Thoron’s Blessings
Dates:
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Thoron’s Blessings Eve: Vicday, Cycle of Noent, Season of Ysandra
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Thoron’s Blessings Day: Esmayday, Cycle of Noent, Season of Ysandra
Observed by: Households, temples, and communities across the Xaverion Islands
Also known as: Winter’s Gift Days, The Blessings, The Long Table
Overview
As the last days of Ysandra’s season draw near and the worst of winter lies behind, families across the Xaverion Islands prepare for Thoron’s Blessings—two days of hearth, gratitude, and shared strength.
Where the Snowdance Ball is the glittering high-society peak of the end-of-year arc, Thoron’s Blessings is its heart. The great halls grow quiet; nobles return to their estates, merchants close early, and even the busiest cities slow as people turn inward to their own tables.
On Thoron’s Blessings Eve, households gather for an evening meal: friends, kin, found family, and any who have nowhere else to go. They look back on the year, speak praise of each other, and tell the stories of how they endured.
On Thoron’s Blessings Day, the focus shifts to tokens and charity: gifts are exchanged—especially for children, but often between adults as well—as a visible sign that no one survives a hard year alone.
Though the festival falls in Ysandra’s season, its dedication is to Thoron: not the harshness of “survival of the fittest,” but the recognition that strength is tested, proven, and shared when winter is darkest.
Names & Meaning
Thoron’s Blessings Eve & Day – The most common names in the current calendar. The wording and explicit dedication to Thoron are recent, dating to the rise of the New Faiths roughly eighty years ago. “Blessings” refers as much to the people at one’s table as to any divine favour.
Winter’s Gift Days – An older, more neutral term still used in mixed-faith towns, among families that never fully converted, and in documents from just before the New Faiths took hold. Here the focus is on the exchange of gifts and stories at midwinter rather than on any particular god.
The Long Table – A name that clearly predates the New Faiths, found in rural records, house ledgers and old stories. It refers to the custom of squeezing in as many chairs, benches, and crates as needed so everyone can sit at one table, however uneven.
Before Thoron’s clergy claimed it, the same midwinter interval already existed as a hearth-feast and gift-time under these older names. Only in the last few generations have temples and nobles begun to speak of “Thoron’s Blessings” as if the god had always owned the days.
History
The practice of gathering at the end of the coldest stretch of the year, sharing what was left of the stores, and exchanging small gifts is far older than the New Faiths.
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In village tales and household ledgers, the days appear simply as “the Long Table” or “gift-days at winter’s end.”
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Some coastal towns speak of “the nights of the red coals,” when the hearth was kept burning until dawn as a quiet defiance against the dark.
When the New Faiths spread through the Xaverion Islands, Thoron’s priests found this existing custom too deeply rooted to erase. Instead, they renamed and reframed it:
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the old gift-days became Thoron’s Blessings,
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the same span of days in the year was slotted into the reformed calendar, now described as lying within Ysandra’s season,
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sermons began to present the feast as an example of Thoron’s strength carrying folk through hardship, rather than a nameless, older tradition.
In cities and among devout noble houses, this newer reading has largely taken hold. In the countryside, many people still quietly call the festival Winter’s Gift Days or the Long Table, and treat the “Thoron’s Blessings” language as a temple coat of paint over something their grandparents were already doing.
Thoron’s Blessings Eve
Date: Vicday, Cycle of Noent, Season of Ysandra
Eve Traditions
The Hearth Feast
On the eve of Vicday it is customary to host a dinner with friends and family as the year is coming to an end. Some households lay out an almost absurd abundance—turkeys or large game birds, roasted roots, spiced breads, gravies, pies, and sweet puddings.
Others manage only a pot of stew and a single shared loaf. What matters is not scale but presence: that the table be shared, and that every person at it is acknowledged.
During the meal, it is traditional to:
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“Speak the year aloud” – recounting hardships, victories, and narrow escapes.
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Offer praise – each person is expected to name something they admire or are grateful for in another at the table.
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Leave a place for the absent – a spare cup or plate may be set, silent tribute to those lost or far away.
The Gifts of Warmth
What began among noble houses as a formal act of charity has spread into cities and towns as a common custom.
In the days before the Eve, people gather:
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spare blankets and cloaks
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winter boots, scarves, and gloves
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preserved food, herbs, lamp oil, and candles
These Gifts of Warmth are then distributed on the afternoon or late evening of Thoron’s Blessings Eve:
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Temples organize wagons to poorer districts.
