Friday open thread: non-religious seasonal events

[dolorosa_12]

Tomorrow — as long as the weather remains clear — Matthias and I will partake of one of our favourite annual traditions: the Mill Road winter fair. This takes place every year (apart from during pandemic lockdowns) on the first Saturday in December. Mill Road is a long street in Cambridge with a lot of restaurants and little supermarkets — all very international (South Asian grocery stores, East Asian grocery stores, Italian delis, Central and Eastern European supermarkets, North African, Korean, Indian, and Chinese restaurants, and so on). During the street fair, all the shops, cafes and restaurants in the street — including those that don't typically serve fresh/hot food on the premises — have stalls in the street selling food or drink. In addition, street food vans and craft stalls set up in a nearby park and carpark and sell their wares. You can wander up and down the street for hours, trying to narrow down a choice for lunch amid all the variety, there are parades, and it's just generally a lot of fun, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

It's seasonal, in the sense that it happens every winter, but it's definitely not a Christmas thing — food fair, not Christmas market. And it's the inspiration for today's open thread prompt:

What is a non-religious seasonal event (it could be local, regional, national, or just a personal/family tradition) that you enjoy and in which you participate regularly?

I'll close this post with a final reminder that I'm collecting links to people's fandomtrees signups and holiday love meme threads on a previous post. If you're worried about either of these things getting lost in the feed, sticking them here might be a helpful thing to do.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

I'm not sure this is an "event" per se, but in the winter, my city sets up outdoor ice rinks!

[dolorosa_12]

Oooh, lucky you! They used to do this every year when I lived in Cambridge, and I would go skating at least once each winter, but now that I live outside the city, there are no opportunities for ice skating. I was going to go to an outdoor rink in London when I was there a couple of weeks ago ... and then I found out that they'd stopped having that rink and had turned the area into a nature reserve.