I know that many of you have been mourning the loss of the God is a Dick series for the last few Sundays. While I won’t say it’s gone forever, I have no immediate plans for its return. However, I do have a replacement for it. This is the first post in a brand new weekly series. I hope you enjoy it.

Humans love holidays, and religion has always been a great source for things to celebrate or commemorate. In fact, if you look at all of the calendars of all the word’s religions, most of the days of the year are taken by one group or another. On any given day, the odds are extremely good that it is a religious holiday somewhere. The variation in these religious observances is enormous. From Christmas to Sukkot to Samhain to Diwali, it is amazing how many things we believe and how many ways we find in which to demonstrate those beliefs on an annual basis. However, most of these holidays have one thing in common. They’re stupid.

And so, I’ve decided to celebrate the rich tapestry of religious holidays by picking one each week and discussing it in detail. It think this is a great way to gain insight into the religions of the world as they are practiced. I’ve spoken before about the tension between religion “on the page” and religion “on the ground.” Never is this more apparent than during religious holidays. Take Easter for example. On the page, Easter is about the son of god, who had come to Earth in human form, rising from the dead and ascending to Heaven. However, if one examines the gospels, there is no mention of the apostles dying hard-boiled eggs, and plastic grass would not be invented for almost two millennia.

This week, I’d like to talk about a Shinto holiday that happened on Friday. In fact, it’s one of the five most important holidays in the Shinto tradition. The earliest written record of the celebration of Hinamatsuri in Japan dates back about 1,000 years, but the holiday may be older than that. The celebration of “Girl’s Day” is fairly elaborate, and has evolved over time, ever since the basic principles were imported from China. The most important part of the celebration is the Hina Ningyo (left). This is a seven-tiered display stand with a set of dolls representing the imperial court of the Heian period. These dolls are passed down from mother to daughter for generations, and they are extremely valuable. A full set can cost as much as $30,000. Some families that are unable to afford a full Hina Ningyo have only the two dolls on the top tier, representing the Emperor and Empress.

The Chinese tradition that gave rise to Hinamatsuri involved a psychic “spring cleaning,” if you will. Each March, psychics would travel through the land transferring evil and sickness into dolls, which would then be cast into rivers to carry away the negative energy. The Japanese kept the date and the dolls, but changed pretty much everything else. The imperial court represents the gods and domestic tranquility, and Hinamatsuri was seen as an opportunity to bring happiness into the home by making food sacrifices to the dolls. At this point, the holiday had nothing to do with girls. Later on, during the Edo period, girls from upper-class families first started playing with dolls. Only then was the connection made, and Hinamatsuri became Girl’s Day. Peach blossoms also became an important part of the celebration, representing fertility and feminine power. While the dolls are put out a couple of weeks before the holdiay, they are put away immediately afterward because it is believed that families which take too long to put away the dolls will have trouble marrying off their daughters.

Hinamatsuri also involves a host of traditional foods, including Hishimochi (colored rice cakes, shown right) and clams, which represent chastity. The preparation of these foods, which are both eaten and offered to the dolls, begins up to a week before the holiday.

Hinamatsuri is a good event with which to start this series, because it highlights the mutability and syncretic nature of many religious holidays. As it is currently celebrated, it has no relationship to the original holiday, aside from the presence of dolls. Various aspects of the celebration are also self-contradictory. The dolls are put away quickly to get the girls married fast. The peach blossoms represent fertility. However, these symbols are at odds with the clams, which represent chastity. One must assume that the individuals who introduced various parts of this celebration had very different goals for their daughters.

Now, I’d like to look at this holiday as an outsider for a moment. What do I see on Hinamatsuri if I know nothing about the history or symbolism of the event? I see an entire culture buying dolls that cost as much as a car and keeping them in a closet only to take them out once a year and feed them. If I knew someone who did this without religious motivation, I’d work on having him committed. With religion as an excuse, we may see it as a beautiful tradition. With a few million families participating, we tend to look at this kind of thing through the eyes of a cultural anthropologist. Society tells us that we can’t judge religion or religious practices. Well, to hell with society. I’m judging these behaviors, and will be throughout this series. Feeding dolls = crazy. I don’t care if you’re from Kyoto or Boise.

I think holidays are a big reason why people find it so hard to leave religion. There is a basic human drive toward tradition. Repetition and ritual are comforting. However, if we take a step back and look logically at the things we humans do in the names of our gods and spirits, we would find almost all of our religious traditions to be wasteful and absurd, just like Hinamatsuri.

~I AM~