Oktoberfest in Munich… Crazy, that’s about all I can say.
And Tabaski in Senegal…
A holiday which involves the ritualized slaying of a goat by nearly every Senegalese family, that’ll stick with you.
Not me, but a friend was in Germany (forget where, Medium sized industrial city) and video taped the New Year’s Eve Festivities.
Everyone is drunk, on a bridge with fireworks.
Said it was insane and amazing no one went up in flames that night.
We have attended the Heideblutenfest. ( Heather Blooming Festival) in Northern Germany in late August.
All the local villages attend, there is a massive parade ( no balloon floats) where the local farmers dress up their tractors or horse and wagon, and pull local displays, kinda like homecoming. Really nice to watch and very traditional. It kicks ass really. It is the highlight for the town ( Schneverdingen) before it is lulled back to sleep for the rest of the year.
There are 10,000 bajallion local marching bands, which are good, but we decided what the bands needed was a really good all-black southern marching band to jazz things up a bit. (Zee germans still like zayr marches, ja.)
Yanno how parades here have huge gaps between the participants? Not here. It was one right after another. Everyone and their brother shows up for these events. It had to last two hours, or seemed like it in the hot august sun. The wagons through out freebies which are always a crowd pleaser ( trial size samples of stuff and gummie bear treats in bags.)
And the beer tents open at something like 8am. My husband meandered up with his cousin at 10am and was completely hassled by the guys were there since it opened. We wandered by at 11pm and there was still a clot of men huddled around the beer tents drinking and talking loud.
The funniest thing was seeing a bunch of little girls marching in cheerleader outfits and one wagon being pulled had a naked guy ( laying face down) getting a massage.
OK, it’s not a foreign country, but I had to mention this…
A lot of states have their own holidays, like Massachusetts with Patriot’s Day(Anniversary of the battles of Concord and Lexington, not to mention the day they hav the Boston Marathon), which other states don’t celebrate. In Utah it’s Pioneer Day in July. They celebrate the entry of Brigham Young and the Mormon Pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley. It’s an excuse to use up the leftover fireworks from the Fourth of July. There’s also a Huge parade with floats that mostly celebrate Mormon history.
One year they invited Bob Eubanks (of “The Newlywed Game”) to be the Host at the parade. I don’t think he knew what he was getting into, because the parade seemed to have him floored.
The 4th of July in Philly was kind of cute 
Specially since your Spanish servant here (bow) got to spend it with two Englishmen and a Swede.
What? It’s foreign to me.
Hmm. You’d think what with all the travelling I’ve done, I’d have a story for this, but I don’t. I’ve managed to completely miss all local holidays, AFAIK. However, I did once witness a huge political demonstration in Argentina. When I found out what it was for, I wanted to join them, but was told that would not be such a good idea. Darn.
Absolutely! I, for one, would like to hear more about your experience. As an American, I think your point of view on the whole shindig should be interesting.
I’m usally not off work for Halloween, Independence day, Valentines day, or No Pants Day (first friday in may if your wondering) but I would still consider them holidays
I was in Southern Sweden for the Feast Sankta Lucia on more than one occason. A good feast day with all the usual Swedish food. What stood out to me was the parade of young girls dressed in white with flowered wreaths in their hair the lead girl’s wreath topped with several lit candles! I’ll I’ve got to say is while it looks pretty, it wouldn’t be my daughter in the lead (assuming I had a daughter).
I’ve been in India for - let’s see.
Janamashtmi - birth of Krishna.
Raksha Bandhan - brother-sister festival
Navratri
Dussehra
Diwali
Kanj-Ka
Lodi
And probably a few others. Diwali-Dussehra was definitely the most impressive; raksha-bandhan has the most personal significance.
Fasching. The German(ic) Mardi Gras. It was great fun. Lots drinking, costumes, drinking, parades, drinking, etc. Did I mention the drinking? I spent the day dressed as Dr. Frank-n-furter…a picture of which is still buried in my most secret archives.
