Redemption Day

Redemption Day is a Smurf day of observance that takes place in the spring in the EMPATH: The Luckiest Smurf story series. It is a very somber time when the Smurfs are reminded each year what their innocence as a Smurf will cost them.

On the day prior to Redemption Day, the Smurfs abstain from all food and all forms of pleasure as they write on a scroll made from a special form of paper all the faults they have committed over the past year. On the day itself, the Smurfs dress in special baptismal gowns and publicly recite all the faults they have written down. Then they proceed to the Pool of Souls, where they must swim across to prove their innocence, which the spirits of the pool usually judge the swimmer on the basis of committing an act that's worthy of death, such as taking another being's life. Any who are found innocent are allowed to live, while those who are found guilty will drown in the Pool of Souls and become another spirit to judge those who will swim its waters. At the end of the day, the scroll listing a Smurf's faults is thrown into a fire burning in a brazier with special wood, and after the Smurf is given a loaf of bread and a glass of smurfberry wine, a black mark is placed on that Smurf's forehead from the ashes of the burned scrolls as a reminder that he is considered innocent.

In the history of the EMPATH story series, every Smurf up until the point of "The Innocence Of A Smurf" was judged innocent. On that particular Redemption Day, however, Empath confessed that he was forced to take the life of a fellow student in Psychelia, Polluxis, during a training battle where only one of the combatants would survive. During his swim across the Pool of Souls, he was initially judged guilty and thus drowned in the pool. However, the spirits saw that Empath's heart was pure in the matter of that situation, that he did everything he could to avoid taking the Psyche's life, and brought him back to life, much to the amazement of his fellow Smurfs.