Winter solstices would be horrific with no light célébrations.
This being said, we might enjoy the view of a clear unpolluted winter sky. Who knows? Which of us, computer-users, has ever directly experienced the view of a stellar landscape, milky way, and meditated on the universe in this situation?
Icelanders, certainly. They even have auroras borealis. This all doesn't prevent them from multiplying celebrations and parties, nor keeps them from needing brennivin and having seasonnal dépressions.
Montpellier might be one of the sunniest places of the continental France, the days shorten, November 13th darkened everything, it hardly ever snows and children need some enchantment.
We started with Hanukah...
and went on with stories, movies, songs, theater, ice-skating.
We watched "Labyrinth", I was ready to cry on the Goblin King.
The agglomeration organized as last year 3 days of light celebration.
There was no Hanukka lights in the city this time, because of the terrorist threats. An allusion to Hanukka on the buildings would have been a valid act of resistance, but antisemitism is growing. Hommages are a huge lie: people don't like victims and don't trust them for being innocent. They applaude the muslims refusing an imaginary victimisation fed by manipulative politically religious authorities, and would like to deny to raped women and stabbed jews the quality of victims.
This is the way people are.
Two churches and two non-religious buildings were changed into 3D screens by some lightning artists.
The show on Saint-Denis Church turned around two good ideas.
It was much better on the Saint-Roch Church (a major step in the pilgrimage toward Santiago de Compostela).
There, the sound as well as the moving images were Worth watching - from all sides, and many times: a pleasure. There were less projections of religious paintings than last year, it was much more living, playfull. References were made to Alice in Wonderland rather than to the History of European art...
On the Prefecture, on the contrary, huge disappointment.
The show was a poor version of last year's show: poor quality, poor inspiration.
The place wasn't crowded.
People headed toward the Triumph Arch.
Some gigantic starmen and women accompanied the walk...
They could have been more professionnal, but well.
The show on the arch was impressive.
The idea of telling the story of human lightning, from the candel to our days, wasn't greatly exploited, but was a pretext to quite a fiesta.
Now, if you imagine Montpellier is a high center of urban life...
Public culture often appears like diamonds for pigs.
