ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts a critical review and appraisal of the current state of research into religious and spiritual festivals and associated events. The literature emerges from a wide range of multidisciplinary sources, which have historically been situated in separate, traditional disciplinary silos. The chapter investigates research into the religious origins of contemporary festivals, and questions whether and how meanings can be separately, or both, spiritual and religious. It notes the de-spiritualisation of religious festivals. The chapter assesses the future development of conceptual and theoretical approaches to religious and spiritual festivals, from empirical positioning to qualitative ethnographic perspectives and critical events research. Equally, studies of religion and spirituality may either make tangential reference to, or ignore, the elements of festival. Religious festivals, feasts, fasts and mystery plays of past millennia have developed into the festivals and events that monopolise the postmodern cultural landscape of the 21st century in what might be recognised as the 'eventization of life' today.
