How to Celebrate Any Day
Planning Community Celebrations:A Guide to Fostering Justice and Love.
Peace harmony and tranquility won't be far behind!
A Bit About Celebrations
Take a moment and focus on the last time you celebrated something. What were you celebrating? Christmas? New Years? Valentine's Day? Easter? A Birthday? A graduation? Now concentrate on the event, on the celebration. What was the celebrating for? Was there something about the celebration that made it clear to all what the celebration was about?
When humans celebrate, even when the celebration is in honor of an individual's accomplishment, the celebration happens when two or more people gather. It is when we are in community with each other that we can truly celebrate.
So what happens when we celebrate? We give thanks. We exchange gifts. We eat. We feast. We break our routine. Sometimes we dance. We sing and shout and whoop and holler. Celebrations are time of joyful noise. Always we incorporate ritual and history.
At Purim we recall Haman and Esther. At Thanksgiving we recall Squanto and Massasoit and William Bradford. We wear something green on St. Patrick's Day. And watch fireworks on the Fourth of July.
When we decided to celebrate something new we look for inspiration from past celebrations.
We celebrate the day of our daughter's adoption much the same as a birthday. History gives our celebrations context. Ritual allows us to free our minds and allows the spirit to enter.
Still thinking about that last celebration, consider the high points of the event. Remember what you felt. Celebrations are times of great emotions. We laugh and cry and groan and weep and cheer. Celebrations are times when we can unleash our passions. The emotional baring that happens during celebrations draws us closer to one another. It is in the midst of strong emotions that we both demonstrate our own and accept one another's humanness. If the celebration you are recalling is a wedding, think about the couple. During their courtship, would you have called upon them to make rational decisions about their relationship? When you say love blinds us aren't we acknowledging the loss of reason that happens when emotions rule? Celebrations are times of abandon, times when we release our inhibitions.
Commercial interests know all of this about celebrations. They tap into our emotions in an attempt at deluding us into thinking that a fast food restaurant is the right place to celebrate a birthday. Or that a twelve-pack of beer will mean the difference between having a celebration to remember and a mournful passing of a momentous event. As if we couldn't remember our child's graduation or our wedding anniversary without the aid of some over-hyped product, be it beer or a dress or a car or a computer or a book or a . . . any thing. Things do not make celebrations. People do.
A Bit About Community
Many of us cringe when we hear the word community because we feel it has no real meaning anymore. We have so corrupted its definition with things such as 'the Hispanic Community' and 'the North Side Community' and 'the Business Community' where even if we share whatever the common traits is we don't feel as though that is our group. We don't go to the 'Business Community' for comfort and challenge and support and correction and direction.
Let's use Carol Shaffer and Kristen Amundson's definition of a conscious community from 'Creative Community Anywhere.' ''Conscious community honors the individual as well as the group, knowing that the well-being of one cannot be bought at the expense of the other.'' Community is a place where:
1. People participate in common practices,
2. Depend upon one another,
3. Arrive at decisions consensually,
4. Identify themselves as part of something larger than the sum of their individual relationships, and
5. Commit themselves for the long-term to their own, one another's and the group's well-being.
This is more than a dream of what a community can be. Almost in spite of our living in a mobile society (30% of the US populations changes addresses every two years). We are forming conscious communities in new places. Primarily at work but also based on our own self-interest: dart clubs, bowling leagues, women's circles, investment clubs, book clubs and social action groups, etc. we are forming these communities because we need each other.
But it is not the number of people that we socialize with that is most important. No, it is our perception of being with other people, of not being alone, not isolated. We all know people who have felt alone even in the midst of festal celebrations. It is when we perceive that we are not alone, that we are people of a group, a member of a community that we are the healthiest. In fact, research has shown that the single activity that provides the most life-lengthening benefits is volunteering to work for and with others.
Putting the Celebration into the Community
When planning a community celebration, make certain that there are opportunities for all of the attendees/participants to get involved in what is happening. Many communities have public celebrations. Most of those are events that the public observes. People come and watch the events, maybe there are food booths or stands where attendees can buy food to eat. But there usually are not activities where all can join in and participate.
Community celebrations are thank-filled, loving, song and dance, emotionally charged, rituals with historical antecedents. Some are significantly quieter than others. All involve at least two people.
When you plan a community celebration, always plan on celebrating if you are joined by one other person. Set your goal somewhat higher but prepare your mind to celebrate. Celebrations are contagious and their contagiousness has birthed new words, 'party crasher' and 'party-pooper' among them. If you plan a community celebration, plan on giving thanks and love, whooping and dancing and singing and laughing and playing.
How do we do that?
Ask at least one other person to join you on this adventure. Creative brainstorming happens best with company and you won't have to shoulder the whole workload yourself. Share this resource with all of the people who are participating in the planning of the celebration.
Determine what your community is. It need not be one that is already established, though that would be a great place to start. Maybe it will be your whole town or your apartment building or an arbitrary circle emanating from your home with, say, a radius of three blocks. Maybe you want serendipity and surprise to reign! Post notices on bulletin boards in grocery stores and campus student centers and bus tops and on light poles. The more easily identifiable your community, the easier it will be to complete the remainder of the planning. For your first event, start small. Next year's event can encompass a larger community.
