Change the Holidays

[PointOfOrigin]

Origin of the word Halloween is Christian, but the hollyday has pagan roots, and it is based of the Celtic ritual of Samhain, marking the end of harvest season and begining of winter season.

Halloween is as much Christianic as is Christmas, so in your belives that shuld be changed too, and far less people celebrate Halloween than Christmas.

Nope. All Saint's Eve and Day of the Dead are Christianic. The Halloween you have now hasn't replaced those two days, it just returned to it's original roots. So no, Halloween isn't the same thing as those two days.

 

I honestly don't like three releases in three weeks. It would be too much, and besides most of us already went crazy with just one week. It's hard to imagine that most of us would have enough patience for three weeks of holiday wall.

[dragonsoup]

I'm as non christian as it is possible to be and I actually don't have a problem with the christmas dragons here. I'd far rather hunt dragons on a day that means nothing to me than waste a significant day catching pixel dragons for a game.

 

Christmas is a useful decoy and leaves the other religious holidays untainted by the curse of commercialisation that has pretty much stripped the 25th December of any real meaning now for most people.

 

I celebrate the 21st as the religious festival and the 25th is just "present day" although I might raise a glass or two in honour of Mithras.

Edited January 19, 2013 by dragonsoup

[Fuzzbucket]

Nope. All Saint's Eve and Day of the Dead are Christianic. The Halloween you have now hasn't replaced those two days, it just returned to it's original roots. So no, Halloween isn't the same thing as those two days.

 

I honestly don't like three releases in three weeks. It would be too much, and besides most of us already went crazy with just one week. It's hard to imagine that most of us would have enough patience for three weeks of holiday wall.

Yup.

 

BUT just for the record - Day of the dead was not ORIGINALLY Christian - it goes back to the Aztecs and the pre-columbians. In actual fact almost everything except All Saints/All Souls (and even there there is a non-Christian Chinese festival of Qingming - Ancestors Day) can be traced back to pre-Christian roots, That doesn't mean that in modern day usage we can just go around saying oh well, they weren't Christian THEN so we're OK here. It is the CURRENT PERCEPTIONS that rate here.

 

I don't see Christmas as Christian; I see it at most as a mammoth international birthday party for some historic Arab baby. And more than that, as a time of year people give people things. I CANNOT see red/green coloured dragons as in any way offensive to ANYONE - or in any way Christian. You get red and green in all sorts of places - and you get ***mas tree decorations in blue and white, too. So how exactly blue and white dragons would help, beats me.

 

As I have said - I'll all for everyone celebrating everything with everyone without rancour. But if people ARE feeling hurt - the answer is not to try and redefine things by saying they predate that baby, so it's OK really. That's a bit like telling a vegetarian that cows only eat grass so it's OK to eat them, because they are reprocessed veggies really....

Edited January 19, 2013 by fuzzbucket

[olympe]

As I have said - I'll all for everyone celebrating everything with everyone without rancour. But if people ARE feeling hurt - the answer is not to try and redefine things by saying they predate that baby, so it's OK really. That's a bit like telling a vegetarian that cows only eat grass so it's OK to eat them, because they are reprocessed veggies really....

You hit the nail on the head here. What we need is something that doesn't scream "This is a Christmas Dragon!!!", but is a more general Winter holiday dragon. As I said before, a candle-themed or light-themed dragon would go well with various winter festivals.

 

Personally, I feel that red and green are pretty univesal colors for winter festivities, as they symbolize the return of life to nature that people expect after the winter solstice. (Okay, several weeks after... but the solstice is the turning point.) And since evergreen plants and their mostly red (holly!) or white berries (mistletoe) are among the favorites, it seems appropriate. At least for folks from northern countries. But I wouldn't be put off a Christmas dragon that would be red/orange (Lantern Feast?) or maybe blue/silver/white instead. It's not the colors that define Christmas or any other cultural and/or religious holiday, but what is in your heart.

[Fuzzbucket]

Something else about those colours. Red and white are the only ones that turn up that deep in winter.

 

White - um - sorry but they are - Christmas roses, holly berries, snowberries. Even the earlies SPRING flowers are snowdrops - also white. The COLOURS surely can't be seen as a sensitivity issue (not that I mine blues and so on...)

 

This year we got wrapping paper. I am willing to bet that Hanukkah, Kwanza and Diwali gifts are also wrapped,. That was pretty good in terms of universality, no ?

