The winter holidays are approaching and with them comes what is called "shopping fever"! December, the "month of gifts" is knocking at the door!
"Shopping fever" and the "month of gifts" are two clichés, two formulas that are used in all the TV news or in the press. Most people celebrating the winter holidays want to give presents.
Retailers are at the origin of these end-of-year shopping habits. Slowly, slowly, the need for gift-giving has been inoculated into the collective consciousness... and therefore to buy!
In order to buy, so that as many people as possible could buy at the same time, fairs were invented. In December, many cities organize fairs. An attraction for children and their parents, all eager to buy both gifts and entertainment...
Well, in order to make a bigger profit, these fairs opened this year in November! A trip to a city in Romania called Sibiu brought me close to such a fair, one of the most beautiful in the country and which attracts a lot of tourists from abroad.
To be exact, I saw the fair the day before it opened.
In my childhood there were no such fairs and, in this part of the world where I live, color photography wasn't widespread either. Everything was in black and white, from newspaper photos to movies and TV.
Our life was black and white with some shades of grey!
I took some photos near this Christmas fair in the Big Square in Sibiu. I thought it would be interesting to see how the pictures of this fair would have looked in the newspapers or on the TV news of my childhood, that's why I chose black and white...
This is my entry for the #monomad challenge.
The purpose of the trip to Sibiu was not the Christmas fair. It was a dance-theatre performance. The posters of this show filled the city center.
The fair was being set up, the official opening was the next day. My attention was drawn to a small train that was going to take visitors around.
Other than those inside the fair who had a lot of work to do to set up their little stalls where they display their products for sale, the little train was resting. Starting the next day, for almost two months it would be hard at work walking a lot of children and even their parents. Quite boring for the driver who is the conductor!
The Big Square in Sibiu is a place in a great hustle and bustle that is still unseen, waiting for the great joy of the winter holidays to begin.
I have to admit that going back in time, I mean the lack of color, stirred up some nostalgia in me. Lack of color may be an option when there is no alternative but, anything too much is damaging, just as life only in black and white with shades of grey brought down a dictatorship in my country thirty years ago.