Lessee…
In most of Spain, summer festivals run about a week and are linked to the local patron saint (except for St John’s Eve, midsummer, which of course doesn’t last a week). Daytime activities very often include “dancing giants”, always a fairgrounds and a market; nighttime includes fireworks. Other activities (bullfights of different kinds, typical dances, etc) vary greatly by location. My hometown is big enough to have fireworks every night of the festivals, the small towns in the area (500-2000 people) will have them only on the saint’s feastday’s eve and on the feastday.
Very few parades; we have processions but no parades. The only instances I can think of when we have parades with those big decorated carts are Carnaval (mardi gras) and Reyes (the Three Mage Kings bring presents to children on the Epiphany, Jan 6th; the parade is on the eve).
I was born in Pamplona - to me, working on July 7th is kind of… erk. I can’t. You want me to be at work and threaten with firing me if I’m not, fine, but I won’t work a whittle.
That year in Philly, July 4th was a Friday - aha, the 7th was next Monday! So since someone had to be “on duty”, I offered to do it in exchange for getting the 7th off. Boss agreed. I could work from home, my internet connection from there was actually better than from the office.
My office was on Independence Mall; I lived 6 blocks away. I got on my computer at the agreed time; got no calls or email at all; did some data-cleansing and house-cleaning. A bit before noon I left the house and went down to watch the parade. It did look a lot like the Reyes parade, only with more flags 
and less candy - and yes, I realize it was actually our Reyes parade that got shaped after yours!
An old lady asked me why I wasn’t waving a flag; I explained that it wasn’t my flag and that “back home” it would actually be considered disrespectful to fly a flag not your own (both together, yes, but flying another’s flag without yours is a no-no; I guess this comes from the times of piracy, of which the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Biscayne saw their fair share). She thought it was weird and wouldn’t believe I wasn’t an American until I showed her my passport. I do have an accent, but apparently it’s not very noticeable. It’s also not the kind of accent most people identify as “Hispanic” (i.e., I don’t sound Mexican). She still thought it was funny but gave me a “well, welcome to America!”
I went back home, no calls all day. Continued the data-cleansing, watched a DVD, surfed the net. Logged off at 6, went to pick the Swede at his hotel for dinner (we worked for the same company but I was located there and he was visiting). We ran into the Englishmen: one worked for our company, the other one used to and was now living in Delaware. We all went to a couple of bars in 2nd street, then had dinner. I wanted to see the fireworks but they didn’t (pity, I would have liked to compare…): we spent a swell 6 hours listing all the reasons Americans are One Weird Bunch and talking about a lot of things that you generally can’t talk about with Americans without running into a PC-bull, like politics and religion. They deposited me at home at 2am before heading for the hotel, by which time most of Philly seemed to be deeply asleep as usual.
All in all, it seemed pretty mild, very nice and a good excuse to play dress-up. But I guess that’s logical, given the idea of a “festival” that we have back home. All night up and bullruns followed by a hot chocolate breakfast, anybody?
American festivals seem to be divisable into “fair type things” and “parades”, most of the time. Mardi Gras in New Orleans sounds like our kind of stuff, but heck, that place was founded by Spaniards as Nueva Barcelona! Some of its founders’ notions seem to have survived the French and the Americans
Back home, when it’s really hot during town festivals and you see an open window with people watching the street (specially after the Chupinazo, the firecracker that marks the opening of the festivals in my part of Spain), your party will get close to that house and start chanting “aaaaa-gua! aaaaa-gua!” (wa-ter, wa-ter) until they get a good dousing. With clean water, hopefully! When it’s noon and the thermometer is over 100F, it sure feels nice.
Darn I’m so old, I haven’t done that for years.
I missed No Pants Day!!!
Hell.
Great story, Nava. Too bad about the fireworks, though, that’s often the best entertainment of the day.
Oh, like there’s that much of a difference between Spain and France … :: d&r ::
Holidays? Let’s see…
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at least one Fourth of July in the US as a kid… northern Minnesota, IIRC.