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Inns and taverns may offer free hot stew to those who need it, funded by anonymous donors.
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Some families simply walk their own streets, pressing parcels into the hands of neighbours in need.
Among devout followers of Ysandra, Gifts of Warmth are seen as her gentle influence braided into Thoron’s harder creed: strength used to lift, not to crush.
Eve Atmosphere
Eve is often loud and busy: kitchens clatter, children peek at hidden baskets of gifts, elders argue cheerfully over which year in living memory was the hardest. Music is common—fiddles, flutes, simple drums, or temple choirs singing winter hymns about firelight and iron.
In villages, it is not unusual to see shared feasts between households that were at odds earlier in the year. To refuse such an invitation on Thoron’s Blessings Eve is considered a grave insult, almost a statement that you expect the other family not to survive the next winter.
Thoron’s Blessings Day
Date: Esmayday, Cycle of Noent, Season of Ysandra
If Eve belongs to the hearth and the hard-won strength of the past year, Thoron’s Blessings Day belongs to the morning-after: the quieter knowledge that one has made it this far, and that others helped.
Day Traditions
Morning Gifts
The morning of Esmayday is when gifts are exchanged. Children rise early, racing to check stockings, baskets, or shoes left by the door or hearth. Traditional gifts include:
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carved toys, puzzle-boxes, storybooks, and painted miniatures
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knitted scarves, mittens, and socks
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simple charms marked with Thoron’s sigil for luck and protection
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bundles of sweets, candied nuts, or dried fruits
Adults exchange gifts as well, though often more modestly: a well-made tool, a new ledger, a book, a bottle of good ale or spiced wine, or a piece of jewellery that commemorates something the recipient survived or achieved.
In some households, each gift must be accompanied by spoken words explaining why it was chosen and what strength it honours.
Table of the Second Day
The Day meal is usually simpler than the Eve feast: leftovers reshaped into pies and hash, thick soups, cold slices of roast, bread warmed again with butter and honey. The point is not to impress, but to linger in the warmth of the hearth and each other’s company.
In more devout Thoron houses, this second-day meal is explicitly framed as a reminder that even hard-won bounty can—and must—be stretched, preserved, and shared wisely if it is to last.
The White Flame Blessing (Day)
Where the Eve Vigil lights the hearth, the White Flame Blessing on Thoron’s Blessings Day looks outward.
At midday, the White Flame is:
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divided into smaller lanterns and carried through streets and farm lanes, or
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brought from the central temple brazier to light household candles for those who could not attend the night before
Blessings are spoken over doorways, workshops, and even stables—asking that the coming year’s trials temper rather than break those who live within.
In some towns, the lantern procession ends at the graveyard, where people pause briefly to remember those who did not live to see this year’s Blessings. It is common to leave a single candle or sprig of evergreen on a loved one’s stone.
Cultural Notes
Thoron’s Church
For strict Thoron adherents, the festival is about earned survival: sermons emphasise discipline, training, and the duty of the strong to defend the weak—so long as the weak are willing to stand and learn. Gifts often have a practical edge: good boots, new armour bindings, training weapons, or apprenticeships secured by temple sponsors.
Ysandra’s Followers
Among Ysandra’s faithful, Thoron’s Blessings is seen as a perfect moment to practice mutual aid. Their Gifts of Warmth efforts are often the most organised, and their White Flame prayers lean more toward community healing, shared knowledge, and support for those who fell through the cracks of the year.
Mixed or Secular Households
In less devout homes, Thoron’s Blessings is simply the winter family feast: no formal prayers, but plenty of toasts “to making it through another year,” “to us,” or “to next year being kinder.” Many who quietly follow the so-called Eighth Faith of cause and consequence still keep the holiday as a cultural anchor rather than a religious obligation.
Place in the Calendar
Thoron’s Blessings sits near the very end of the year, forming the middle step in the closing sequence:
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Snowdance Ball (Amber Noent Ysandra) – Public splendour and social ties in glittering halls.
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Thoron’s Blessings Eve & Day (Vic & Esmay Noent Ysandra) – Hearth, family, charity, and the recognition of shared endurance.
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Lantern Night (Li Noent Ysandra) – Quiet, lantern-lit farewell to the old year and its wandering spirits.
By the time Lantern Night arrives, most of the feasting is done, gifts have been opened, and the White Flame has burned low. All that remains is to see the year out with light in hand and, one hopes, fewer regrets than before.