A couple years ago, some friends and I went to Reykjavik for New Years’ Eve. Holy moly, what a party! The fireworks that only professionals can get in the U.S. are the same ones everyone on the street has there, and I do mean everyone. The city was lit up from horizon to horizon for hours. It was a stunningly beautiful display. There were also huge bonfires throughout the city. We crashed early – about 2 a.m., if I recall correctly. The locals didn’t start filtering out of the streets until about 9 a.m. Those Icelandic folks sure do love the new year.
Far be it from me to contradict an actual Spaniard, but are you sure we’re talking about the same thing? It’s very peculiar that all the references I’ve seen say October 12, and everyone in Madrid (the museums and whatnot) seemed to think it was the national holiday. I’m referring to the secular national holiday, not the feast day of the patron saint.
I was in Costa Rica on a school trip on Easter once. Certainly like nothing I’d seen before, having been raised in a hugely Jewish, white-bread suburb. Our tour bus got stuck behind Jesus in some little town.
I don’t think Oktoberfest is exactly a “holiday”, although it is a fun event and I left quite a few brain cells on some of those tent floors.
In Germany, I think I liked their Christmas best - big deal on Christmas Eve with the lighting of real candles on real trees that were probably only put up an hour or so earlier. Very peaceful, warm celebration, with good food, just a few gifts, and family and friends. Not nearly as commercial as in the USA (although sadly, they are catching up to that trend.)
Hated their New Year’s Eve…every drunk clown in the country firing off huge bombs on their balconies…place smelled like a sulfur mine by 12:01 and the stench never left until about January 15th.
The Germans have whole bunches of holidays I had never heard of, and for Easter, everybody has Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday off work - and it is a big travel weekend.
I once went to May Day celebration in what used to be East Berlin. Now that was a trip…a head trip…very odd, and you could tell 99.9% of those celebrating had no desire to be there and would much rather have been in a bar getting drunk, which is precisely what they all did following the parade.
I just remembered, I arrived in London on May 1, 2003. There was a huge May Day parade, composed mainly of very angry “leftist” groups. They were particularly angry, since this was shortly after the beginning of the war in Iraq. Lots of anti-American, anti-Bush and anti-Blair signs and rhetoric. The problem was that my hotel was half a block from Trafalgar Square, and that’s where the parade was emptying into. It took me forever to get to my hotel.
I was also on Maui, once, for the annual Onion Festival (not exactly a huge holiday). I was amazed at all the things they could make with onions, and how sweet Maui onions are.
Junkanoo in the Bahamas.
Junkanoo is actually a celebration of Boxing Day, but unique to the Bahamas. The celebration starts at 2:00 a.m. on December 26 (and January 2); it originally was set to begin just after midnight mass got out. We were visiting Nassau around 1971, and my mother got the idea to try to check it out.
None of us was waking up at 2:00 a.m., but we got up at 4:00 a.m. and took a taxi to Nassau. The celebration was in full swing. The streets were crowded – you could barely walk from block to block – and in the middle of the road, people were dancing, wearing costumes with wings and other elaborate items, made of cardboard covered with colorful crepe paper. There was a very strong beat of music, and cowbells, and drums, a chant that went up and down the street. The beat seemed to surround everything.
I loved it.
My brother, however, did not. He got lost in the crowd for a little bit, and it was too much for him (my mother mentioned that we were the only white faces there, a fact I really hadn’t noticed or cared about). My mother led us up a side street; I couldn’t hear what she was saying, so I thought she was just trying to go around the block to get nearer the music. Then she found a taxi and tried to get us in.
I thought she was nuts. I was not getting up a 4 a.m. to head back to the hotel. I stayed (I was around 18 at the time) and hung out until the entire thing petered out around 6:00 a.m.
The celebration seems to be still going on, but it doesn’t look like it’s the same: there are actual musical numbers and elaborate costumes. It’s sort of the difference between sandlot baseball and Little League: it’s become organized. They even charge admisstion! It does not look like the nearly spontaneous celebration it was back then.
Once again this May-Day parade was a demonstration , not a holiday. You might as well class the recent pro-immigrant demonstrations in the USA as a holiday. Quite a few people seem to be confusing demonstrations and festivals (such as Guy Fawkes) as holidays. To me a holiday is when people have the day off work, and banks, shops and businesses are closed for the day.
In Colombia: (red means non-working day for most)
Jan 1 New Year’s Day
Jan 6 Epiphany
Viernes de Reina (the four Fridays before Carnaval–outdoor concerts throughout the city)
Friday night before Carnaval–La Guacherna (musical parade throughout the city)
Sat–Tue Carnaval (second largest in the world after Rio; parades and concert)
Mar 19 Saint Joseph’s Day
Semana Santa (the week before Easter) includes Apr 13 Maundy Thursday; Fri Apr 14 Good Friday
Apr 16 Easter
May 1 Labor Day
May 29 Ascension Day
Jun 19 Corpus Christi Day (for teachers who count ballots after elections)
Jun 26 Sagrado Corazon Day (Sacred Heart)
Jul 3 Saints Peter and Paul’s Day (for teachers who count ballots after elections)
Jul 20 Independence Day
Aug 7 Battle of Boyacá Day
Aug 21 Assumption Day
Oct 16 Diä de la Raza (Colombus Day)
Nov 6 All Saints’ Day
Nov 11 Cartagena Independence Day
Dec 8 Immaculate Conception Day (Big party the night before)
Dec 25 Christmas Day (Big party the night before)
I’ve done most of the holidays in Belgium, but only the strange Catholic ones caught me off guard, and most of that was because of, say, finding the bank closed because of Assumption Monday or something. One cool thing, though, was St Nicholas’ day, as Sint Niklaas came into town along the canal on a boat, in full episcopal regalia and with his many many . . . um. . . helpers, all of whom are “Black Piet”, basically elf-functioning but people in blackface dressed in 17th-c costume who hand out handfulls of gingersnaps. In Ghent I stood on a corner watching this and one of the new local Congolese residents rode up on his bike and was like, WTF. Also saw it in Delft as a restaurant we were in was invaded by Zwartepiets and everyone starting singing a song but me and my friend didn’t know the words and they didn’t beleive us.
Christmas season in Austria was cool because on that side of Europe they have this character who travels around with Nicolas-- Krampus, who is, well, he’s tall and bright red and has horns and a tail and he beats you with a stick if you’ve been bad-- they cometo parties and do this ‘who’s been bad’ interrogation schtick with the kids who love it. The decorative chocolates that go along with this character are diabolically delightful.
The other one that sticks out in my mind is Heiligbloeddag in Bruges, Belgium-- the annual procession with a relic of the holy blood that they’ve done most years since. . . 1320 or so? After 1380 or so this started to get fancied up with pageant floats and short dramas and tabelaux vivants and such and this century it’s become a bit of a ‘good old days’ late-Medieval style thing with costume and all people- or animal-drawn floats. Some guy dressed as king Boudewijn, lots of little Biblical presentation, every important cleric in the damn country, etc. Quite cheesy and raucous but then everyone gets very quiet as the relic goes by.
Oh, lastly, the Gentse Feesten–a week long arts and music festival in Ghent which is totally off the hook and Belgian-beer-fortified and absolutely trippy. It takes over the entire town-- offices close for the week and a lot of locals flee for the coast, as it’s a bit like a natural disaster. If you’re in Belgium in July check it out.
When was this? I’m asking because never in my life (I’m 28) have I seen a Lucia with actual candles, until I saw the Lucia parade at the Swedish embassy in Moscow. They’ve always been electrical candles. It ticked me off as a kid.