Statement
The Sapporo Snow Festival lasts for seven days in March.
Text - Celebrating the Seasons
The Sapporo Snow Festival is one of Japan’s most exciting winter events - held for seven days in February. The festival started in 1950 with a group of students making sculptures with snow and ice in the park. Now, over two million people come to Sapporo to see around 400 huge sculptures. They are usually of famous people, buildings or events, and teams from different countries take part in a competition, with prizes for the best sculptures.
In March, people in parts of Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey celebrate the beginning of spring with the festival of Novruz Bayram. Around March 22nd, the day and the night are equal length, and people celebrate the fact that plants are starting to grow again after the winter. People light candles and share traditional food, and there are special theatre performances in the street. It is also traditional for children to go from door to door asking for sweets.
People celebrate Midsummer’s Day all over the world, but it is particularly important in Sweden. Swedish people celebrate on the Friday and Saturday nearest to June 24th by dancing round a huge maypole. There is traditional music and people wear traditional costumes. They also wear crowns made of wild flowers. Special food, like the year’s first strawberries, is on the menu, and people decorate their houses with flowers to bring good luck for the year ahead.
Harvest festivals in the autumn are very popular in the USA, especially in the north-east of the country, where the autumn trees are beautiful. Harvest festivals are usually held in October and they are about celebrating local food. There are always incredible displays of food, such as apples, pumpkins and garlic. Children dress up in traditional costumes and take part in parades, and there are pony rides, entertainers and plenty of traditional music.