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HISTORY OF THIS HOLIDAY (AS RESEARCHED BY HISTORIAN
QUARREL)
This holiday has a sort of mythic quality about it.
Although Lord Hogfish has only recently rediscovered it, Night Day
is a holiday which traces its origins back to the earliest Itonians.
And it all has to do with eclipses.
Everyone knows that an eclipse is that time when, by
some quirk of planetary motion, either the sun or the moon momentarily
passes in front of the other, right? Well the earliest Itonians had
another explanation. They believed that an eclipse was that time when
the sun and the moon stood face to face and discussed all the problems
that they'd had with each other since the last eclipse. In other words,
they had a shouting match. The satellite and the star would release
all the frustration that built up as a result of one heavenly body
setting too early (in order to nick off to the pub perhaps) or rising
too late (as a result of the pub session the night/day before). Perhaps
the sun hadn't been bright enough lately, or the moon had been really
messing up the tides. Maybe the moon had been mixing up its phases
deliberately to annoy people or the sun had been shining too much
on the beaches and not enough everywhere else. You get the picture.
But celestial arguments only went on for what (on earth)
were only a few minutes of time. Until one fateful eclipse when the
moon said something particularly nasty to the sun and the sun refused
to set.
It was the beginning of an odd week for the Itonians.
First the sun stayed in the sky for two days straight. Then, when
night finally came, there was no moon because the moon was sulking
somewhere. Next day there was sunlight but the following night there
was still no moon. On day four there was no sun either, except for
occasional flashes of sunlight while the sun zoomed around everywhere
looking for the moon. Day five arrived with what seemed like neither
celestial body because things had gotten physical when the sun found
the moon and now the sun was nursing a black sun spot and the moon
had several new craters. The moon was first to recover and so day
six was one of moon light. On day seven the two met in the sky again
and the Itonians could tell that things weren't going well from the
great arcs of flame erupting from the sun and the iciles prickling
the surface of the moon.
Deciding that they couldn't take it anymore the Itonains
appealed to IT. Because IT is not an interventionist god, IT did not
talk to the sun and moon for the Itonians. Instead, IT summoned the
celestial bodies together in the sky and chose one Itonian to represent
the views of the Itonians to the sun and moon. The Itonian chosen
was Desputi, a nite known for her skills as a mediator. Even so, it
took her six hours to get the differences sorted out between the sun
and the moon. The longest eclipse ever observed.
After that, everything was back to normal. There are
still eclipses - because everyone needs to let off steam now and again
- but they are only at certain times and only last for a few minutes.
To prevent such an occurrence happening again, the holiday
of Night Day was created. On this day, Itonians would act as if it
were night and during the night which follows Night Day they would
act as though it were day. Thus, if the sun or the moon were feeling
like having a protracted argument again, when they looked down on
the earth they would see people acting like day and night were out
of order and be reminded of the trouble their long ago argument had
caused.
TRADITIONAL CELEBRATION METHOD OF THIS DAY (AS
RESEARCHED BY LORD HOGFISH)
On this day, you act like it is nighttime during the day, turning
on lights when you enter a room, stumbling about if there are no lights,
referring to midday as midnight, morning as evening etc, calling lunchtime
"supper".....that sort of thing. To help you out in your nighttimeness
you might want to wear dark clothes (since if it was dark you wouldn't
be able to see them) and wear dark glasses. Of course, when actual
nighttime comes around, it becomes Day Night, during which time you
should turn all the lights off to save electricity since they are
not needed.
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