The Holiday Folk Fair is an annual three-day festival celebrating cultures from around the world. Thousands of visitors attend the Fair each year. It is held the weekend before Thanksgiving in West Allis, Wisconsin, at the Wisconsin Exposition Center of Wisconsin State Fair Park. It is billed as the largest indoor international festival in America. The Fair's goal is to encourage intercultural understanding.
Folk Fair offers continuous entertainment, food from around the world, art displays, vendors, and demonstrations. A visitor can find egg rolls, strudel, scones, falafel, pizzelle, and sushi all under one roof. The main entertainment takes place on two floors, the All Nations Theater and the Music Pavilion. Dancers representing over 30 nations perform for the crowds.
The first Holiday Folk Fair was held on December 10, 1944. Despite a violent snowstorm, 3,500 people braved the weather and took part in the event. In 1947 the Fair became a two-day event, and Friday evenings were added in 1964. The Fair was formerly held at the MECCA Arena. It was also hosted at the Henry Maier Festival Park for one year, before finding a home at State Fair Park.
Folk Fair is sponsored and organized by the International Institute of Wisconsin, a not-for-profit social service agency that promotes cultural understanding. Al Durtka is its current president.
Famous quotes containing the words holiday, folk and/or fair:
“With a broad shoehorn
I am unstuffing a big bird in this dream
Msomebody else’s holiday feast—
and repacking the crop of my own,
knowing it will burst with such
onion, oyster, savory bread crust.”
—Maxine Kumin (b. 1925)
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“As to what we call the masses, and common men;Mthere are no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible, on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)