christmas | Steve Hyde

Patti hosts this weeks Lens-Artists Challenge – Celebrations around the World. How and what do you celebrate in your part of the world or in places you’ve traveled? Do you commemorate an historical event? The grape or olive harvest? Religious events? Do you go to music festivals? What milestone events do you commemorate? Show us joyful, solemn, traditional, or avant-garde festivals, parades, feasts, holidays…to name a few. To get your creative wheels turning, here are some examples from our travels.

I wish I had more examples to show but here are a few I do have that are outside of the UK…

We flew to Miami and picked up a cruise of the Dutch Caribbean for my 60th birthday. That falls in late December so we were there for their Christmas Holiday Season. It was my first experience of being somewhere warm in December. Sitting outside in warm sunshine, dressed in shorts and a T-Shirt, watching the film Elf on our ship certainly seemed all wrong.

In 2018 we happened to be in France when their soccer team qualified for the World Cup Final, which they went on to win. These are soccer fans getting face painted and then queuing to get into a large outdoor fan zone for the final. The atmosphere was fantastic.

Young French soccer fans walking the streets in Cannes.

France again, this time Nice. We stumbled into this Ironman Triathlon and arrived as these front runners were emerging from the transition zone from bicycle to marathon. This was one of the leaders but I have no idea who he is.

For my 50th birthday we decided to visit my brother in NJ and celebrate there. As we were there during the Holiday Season we bought tickets for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. That was superb and the building itself is something else. Our plan was to spend my birthday celebrating in Princeton but we got snowed in. I’ve never experienced being snowed in before or seen that amount of snow. The UK comes to a standstill with two inches of snow. This fall covered the fire hydrants! Amazingly, the following day, the roads were clear enough for us to drive in to New York.

A Greek wedding we stumbled across in Crete last year. That’s rice hitting the groom side on. The priest followed the wedding couple down the steps and then emptied a large bag of rice over the pair of them.

Finally a few images from the Fiesta in Estepona, Spain where we were staying a few weeks ago. Lots of the locals, especially the youngsters, dress in traditional costume. A brilliant experience for us.