Thumbnail basically explains this. Y'all keep saying howls were just people howling (while they probably did involve that, they weren't /just/ that, either), and making the first full moon of November a day about the first howl, when it's the actual, main therianthropy day. This is incredibly annoying to me for some reason so have a ramble. 1. Howls. Howls aren't just going outside and howling. They're closest to meets. It's actually a bit of a foggy line. Howls tend to me in nature almost all of the time, and are generally further from civilisation than meets (meets are just a few therians meeting up), and also tend to have a weird amount of fire involved. The first howl (harvest howl) had a rule against non-natural light sources unless strictly necessary and asks for folks to help bring firewood, the AHWW faq' section on howls talks about bonfires twice, and some of the photos from old howls include fire, firewalking, and jumping over fire. So, uhh, yeah. Fire. They also seem to be a bit AHWW focused, at least according to AHWW itself, but the harvest howl update post talks about how it's "not just an ahww thing anymore", and I've seen some stuff implying that they at least became generally (old) therian forum focused, but take that one with a grain of salt. 2. Therian day / the first full moon of November Therian day being the first full moon of November is because of the harvest howl, yes, but it is not about the harvest howl, and is not called the harvest howl. It's just a convenient day to put the therian day on, because: 1. full moon (the old therian community had a lot of stuff around lycanthropes, and therians ofc used to be called weres or spiritual lycanthropes). and 2. large therian event. Other than that, it has nothing to do with the howl. It's a general therian day, and has no traditions, but most of what I've seen folks do is try and express their therianthropy more (wearing gear, doing vocals, being outside in nature, doing quads, etc.), feel euphoria and more generally comfortable in their own skin, however they want to do that (often meditation, quads, gear, vocals, being in nature, etc.), generally do stuff around therianthropy as a community (learn about it and it's history, talk to others, etc.), and just generally do stuff that you associate with your therianthropy. It's just the main, general therianthropy day, and the first one, from what I know of. Also, howls set on that day are harvest howls, not the day. It is therianthropy day. That is it's name. Not harvest howl or harvest howl day. Therianthropy day. Most info from AHWW, the sites with photos of the howls, and generally random stuff I remember from various sources.
