The road to Navidad is always so pretty here.
There are three "phases" in Medellín:
Sept 1 - the end of Feria de las flores in August brings the first Xmas decorations into stores.
Then sometime in late October or early November the lights start going up. :)
Next up, fireworks on Nov 30, leading up to Dec 1. Then all of December is filled with events - Día de las velitas, novena, the local April Fools on Dec 28 - until Día de los reyes in January.
Still 100% atheist, but what a culture! 💛
If the world were fully secular and eschewed the old rituals, we would have to invent new ones, because we like to mark time and celebrate changing seasons and great events.
😅 Agreed! Oh, but I bet we'd make such fun ones if we started from scratch...
There's a short story in this....
Here's the other side: in the same paper, there are updates on Petro's attempts at "total peace" - a complex and hardwon thing, when negotiating with many groups at once.
ELN has announced that it's not going to stop kidnapping civilians because that's an income stream 🙃, while Clan del Golfo is diversifying its portfolio: exploiting immigrants trying to reach the US, in the absence of robust drug returns.
Colombia celebrates hard because Colombia also holds in tension how hard life always is.