What follows is but a brief and informal evaluation, and a subjective review, of H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Festival.” This article, which only reflects my own opinions about that story, could perchance reveal its major plot elements, or other particulars within it, which some may wish to evade. Those preferring to avoid spoilers have been warned. This article is not an attack, nor a condemnation, against anyone who enjoys Lovecraft or his writings. Capisce? If reading Lovecraft works for you, and if it can help you evolve as a reader or a writer, that is fine.

Yuletide provides a good time, a wonderful opportunity, for examining and celebrating the cherished qualities of our loved ones and our communities, a time of fondly reminiscing about friends and relatives. It can be a time to reconsider what such concepts signify for one individually or socially. While we are on the subject, some of the best stories to read during this festive season are those that focus around family drama, which is why I favor throwing in a few works of gothic fiction for my reading enjoyment at this time of year. Yes, I currently believe the Yuletide really comes to life right around American Thanksgiving Day. Gothic fiction oozes with stories haunted by familial strife. Some may say the gothic genre is allegorical of ancestral, even religious, schisms and household discordance. For those who cherish all that is sublime and enjoy tales of fear and weirdness, then the Yule season and stories emphasizing it are boons.

Lovecraft’s “The Festival” offers up a weird experience of insanity. Its storyline events appear to take place during Yuletide, and the plot centers around a family mystery. From my opinion, this story, whilst it is rather pharisaical, is one I can recommend to anyone striving to understand weird fiction or gothic fiction, to anyone desiring something remarkably strange and spooky to read during any time between late November to Christmas Eve.

One thing I like about “The Festival” is how the story as a whole almost has this Symbolist quality to it; one could read this short story as if it were a series of strange images and dream parts that come together to form a face (or a masque) of madness.

Lovecraft’s little Yuletide short story, stumbling from narrow-minded sermonizing, attempts to mark too much with panic and puritanical demonizing. This stuffy story reads too much like it could have been written by a witchfinder. Anything unknown becomes an abomination. Anything different becomes unmentionable. Upon almost every portrayal do xenophobia and preconceptions cling like offensive odors. Within a certain interpretation or context, there can be seen to exist within the story a neurotic phobia of all that is pagan or Romish, a fear of that which is not Protestant, not Puritan, not Wasp, which also connects this story to the classist tradition upheld by the gothic genre. On the other hand, there is also in this story a fear of all types of religion and all types of organized faith in anything, a fear even of the old and of tradition, which can be regarded as a strand of Nihilism. The main character fears the holiday, fears Christmas festivities, fears the festival of his forefathers. Fears himself. Attached to practically every scene, there can be recognized a fear of idolatry, fear of rituals, fear of the material and the astral, fear of anything that is not on a narrow path of provincialism or the status quo of mundane, conformist human society. I can smell the anti-wizardry, the burnt witches and sorcerers. In view of the hybrid beasts that appear, the festivity could become something to dread because it is a chimera of many different cultures and ancient customs mixed together with diverse religious beliefs.

There were times, especially during the beginning of the tale, that I became lost, unsure of where the main character actually was supposed to be. There was something I liked about that and something I didn’t. This kind of technique, as it was used in “The Festival,” evokes a dizzying sense of mystery, which can be delighting to a horror reader. Feeling unsure about what town or village the narrator was in created a mood that was to some degree frustrating yet evocative of dreams and symbolism and madness. It is akin to the dizziness of dancing, and the details and events of the narrative do vaguely appear to have some resemblance to a carnival (more specifically the Venetian type) or a masquerade ball.

The story’s psychosis drips palpable. Revel in it. Be horrified, and transcend!

