Delaware festivals

Last updated December 02, 2020

There are several annual festivals in Delaware.

The Firefly Music Festival is an annual four-day music festival which was first held in July 2012.^[1] It is held at The Woodlands, an 87-acre site adjacent to Dover Downs in Dover.^[2] The festival features nationally-known musical acts performing on several stages over a four-day period. Headliner acts for 2012 included The Killers, The Black Keys and Jack White, and included 48 total acts.^[3] The festival grounds also feature camping areas, food and beverage venues.^[4] Approximately 30,000 people attended the 2012 festival.^[5]^[6]
The Big August Quarterly (also referred to as the "Big Quarterly" or "August Quarterly") is an annual religious festival held in Wilmington, Delaware. The festival was started in 1814 by Peter Spencer in connection with the "quarterly" meeting (or "conference") of the African Union Church. Out of the four meetings during the year, the one in August became the "annual conference" of the Church when ministers' assignments for the next year were announced, among other business — it was a time for free blacks and slaves alike to come together from the multi-state area and celebrate their faith with singing, dancing, testifying, and feasting. It is the oldest such celebration in the country. Senator Joe Biden's remarks on the significance of the "Big Quarterly" were published in the Congressional Record for 30 July 1981 (Vol. 127, No. 117) and for 9 August 1984 (Vol 130, No. 106).
The Delaware State Fair (also known as the Harrington Fair) is Delaware's only state fair. The Delaware State Fair occurs during the last two weeks of July.^[7] During the fair, various musical acts perform at the Grand Stand. The Grand Stand is also used for a Demolition Derbys, circus performances, and other entertainment.

The Delaware Sängerbund (German for Singers Alliance) holds an annual three-day-long Oktoberfest. The Oktoberfest features carnival rides, German foods, and demonstrations of German singing and dancing.
The Delaware Shakespeare Festival is an outdoor Shakespeare festival that takes place during the summer months at Rockwood Park located near Wilmington. The mission of the Delaware Shakespeare Festival is to create professional theatre and educational programs in order to further the understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare’s works.
Wilmington is home to several ethnic festivals sponsored by traditional ethnic churches in the city. The most popular is the Italian Festival hosted held each June in the neighborhood surrounding St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church. A highlight of the Italian Festival is a procession of the church's statues of saints throughout the community on the last afternoon of the festival. St. Hedwig Roman Catholic Church sponsors a Polish festival along the city Riverfront each October and Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church presents a Greek Festival at the church ground each June. These ethic festivals all feature carnival rides, ethnic foods and craft, and musical performances.
At the end of October, Rehoboth Beach holds its annual Sea Witch Halloween and Fiddlers' Festival.
The Clifford Brown Jazz Festival is a free jazz music festival held annually at Rodney Square in Wilmington in honor of Wilmington native and respected jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown. The first festival was held in 1989 on the open lawn in the central area of the city.
The Wilmington Flower Market is a held each May in Wilmington's Rockford Park. The Flower Market is a three-day long festival which serves as a fundraiser for charitable organizations which benefit Delaware's children.
The weekend after Halloween, Sussex County hosted the World Championship Punkin Chunkin, where pumpkins were shot from devices such as air-powered cannons, trebuchets, catapults, and various other contraptions. The performance of various styles and classes of devices was supplemented by food booths and musical performances. The Punkin Chunkin was not held in 2014 and 2015 due to legal and insurance issues and was cancelled after 2016.^[8]
During the second weekend in October, Bridgeville hosts its annual Apple Scrapple Festival. The carnival centers around the preparation and consumption of apples and scrapple and also includes contests, live entertainment, a car show, a tractor pull, and craft shows.
On the second Saturday in March the Chocolate Festival at the Rehoboth Beach Convention Center features chocolate made by professionals, amateurs, bakeries, and children.
A tradition that is unique to Delaware is Return Day, which occurs every two years on the Thursday following the November general election. Believed to be the only event of its kind in the United States, it is a continuation of a tradition that dates back to Delaware's earliest days in the 18th century. Festivities include the reading of election results from the Sussex County Courthouse balcony by the town crier, a parade in which winners and losers ride together in open coaches, the roasting of an ox behind the courthouse, and the ceremonial and symbolic "burying of the hatchet" in sand from Lewes Beach.
Dover Days is celebrated in mid-spring to early summer in Dover, Delaware and features the town's history and culture. The festival's highlight is a parade.followed by carnival rides and food stands along the historic Green downtown.

