Ruminations

jollification [jol-uh-fi-key-shuhn]

noun:
lovely merrymaking; festivity

Examples:

Even the mascot that day celebrated with a raw passion that belied his novelty dragon costume and the manufactured family-friendly jollification expected from mascots. (Ben James, The seven greatest rugby moments the Principality Stadium has seen, Wales Online, June 2019)

Abstaining, for a moment, from the clamor of compulsive jollification, and instead leaning into the reality of human tragedy and of my own need and brokenness, allows my experience of glory at Christmastime to feel not only more emotionally sustainable but also more vivid, vital and cherished. (Tish Harrison Warren, Want to Get Into the Christmas Spirit? Face the Darkness, New York Times, November 2019)

He told about the midnight dances and how the Nymphs who lived in the wells and the Dryads who lived in the trees came out to dance with the Fauns; about long hunting parties after the milk-white Stag who could give you wishes if you caught him; about feasting and treasure-seeking with the wild Red Dwarfs in deep mines and caverns far beneath the forest floor; and then about summer when the woods were green and old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to visit them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end. (C S Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

Now that Old Grandmother's birthday had come, the Lesleys had an excuse for their long-deferred jollification. (L M Montgomery, Magic for Marigold)

For a long, long time they have been staying in the caves and hiding away in the tops of the corners and crevices. But last night they had their first real jollification. (Mary Graham Bonner, Daddy's Bedtime Bird Stories)

Thomas Wilson, who spoke in a strain so ambitious and toploftical as to be scarcely intelligible to the magistrates, succeeded after much ado in making their worships comprehend that on the night previous he had had a jollification with a friend in Merrion-street. (Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin), 21 March 1842)