Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/355



The readjusting of the character of the Portland Rose Festival, offers an excellent opportunity for transforming it into a real folk festival for the Pacific Northwest. It would not thus be less a rose festival, for in the rose it has a most appropriate designating symbol—one exquisite in beauty and matchless for its distinctive fitness. This charming emblem would still serve to designate and to decorate, but in making it a folk festival it would become an occasion intent on suggesting through music and pageantry the inmost spirit, power and purpose of the people here.

The festival would become an experience instead of a show. With increased depth and volume of meaning the festival would have perpetual youth and become a joy forever.

In a folk festival the people of the Pacific Northwest obtain a new view of their past-making and their traditions. It would be a medium of culture for all. Out of its past alone can a people obtain an inspiration for genius and future greatness. On the past alone must the enduring achievements of a people be built. Vividly interpreted, that past becomes the vehicle to convey to the social mind and heart its working ideals.

That a folk festival of the right kind is an indispensable factor in the making of a people is suggested by the fact that no great peoples have been without it, and those like the Hebrews and Greeks, whose world contributions have been most illustrious, have had festivals most expressive of their peculiar national genius. And if we care to go farther back we find credited to the folk festival the origin of language, music and poetry—those cultural joy-inspiring powers and possessions that made the race human.

Before Christianity there were the midwinter holidays expressive of the joy of returning warmth and longer days; and Easter, too, celebrating the fresh glow of life in grass and tree ; and Thanksgiving and Harvest Home, as a grateful recognition of accumulated Winter store. Christianity could only