[Vhale]

I've always considered red and green official Christmas colors. Red for Santa, Green for the tree. But as far as the paper etc, we've had a silver and blue tree for 20 years. My tree, wreath and gingerbread house are all silver and blue. My mother has 9 trees, each different colors. Mardi Gras, Burgundy/Gold, Crystal/Silver, Wedgewood/Porcelain, Pastel, Candy/Coke, Gold, Silver/Blue, Dolls. Decorations are absolutely NOT limited to red and green. It's actually a bit rare to find green at all. Believe me, I've been drug around shopping for ornaments enough to know when trying to find green for the Mardi Gras tree. o.O Green doesn't stand out well against the tree so it doesn't sell. I guess I'm saying, no one limits themselves to those colors when buying Christmas fluff. (My Christmas cards were, in fact, white and blue too) Some examples here:

 

Christmas Design I made a few years ago

 

Last year's piece

 

Mah crystal tree spider

[RainDear]

I don't object to changing the name of the winter celebration to "Winter Faire" or whatever. I don't care.

 

I don't object to changing the dragons' descriptions to include the names we call them by and describe them as the "Spirit of Giving" or whatever. I don't care.

 

I don't object to changing the theme, if that will make people happy. I don't care.

 

I don't object to including other cultural themes. I don't care.

 

I wouldn't object to having one theme for the event activity and another for the dragon. I don't care.

 

I do object to trying to have more than 1 new release dragon for the celebration. It would not only make it hard to maintain the spirit of the thing, it would also make it hard to catch and raise everything for newer members in coming years.

 

I do care that we keep the event, I don't much care how it's done, but I do not want to lose what we have.

 

[olympe]

I don't object to changing the name of the winter celebration to "Winter Faire" or whatever. I don't care.

 

I don't object to changing the dragons' descriptions to include the names we call them by and describe them as the "Spirit of Giving" or whatever. I don't care.

 

I don't object to changing the theme, if that will make people happy. I don't care.

 

I don't object to including other cultural themes. I don't care.

 

I wouldn't object to having one theme for the event activity and another for the dragon. I don't care.

 

I do object to trying to have more than 1 new release dragon for the celebration. It would not only make it hard to maintain the spirit of the thing, it would also make it hard to catch and raise everything for newer members in coming years.

 

I do care that we keep the event, I don't much care how it's done, but I do not want to lose what we have.

Total agreement from me.

 

If you agree with this, copy and paste this quote into your post?

[Fiona]

I haven't kept up with this thread, and don't have time to read the whole thing. I do agree that we don't want people offended or feeling left out just because the holiday events are ones they don't celebrate. I do feel that people can be overly sensitive about such things and see offense when none is intended.

 

I fear that if we simply try to incorporate other festivals into the events we'll only end up offending more people that are already feeling off about them. For one, the real world is a big place. I don't think we can cover all the different cultures. Second, the artists mostly are the ones who plan these out and do the artwork. We might unintentionally offend someone regarding how we portray a particular culture through unfamiliarity. That would be worse than what we have now.

 

If there is a need for a change I'd personally prefer holidays made up specifically for the DC world. Probably they would be based on seasons changing or some such, simply because that is neutral. It might be less exciting to sprite for, because part of the excitement comes from sharing our views of these occasions. The cooking event is a good example, as the artists got to share what says "holiday feast" with the others. I proposed the apple pie, for example, because to me it isn't Christmas dinner without apple pie at the end. Another artist suggested the stollen because to that person, that is what makes it Christmas dinner. Making the holidays into unique DC holidays takes that away, though it offers other things.

 

Another change I would like is to spread the holidays out a bit more. Right now from whenever we start planning the Halloween event to whenever we're done with Easter it's pretty much all holiday planning. Remember, planning and spriting must start long before the actual event. That doesn't give a lot of time to work of other release ideas.

 

Something I would be opposed to is changing the descriptions of existing holiday dragons, except perhaps to add the specific names of the ones that don't have them already. They are what they were when released. I got the sense that changing the references to specific holidays on existing dragons was part of this suggestion. If I'm misreading, forgive me.

 

 

Also, olympe, forgive for not copying that quote into the post. I do pretty much agree with what raindear is saying, but feel that just copying the post and saying I agree doesn't advance the discussion. It becomes a bit spammy in my opinion. I don't want to lose what we have. I don't much care how we do it otherwise.

Edited January 19, 2013 by Fiona BlueFire

[skauble]

I have no problem with changing things up. Having the celebration is the fun part for me. The fact is that if, when we'd started celebrating holidays around here, they had all been made up DC based holidays, no one would have minded at all so I don't see why it matters that they if they change.

 

I have only one issue:

 

Ok, for those of you who want to change what the holidays are called, I can see newbies and me (because dates get really confusing when you are in a weird timezone like mine) getting a tad confused about when everything is.

Holidays that exist in RL and a lot of people tend to see evidence of/hear about when they're about to begin can clue people to check in here.

