Seasons Beatings, Indian days of Rest and Rearranging Calendars

Welcome to the 11th episode of our second season!

Ragini starts us off with an explanation of when holidays really became a thing. Interestingly, the origins weren’t as fun as you would think. They naturally evolved from the things that dominated people’s lives at the time - love, war and religion!

We go through the etymology and then dive deeper into the concept of ‘holy’ who celebrated them and for what reasons. We also talked about “spa” towns that provided rest and relaxation to that underpriviliged class of society at the time - the rich! Ragini then gently steered the fact into the game changing 1870s when things began to change. For more, go take a listen to the episode!

All the talk about the weekend had Shar thinking about how holidays were treated and how they originated on the Indian subcontinent. As most things from India, the history of this is long, diverse and dependent on the evolving political realities it was experiencing. Shar goes into explaining briefly the concept of rest days as per Indian Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Indian Jews and the Muslim holidays. It’s fascinating how all these different cultures, religions and regions have come together to at least attempt to give everyone days of rest based on their beliefs and cultural customs. From the journeys across undulating sands by the wandering Jews to the ancient Aryans in India, to Buddhist ‘Uposatha’ days this section takes you on a journey of its own - worth a listen! Honorary mention of the very interesting “Shanivar Talis” and the unique division of the year by the Zoroastrians / Parsis. We round off this segment by talking about the enactment of laws that make holidays necessary by law for workers in India - this is well in to the modern history of India.

Ragini then took us onto the Seasons Beatings section of the episode and talked at length about the terrifying “Krampus” (to children and all reasonably superstitious adults) and how the acceptance (or lack thereof) of it by society has evolved over the years. Also, a handy tip on how to avoid getting whacked on holiday - literally, not mafioso-ly!

And that brings us to the end of this blog! We’ve got one more episode to the end of the year and this season - if you like to rewind, you’ll want to listen to our next episode. It’s the best ofs, the champions of BRF, the league of extraordinary facts, aaaannnd …. the hype machine has run out of juice - just watch out for our next and last episode of the season! It’s a good ‘un.

Enjoy!

Links of Interest:

Krampus

Bonus link

NB

Episode Edited by: Mohit Shandilya

Music for the episode: Charita Arora