Related Research Articles

Delaware is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the nearby Delaware River named after Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and Virginia's first colonial governor.

Wilmington is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine River, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area. Wilmington was named by Proprietor Thomas Penn after his friend Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who was prime minister during the reign of George II of Great Britain.

Bridgeville is a town in Sussex County, Delaware, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population is 2,048, an increase of 42.6% from the previous decade. It is part of the Salisbury, Maryland-Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Rehoboth Beach is a city on the Atlantic Ocean along the Delaware Beaches in eastern Sussex County, Delaware, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 1,327, reflecting a decline of 161 (11.2%) from the 1,488 counted in the 2000 Census. Along with the neighboring coastal city of Lewes, Rehoboth Beach is one of the principal cities of Delaware's rapidly growing Cape Region. Rehoboth Beach lies within the Salisbury metropolitan area.

Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name Pannhaas or "pan rabbit", is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then pan-fried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is best known as an American food of the Mid-Atlantic states. Scrapple and panhaas are commonly considered an ethnic food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Mennonites and Amish. Scrapple is found in supermarkets throughout the region in both fresh and frozen refrigerated cases. In Delaware, it is sometimes described as containing "everything but the oink".

Pumpkin chucking, or for rhyming purposes punkin chunkin or pumpkin chunking, is the sport of hurling or 'chucking' a pumpkin solely by mechanical means for distance. The devices used include slingshots, catapults, centrifugals, trebuchets, and pneumatic cannons.

Delaware is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The Delaware Symphony Orchestra is the largest organization of professional performers in the state, and is more than seventy years old; the orchestra evolved out of the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra. The Delaware Music Festival is a prominent music festival. Other musical institutions include OperaDelaware, the Music School of Delaware, and the School of Contemporary Music.

Simeon Selby Pennewill was an American farmer and politician from Dover, in Kent County, Delaware. He was a member of the Republican Party, who served in the Delaware General Assembly and as Governor of Delaware.

The Delaware Sängerbund is a German-American club located near Newark, Delaware.

The Oktoberfest is a two-week festival held each year in Munich, Germany during late September and early October. It is attended by six million people each year and has inspired numerous similar events using the name Oktoberfest in Germany and around the world, many of which were founded by German immigrants or their descendants.

U.S. Route 13 (US 13) is a U.S. highway running from Fayetteville, North Carolina north to Morrisville, Pennsylvania. In the U.S. state of Delaware, the route runs for 103.33 mi (166.29 km). It traverses the entire length of the state from the Maryland state line in Delmar, Sussex County north to the Pennsylvania state line in Claymont, New Castle County. US 13 connects many important cities and towns in Delaware, including Seaford, Dover, and Wilmington. The entire length of US 13 in Delaware is a multilane divided highway with the exceptions of the segment through Wilmington and parts of Philadelphia Pike in Claymont. Between the Maryland border and Dover, US 13 serves as one of the main north–south routes across the Delmarva Peninsula. From Dover north to the Wilmington area, the route is followed by the limited-access Delaware Route 1 (DE 1) toll road, which crosses the route several times and has multiple interchanges with it. US 13 bypasses downtown Wilmington to the east before it heads northeast of the city parallel to Interstate 495 (I-495) and the Delaware River to Claymont. US 13 is the longest numbered highway in the state of Delaware.

U.S. Route 13 runs along the Atlantic coastline for over 500 miles (800 km), passing through five states. Along its route, it possessed numerous special routes, which are all loops off the mainline US 13. At present, there are at least fourteen special routes in existence: two in North Carolina, five in Virginia, two in Maryland, four in Delaware, and one in Pennsylvania. Seven others have existed in the past, but have been deleted.

The Apple Scrapple Festival is held annually during the second weekend in October in Bridgeville, Delaware. It was first held in 1992.

The Morton Pumpkin Festival is an annual four-day festival held in mid-September in Morton, Illinois in 1967. The event now draws more than 75,000 attendees annually. It is organized and sponsored by the Morton Chamber of Commerce.

Oktoberfest, USA is an annual celebration held in La Crosse, Wisconsin, United States, usually on the final week of September and into the beginning of October. Through the years, the celebration has drawn crowds of up to 150,000 people during the opening weekend.

