Christmas

Xian Fei Kalavati · Christmas

Do you think theres Christmas in Serenity world?

Tobias Rieper

Given the proliferation of the various religions about the serenity 'verse, i would expect so, and that practice of the various festivals of all cultures would be widespread.

Their only problem would be the date: each planet would have to operate it's own calendar, as related and tailored to it's individual orbit duration and day/night length.
Given this, it would be physically difficult to co-ordinate the celebratory period, date wise at least, between the different planets, and even if it was strictly standardised, i'd still expect to see a christmas day varience of at the very least 72hrs between core and outer planets! Why? well, it's about 12hrs here on earth, due to planetary rotation - factor in varied day lengths/timezones/etc.......you get the picture.

On an interesting note however, i would expect we would see many local variants on the theme, such as no snow on arrid planets so no snowmen, no santa down the chimeny on hi-tech alliance core worlds where chimneys are non-existant, cross pollination with other similar festivities at the same/similar timeframe of the host culture, etc.

Gerwyn

what could be quite interesting would be the central church authorities maintaining a beacon which transmitted a "standard time" which would allow churches around the verse to work off a unified "calendar"

Having said that, the christian movements that have been seen in the show seem to indicate a closer ties with protestantism and resultingly, i dont think we've discusses centralised churches or the existance of "the space pope" as a ref team yet.

XavierYu

I bet those damn Alliance boys tried to set a standardised date & time for Christmas (probably using the one from Londinium) and that's what caused the entire war...

Tobias Rieper

No Xavier, that's the excuse they'll use for the next one.....then it'll all brew up into a holy war against the infidel.

Silence! I Kill You!!
(Sorry, couldn't resist Laughing

)

Gerwyn

Gonner Hendershot

It would seem sensible that the Alliance would insitute some form of Unified calendar, based off the calendar(s?) used in the Core which would be roughly the same given the close proximity of the Core worlds to each other (this is an assumption based mainly on the name, not upon any real knowledge of Alliance astrogation). The show gives the suggestion that Unification Day happens at roughly the same time across the 'verse, as far as the Alliance are concerned.
The further you got from the core, the greater the difference in the calendar, so locals would have similar holidays at roughly the same time of the year, variable upon the local planetary rotation and length of the year. This assumes that the locals are descended from Coreworlders and as such share at least a small amount of cultural heritage with the Core.
It should also be noted that the border and the frontier planets have developed a large variety of eccentric customs (juggling baby geese, kidnapping people who they think they need, etc), probably due to the isolation of these worlds from mainstream Alliance influence.

Jon

Londinium Mean Time?

I think the Space Pope deserves their own TV show.

Tobias Rieper

nick

Well the easy way to stop the televangelist is to lie and tell him that you are Jewish. It works on Jehovah's witnesses!

Jon

So it's true, the televisions can hear us.

Tobias Rieper

Aye, that would be being the purplebellies spyin' on us again, y'hear?
The only defence is tinfoil hats. so they can't peer into our skulls and mess with our heads.