In plain words
The people of Bhārata love sacred observance; they are a people who practise. And so the supreme purpose of holy festival days such as Śivarātri is precisely to take up the sādhanas needed to experience those days and rejoice in them according to their inner meaning, and to recognise your own svarūpa and realise it: it is not to feast on food and pleasures. To pass your life in sheer darkness without recognising the real principle is simply the way of the ignorant; it is not the mark of human beings, who have received as a boon the qualities of Viveka, discernment and Vairāgya.