Happy Monday, folks! It’s Wolfman Jew, here to welcome you to the Weekly Video Games Thread.

So we’re currently in the middle of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. But, speaking frankly, as a Jew, Chanukah’s a pretty banal holiday. Like, Purim? Purim rules; it’s about life and love and the pleasures of the spirit, senses, and flesh. Passover? That’s a holiday about heady philosophy, where you join a grand continuum of Jewish thought and hopefully come out a more thoughtful, decent person. By contrast, Chanukah is kinda boring, it’s hard not to see it in a weird, vaguely nationalistic context, and its outsized role in modern life feels like an attempt to retrofit it as our equivalent of Christmas in a very capitalistic, inauthentic way. As an equivalent it is at least a very functional avenue for getting video games as presents by your family (Sea of Stars! The better / remastered versions of Xenoblade and Control!), but it’s not emotionally stirring to me in any way.

Also, for those who’ve had the pleasure to not play it, Dreidel is basically the worst Mario Party mini-game. It’s slow, boring, random yet not random enough, and only one person ends up happy by the end. And I can now make that example since on Saturday I spent two hours on a charity stream on a “short” round of Mario Party 3.

Anyway, kvetching over. What I’d like to get at here is that despite those complaints and my general aversion to Christmas, I still spend much of the winter season in a festive mood, which means it’s now your job to enrich my soul by telling me about your favorite fictional video game holidays. If that means talking about dumb corporate edicts like MAR10 Day or N7 Day—or the depictions of real world holidays in games, like the memorable St. John’s Eve pageant in Pentiment—do it! But I’m especially interested in the ones crafted for the games we play. Who doesn’t like waking up in Chrono Trigger with the bustle and lights of the Millennial Fair to start us off? Or running up to Princess Peach’s Castle, bathed in the light of the Star Festival…

Wait a sec. Are all my examples just stuff from the start of a game that has little material impact on the adventure? No, no, wait, the Radahn Festival counts as a holiday. Or it least, it should and we deserve to get time off for the sacrifices we made in killing Radahn. Anyway, like, do that, or just tell us what your gaming experiences were like this weekend. And remember: Peely’s will be in about a week’s time!