Meadthing
The Free Folk's great feast on the longest day of the summer, where a year of grudges is called out, struck, and wiped clean
The Meadthing falls on the longest day of the summer and is the great feast of the Free Folk’s year, where people eat and drink with the best they can provide.
Its real business is the settling of grudges. Anyone may call out a person who has wronged them and strike that person in the face for it, a slap or a punch according to the gravity of the wrong, and once it is done everybody has a clean slate for the year to come. People behave better through the year for not wanting to be called out at it.
It is not used frivolously. Everybody is expected to be serious, to be respectful, and to accept whatever is coming to them, and the punishment falls harsher on anyone who will not.