In Abbots Bromley, today is a festival. The Horn Dance festival occurs on Wakes Monday every year and is a cultural ritual that has been performed since the early twelve hundreds. As it is every year since then, the dancers collect the horns early in the morning and make the rounds to places around the village, walking about ten miles during this time; all the while carrying a set of animal horns. The group consists of ten performers, all with their part to play and after the long day, a launch of sky lanterns would be a perfect way for the villagers to say thank you to those who participated. After ten miles, dancing and merry making, they deserve some praise for their efforts in making the day a success.

Sky Lanterns – Perfect for Any Occasion

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance festival relies on the community to organize the festival. From the Horn dancers themselves to all the other parts of the day’s festival, there are people who run it and are often overworked and underappreciated. An evening of floating Chinese Hanging Lanterns with the names of those who volunteered to get the festival going and who participated would make the perfect ending credits for the festival day.

On top of floating lanterns being a great way to acknowledge those involved in the festival, they could provide a great way to simply end the festival. While the Horn Dance is hundreds of years old, the design of the floating lantern is based on the Chinese lanterns that have been in use for much longer, and those that were celebrating the Horn Dance originally would have been amazed had they seen Chinese lanterns floating in the night sky. Being a dance that is rooted in pagan traditions, it is very likely that floating lanterns would have been seen as magic or perhaps an omen of things good or bad to come in the next year.

Modern Sky Lanterns – Traditional but Environmentally Safe

For the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance festival or any other event, NightSkyLantern.co.uk’s lanterns are the best and most environmentally conscious choice for sky lanterns. By going back to the original construction methods of the ancient Chinese, our modern sky lanterns are wire free, making them the safest option when launching them in places where they could land in a field where livestock are or a hay field where farmers will be collecting winter feed for their livestock. In both cases, sky lanterns with any type of wire can end up injuring livestock and wildlife and should be avoided. NightSkyLanterns.co.uk’s commitment to the environment is demonstrated by the fact that none of the traditional Chinese Hanging Lanterns sold on the site have wire in them at all. For those who celebrate today in Abbots Bromley as well as all the other reasons and areas in the UK where Chinese Hanging Lanterns will be launched, the simple deletion of wire from the construction costs pennies more, does not affect the enjoyment of the lanterns and makes it so the farmers enjoy them rather than cringe when they see them floating in the sky.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 4:20 PM and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.