Holiday of Holidays 2022 – reportage from the downtown of Haifa, Israel.
Yes, last weekend I went there again - to the annual Holiday of the Holidays celebration when people of three religions are celebrating together. Christians, Muslims, and Jews came to have fun in something connecting all of them. This weekend the main attraction of the celebration was a march of Santa and hundreds of young scouts from different cities. Most of the scouts played on snare drums, some on huge drums, and some on trumpets. As you can understand it was a big noise, but very cheerful and energetic. Ah, almost forget - also the flags. Lots of them.
So, here we are again - marching together with thousands of people, connected together with one single celebration. Can you hear the wonderful noise of these snare drums? Can you feel his tension and joy? It wasn't easy to stand or to go close to these big and noisy bass drums. The only adults used to carry and play on them. I saw the fatigue on the faces of the guys, but at the same time some kind of inner energy, helping them to carry this heavy stuff and to pull out of them this low voice.
The streets were packed with people of all ages, and nationalities. It felt right the whole city leaves their homes and came here to make some noise, to eat, to walk, and to see this march. Lots of kids were sitting on their parent's necks. (hehe, nice wordplay - they literally sit on the necks even when they physically don't).