Redheads assemble. Thousands gathered for the annual Redhead Days Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, this week.
What is the Redhead Days Festival?
The festival brings together redheads from all over Europe and the world to “celebrate redheads and ‘gingers’” with “campfires, photo booths, portrait painting, dancing and even an info session on skin cancer,” The Washington Post reported.
Only about 1 to 2% of people have red hair who come from European ancestry, according to an academic study. Those numbers are highest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, depending on how being a redhead is defined.
In 2005, a “South Park” episode was released where the main character acts as if red hair is a disease. The episode “has routinely been cited as a cultural contagion for bullying redheads and was repeatedly blamed for reported assaults in the United States, the U.K. and Canada,” places where some redheads were physically assaulted due to the “Kick a Ginger Day,” according to the Post.
Liam Hunter, a 30-year-old from Scotland, attended the three-day festival and told Reuters, “being here I’m completed.”
“I don’t feel alone anymore, I feel together, a part of something,” he said.
What started the Redhead Days Festival?
In 2005, a painter, Bart Rouwenhorst, advertised to find 15 ginger models to paint and was bombarded with 150 respondes. He was unable to paint all of the respondents and after the ones who weren’t selected then “voiced their disappointment,” Rouwenhorst decided to make it an annual event, BBC reported.