Hi everyone! I hope you had a wonderful New Year's! I have a ton of pictures to share from our trip (spoiler alert - it was amazing), but in the meantime here's a quick post I was hoping to put up before we left but ran out of time to finish.
From the title of this post, you might have expected a post about Chanukah. Nope. Instead, I'm talking about Lyon's Fête des Lumières, which translates
to Festival of Lights!
Basically,
the Fête des Lumières is an annual festival in Lyon during which illuminations
and light shows are set up across the city. The festival’s origins date back to
the Middle Ages, when the people of Lyon prayed to the Virgin Mary to protect
the city from the Black Plague. After the city was spared, they put up a statue
of Mary next to Fourvière, the huge basilica overlooking the whole town (you
can see it in my picture here), to thank her. The inauguration of the statue
was supposed to be on September 8, 1852, but the Saône flooded, so the
celebration was postponed to December 8. When a huge storm struck the morning
of December 8, the city leaders decided to postpone the celebration yet again.
However, since the weather cleared up by the evening, all of the people in Lyon
ended up illuminating their windows with candles and celebrating and singing
out in the streets anyway. It became an annual tradition to light candles and
celebrate on December 8.
It used
to be a one-day celebration each year, but over the last decade or so it has
grown into a 4-day event. It would be an understatement to say that the Fête
des Lumières is a big deal in Lyon -- it's a huge deal. Apparently,
Lyon has about 7 million visitors each year and 4 million of them come
during this one long weekend! And according to Wikipedia, this is one of the
largest festivals in the world in terms of attendance, along with Oktoberfest
in Munich and Carnivale in Rio!
This
year La Fête des Lumières was held the weekend of December 5-8. I went Friday,
Sunday, and Monday nights, and as you can imagine, the streets were jam-packed.
The crowds Friday night were shoulder-to-shoulder, and my little group wove
through as best we could. Sunday and Monday nights weren't too bad because most
tourists left by Sunday afternoon and it was chilly and drizzling a little. (I
heard that Saturday night was unimaginably crowded, but I missed it because I
actually took a little side trip that weekend to my friend’s family’s home in
the country outside of Lyon. That’s a story for another post though!)
Over 70
spectacles, sponsored by various companies and organizations, were set up
across the entire city. They ranged from very simple, static lights to 10-15
minute-long shows. My photos don’t do it justice, but, thanks to the wonders of
the Internet, I can share the festival with you!
Here
are my favorite light shows:
L'Opéra (Projected onto the side of the
Opera building. The Anooki are like the minions in Despicable Me and are
adorable.)
Place des Terreaux (Projected onto the Fine Arts
Museum and the Hotel de Ville. Starts out slow but it’s fantastic!)
Cathédrale Saint-Jean (Projected onto a cathedral that
took over 400 years to complete. Abstract and awesome.)
Place Antonin Poncet (Projected onto the façade of a
building. It also starts out slow, but I promise it’s worth it. When I showed Drew the video, he said this was definitely his favorite.)
The website for the event has a ton of great
photos from this year too!
Overall,
it was fantastic to be in the city during its big weekend and to celebrate with
the people of Lyon (and the rest of the world!).
