Silverwheat Harvest Festival

Taking place twice a year in mid-summer and early winter right after the harvest, the Silverwheat Harvest Festival is a celebration of the plant's contribution to feeding the society and in later centuries, when its importance to the rapid population growth and nutritional efficiency that allowed it to happen has been fully understood, a holiday to celebrate the harvest druid Alliswert, who was responsible for its initial cultivation.

History

Harvest festivals were common throughout the ages, but they became much greater and opulent after silverwheat spread across the lands of Impera and ushered in an era of abundant food and less poverty and hunger. This newfound prosperity lead to everyone from peasants to lords to celebrate these harvests in a new and grander way that would put the old, humble celebrations to shame.
The first truly grand Silverwheat Harvest Festival was held a mere two years after the adoption of the crop in the Reventine empire in the town of Belega, a major distribution center for grain in the middle of the most fertile region of the country and it established a new standard for harvest celebrations throughout the Continent that was followed and increasing ever since.

Execution

Apart from the standard religious services carried out by village elders or priests for centuries, now significantly more pompous and complex, the new festivals feature everything imaginable, from fairs and markets all the way to circuses and jousting. Lords often use these celebrations to show off their wealth and prosperity and so they often push more and more attractions to be featured and pour a large amount of money in them in an unending race to outshine their aristocratic peers.
The festival can last anywhere from two days to a full week and in many locations throughout a singular kingdom simultaneously, although only one location at the time is the royal festival, despite the monarch usually being absent and touring the festivals of the most important lords in order to tighten his bonds with the aristocracy.