8 décembre - Fête des Lumières

December 8th is a big day for the city of Lyon. The religious date is the feast of the Immaculate Conception honoring the Virgin Mary. Centuries ago, a plague swept through much of Europe but the city of Lyon was spared. They built a large Basilica on the big hill Fourvière to give thanks to the Virgin for having held back the plague epidemic at the gates of their city. You can read more of the history here... but we enjoyed some of the city's traditions last night.

These events in the past have morphed into a big Festival of Lights that is celebrated every year during this week. Lyon has a long history of fascination with light... the Lumiere brothers (who invented moving pictures on film) are from Lyon. So all over the city, the major buildings are lit up with various colored light and there are many light-shows and displays all around.

One of the traditions is for the people of the city to place lots of candles on their windowsills when it gets dark on the night of Dec. 8th. So we did that, of course. Our French friend Pierre did the math for us…. X number of windows times Y number of candles in each window... we had about 30 candles out!

After dinner we walked (along with thousands of other people) over to the main part of town where the spectacular displays were. It was exciting... like going to a big party. Paul kept saying it felt like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The city was indeed beautiful with lights everywhere! We just followed the crowds to one of the main places in the city and watched a light show. There were so many people. It was like everyone was giving everyone else one big hug. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Glad we went... may never go again.. but we checked off that box!

See better pics here.