Some popular upcoming festivals and events that are celebrated during spring is the national cherry blossom festival, Canadian tulip festival and Songkran. The cherry blossom festival is a major celebration located in Washington Dc attracting over 1.5 million people a year. This festival lasts 4 weeks coinciding with the cherry blossom bloom period in Washington. The festival commemorates the 1912 gift of cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to Washington, D.C., symbolizing the friendship between the two nations.
These festivals also are held in places neighboring Washington such as Maryland and Virginia. The festival was inaugurated in 1927 with a reenactment of the planting of the 1912 trees and officially established in 1935. This festival features a variety of events like a parade, fireworks, concerts and special exhibits, all themed around cherry blossoms. After some research I found a cherry blossom festival located in Cherryville North Carolina towards the end of April. It is close to Charlotte, so it is about an hour or so drive from Greensboro.
The next celebration is the Canadian tulip festival. The tulip festival is held annually each May in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. The festival claims to be the world’s largest tulip festival, displaying over one million tulips with an attendance of over 650,000 visitors annually. The history behind the tulip festival is that every year the Dutch royal family and the people of the Netherlands each send 10,000 bulbs of tulips to Ottawa. In 1945, the Dutch royal family sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa in gratitude for Canadians having sheltered the future Queen Juliana and her family for the preceding three years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In the years following Queen Juliana’s original donation, Ottawa became famous for its tulips and in 1953 the Ottawa Board of Trade and photographer Malak Karsh organized the first “Canadian Tulip Festival”.
Queen Juliana returned to celebrate the festival in 1967, and Princess Margriet returned in 2002 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the festival. The tulip festival hosts multiple festivities like a blacklight boardwalk which is a unique experience with a sound and light show, offering a different perspective of the tulips, movies in the park, tulip markets, Rideau Canal cruises and guided walking tours. The last festival we will be reciting is the Songkran festival which is Thai new year located in Thailand. Songkran is Thailand’s most famous festival. An important event on the Buddhist calendar, this water festival marks the beginning of the traditional Thai New Year. The name Songkran comes from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘passing’ or ‘approaching’.
This celebration starts on April 13th. However, on Phuket Island, it is celebrated beginning April 12th and ends April 14th. the traditional Thai New Year, is a vibrant festival celebrated with water fights, honoring elders and Buddha images, and symbolizes cleansing, reverence, and good fortune for the coming year. The tradition of Songkran is pouring water so Thailand has a three– day water balloon fight to symbolize cleansing and good fortune. On these days, Songkran is celebrated through eating meals with family and friends and playing games.