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Gay Pride in Madrid is awesome - saw it in 2002.
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While in Spain this past time, I saw a couple of festivals, including some sort of Maragato festivity in Astorga (dancing horses!), Santa Tecla in Tarragona (way, way too many firecrackers, plus gegants (traditional giant puppets), amazing processions, and castellers - human castle builders), and the tail end of the Mercè in Barcelona (more castellers and gegants, plus sardana dancing and the most unbelievable fireworks display).
I was in Madrid for Spain’s national holiday on October 12, but it was fairly dull - just a military parade; I’d much rather be in Ottawa on Canada Day. Though the King did put in an appearance. Apparently the place to be is Zaragoza for the Virgen del Pilar on the same day, which I briefly considered, but it was 100% impossible to get a room without booking centuries in advance.
Wow! This is neat! Thanks for for all your stories. I especially liked hearing about Songkran and Nepi. Keep your reminisces coming!
I spent Christmas and New Year’s in Denmark in 1972.
New Year’s Eve was one of the most memorable nights of my life.
Less than two weeks earlier, Nixon had ordered the resumed bombing of North Vietnam. The Scandanavians knew that this was a crushing disappointment since many Americans had thought that a peace agreement was near.
At the end of the meal, the group of about sixteen new Danish acquaintainces that I spent the evening with stood and raised their glasses and sang in English “We Shall Overcome.”
I will never forget their kindness.
Actually, though I spent that whole summer in Akademgorodok, for Ivan Kupalo we drove a couple of hours outside town into the middle of nowhere, to a town of maybe a few hundred people - no bonfires in Akademgorodok that I was aware of. It was pretty funny, though - word got out that there were a bunch of Americans running around, and I ended up being interviewed by a local TV station.
Mostly the whole thing seemed like a typical excuse to get rowdy and/or drunk. I wonder if people still practice the ancient pagan aspects of the holiday beyond that?
Oh, I forgot, I was in Bahrain for the Shia festival of Somethingorother. It commemorates the death of Somebody. Black flags all over the place. At least some self-flagilation. Very odd.
Nonono… Hispanity’s international holiday Spain’s national holiday is July 25 and doesn’t get any particular celebration, it’s just an off-work day (Santiago/St James is Spain’s patron saint; Our Lady of the Pillar is Hispanity’s)
That holiday used to be bigger. Then we got on this absurd guilt trip over bringing the flu to Tierra del Fuego and Social Security to Costa Rica. Now most Spaniards wouldn’t dare call that day by its official name any more (día de la Hispanidad). I realized the absurdity of it all when I got to Miami and it was full of posters advertising el Día de la Hispanidad and el Día de la Raza. The point got hammered down even further over the years: Argentina, Colombia, México, Costa Rica… Meeting several brazilians who gushed about their pleasure visiting El Pilar in Zaragoza and being allowed “to kiss Our Mother’s mantle” was waaaay cool. I checked next time I went to El Pilar: the flags around the altar include Portugal and her colonies, as well as Spain and hers. There’s also flags from other countries but they’re more recent.
I don’t dance flamenco, but I dance sardana. Were you able to join in? It’s incredibly easy, there’s only seven possible steps and one of the people in the wheel directs the dance.
That’s the holiday of Ashura I mentioned in my post. I was allowed to enter the mosque during the celebrations, it started with the re-telling of the betrayal of Husayn ibn Ali at the battle of Karbala. Finally the flagellants come in to chanting and start to rhythmically beat themselves, some with chains, others with sticks and others with the flat sides of long knives. The entire service went on for hours. I used my digital camera to discretely take some video which I’ll dig up when I’m on R&R in a couple of weeks if anyone is interested. I also was in Karbala, Iraq during Ashura, but didnt’ go in the mosques. In fact someone told me to get off the streets or I was a dead man, so I did and I’m not.
Here’s a Wikipedia article.