The story of Mayfairstivus is pretty straightforward. This blog's author had been bogged down throughout October with school work and a self-imposed deadline to complete a yearlong project examining in great detail the foes of the Martian Manhunter. Burnt out but needing material for five regularly published blogs, the author grabbed his copy of the 1993 Mayfair Games DC Heroes Role-Playing Game Third Edition and scanned various entries as filler material for his blogs. The posts ran in early November, and prompted reader/contributor Tom Hartley to offer the author a boxed set of the 1989 Mayfair DC Heroes game for a reasonable price. The author was hesitant, but after being sent a zipped folder with scans of for thirty of the 75 character cards in the set, he relented. Tom shipped the set off for $25 total, packaged exquisitely and in remarkably good condition for a twenty-one year old package. The author had so many great cards, he decided to make a ton of brand new scans and offer them to his blogging buddies as a crossover event. He erroneously thought this would be very little work, but correctly predicted it would be fun and fill a whole slew of days. Since Chanukah happened to begin on December 1st, he co-opted the Seinfeld make believe holiday of Festivus and exploited it as a part of the Mayfair theme.
The Jewish people follow a lunar calender, which isn't as consistent as the more common Gregorian calendar that follows the Earth's orbit around the sun. There's an eleven day difference between the two systems, necessitating the use of an additional winter "leap month" called Adar Aleph seven times every nineteen years. Also, Jewish "days" begin when the first star is visible in the night sky. Therefore, while Chanukah began on December 1st according to a regular calender, it technically didn't commence until that night and would therefore continue until nightfall on December 9th. Since Mayfairstivus roughly approximated Chanukah, this initial offering ran nine days, with an optional tenth for stragglers and after party cleanup. If there is a second Mayfairstivus, it will not follow Chanukah, since nobody would want to deal with a lengthy crossover on December 20-28, 2011.
These days, most people know the story of Chanukah-- about how the Maccabees retook the temple in ancient times, and manged to make one day's worth of consecrated oil last the eight required to make more. Since the story and holiday are so familiar, a lot of folks assume it's the Jewish celebration of the year. Actually, it was something of a lesser and irregularly observed holiday until all the gentile kids started getting all those presents relatively recently (late 19th-early 20th century.) Sukkot (sort of our Thanksgiving, but involving camping outdoors for a week,) and Purim (our Halloween,) were bigger for longer, but Rosh Hashanah (New Year's,) Yom Kippur (spiritual tax filing/accounting,) and Pesach (Passover, or Easter without the Jesus) are the really important observances each year.
Finally, punk rock was an anti-commercial, low-fi musical form whose heyday was from in the mid-to-late '70s. The aggressive mohawk hairstyle survived the movement into New Wave, which is where it landed on my head in 1983.
Any more questions?
At nightfall on the first day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
At nightfall on the second day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
At nightfall on the third day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
At nightfall on the fourth day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
At nightfall on the fifth day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
At nightfall on the sixth day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
At nightfall on the seventh day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
At nightfall on the eighth day of Mayfairstivus, these candles were lit:
As Mayfairstivus drew to a close, these final gifts were presented:
As Mayfairstivus drew to a close, these final gifts were presented:
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