Reformation Day: The Holiday That Celebrates a Strongly Worded Letter

Reformation Day is an annual Earth holiday celebrated on October 31st by Protestant Christians to commemorate the day in 1517 when Martin Luther allegedly nailed his 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. This makes it one of the few holidays explicitly celebrating an act of property damage and workplace complaint filing.

The holiday marks the beginning of what became known as the Protestant Reformation, though as previously noted, “The Great Church Breakup” would have been more emotionally accurate.

Observance

Reformation Day is primarily celebrated in Germany (where it’s a public holiday in several states) and other predominantly Lutheran regions. Celebrants typically:

• Attend church services featuring hymns written by Martin Luther, who was apparently as prolific with music as he was with complaints
• Eat special foods, though notably not the sort of indulgences that started the whole affair
• Reflect on themes of grace, faith, and the importance of reading the fine print in religious contracts
• Pointedly ignore that it’s also Halloween, which the secular population finds far more interesting

The Halloween Problem

An unfortunate scheduling conflict has resulted in Reformation Day occurring on the exact same date as Halloween, when children dress in costumes and demand candy from strangers. This has led to some awkward situations in Protestant households, where parents must explain why they’re commemorating theological reform while their children are dressed as vampires.

Some Lutheran children have attempted to compromise by dressing as Martin Luther for Halloween, though this has proven less effective for candy acquisition than traditional ghost costumes.

Regional Variations

In Switzerland, they celebrate Reformation Day on the first Sunday in November, having apparently decided that October 31st was too crowded. The Swiss have always been very practical about these matters.

In Slovenia, Reformation Day commemorates the translation of the Bible into Slovenian, proving that the Reformation had excellent brand extension across multiple markets.

Cultural Significance

Reformation Day represents humanity’s odd habit of celebrating the moment when large groups of people decided they could no longer stand each other’s company and needed to form separate organizations with slightly different beliefs. This pattern would repeat itself thousands of times in Protestant Christianity alone, suggesting that humans are exceptionally good at finding reasons to disagree about the details while agreeing on the general concept.

The holiday also marks one of history’s most successful demonstrations of how posting your opinions publicly can change the world, though Martin Luther’s success rate of “started a global religious movement” remains statistically anomalous compared to most public posting.

Modern Observance

In recent years, some Protestant churches have begun hosting “Reformation Day” events as an alternative to Halloween celebrations, featuring games like “Pin the Theses on the Church Door” and “Bobbing for Apples (Which Are Theologically Neutral).” These events attract a very specific demographic.

A Note on Strongly Worded Communications

Earth is not alone in having its history altered by a particularly emphatic letter. The galaxy is littered with examples of civilizations fundamentally changed by someone who decided to write down their grievances:

• The Vogons once received a single-sentence complaint about their poetry that led to a 400-year civil war (the complaint read: “This is terrible”)
• The entire governmental structure of Betelgeuse VII collapsed after someone published “Twelve Reasons Why Our Emperor Might Actually Be Three Small Children in a Robe”
• The Alpha Centauri Treaty of 2891 exists solely because someone wrote “Could everyone please stop doing that thing with the plasma cannons” and 47 star systems agreed
• The Great Schism of Arcturus began with a memo titled “Some Thoughts on Our Current Tentacle-Arrangement Policy”

Historians note that while Earth’s reformation took several decades to fully unfold, the Sirius Theological Incident of 3002 concluded in just under eight minutes after someone posted their complaints directly into the planetary hivemind. The resulting reformation was significantly messier but far more efficient.

What makes Luther’s letter remarkable by galactic standards is not that it changed things—strongly worded letters do that constantly—but that he bothered to print it on paper and nail it to wood, which even by 16th-century standards seems unnecessarily complicated.

For the Visitor

If you find yourself on Earth on October 31st, you may notice two distinct types of celebrations occurring simultaneously: one involving theological reflection and hymn-singing, and another involving fake blood and miniature chocolate bars. The Guide recommends attending both, as they represent two equally important aspects of human culture: the desire to understand eternal truths, and the desire to obtain free candy.

Do not, under any circumstances, arrive at a Reformation Day service dressed as the Pope. This joke has been attempted 847 times and has never been well-received.