Two of the story’s most prominent features are the attribute of self-hate and the aspect of ancestral doom, inheritance, both relatively typical in gothic fiction. The main character, who is the story’s narrator, has been Anglicized (as seen from the main character’s writing characteristics and from the fact that his ancestors are implied to have adopted the language of a blue-eyed race), secreted away from his past and his true heritage. The main character has forgotten himself, blind to his actual rôle. When he meets the sublime actuality of his progenitors, whom the main character describes as being of a dark, strange, old people from a southern orchid land, when he sees the rite in which he and his kinfolk are participating, his naïve, milquetoast mind is unequipped to comprehend the wonder and majesty of his family legacy; he sees only nonhuman beings pretending to be mundane New England townsfolk, things he wishes to forget. His forebears worshipped the forbidden. Four of his kinsmen were hanged on account of them being accused of witchcraft. To me it looks like there are signs hinting at how the main character fears Christmas trees (a green tower of unholy light is what most terrifies him, more than the monsters) and the ornaments and the lights, which could connect to the sanctimonious fear and the unhinged hatred of pagan idols and instruments of pantheistic celebration, which is an ugly fanatism popularly attributed to and associated with Abrahamic religions, most prominently Puritanism and Protestantism, but also commonly related to anyone zealously against anything popish; as well, do not forget the atheistic intolerance and anticlerical attitudes of Communism; furthermore, we must remember the dogmatism held by religious extremists campaigning against anything stigmatized an infidel. The Christmas tree is something that is weirdly both pagan and clerical. In “The Festival,” there are connections made between a fear of stars and a fear of lights, a fear of souls, a fear of ghosts and flames and things resembling constellations twinkling in a darkness that is limitless and filled with hidden dangers.

I find it fascinating when over the course of a storyline the past returns, especially the dead returned and ancient rising corpses. It is one of my favorite gothic motifs. Of course, the major nonhuman entities, the main character’s sorcerous relatives, in this tale are not revenants nor zombies in that exact traditional way, but there is conceivably a form of possession or resurrection or reincarnation happening, quite possibly a combination of all three. And the concept of witches (male and female and anything else whatsoever) creating this blasphemous return from death, in strange correlation with the birth of Christ, is very appealing.

Lovecraft created a wonderful, creepy town in this story, one in which I would love to visit to celebrate amidst the green fire among the maggoty locals. What was so bad about the festival? The green fire? The flying aliens? If the main character doesn’t want to enjoy the jubilation, invite me this upcoming Yuletide.

“The Festival” makes me ask this important question: how did this complete naïf, the main character, become so ignorant about his own ancestors? Why would, or why could, his family fail to teach him about who his ancestors really are? He seems to know so much, and yet his mind cannot comprehend things that should be obvious. It asks, or raises, perhaps inadvertently, questions about how history can become forgotten, how families can separate and stray apart, how ancestral customs can become neglected or supplanted, how cultures can fade and become demonized, or colonized, and how humankind’s holidays attach humanity to mysteries humans can never reconcile nor unravel because of what has been lost or obscured. Looking at it in that light, it is easy to apprehend how the main character of “The Festival” is comparable to the main character of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider.”

“The Festival” was once a story I could esteem thoroughly; however, reading it again nowadays, as I have become older, grayer, the story casts an awful taste amidst the fragrant notes. That’s kind of the way it is with Lovecraft’s oeuvre altogether: fun to read a few times, grow from it, but after that then just say ciao and move on. It is true that one’s opinions can change over time, n’est-ce pas?

I can understand if someone does not want to make this a story to read all the time, but at least something positive can be gained from reading it. If the offensive material does not disturb you, then this story will delight with delicacies of horror and weirdness. Art is meant to be offensive, no? What is the point of art? To push us out of comfort? Qu’est-ce que c’est? The purest art has no agitprop nor credo nor bottom line; so, being not utilitarian and not politic, art can do whatever each member of the audience or each reader wishes. The irrational lust for horror is so close to this sentiment. But I believe it is healthy for each reader to decide for themselves what the limit is, without automatically limiting art for others or hiding (or for that matter even censoring) an artwork (including writings) away from others. Cultures coalesce from like-minded people banding together. Contention begets contention. Che sarà, sarà. Some pieces of art, including literature, work for others and some do not. Give this story a try at least once. I would not want to read stories like this all the time, but this one has a singular je ne sais quoi, and the style and the craftsmanship it demonstrates is something that could be studied and explored, even if merely briefly. To be fair, “The Festival” is not even remotely the most offensive of Lovecraft’s works. Sometimes there is something to gain, some wonderful emotion to savor, when reading a story that holds a perspective that is different or challenging. To each his own. Life is absurd. C’est la vie.

Matthew Pungitore graduated with a Bachelor of Science in English from Fitchburg State University. Matthew is the author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories, Fiendilkfjeld Castle, and Midnight's Eternal Prisoner: Waiting For The Summer.

If you’ve liked what you’ve read here, check out some of Matthew Pungitore’s writings at his BookBaby author-page.

Contact him at: matthewpungitore_writer@outlook.com