Winter Veil is probably the Azerothian festival I enjoy the most. Running over 18 days, Winter Veil is less time pressured than many of the other seasonal events, has some fun quests and interesting challenges, some cool companion pets and the distinct feel of celebration about it. After all, there is something nostalgic about checking the gifts under the tree, waiting impatiently until Christmas day and then opening the gaily wrapped packages to see what they contain. As usual Winter Veil is packed with goodies including companion pets (Red and Green Little Helpers, Snowman kit, Jingle Bell), festive goodies, quests and achievements (see below about quests and achievements).
Winter Veil clearly falls around the time and alludes to the major Western festival of Christmas (mistletoe, holly, gifts under the festively decorated fir trees, the garb and roles of Father Winter and his helpers, traditional Christmas foods, reindeer, the Greench etc). The date of Christmas is close to (though not exactly on) the date of the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (and the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere) and it was common in pre-Christian Europe and in East Asia to celebrate a festival in the very depths of winter in the hope that summer, light, warmth and growth would return to the world. In the quest line The Reason for the Season both Dwarven and Tauren Legends are cited to indicate that Winter Veil was a time to celebrate the land’s blanketing with snow by Great-Father Winter and the renewal of the land. The traditionalists lament that the Goblins have commercialised the season with “a bumbling fool in a red suit,” the giving of gifts and festival foods. This is the closest that Winter Veil gets to alluding to the other major reason that Christmas has been celebrated in the West over the last 2000 years – the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in the small hamlet of Bethlehem in Israel. Jesus was thought by many to be the long awaited Messiah (Christ) and he made radical claims about himself and announced a radical message about God’s love and forgiveness that got him offside with the religious authorities of the day. Despite his subsequent death at Roman hands, his followers claimed that he had risen from the dead, continuing to spread his movement and message and “turning the world upside down.” It is perhaps surprising that such an influential person, who is honoured, at least in name, by half the world’s population and respected by icons such as Mohammad, Mahatma Ghandi, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa, is so easily sidelined into obscurity. While Christians might claim that Jesus is the Reason for the Season, any allusions to the existence and influence of this world figure in the world of Azeroth are at best obscure, satirical and perhaps unwelcome – reflecting a major trend in popular, secular and neo-spiritual Western culture.
This guide will look at the quests, achievements and the changes from 2009.
