On Festivals

The fact that I stay outside home has led me to miss a lot of festival celebrations with my family members. Not only me, but most of the young people who stay outside their homes for work or studies tend to miss a lot of festivals.
During festivals when I am not at home, I tend to visit the heart of cities (or what we call the old city part of the town) to see how the festival is celebrated in the city. Today was such an occasion. Today was Dassera and so I had been to the old part of Pune (Deccan and nearby area) to see how the festival is celebrated. I was very happy to see the automobile stores, mobile shoppes and other shops geared up for the Dassera shoppings. [Hope that they have a good sales today. (Rain clouds lurking around)]. I saw a lot of people in traditional dresses but yet I felt that the feeling of festival was missing amongst people. The festival feeling was just like superficial. It was as if there had to be some ritual on Dassera because it was done by ancestors. The rituals are considered as a pain during the cosy holiday by most of the modern day nuclear families living in tier 1 or tier 2 cities.
I had observed the same during the festival of Ganpati - Most were invloved with worshipping their own at home idols.
When I look at why these festivals were started, I find strange to observe such kind of behaviour. These festivals were started for bringing people together. E.g: Lokmanya Tilak started Ganesh Festival to help people get together and plan for the freedom movement. I do not know who started Dassera but it also means the win of the good or the right v/s the evil or the wrong. So, ideally during these festivals people should meet together and discuss issues surrounding them. As such festivals should be an occasion of a get-together between people.
Yet more and more people, during these festivals, are opting to celebrate the festivals with their own families. People consider festivals as an occasion to be a time to be with their families.

So, I believe that there has to be a serious thought given on the reason why the festivals are celebrated - Is it because of our parents, ancestors [tradition] or are we seeing any value in it (other than, ofcourse, a holiday)

Dassera - I am missing the distribution of those apta leaves and taking the wishes of parents and elders.
(An interesting link of why the Apta tree leaves are distributed in Dussera. Click).

Wish everyone a very happy dussera.