Mini-episode 4.5 - New Year's Traditions
This week I try a new narrative style, with no script, one take, and my iPhone microphone on the top of a mountain far from home. As this is the New Year's special, we discuss Onaki New Year's traditions before the sacking and opening of the Lumina in 2386.
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Episode Transcript
Hello everyone, and welcome to the History of Onaki. This is episode 4.5, New Year's Traditions.
Now this episode is going to be a little different. My narration style will be different as I'm in a different place, I'm on a different device, and most importantly, I have no script. Usually, I write out exactly what I'm going to say in each podcast, and I try and take a lot of care as to how I pronounce certain words to make myself more clear. I like the podcast to be as accessible as possible for everyone. But this episode, you know, it's a mini-episode, unnecessary, kind of deviating from the narrative a little bit here.
We're going to be talking about New Year's Traditions. I won't be covering anything that we don't know about so far. Most of what we need to explain these traditions, I've already ironed out in the podcast thus far. Major locations, major traditions, most of this stuff is all based in the very, very ancient Eleno sort of storyline. And we have definitely covered most of what there is to know there.
New Year's in Onaki is a very, very important holiday. It's a very important season. It's the most important holiday of all, by far, bar none. It's a three-day celebration, and it's essentially about the cycle of life, a celebration of life. Each day has a sort of a different theme. It's not like a one celebration over three days. It's three distinct celebrations and three distinct themes that take place over these three days.
The first day is a celebration of life in general. This is a feast day, and it takes place one day before New Year's Eve. This is essentially a day where you come together with your loved ones, whether that be with family or non-genetic family, let us say. And you celebrate your loved ones, those you love and who care about you. And you come together and have a large feast. You're going to be eating a lot of stuff. Now, this does take place during winter, so let's think about some of the things that ancient peoples like the early Onaki would be getting their hands on in this time period. Not much. They have fish. There's a whole lot of fish. But other than that, any fruits or vegetables, most fresh food items would have to be preserved from the harvest period a few months beforehand. So think ciders, think wines. Those are interesting ways of preserving fruit. Some do funny things to your body. I would like to think that pies were around in this time. Everybody loves pie, and pie is a great way of preserving fruit. But we really have scarce evidence of what people ate on these holidays. It seems like the actual contents of the food wasn't very important, unlike some of our fall holidays where you have staples like turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes. No, it seemed like it was more of a "to each their own" style. And you're just celebrating, celebrating people you love, and especially those who may be afflicted by day two.
Day two is a celebration of death. It's called colloquially the Ascension Day. If we think back to episode two, in episode two, we talked about the legend of Eleno. And in that episode, Eleno passes away and he ascends through the Oculus of the Ona Temple. This tradition is based on this story. On the anniversary of Eleno's death, which is on New Year's Eve, there is a large procession. Let's call it a parade or a celebration. It starts just outside the walls of the Lumina. Now, remember the Lumina is closed at this point. The Lumina doesn't open until [2386], I believe. I don't have the date in front of me. It's the same day as- same year and same day as the sacking, of course. And these processions start just outside the Lumina's walls and goes down the Western Road. The Western Road goes- if we look at our map from episode three, I believe if you pull up that map, you can see the road leads down from that wall of Lumina through the walls of the city, and down around the Consortium House and then towards the Temple of Luminasuta. Now, in this procession, people who are frail, people who are sick on their deathbed, old people who generally see the next stage of their being not being on this world, so to speak, they can elect to pass on on Ascension Day. In this parade, which is led by the Nalepa traditionally, of course, many Consortium members will join them. They will travel down the Western Road and along the way, they will be joined by many, many [Onaki Citizens] who are sick, who are elderly. And they will process down to the temple of Luminasuta. Once they are at the foot of the peninsula, there is a humongous gathering. Now, we have a very, very large, I don't know what to call it. It's alike to a forum. It's a very large open area in front of the temple of Luminasuta where we believe that people gathered. And they would gather around the temple as a sort of a large celebration was held to celebrate the end of these people's times on Earth. And after this period, these people elect to take some sort of very quick acting poison. It's alike to Hemlock. We don't know exactly what it was, but it's something of the sort. It was quick, painless, essentially like falling into a deep sleep. Once these people passed away, the families would be given the bodies. They would elect what to do from there onwards. But this celebration centers around this great sort of ending of life of people want to take a dignified way. They want to end their suffering. Because think in this time, there's no Hospice. There's no end of life care. Some families didn't have the means to care for their elderly members. Some people who were too sick to work, they couldn't afford [to live], they may not have had a family to take care of them. So this was a way for someone who felt like they could no longer support themselves to have a dignified way out. How we think of this tradition today, we may have our differing opinions, but for the people of Onaki at that time, it was a very important stage for some people who may not have died naturally with their families. It seemed not- it was definitely not the majority of people who took that path, but it was certainly a prevalent one.
