Colors of the World: Festivals

Mack Prioleau on the Colors of His Travels

It’s a well-known fact that colors have a specific effect on your mood and emotions. Psychology reveals that the more you look at a specific color, the more it can alter your mood and mental state. Hi, everyone! My name is Mack Prioleau, and I’d like to share with you some of the most amazing moments in my travels, and how they’re somehow linked to a dominant color every time I remember them. And it is this color that helped me recall those moments more vividly.

Having traveled to various places here and abroad, I was lucky enough to witness a few festivals—intriguing, entertaining, and utterly delightful I might add—and it is actually these cultural traditions that displayed the most vivid colors during my visits to these places.

1. Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taiwan. The Lantern Festival is actually celebrated throughout Asia to mark the end of the Chinese New Year. But nowhere else will you find a celebration as colorful as Pingxi District’s. Between the hours of 6:30 pm and 9:00 pm, the night sky is lit with hundreds of thousands of lanterns, all ablaze in a fiery, orange glow. It is estimated that an average of 100,000 to 200,000 lanterns light up the sky each year during this festival.

What makes this festival special for participants is that they get to write down their prayers and wishes on a piece of paper and send it up to the sky with the lantern. However, its origins are far from what the lanterns represent today. During the Xing Dynasty, bandits would raid villages and forced the people to seek refuge in the mountains. The village watchmen would send up fire balloons to signal that the bandits have left and that it was safe for the villagers to return home.

2. La Tomatina, Spain. This festival is held annually in Buñol, a town located in Valencia. The celebration takes place on the last Wednesday of August. Locals and tourists alike participate in a tomato fight, where they playfully throw tomatoes at one another. Eventually, the streets are filled with tomatoes painting the ground a rich and deep shade of orange.

Orange is an energetic color that can elicit excitement, warmth and enthusiasm.

3. Tulip Festival, Holland. Between the months of April and May, I recommend a visit to Holland. Take the Flower Route, which begins in Haarlem and ends in Leiden, and view a spectacle of colors—tulips of different colors, from yellow to red, purple, and orange. The Flower Route gives you 25 miles of amazing tulips in full bloom.

Red is a color that brings out strong emotions that range from anger to excitement. It is often associated with love and warmth. Yellow is bright, warm, and sunny. It is often associated with cheerfulness. Purple on the other hand, was regarded as a color for royalty, symbolizing wealth and stature. Today, purple is widely regarded as a color of spirituality and wisdom.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Again, this is Mack Prioleau.