History of festivals

A festival is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community.

Among many religions, a feast is a set of celebrations in honour of God or gods. A feast and a festival are historically interchangeable. However, the term "feast" has also entered common secular parlance as a synonym for any large or elaborate meal. When used as in the meaning of a festival, most often refers to a religious festival rather than a film or art festival.

In the Christian liturgical calendar there are two principal feasts, properly known as the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord (Christmas) and the Feast of the Resurrection, (Easter). In the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican liturgical calendars there are a great number of lesser feasts throughout the year commemorating saints, sacred events, doctrines, etc.

A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, orholiday.

A rock festival, or a rock fest, is a large-scale outdoor rock music concert, featuring multiple acts, often spread out over several days. The first rock festivals were put on in the late 1960s and were important socio-cultural milestones. In the 1980s a minor resurgence of festivals occurred with charity as the goal.

Today, many rock festivals are annual events sponsored by major corporations. Besides rock, many feature multiple genres of music such as pop, dance, andelectronic. Some owners of radio stations produce radio festivals that only include bands of a specific style of rock (according to what the station wants to promote). The size of these events mean that large temporary infrastructures are installed, supplying amenities like water-based ablution facilities.