430 festivals: Africa Many African festivals centered on age sets, groupings of people within a certain age range At festivals people would sit and dance with their own age set Age sets determined who could what during festival events and afterward Among the peoples of Uganda, for example, the elders might arrange rituals, set schedules, and find people to donate animals for feasts The young men would prepare the site for the festival, clearing away branches, setting up seats for the elders, and cooking the meat Groups would be served by age set, from the oldest to the youngest, and within the age sets the oldest members would be served first The members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church held beliefs that were unique in Christianity and celebrated unique festivals Ethiopian religious festivals were scheduled according to the Ethiopian calendar, which was based on the Coptic calendar and was slightly different from the Julian calendar then in use in Europe This meant that even those Christian festivals commonly observed in Europe fell on different dates in Ethiopia The Ethiopian New Year, for example, was celebrated in September rather than January, and Christmas fell in January instead of December At the end of September they celebrated Maskal, a festival marking the finding of the True Cross (the cross upon The Festival of Maskal The religious basis of the festival Maskal was distinct to Ethiopia According to legend, in 326 Helena (ca 248–ca 328), the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine I (r 306–337), was looking for the cross upon which Jesus was crucified She prayed for help and was told to set a bonfire in Jerusalem She erected a large pile of wood, added frankincense to it, and set it afire A stream of incense smoke directed her to the spot where the cross was hidden Centuries later, during the 1400s, the patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, gave an Ethiopian emperor half of the True Cross This piece of the cross was placed in the Gishen Marien monastery on Mount Amba The festival of Maskal evolved out of this story The bonfires people burned symbolized the fire that Helen had burned to find the cross Ethiopians added flowers to the pile to decorate it Because the fire was holy, they would collect pieces of the charcoal left over once the fire finished burning and use this to draw crosses on their foreheads According to church tradition the True Cross was found in March, but the Ethiopians moved the festival to September to avoid a conflict with Lent which Christ was crucified), by lighting bonfires and dancing around them In January they celebrated Timkat, the Ethiopian Orthodox version of Epiphany, commemorating the baptism of Christ This festival included feasting, music, bathing in lakes or rivers, and religious processions carrying replicas of the Ark of the Covenant, said to have held the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments Easter and Christmas were other important holidays Saints’ festivals were important to Ethiopians New Year celebrations were combined with the feast of John the Baptist At the end of December, Ethiopians celebrated the feast of Saint Gabriel, guardian of homes and churches, by joining pilgrimages They carried burdens to symbolize Christ’s suffering and gave alms to the poor The fertility of humans and the land was a common reason to hold festivals In Nigeria the Yoruba people held a festival called Gelede that celebrated motherhood and womanhood This festival occurred during the spring rains, a time when the earth’s bounty seemed assured for the coming year In Yoruba mythology people originally lived in a matriarchal society that transformed into a patriarchal society, and the Gelede festival paid homage to mothers as female elders The people would perform rituals to honor women’s work and fertility and would dance wearing animal masks, sing, and play music Harvest festivals abounded in medieval Africa Agriculture was always a chancy way of life, and a good harvest meant that the people could eat for another year To show their appreciation to the gods and spirits who made the harvest possible, they celebrated with ritual dances and songs that thanked the spirits and ancestors for their help The Ga people began holding a harvest festival known as Homowo sometime during the medieval period The name Homowo means “making fun of hunger.” The festival arose after a long drought had caused a deadly famine in the region; when the rains returned and the people could once again harvest crops, they invented a festival that mocked hunger with feasting and music The festival took place in the late summer, around the time when the people harvested yams, the earliest crop and their primary source of sustenance The people would offer yams to their ancestors and local gods, accompanied by dancing and singing All people would return to their parents’ homes to mourn that year’s deaths, celebrate that year’s births, eat special foods, and dance in the streets Festivals were also an opportunity to address problems If something had gone wrong that year, such as illness among the livestock or lack of rain, the people conducted rituals to attempt to solve the problem for the next year Herders celebrated their own festivals around the events of the year In Mali every winter the herders congregated on