Religion plays a massive role in the Warhammer 40k setting, with the church known as the Ecclesiarchy holding massive social influence and temporal power within the Imperium of Man. Where there’s religion, there are holy days and festivals, and during the festive season that makes us wonder – does the 40k universe have anything analogous to Christmas?
There is no Christianity in the 40k universe – we learn from the Horus Heresy books that the ancient ‘Catharic’ faith is all but forgotten by the 31st millennium, and then effectively eliminated by the Emperor’s Great Crusade.
However, the look of Warhammer 40k is partly inspired by the architecture, clothing, and art of European high church Catholicism. The Christian epic ‘Dante’s Inferno’ is a conspicuous influence on the Horus Heresy narrative, and all the major authors who worked on it grew up in majority Christian countries. There’s plenty of Christian-ish stuff in 40k.
The Emperor of Mankind is a martyr whose sacrifice is understood to have saved mankind, similar to the Christian belief in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. But the Emperor is not understood to be an incarnation of a creator God.
Nor, as far as we know of Imperial doctrine, is the Emperor’s incarnation as a man a necessary prerequisite for his sacrifice to redeem mankind, unlike the Christian messiah. So a spiritual equivalent to Christmas isn’t possible in 40k.
But there can be a practical analog to Christmas: a massively popular midwinter festival focused on communal celebration and feasting. ‘Midwinter’ is a sketchy term for the Imperium of Man, a civilization that crosses multiple planets, including some which never have a summer, and others (like Terra) where the natural climate has been destroyed by industrialization.
But there are two major unifying festivals in the Imperial faith that each occur once a year, and might be considered something like ‘Imperial Christmas’.
Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension
The Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension is “the most notable Imperial holiday and the one that the majority of Imperial civilians observe”, according to the Warhammer 40k RPG supplement Dark Heresy: The Inquisitor’s Handbook.
“It celebrates the moment… when He was raised to the Golden Throne and made the transition to divinity”. Spiritually, this is closer to the Christian Feast of the Ascension than it is to Christmas.
For some planets, this is a week-long festival, with “feasting, games and spectacles to honor the Emperor”. There may be symbolic sacrifices, “such as the burning of books to offer their knowledge up to Him”.
It’s also considered a good time “to join people in wedlock or conceive children”, and there are mass ceremonies for “one or both” of the activities. It is also “impossible to overturn a ruling made during this time”, as – under such holy circumstances – “no false judgement can be made”.
On primitive worlds, it is considered a time when the Emperor looks down on his subjects in the material world, and “those brave and bold enough can earn a place at His side”. As a result, it is a time for sanctified warfare as “men and women fight and die” to prove their worth.
While much of the Dark Heresy line was published under license by Fantasy Flight Games, the Inquisitor’s Handbook was one of a very small number of early books created by the short-lived GW subsidiary Black Industries. It was written by a team including Warhammer 40k book author John French and the late Alan Bligh, making it very reliable – if now rather aged – lore.
Sanguinala
Sanguinala, also called the Red Feast, and the Festival of the Blessed Sacrifice, is an annual festival in honor of the martyrdom of Sanguinius, Warhammer 40k primarch of the Blood Angels. The celebration of Sanguinala on Terra forms the background to the novel Vaults of Terra: Carrion Throne, which gives us an in-depth look at the celebrations.
This is the most extreme version of the festival, with untold billions of Pilgrims overflowing the planet-city. “The most exalted of all” are “permitted to approach the Eternity Gate itself, to witness the rites of remembrance performed on the site of the Angel’s legendary stand”.
Sanguinala is described as a “feast”, but this is in the religious sense of a set of rites (which may involve eating or drinking) rather than a communal meal. Bells known as the “Blood Chimes” are tolled, and lesser bells are sounded throughout the Imperium “through the subtle arts of the astropaths and the Ministorum calendar-scryters”.
When the final rites are performed, “priests raised bloody offerings before their altars”, “drums rolled and hammered, war-horns blared, huge batteries of defense cannons discharged in salute”, and a great red light is fired into the sky above the Sanctum Imperialis powered by “lumen banks the size of Battleships”.
The pilgrims undertake actions that may be specific to the Pilgrim’s Way on Terra but probably reflect practices in the wider Imperium. They are red-robed, and carry banners and “effigies of the fallen primarch, some many meters high… given crude masks of gold paint and sporting crooked wings”. They have “regulation blood-lanterns…” which, at the end of the festival, are released to rise into the air in their billions.
As well as revering Sanguinius and blood, the festival is associated with fire. In the same novel, Lord Inquisitor Rassilo describes Sanguinala as “a celebration of dominance over the dark” in which people “light the fires, to push the shadows back…” In Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son, an exploding fuel dump is described as being like “pyrotechnic novelties on Sanguinala”.
This all paints a picture of Sanguinala as a riotous outdoor festival, similar to (but less frivolous than) a carnival, or a fire procession.
This kind of rich setting detail is one reason we love books about Warhammer 40k factions other than the Space Marines: they’re a window into the universe beyond the battlefield.
Source: Wargamer
