Suze (7) asks: ‘Why do we celebrate holidays?’ † Family

At Easter, most children look for Easter eggs and families gather at a table full of Easter treats. Suze has another tradition during Easter: every year she and her family go to Schiermonnikoog, where they paint, search, divide and eat eggs! But why do people actually celebrate?

Walter Weyns is a professor at the University of Antwerp and has researched people who party. Weyns: ,,There are groups of people everywhere. They form communities. There are no groups of people who do not organize parties and parties have been around as long as man has existed. Partying keeps people involved in a community. You tighten ties during a party; you sing, jump, dance and drink. That helps to get closer and really feel that you are a community. It makes you emotionally connected.”

According to Weyns, a party often has a reason, but the reason for celebrating a party is much stronger. “You don’t celebrate a party alone. You do this with a group and with the party a group celebrates itself. Even on your birthday, it’s actually about the group rather than you. Of course the group members will give you all the beautiful things as a birthday girl and you will be shouted ‘hurrah’. But thanks to that hurrah, a group is actually screaming itself warm.”

“A party can take place at any time and in any place, as long as a group has agreed to this,” says Weyns. “Sometimes parties are specific to a place, such as a party at a pilgrimage site or a party at a sports club. But a party can also be at a certain time because something is being commemorated. Such as Liberation Day, on May 5. Or something is celebrated on a certain date, such as the birthday of the king on April 27. You can have a holiday that only your family or group of friends celebrate or a festival that is only held in your village, such as a harvest festival. But there are also festivals that are celebrated all over the country or around the world. Think of Sinterklaas and Easter. You can call all those parties holidays and anyone can start such a holiday.”

Many holidays are linked to a religion. For example, during Easter, it is celebrated that Jesus rose from the dead. But the real origin of Easter does not lie with Christianity, but can be found much further back in time. Easter is about spring, where the egg is a symbol of new life. When you talk about the chicken or the egg, or in this case Jesus or the egg, clearly the egg came first. For a long time it has been celebrated that animals are born and that the plants grow again. Christianity has linked the story of Jesus to Easter because it is also about new life. Also, Christmas was not initially there to celebrate the birth of Jesus. On December 25, the feast of the sun god of the Roman Empire was celebrated. Christianity probably adopted this date because Christ was associated with the sun.”

According to Weyns, celebrations are extremely important for religions in general. “Religions have a very close relationship with parties. There is no religion without celebration. The Catholic religion, in particular, is very much focused on collective celebrations, where people gather and celebrate at set times. A religion tries to maintain ties through celebrations.”

Suze’s favorite holiday is her birthday. Suze: ,,When it’s my birthday, I wake up in a house full of streamers. My chair is also decorated with balloons. At my children’s party the names of the children who come are in balloons. We then pop the balloons to see who can open the next present. I think that’s super fun! If I could come up with a holiday of my own, it would be a holiday for watching movies. The whole of the Netherlands has to watch movies. Which one, you can come up with that yourself!”

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