The Rainbow Festival is held on the first full moon of autumn, named for bright red, orange, yellow and green of leaves at this time of year. Primarily held in outlying farming communities, it is a celebration of a successful year's harvest or a public condolence for a failed harvest. While the harvest is far from over, it is a chance to showcase the most sucessful produce of the year, and to come together as a community.
The Forest Tour
In many communities, the forest tour is a highly anticipated event. Each year, hunters, woodsmen and loggers take note of places in the forest of particular beauty: outcrops offering a good view of the changing leaves, places where wild berries grow, and so forth. During the festival, farmers who spend most of their time in the fields line up to be escorted out into the forest in small groups, so they can appreciate the beauty of nature while not getting lost or stumbling across the wrong wild animal.
The Harvest Showcase
Every year, each farm family prepares a demonstration of the finest produce of the year. This is widely considered the highlight of the festival and happens at this time as the Festival happens around the same time that many fruits that might spoil quickly reach their peak ripeness. Everyone in the community is welcomed to examine each of showcase, which usually includes two or three things that people are welcomed to taste-test, and vote which family pulled in the best harvest. (Often there is no particular prize for this beyond the honour of that recognition, but sometimes the community will put up a small prize if they have something unique - a pie made by the best baker in town, for example)
In the days following the festival, members of the community (traditionally the wives of each farmer, though this has long since stopped being exclusively a woman's role) get together and discuss if anyone's showing was poor enough to indicate a failed harvest, and conspiring to ensure that they get enough food to last through the winter months. This saves people from the shame of having to openly ask for charity; instead those in need simply find themselves more popular, recieving gifts and dinner invitations from those who can afford to share. Of course, when the harvest is poor for the whole community, this is not enough, but it also forms the groundwork for the community coming together in such an event to make supplies stretch so that if anyone has to go hungry, at least they share that burden.
Games, Races, and Events
The Rainbow Festival also features a wide variety of other events. With everyone travelling to the village from outlying farms, children get the chance to play games like hide and seek with their friends, compete in footraces and so on. The adults also compete, with an annual baking competition being particularly popular, both among those seeking to be crowned the best cook of the village and among those hoping for a chance to take part in judging. Another popular event is the communal jamming session, where people devote a couple of hours of the day to making jam over an open fire, using the largest pots they can find to process fresh fruit so it can be preserved as jam. This gives folks the chance to socialize while making jam, rather than slaving away in the privacy of their own homes, and also allows people to trade jars with their neighbours, giving them access to a greater variety of jam than they would otherwise have access to.
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