Set a date at least four months away and then locate a site. Find a date that has some community relevance and that isn't well known. If your community is your immediate neighborhood, this is easily accomplished by a couple hours review of old community newspapers at the library. The focus is on community, on relationships, so look for dates when a new housing development began or when lots in your neighborhood were deeded to the city or purchased or when the first home was completed.
For a wonderful opportunity to build collective stories, try to identify one of the original home-owners and the locate them and invite them to attend the celebration. Current residents will welcome the opportunity to discover some of the lives lived in their neighborhood.
The actual structure of your event will vary but please use the following chart to assist you in the planning. Please try to include all of the items in the chart in some form or other. If the statisticians and social scientists are correct, people, all of us, are hungry for meaningful events. We're hungry for meaning. And we aren't necessarily finding that meaning in our everyday activities.
Set a starting time and an ending time. Be certain to post both times when you begin publicizing your celebration.
After you have completed the chart and have a solid idea about how your event will happen and what all will occur, figure out what your costs will be. These costs can be met by securing event sponsors or by charging a fee per participant or per family. If you plan on charging a fee, offer an alternative such as an offering of food for a soup kitchen or clothing for a shelter or a commitment of time and skills for a service (from window-cleaning to car-washing to envelop-stuffing to errand running) so that those who cannot pay a fee can still participate. If you plan on charging a fee, you will need to pay for all of the cost out of your pocket initially. There are benefits to both methods, but be creative. Many of the items used for activities can be donated or scavenged as can much of the food, if not all of it.
When determining the costs and subsequent fees, allow room for making a profit. That probably won't happen. But if it does, try to return the profit to the community in some form.
Here's Help
For ideas for foods, activities, songs, stories, games and alternative fees, the following brief list of resources can serve as a starting place.
Community celebrations can be the most rewarding events you'll ever participate in. Take your time, plan well and have fun!
Ashley Nedeau-Owen
Resources
1. New Games for the Whole Family, Dale N. LeFevre, Putnam, 1988
2. Hands Around the World, Susan Milford, Williamson Publishing, 1992.
3. EcoArt, Laurie Carlson, Williamson Publishing, 1993.
4. Crafts for Fun, Virginia S. Rich, Judson, Press, 1986
5. Feasting with God, Holly Whitcomb, Pilgrim Press, 1996.
6. Extending the Table, Joetta Handrich Schlabach, Herald Press, 1991.
7. Fanfare for a Feather: 77 Ways to Celebrate Practically Anything, Margolis, Smith & Weiss, Resource Publications, Inc., 1991.
The Chart
For Planning Community Celebrations
Items to do/be done
1.) Pick your working group: friends, neighbors, church folk
2.) Find a site and secure it or reserve it.
A. Your site determines the size of your event, the number of participants
B. Accessibility for all with adequate rest room facilities.
3.) Set a date
4.) Identify at least one activity/event/happening that fits each of the following categories and then name a person responsible for the organizing, production and follow-up of that particular activity/event/happening.
A. Naming and identifying participants
i. Name badges, stickers, buttons
ii. Name games for introducing people to each other
iii. Autograph book in which people collect signatures of participants
B. Cooperative games, at least three so all might participate regardless of age/ability
C. Songs, sing-a-long
i. Locate musicians/leaders, but give these folks a chance to participate in the rest of the events
ii. Create your own music space, provide instruments, from beans and toilet paper tubes to garbage can lids.
D. Storytelling
i. Have a storyteller telling stories
ii. Have a story-telling booth where people can tell their stories using a set format to prevent long-windedness
iii. Have a liar's (or tall tale) contest
E. Art and Craft--create an activity/event/happening
i. Banner/sign-making
ii. Face &/or body painting
iii. Paper art - paper folding, pasting, cutting, making, drawing, painting
iv. Fabric arts, such as community quilting (quilting pre-made square for making squares to be quilted later). Stretch a piece of fabric - heavy cotton shirting, canvas or duck - and offer fabric scraps and threads and yarns and needles and make a fabric poster/mural.
v. Movement arts - dancing (square to polka to lindy to modern to line); Tai chi, yoga and martial arts; games like statue and charades
F. Food, preferably a community sit down meal
i. Potluck
ii. Catered
iii. Food booths from vendors for their profit-making
iv. Picnic - brown bag
5. Set up a marketing strategy to include some or all of the following: posters, newspaper advertisements, door hangers, media releases, TV and/or radio (ads, Public Service Announcements, interviews, or talk shows), phone calls, and door knocking.
6. Obtain supplies for nonfood activities/events/happenings
7. Coordinate the food activities, i.e., prepare mailing or flyers/posters for potluck contributions, call and arrange caterer, contact local restaurants and food vendors, and make arrangements for selling foodstuffs at food booths.
8. Post signs at the site.
9. Setup all activity/event/happening locations within the site.
10. Party! Celebrate! Have fun.
11. Reconnoiter and evaluate event. Ask yourself if you want to do this again and if so, begin planning for the next celebration.
Prepared in advance of Alternatives' 25th Anniversary, 1998, by Ashley Nedeau-Owen.
Page updated 6 April 2014
Simple Living Works! * SimpleLivingWorks@Yahoo.com
BLOG: SimpleLivingWorks.WordPress.com
| Blog INDEX
PODCAST |
Podcast INDEX
VIDEOS: YouTube.com/SimpleLivingWorks
MISSION: Equipping people of faith to challenge consumerism, live justly and celebrate responsibly // An all volunteer educational organization.