 

I know that there have been times where I've had to take a break from playing, and it was only seeing that it was a holiday that reminded me to check in and get Halloween dragons (in fact, I remembered so late during the first TorT event that I had to do a marathon session to manage to get them all ).

 

So I would either suggest keeping them at the same time period, or making sure that it's announced in-cave beforehand. I thought the tent idea was really cute. I'd also support keeping all the same days and just making things a bit more neutral.

 

A note about Christmas - I generally see Christmas as a secular holiday, so I've always understood why it was celebrated here as opposed to something like Easter. However, I can't speak to how it is in other countries, but in the U.S., in recent years, there's been a substantial effort to chide (and sometimes outright shame) people for that. For goodness sake, the White House got called out for having Bo the dog in a winter scene on this year's cards and not putting a Bible verse in it. So while I've never had a problem with them being Christmas dragons, I actually can see where some people might prefer something a little more on the neutral side of things. And while some of us might not mind the tension in regard to the religion vs. secular nature of the holiday, we shouldn't pretend it doesn't exist.

[Reidragon]

I still see no reason why anything should be changed at all. It never seemed to be a problem till suddenly NOW.

 

The truth of the matter is that no matter what is done someone will be butthurt over it. It doesn't matter how minor or extreme the changes are, you will have your groups of angry mobs. All this stuff seemed to start when people started all this politically correct stuff.

 

I personally would be greatly saddened and disappointed if any of my current DC holiday releases and events were taken away or changed dramatically. I like things as they are. I might be okay with little changes but when you start changing the whole thing, like events, and root and dates I start getting upset. That may be my slightly autistic side screaming about change but that is my opinion. That being said I do see the points some of you all have in asking for change. I just don't think one is needed even if some of you do and it's my right to feel that way.

 

The truth is I don't believe that there is any feasible way to please everyone. Not to say you all aren't welcome to try but I highly doubt with the number of people and differences there are in those people that play this game there is not going to be one catch all solution that pleases everyone. Please don't be angry with me I'm just announcing my feelings about the whole thing and yes. I did read the entire thread in it's entirety. Each and every post.

 

Also do remember that the forum community makes up a small minority of the entire game as a whole. More then half of the users playing this game don't use the forums at all. (and I can't say I blame them >>) That said do remember that these changes will effect the game as a WHOLE not just those of us who have forum accounts. Is it not only fair that those who do not use the forums get a chance to put in their opinion as well either through an on site poll or some other method?

 

I'm going to crawl back into my dark lurking cave now. Please go on with your regularly scheduled programing

[Dangeruse]

Some of us are referring to "the artists" as if they're some modular group that decides, collectively, to make the dragons one way or the other.

 

I believe anyone can submit a dragon concept. So I don't think we should rely on an "oh the artists are the ones..." mentality. WE ARE the artists. Or we have the potential to be, anyway. Is there a thread on the boards that describes how to go about suggesting an event dragon? (I haven't see one-- not that I've looked particularly hard ). Is the process much different from suggesting a general purpose dragon?

 

Part of the problem might be that not enough people recognize that they have the power to suggest a dragon that draws from their own celebrations. Maybe...?

[Fuzzbucket]

An event dragon - you create one secretly and submit it to TJ. ANYONE can do it. Whether they have the ability to do it well is something else.

[hazeh]

Again, we don't necessarily have to have 3 different or even 2 different types of dragons each year. It can be one kind of dragon, and then an event that ties into another holiday around that time. Then each year the different holidays that are represented either as Dragons or events would switch.

No opinion on this at all?

 

It doesn't even necessarily have to be completely tied around one holiday. But instead of delving into activities that are highly connected to Christmas themes, I think it'd be cool to have an event that delves more into other cultural holidays. Maybe not to a point where it's like, OMG RELIGION but like, I pointed out that another site introduced a driedel event last year and it was really fun. I think it'd be awesome to have something like that this year around.

Then we can have a dragon themed something more like around candles or snowfall or just overall wintry celebration.

[~Kat~]

There always has to be conflict over stupid stuff like this. This is not about religion, but catching dragons ... This Is A Game, only a GAME.

 

If a person is going to get upset over a game like this. To me, if you have a problem, don't play the game then or try to ruin it for anyone else.

[skauble]

There always has to be conflict over stupid stuff like this. This is not about religion, but catching dragons ... This Is A Game, only a GAME.

Then what does it matter if it changes?

 

Like I said, I'm not really invested in it being one way or the other, but if the argument is that it's not important and it's just a game, then changing it doesn't seem like it would be an issue.

Edited January 19, 2013 by skauble

[hazeh]

Kat, no one said this was about religion. Please be more respectful of the other players.

