Grimgoreniht

From the pen of Brin,
a treatment of the High Holiday of the Gnomish and Halfling People

The greatest holiday among the Halfling and Gnomish people occurs in anticipation of the Winter Solstice. Each People celebrates differently, but the Holiday is the same, and their celebrations are curiously interlinked.

For the Halflings, the holiday begins with a period of grim rememberance. Then, after six days of mourning and fasting -- having only three complete meals a day, the seventh day is set aside for the Grimgoreniht. There is great merry making on that day and the celebrations begun in the morning will carry on until well in the night.

Traditionally, the morning means a large meal of thick pan-fried cakes covered with melted butter and a sweet syrup distilled from the sap of a maple tree, along with tart apple cider and small grilled sausages. A nap is taken and then morning is spent preparing each home for guests who will arrive later in the evening. Clean china is set out, houses and faces are scrubbed and large meals are prepared with five or six courses planned. Meals will include various roast meats and fowl, braised vegetables, fruit and nuts baked into loaves of bread, and various wines that have been laid aside all year.

Small children will spend the day playing and celebrating the end of their fasts. They will make Strawgnumm dolls and use old cloth to dress and decorate them. Lanterns and streamers will be hung from trees and the byways and lanes will be lined with candles. If possible the Shires will arrange for a magician to have fireworks displays.

Meanwhile, for the Gnome, preparations actually begin a year earlier. Each family will spend a portion of their workdays making toys and smithing tools. They will also brew ginger beer, fire and paint pottery and lay aside a portion of their harvest. Then, on Grimgoreniht itself, a meal will be shared in silence consisting of bitter roots and tubers. All of the gifts will be quietly presented to the Curate and he will make a great show of inspecting and approving them under the eye of the entire people.

After the assembled gifts have received the Curate's nod of acceptance, a great cheer will go up and the celebration will be had in earnest. There will be singing, dancing, and no little drunken revelry. Then, one by one, pilgrims who have returned from last year's journey will stand and regale their fellows of tales from their journey -- of perils braved, wonders seen, and friends lost.

Throughout all, the gnomes who have attained at least 13 years of age and never been on a pilgrimage, will stand and vie for the privilege of making one that year. The Curate will listen to the pledges and select twelve of them, along with a thirteenth who has been a pilgrim before. Those chosen will then immediately leave the celebration to make their preparations for travel. They will leave that very night, before the sun rises. They will carry all of the approved gifts and travel the long distance to their adopted Shire.

Some of these journeys may actually take as much as a year, others may be forced to pace themselves so as to arrive a year later. But when that year is up, on the night of the Winter Solstice, the arriving Gnomes will be received with great fanfare by the host Halflings. The Gnomes will make a point to stop at every home and dispense gifts for the occupants. In return they will receive dozens of invitations for dinner and though they cannot accept them all, the Gnomes will generally make a good showing by attending as many as they can -- usually splitting up to hit as many homes as possible. Those houses that are chosen to host will become all the talk in the days that follow. Husbands and wives will ply their neighbors will tales of what repast it took to tempt the Gnome into their home.

At the end of the evening, and well into the next morning, the Halflings are exhausted and feasted, the Gnomes are sleeping off their entertainments and long months on the road, and all is peaceful. The visitors may remain with their hosts for as much as a week, but will depart suddenly and quietly in the dark of a night with no prior warning. Though a great show of sadness is made when they are discovered missing, the truth is that the Halflings are glad to see them go. Too much merriment is as bothersome to that people as not enough.

After the visitors are gone, the season is considered over and life settles into its usual routines for the Halflings. For the pilgrims, however, all due haste will be made to arrive home. The pilgrims will begin their long journey home, even as they are aware that another pilgrimage is already making its way toward them for the next year.