The almond blossom festival
The almond blossom festival is a very popular spring festival in Akragas (Agrigento). It was first started in the early thirties to celebrate the beautiful blossom which flowers in February and March here and in the surrounding area. The festival celebrates the coming of the spring, as well as local folk traditions with puppeteers, singers, poets and actors. In Akragas the Torchlight Friendship Procession is very popular with international folk groups winding through the streets of the old town. The International Folk Festival is the central event; different people from all over the world come together to dance and sing in the name of peace and brotherhood.
It takes place at night in the Valley of Greek Temples. It is an amazing show full of music and dances just under the columns of the Concordia Temple dedicated to the Goddesses Demetra and Persephone.
As everybody knows, Sicily was a Greek colony and in our land many myths took place.
Greek people explained to themselves the changing of the seasons with the myth of Demetra and Persephone.
Demetra was Crono and Gea's daughter, Persephone was her daughter. One day, while Persephone was collecting flowers with other girls, Ade, the God of Hell, suddenly appeared and forced her to follow him to the deaths' reign. Demetra heard her daughter's screams but she was too far and she wasn't able to save her. So she began her voyage looking for Persephone; she went away from the Olimpo and because her sadness, she brought sterility to the earth putting in danger the Human Nature. So Zeus, fearing the Human Genre could disappeared, ordered to Ade to give Persephone back to her mother.
Ade wanted Persephone to stay with him forever but at the same time he had to obey to Zeus. So before leaving Persephone free, he gave to her some grains of
“ melograno”. She ate them and doing it she was chained to the deaths' reign forever.
From that moment Persephone spent 6 months on the Earth and these months coincide with the beginning of the spring to the beginning of the autumn and 6 months in the hell. This alternation scans the rhythm of the seasons.
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