Kissing Day

[aldarron]

Kissing Day is a fun idea for a holiday added to Blackmoor lore in the d20 Zeitgeist era. A whole Season 1 MMRPG was built around it. So, cool, but I was looking at the list of holidays and realized there is a significant problem with it.

Blackmoor is, in every iteration, a frontier northern land meant to mimic climactically Minnesota where Arneson lived.

Kissing day, according to the MMRPG Episode 18 is "a custom observed at the first party of the New Year.", and the 4e sourcebook (and prolly the 3.5 but I didn't check) lists Kissing day as Chrislina 16.

Okie doke, no problem there, but then we have the holiday activities described as:

"On this day people dress in colorful clothes
and extravagant masks and head outside for
citywide street parties all over the north."

The MMRPG episode also features an evening street parade after 4 and outdoor kissing booths.

Now per the books, Chrislina = February. Kissing Day is on February 16.

See the problem?

There is not one iota of a fraction of a mite of a chance that anybody with even the slightest amount of sanity would run around in fancy costumes having parties out in the streets and hanging out in kissing boths in the middle of February in a northern land like Blackmoor. Hell, even in a relatively warm place like Florida street parties are unlikely in the dead of winter, let alone some place like Minnesota (or Finland or Alaska or whatever northern locale you want to draw the comparison to) where it is virtually guaranteed to be well below freezing and probably snowing.

What's more, nobody is going to be having "evening" parades in the streets when the sun sets before 5.

It is a mind-blowing mistep that can't be left unfixed.

I think there are 2 options:

1) The date stays but the description changes from their being street parties and parades to indoor balls and parties.

2) The date changes to summer sometime.

Personally I think keeping the date is the least offensive to "canon" in that descriptions for things tend to vary and it is an easy tweak to move the party indoors, but that does bring up issues with the details of the episode 18 adventure for those who may want to run it.

[Havard]

Very good point Aldarron!

Perhaps many of the traditions of Kissing Day were developed in the Thonian Empire, farther south?

You could still have some kind of parade outdoors, but it would be moved to the daytime and perhaps with torches and bonfires to keep warm. Perhaps warm wine is served.

But much of the activity would have to be moved indoors in Blackmoor as you suggest.

-Havard

[Yaztromo]

Well... that date is pretty close to Carnival dates (although exact carnival dates change, following the lunar calendar, between late February and early March, as carnival traditionally ends at the beginning of Easter celebrations and fasting...) and the reference to masked parties and street parades sounds spot on... more or less.

[RobJN]

The holiday always struck me as being more along the lines of a rite of Spring sort of thing....