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Year round, the city of San Antonio celebrates its history and holidays.  No matter what season you arrive and book a hotel, chances are good that there will be a place to enjoy yourself. 
 
Starting out in January, San Antonio rings in the New Year on South Alamo Street, across from HemisFair Park.  You’ll find here music and food as well as an amazing fireworks show blasted off from the heights of the Tower of the Americas.  This is followed by the Michelob ULTRA River Walk Mud Festival, which honors not a new year, but the annual maintenance of the River Walk, which is done by draining a portion of the river.  The festival, which includes a Mud Parade, an art festival and a Pub Crawl, also honors a newly crowned Mud King and Queen.
 
In February, there’s a sixteen day event known as the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo held at the Freeman Coliseum and AT&T Center.  In April, there’s a ten day festival held all over the city in order to commemorate the heroes of the Battle of the Alamo, as well as the Battle of San Jacinto.  This is all about the independence of Texas from Mexico, and there’s over one hundred events taking place at this time.  This particular festival goes back to 1891 when the festival was just a parade of ladies in carriages tossing the blossoms of flowers at each other.  In 1895, this parade had grown into a week long celebration, now known as the Battle of Flowers Parade.
 
Around Easter, you’ll find a Passion Play performed at the Cathedral of San Fernando, which happens to be the oldest cathedral in the country, and this production has happened every year for the last two hundred and fifty years.
 
In May, of course, Cinco de Mayo festivities occur in Market Street.  In June, you’ll find there’s free theater at the San Antonio Botanical Garden with Shakespeare in the Park.  There’s also a Texas Folklife Festival, four days that bring together forty ethnic groups in Texas to display food, music, crafts and folk dancing. 
 
In November, you’ll find the Holiday River Parade and Lighting Ceremony which is held the day after Thanksgiving, which lights up the River Walk for the holidays with over 122,000 lights.  In addition, there’s floats that move down the river, concluding with Santa Claus and Pancho Claus, the Latin variation on the mythic Christmas elf.  In December, you’ll find the amazing Fiesta de las Luminarias along the River Walk, where people put out seven thousand luminarias; this ceremony is part of a tradition with Mexican-American roots and will continue over nine nights.  This particular procession has been going on for over forty years here.
 
This brings us back to New Year’s Eve and another round of festivals begins.

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