In plain words
The heap of the many śāstras, the Vedas and the Vedāṅgas cannot tear through the curtain of the jīva's mind. On this side of the curtain the jīva; God dwells on the far side: the effect on this side, on the far side the cause.
Embodiments of the divine Ātma!
The festivals and holy days of the Bhāratīyas are great holy days that make known Bhāratīya culture, its fellowship and its oneness. From ancient times Bhārata has been unable to understand the great and mighty Bhāratīya culture, still less to learn its inner meaning, and so it has gone on wasting its humanness.
Festivals and holy days are not without an outer meaning and an inner meaning. But man is not trying very earnestly to recognise that outer and inner meaning. Holy days arose to bring to mind the birthdays of the Avatāras who came down for the welfare of the world, the birthdays of great souls, and the death of the wicked who were thorns in the side of the world and lived by evil qualities and evil ways. Festivals, that is: people have celebrated festivals in order to call to mind the birthdays of great souls and the days on which the wicked died. The day on which Rāmacandra, the very form of Dharma, came down is Caitra Śuddha Navamī. On that day we keep a festival as the celebration of Rāma's birth. Śrāvaṇa Bahuḷa Aṣṭamī we hold to be the birthday of Kṛṣṇa, who came down to establish Dharma, practised it solely to teach Dharma and won the name Gītācārya; and on that Aṣṭamī day we keep a festival.
These nights, the Navarātris, the Śivarātris and Saṅkurātri, all these nights we regard as holy days on which the wicked were slain, holy days bound up with the death of the wicked, and on those days we keep festivals. Rāvaṇa, wicked and evil, was put to death: learned though he was, however bold and daring, it was because he was held to be without Dharma that he was slain, and the day of his slaying is this Vijayadaśamī. Against Mahiṣāsura, who ran riot with many evil forces, Durgā, Sarasvatī and Pārvatī, that is, Icchā-śakti, Kriyā-śakti and Jñāna-śakti, through the oneness of these three, from Āśvīja Śuddha Pāḍyamī right up to Navamī, these three forms took on a single form and fought: those were the days. The last day, the Navamī day, is the day on which Mahiṣāsura was crushed.