgiving and Christmas, The Autumnal Equinox is presided over by the Knights of Earth who use the chance to have a more grounded holiday based around family, honor, and giving gifts.

Other Knights contributions are as follows:

* Knights of Air: Secretive gift-giving.
* Knights of Fire: Feasts!
* Knights of Water: Esoteric bartending.

Students of the Earth Academe, tending to be sick of diplomacy and being burrowed down with their fellow Earth Knights, are the most likely among the various Academe students to "make a run for it" during their autumnal week off, amusing themselves with how far they can get and how much fun they can have in the week before they have to be back on campus. There are more than a few Eastern Marks towns and villages within a three-days' hard ride of the Earth Academe which have gotten used to students arriving on or around the actual Autumn festival and, quite diplomatically, raucously taking charge of festivities (if no other local Knight has stepped up to do so).

## The Winter Solstice (The Twenty-First of Esper's Moon)

The Winter Solstice is the Merionese equivalent of Halloween. It is presided over by the Knights of Air who have a tendency to get very creepy with their planning and celebrations.

Other Knights contributions are as follows:

* Knights of Earth: Remembrance of the dead.
* Knights of Fire: Costumes.
* Knights of Water: Confections.

The Academe of Air, being a super-secret and grim place by any measure, typically finds the students there, during their week off, either melt into the winter mountains to do weird and unknown things in the bitter cold or just hunker down and sleep for a week straight.