ABSTRACT
A religious festival is the domestic equivalent of a pilgrimage: Both disrupt ordinary, everyday time with religious significance and practice; both require bodily participation; both are connected to meanings larger than themselves, of which they instantiate a particular aspect; both require material preparation and use; and both require a substantial commitment of time on the part of ordinary people. A significant difference is that a festival is at home, while a pilgrimage requires travel. It is true that some people settle at places of pilgrimage, but then its status as a place of pilgrimage is not determined by them but instead by the people who journey to their place. It is also the case that the desire to attend a festival can provide the motivation for pilgrimage, but, from the vantage point of festival hosts, these people become, along with locals, a participatory audience for their scheduled celebrations. Even the title of Victor Turner’s classic article on pilgrimage, “The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal,” captures this distinction. 1 A festival does not need people to travel to it for its definition, although it does require a public. Whereas a single person can embody and enact a pilgrimage, a festival cannot be embodied and enacted alone. 2