Now we have day three. Day three is a celebration of birth. Now every child who was born in the previous year, their parents would determine a sort of a patron saint, I want to call it. That's sort of what we would alike to it today. I would translate it more towards calling it a caretaker. And this person's caretaker would be dead, of course. It's sort of like as a person who watches over you, and provides, I don't know, spiritual wisdom. And it's said that the caretaker's wisdom and wealth would be passed on to the child. And the customary caretakers who would be given to these children by parents, of course, previous Nelepas, prestigious individuals, war heroes, legendary figures, of course, Osaki, Eleno, would be very popular picks. It's like picking the most important God in the pantheon to be your patron saint, you know? So that is a common caretaker, another common caretaker is the deceased parents of the parents. So a deceased grandparent. Or maybe if someone says, "Oh, well, my family line traces all the way back to Eleno." They can say Eleno is the patron saint of my child, as has been mine, and my father's, and my father's before me, and so on and so forth. But the most interesting, I won't say the most prevalent, we don't have statistics on this. We have a very biased selection because most of our histories come from the richest people from the Consortium. So we really don't have as much information about the layman, and it's unknown what they would have chosen by and large. But what we assume is that this was quite a large part of it. We do see a number of Consortium members choosing this option as well. So it's not, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary. Essentially, the caretaker would be one of the people who just passed on in the previous day's ceremony. So let's say some, let's say a man, an old man who lived a long life, say a carpenter, I don't know, just making it up. An old carpenter passes away during the ceremony, parents maybe knew him, lived on their street, and they say, "Oh, well, our newborn child is now going to have their caretaker be this old carpenter." And supposedly his skills and his wisdom would be passed on to the child. And maybe the child pursues a career in woodworking and carpentry, who knows. But this was a very, very prevalent way of electing someone's caretaker, and honestly, I think it is touching. It's sort of a cycle of birth. We have a previous generation which has just left, and then they are essentially still living on by being guardians of the newest generation of born Onaki. Of course, all of these days are celebrated on the streets, with feasts, with everyone. Except for day one, which is more of a private day. And of course, there is going to be grieving. And there is, but death is perceived by the Onaki, as far as we can tell, as not the end of life, but more of a stage within life. It's a part of life. It is something that happens to everyone who is living, as just as much as being born, or as going to the grocery store.
So that is essentially a very bare bones and glossy look at the New Year's traditions of the Onaki. I think they're quite interesting, maybe quite morbid to us now. But it seemed to bring them happiness, and I suppose that's all that matters, doesn't it?
Well, shoot, I don't know how to do an outro. Well, next week- well, for one, won't be next week. It'll be later this week. I haven't quite had the chance to record. But now that I have, this upcoming week, we're going to move on and take a look at Ajimi and Ajimi's rise to power. Ajimi, obviously, is the most powerful, maybe, except for Ponsaka, who is a very old sack of bones at this point in time. But Ajimi is obviously a very young, power hungry individual, and she has a lot of work to do. And we're going to take a look at her reign as Nelepa next week, what changes that she inflicted on the Onaki, and also Ponsaka, who will have a much greater role. Of course, he's been more involved in the Consortium so far. We won't really hear much, mostly because these are legendary figures, and, hint, hint, they probably didn't exist. But they are still very important to our narrative, as they were very important to these people. And so we will treat them as if they were real. Hopefully, we'll be moving on to some history soon. As we move forward into the next couple of decades, it's going to be like a transitional period. It's going to be quite a lot legend, as there will be throughout most of this story. Our narratives are unreliable, we only have so many good sources to go on. But by and large, we will be more and more historical as we move out throughout these next few hundred years moving towards the sacking. Other than that, I will see you all on Sunday.