Festival, in a religious sense, is a day of feasting and thanksgiving.

Among the ancients, feasts were instituted upon various accounts, but especially in memory of some favourable interposition of Providence. Thus, the Jews had their feast of passover, pentecost, and tabernacles; the Greeks their cerealia, panathenaea, &c., and the Romans their saturnalia, ambarvalia, &c. See Passover, Cerealia, &c.