defestival1-4, Exercise 3: Carnival and Beltane

Model answer (check the details):

Claims: Edinburgh's Beltane Fire Festival, held on Calton Hill on the night of 30 April, presents itself as a revival of an ancient Celtic spring festival. German carnival is often described as an ancient pagan survival.

Documented: Beltane as a Celtic or Gaelic festival is recorded in older sources (for example in folklore collected in Scotland), but the Edinburgh event began in 1988 and is a modern creation by a group of performers, with a ritual drama that is newly devised (check). German carnival has medieval records of pre-Lent revelry, and its modern organised forms date from the 1800s.

What each shows: both are cases where a modern event rests on an older seasonal idea, and both are described as older than the record supports. Beltane is openly a revival; German carnival is a continuous but reshaped custom. The test is the same: find the earliest record, and ask who wrote the story of age.