Celebration - Provence - 1 page

People have always loved holidays! Since olden times this was the name of definite time spaces marked in the given people’s calendar, which were given a special important meaning (most often a religious, mythical-sacral meaning). Holidays are connected with an idea of a possible existence of some ‘perfect’ being, totally different from common days with their mundanity.

В On such days people didn’t think of their every-day troubles, they had time to contemplate about the beauty of the world, the sense of life, to dream of something beautiful… And to create something wonderful themselves (if not very useful in a practical sense)!

A holiday is a «parent form of human culture». Participating in a holiday, people join in the norms and values accepted in a given society. Besides, holidays are the major component of a tradition which plays a stabilizing role in a society (because via traditions the socially meaningful information is saved and passed over from generation to generation).

Holidays are of a ‘calendar nature’ which helps to balance the rhythms of human life and the rhythms of nature and the Universe, promotes a person’s choice in favour of order, goodness, life meaning – against chaos and death. That is why it is difficult to over-estimate the place of a holiday in human culture.

And it is difficult to find another country on the Earth with such joyful and colourful holidays as  France. Zest for life and cheerfulness of the people, inhabiting this country, is well-known. He, who can work well, can rest well!

The French have a skill to enjoy life and they invite guests to their beautiful country to share a holiday with them!

Yes, the Feast of life takes the whole year in France: each city, town or settlement marks several holidays ‘of its own’ in definite periods of a year. Tourists should take their time to manage here and there, taking photos to remember impressive colourful events (say, to visit a Holiday of Violets in the town of Tourrettes-sur-Loup to come to Arles to admire the Easter extravaganza, then to Orange to an opera holiday ‘Chorégies d'Orange’, to manage seeing the Avignon Festival and so on).