Red Frog Events, LLC was a privately owned event production company founded in 2007 and based in Chicago, Illinois. The company's events and services included Warrior Dash, Firefly Music Festival, ShamrockFest, American Beer Classic, EventSprout, and Red Frog Food and Beverage. Joe Reynolds and Ryan Kunkel were the co-CEOs.

Firefly Music Festival is a music festival produced by Red Frog Events alongside Goldenvoice, that was first held on July 20–22, 2012, in Dover, Delaware. Firefly takes place in The Woodlands of Dover International Speedway, a 105-acre (42 ha) festival ground, over the span of three days. Many nationally known musical acts have performed at the festival, with over 100 performances held over the course of the festival in 2016. The festival producers have been working together to establish the event at the current venue with the hopes of having "an open-air festival on the East Coast with plenty of outdoor camping". In past years the festival has included up to seven stages; The Porch Stage, The Lawn Stage, The Backyard Stage, the Treehouse, The Coffee House, The Pavilion and The Firefly Stage. In 2019, the festival had six main stages, two sponsor stages, and one stage in each camping hub. Firefly offers three different passes options; general admission, VIP, and Super VIP.

A Dickens fair, Dickens Christmas fair, or Dickens festival is weekend or multi-weekend gathering, usually held in the United States, open to the public and typically commercial in nature, which attempts to recreate a Victorian English setting reminiscent of the novels of Charles Dickens. The British equivalent, known as a Dickensian evening, is distinct from its American counterpart because it is organised by local businesses and the town council to raise money for charity. Events may be outdoor, indoor or a combination of the two. The great majority are Christmas-themed, a reflection of the enduring legacy of Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The fairs generally include an abundance of costumed entertainers and fair-goers, musical and theatrical acts, and art, handicrafts, food and drink for sale.

This is a list of George Floyd protests in Delaware, United States.

References

↑ Cormier, Ryan (4 January 2013). "Big in '13: The people, places and events making Delaware's pop culture scene this year". The News Journal. Wilmington, DE. p. HR10.
↑ Red Frog Events. "About Firefly". Firefly Music Festival. Silverline Creative. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
↑ Red Frog Events. "Official 2012 Lineup". Firefly Music Festival. Silverline Creative. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
↑ Wilson, Frank (25 July 2012). "Inaugural Firefly Festival An East Coast Summer Success; 'Delaware, Who Would Have Thought?'". Revamp.
↑ Comer, M. Tye (23 July 2012). "Firefly 2012: Highlights From Delaware's First Major Music Fest". Billboard Magazine. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
↑ Bothum, Peter. "Firefly Music Festival set to make Delaware's economy glow". news.Delaware.gov. Delaware Tourism Office. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
↑ "See You at the Fair!". State of Delaware. 2007-03-27. Archived from the original on 2007-10-12. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
↑ Walter, Laura (13 May 2016). "Chunkin countdown begins: Event returning to Bridgeville". Coastal Point. Retrieved 26 May 2016.

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[1] Cormier, Ryan (4 January 2013). "Big in '13: The people, places and events making Delaware's pop culture scene this year". The News Journal. Wilmington, DE. p. HR10.

[2] Red Frog Events. "About Firefly". Firefly Music Festival. Silverline Creative. Retrieved 8 February 2013.

[3] Red Frog Events. "Official 2012 Lineup". Firefly Music Festival. Silverline Creative. Retrieved 8 February 2013.

[4] Wilson, Frank (25 July 2012). "Inaugural Firefly Festival An East Coast Summer Success; 'Delaware, Who Would Have Thought?'". Revamp.

[5] Comer, M. Tye (23 July 2012). "Firefly 2012: Highlights From Delaware's First Major Music Fest". Billboard Magazine. Retrieved 10 January 2013.

[6] Bothum, Peter. "Firefly Music Festival set to make Delaware's economy glow". news.Delaware.gov. Delaware Tourism Office. Retrieved 8 February 2013.

[7] "See You at the Fair!". State of Delaware. 2007-03-27. Archived from the original on 2007-10-12. Retrieved 2007-10-07.

[8] Walter, Laura (13 May 2016). "Chunkin countdown begins: Event returning to Bridgeville". Coastal Point. Retrieved 26 May 2016.

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