Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on August 28, 2013

Fall means festivals in the Kansas City area, and our festivals go a long way to trace our history and heritage.

Start with the American Royal, the 21/2-month homage to the citys days as a cow town. Other events recalling the areas frontier days include the Santa-Cali-Gon Days Festival in Independence, the Johnson County Old Settlers celebration in Olathe, the Jesse James Festival in Kearney and Outlaw Days in Richmond.

Then you have celebrations of the folks who settled here, Irish, Greeks and Hispanics among them.

Many of the areas traditional products are the focus of other festivals, including apples, tobacco, spinach and chili.

And dont forget the blues, which will merit more than one area festival this fall.

Finally, you have the Renaissance Festival, a tribute to our 16th-century ancestors who blazed a trail across the prairie by storming castles and saving princesses. OK, so the Renaissance Festival doesnt exactly fit into the theme of Kansas City history and heritage. But that doesnt mean its not worth checking out.

Youll have plenty of chances to do just that. The Renaissance Festival opens this weekend to help kick off the fall festival season with a bang, and the annual event in Bonner Springs runs on weekends through Oct. 14. See story, Page 5.

The two other biggies this weekend are the Kansas City Irish Fest at Crown Center and the Santa-Cali-Gon Days Festival. The Irish Fest runs Friday through Sunday; Santa-Cali-Gon Days runs Friday through Monday.

Most of our fall festivals follow the same general format as Santa-Cali-Gon Days a heavy dose of arts and crafts, plenty of not-so-healthy food and a variety of music with a dash of this and that. Other events focus on a single area primarily music, food or art.

They all combine to produce an autumn during which not a weekend goes by without a selection of celebrations.

Follow this link:
Fall festivals crowd the calendar

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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