To the History of European Nations’ Public Holidays

Author

Kurochkin Oleksandr

a Doctor of History, a professor, a senior research fellow at the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3365-7266

To the History of European Nations’ Public Holidays

Abstract

Holidays are important cultural markers and symbolic structures that define not only religious but also ethnic identity. In developed societies, to which Ukraine belongs, the latter gravitates inevitably towards state identity.

The article is aimed at the determination and analysis of the typology of formation of the European nations’ official public holidays, correlating it with key, fateful moments in the history of each national community. The research methodology is based on an interdisciplinary approach and the use of the cross-cultural analysis method.

Religious holidays are the oldest and most widespread among European nations. Comparing their existing festive systems, we register a significant number of markers related to the church Christian calendar. And this is natural: during the 1st and 2nd millennia A.D. all the barbarian people of Europe have changed paganism into Christianity.

The phenomenon of a religious holiday is currently undergoing the development from sacralization to secularization in the public sphere. As in the past, religious traditions are interwoven with ethnic ones, transmitting a sense of identity and culture durability through memory mechanisms.

The revival of independent states after the USSR break-up has caused a wave of national and religious renaissance, stimulating the return of people to their historical roots, to the Christian traditions, holidays, customs and rites repressed by the Soviet authorities.

The French Revolution of 1789 has become a prologue to the destruction of the archaic feudal-absolutist system of Europe. Military cataclysms and revolutions of the 19th–20th centuries have contributed to the fact that many thrones and royal dynasties ceased to exist and passed into the category of relics of history. Only some European countries have been able to reconcile traditions with the demands of time transforming into a parliamentary monarchy.

In the conditions of the modern information society, the holidays of the royal dynasty turn into bright shows that are broadcasted willingly by television and other media.

Keywords

Europe, nation, state, monarchy, liturgical calendar, holiday, ritual, secularization.

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