Seasonal sales and Kekri customs

[Sami]

Harvest festival sales are on at Steam and Itch.io -- and in the Far North we do celbrate Kekri.
So let the new adventurers be respected with the discount, and the ancestral spirits with our special Kekri costumes and customs...

During this festivity period you can grab the game for decent discount on Steam, or from Itch.io.

It's Kekri, not halloween, in the Far North.

Kekri is an ancient Finnish harvest festival celebrated in the fall when the annual agricultural activities were all accomplished and the harvest collected. Kekri meant the end of the crop year, which was a big turning point. It was the time when the souls and spirits of the dead wandered around and visited the living. The ancestors were respected and welcomed. Sauna was heated up for them, and meal prepared too. The living celebrated accordingly, and so do we.


Kekri Goat

Kekri time included tradition of Kekripukki (Kekri goat) figure. People would dress up as horned creatures, wearing furs or coats upside down, and went around in their disguises and were offered food and drink.
So, what does a decent developer of tradition rich game do to follow the tradition?
Yes. He dresses up as Kekripukki.



We wish you happy and haunting Kekri time, or Halloween - if that suits you better.
Celebrate and participate!

[Bert Preast]

This is great, I can't wait to see the pictures of you when you put the mask on 

[Sami]

This is great, I can't wait to see the pictures of you when you put the mask on 

Heheheh  

[Dark Art]

Interesting.... Your Kekri sounds very much like our Schedrivka, but performed after harvest and not around Christmas. The debate is still out on the true origins of Schedrivka and other pagan-ish (Kolyadka, Kupala Night etc) traditions that still endure, but I wonder... After reading up on your Kekri, I am almost 100% sure they were initially either related or have been heavily influenced by some other tradition that shaped them in what they are today. Way too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. Sure, our Schedrivka mutated and adapted to Christianity, but the core of it is still there, all the way to kids and teens dressing up in goats, mystical or folklore creatures, going door to door and singing specific songs or chants. I wonder if both traditions had Celtic influence or was it something else? Hmmm...

[Lopo772]

Interesting.... Your Kekri sounds very much like our Schedrivka, but performed after harvest and not around Christmas. The debate is still out on the true origins of Schedrivka and other pagan-ish (Kolyadka, Kupala Night etc) traditions that still endure, but I wonder... After reading up on your Kekri, I am almost 100% sure they were initially either related or have been heavily influenced by some other tradition that shaped them in what they are today. Way too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. Sure, our Schedrivka mutated and adapted to Christianity, but the core of it is still there, all the way to kids and teens dressing up in goats, mystical or folklore creatures, going door to door and singing specific songs or chants. I wonder if both traditions had Celtic influence or was it something else? Hmmm...

It's an interesting field to study for sure. As is most likely the case in all european folk rituals of pagan origin, the influence would be partly indo-european, partly old-european (whatever was in place before the arrival of the indo-european population), and also probably partly, due to the geography, uralic pagan elements. The hard part is saying what is what and to which degree, and this gets harder to understand because all forms of rituals and religious understanding shifts with time, much like language. However, something interesting to note is that there is linguistic (and very minor genetic) evidence of a population existing around the baltic region that we have no direct evidence of or idea who they were. They are however thought to have contributed an enormous amount of vocabulary to both Finnic languages, and even more so Sámi languages. Maybe their shared cultural influence played a part in common markers of later cultures? Food for thought.