[~Kat~]

Kat, no one said this was about religion. Please be more respectful of the other players.

I do not care if it changes or what the dragons are named myself. To me this is just a game of catching dragons.

 

I am not trying to be direspectful at all. I am sorry that you took it this way.

 

I am just putting my feelings down is all.

Edited January 19, 2013 by ~Kat~

[Pixxelation]

Guys, I have no problem with the dragons that have been released. It's really the descriptions that bug me. It's easy to change them. Another problem from the descriptions is that I'm not going to submit a Hanukkah dragon to have it be described as the Spirit of Christmas. That would be extremely offensive, hence why we can't submit other holidays as it is now.

[~Kat~]

One of the biggest problems with DC holidays is that the holidays we celebrate on the site either weren't around in medieval times, celebrated in a different form, or aren't celebrated by all members. This suggestion is to tweak the holidays, so that they make more sense for this site.

• Christmas: My suggestion for Christmas is to change the name/events so that they are not biased to a certain religion. I speak as someone who is not Christian, and although I have fun and still feel the spirit of the holiday (Hanukkah has similar morals; miracles can happen to those who earn them), but can't help but feel biased against. Why not change it to something that celebrates winter in general? I don't want someone saying they aren't labeled as Christmas--their colors have all been red and green, sometimes with gold and white, and their descriptions specifically describe them as the spirits of Christmas. I'm not saying change the sprites--I'm fine with the color scheme. Just wanted to include that as an example of how they are clearly Christmas.

   

  Here's a tentative idea for text to be added to the main cave around the holidays that should also solve the issue of forum-only announcements:

   

  As you walk to the caves you usually grab eggs from, you notice a cluster of caravans and tents and decide to stop by. As you get closer, you realize that the Winter Festival, where people of all faiths gather together to celebrate the winter together, has begun! You wander through the tents, awestruck by all the amazing things people have on display. One tent in particular catches your eye, and you decide to check it out.

   

  Upon closer inspection, you find it is a stand for (Insert event here). You ask the operator about it, but he says he is still setting up, and asks you to come back on (Insert event date here), when he opens. you feel you are done for now, and continue on your way to the caves.

• Halloween: Halloween's fine staying as is. Its origin is in late medieval times, in Scotland, where it was believed that the day was when they barrier between the living world and the afterlife shattered, and ghouls could enter into reality. People would dress up in intimidating costumes, trying to scare the ghouls back to the other side. The Halloween dragons could represent either the ghouls or the people wearing masks.

• Valentine's Day: I don't really know much about what to do with V-Day, as I don't know its origins or if there is an equivalent. Any suggestions would be great :3

Hopefully, I'm not the only one feeling this way about the holidays.

 

Also, please no fighting. Discussion is fine, but I really don't want this to turn into another thread full of yelling and such, because I don't want this suggestion being wasted. If it gets shot down, it gets shot down, but being shut down for vent/rage would make me haz a sad.

Shiny Hazard Sign, I read the first post by PieMaster. I do believe this has to do with how people feel about religion or holidays.

 

To me, again I could care less if it is changed or what anyone calls the dragons. I just like catching dragons.

[hazeh]

Shiny Hazard Sign, I read the first post by PieMaster. I do believe this has to do with how people feel about religion or holidays.

 

To me, again I could care less if it is changed or what anyone calls the dragons. I just like catching dragons.

Throughout the thread it has been repeated that the secular Christmas celebrated on DC still goes with cultural references, not the religious kind. While although the holidays in themselves are inherently religious, the major component to the overall discussion is the presence of one culture over another, and the attempt to incorporate other cultures- not necessarily those with religious ties, i.e., I celebrate Chanukah and am not religious whatsoever- so that we can represent all of our members accordingly.

That is what I was getting at, I apologize for being so vague.

[~Kat~]

Throughout the thread it has been repeated that the secular Christmas celebrated on DC still goes with cultural references, not the religious kind. While although the holidays in themselves are inherently religious, the major component to the overall discussion is the presence of one culture over another, and the attempt to incorporate other cultures- not necessarily those with religious ties, i.e., I celebrate Chanukah and am not religious whatsoever- so that we can represent all of our members accordingly.

That is what I was getting at, I apologize for being so vague.

Thank you Shiny Hazard Sign.

[LaHaine]

Why is this a problem now after what, 6 years of things being like this?

[Zovesta]

Why is this a problem now after what, 6 years of things being like this?

If every problem was found and addressed immediately, our world history lessons would probably be a lot shorter...

[PointOfOrigin]

Why is this a problem now after what, 6 years of things being like this?

Because it hurts some people and they've finally decided to say it out loud.