So the Catholic idea of feasting follows on from those Jewish ideas. Our feasts fall into two main categories:
- Holy days - Obviously Easter and Passover are the same holiday, transformed by Christ’s death and resurrection. Scott Hahn, Brant Pitre, etc. have a very good series of talks (free) that shows the relationship between eight Jewish holidays and some of our big holidays. It’s over on salvationhistory.com under Audio.
- Celebrations of martyrs’ birth into heaven, and that of other saints - Most saints’ days are supposed to be celebrated on their “dies natalis,” their birthday. The early Christians celebrated the birthdays of the living just like other people in the Roman Empire. But when a martyr died and went to heaven, they called that day his “dies natalis” from then on. This is why we usually celebrate the anniversary of saints’ deaths as their feast day. Dioceses usually keep a list of death days of priests, etc., so that they can have Masses said on that day by the living priests of the diocese, and most laypeople’s families remember them with cemetery visits and Masses on death anniversaries.
If you want to get theological, celebrating a saint’s feastday is a sort of foretaste of heavenly glory. We cheer for our hometown hero having made it, and we express our joy that we can hope to follow him to heaven. Celebrating a holy day associated with Christ is even more solemn and joyful, of course, because He is our Savior and we are darned grateful.
On a feast day, the traditional expectation was that one did not work, unless you had work connected with the feast day. (Especially if you’d spent all night up praying and on watch. “On watch” is what “vigil” means. Prayer vigils all night were an early Christian custom before feasts, as well as fasting the day before.) This was why local dioceses didn’t celebrate feasts for every possible saint in the year.
So yeah, the day before you were fasting and possibly staying up late/all night. First thing in the morning, you would traditionally go to church and go to Mass. You would have gone to Confession and you were all prepared, so as a special sign of joy and devotion, you might actually go up to receive Communion. (In the days when frequent Communion was uncommon. Nowadays, though, people who don’t normally go to daily Mass are showing special devotion and joy by going to Mass on a weekday, so there’s a similar concept.)
At the end of Mass, if there were special blessings associated with the day, people would bring up food or drink or other stuff to be blessed. If the saint was local or they had local relics, people would visit the saint’s tomb/relics, usually pressing something up against them like a handkerchief to make the hankie a third class relic. It was also a good time to ask for the saint’s intercession for healing, or other special miraculous help.
After Mass, since you weren’t working on a feast day, that meant it was a town day off if it was a Catholic town. So you’d have a procession/parade of all the local guilds, businesses, clubs, prayer groups, penitents, etc. If the parish had a statue of the saint or Jesus, that might be processed, or there might be a Eucharistic procession if it was Corpus Christi. You might have people acting out scenes from the saint’s life or the holy day events, or parade float dioramas. There would probably also be a lot of secular things, like puppets or monster mascots or the local government officials marching along. There might be marchers throwing out coins or food or gifts as alms, or there might be an alms collecting thing in the parade, like a giant dragon with a mouth for the parade viewers to throw food and coins into. The whole town would probably be decorated festively. If the town wasn’t all Catholic or wasn’t all that big, people might process along some kind of prayer trail of local holy sites, or visit the cemetery.
There would probably be a fair with merchants from far places, as well as food and goodies and crafts sold by local people. Local farmers might also bring stuff to sell, depending on time of year.
There was very likely to be dancing and music and games in the town square or the churchyard. There might even be a public picnic feast with tables set up, although usually people went home for dinner for the big feast day meal. Many foods were specifically associated with saints’ days, often for jokey reasons. (Greeks eat loukoumades balls on St. Barbara’s Day, because she’s the patron saint of cannons and artillery.) Cookies and cakes were often decorated with the saint’s attributes. Drinking (often to the saint’s health, or with wine/beer/cider blessed by the priest after Mass) was also popular.
Many feasts were associated with special home customs, as well. For example, when I was a kid, I got my stocking filled on St. Nicholas Day, on December 6. This came from the German custom of St. Nicholas putting treats in kids’ shoes.
Some feasts were associated with “guising,” or dressing up in costumes. Sometimes this happened on the feast day, and other times on the night/week before. Often costumed people were prayer guilds hitting people up for alms for the poor or candles for the Poor Souls. Other groups, like Christmas carolers and wassailers, were out to spread merriment and devotion to God, and expected a drink or a sweet treat in return. (Insert your comparison to Trick or Treat here.) In many places, the pre-Lent carnival had everybody dressing up just for fun.
There might be illuminations or fireworks at night, or they might have had them the previous night. People would stay up late having fun. If it was a big enough feast, the whole week afterward might be a lesser holiday, with more big stuff happening on the octave of the feast.
So yeah, a parish festival is sort of the idea. A full-blown fiesta is more the idea.
