28.09.2026
Share Your World 28th September 2026
Here are this week’s questions & my answers
Share Your World – 28 September 2026 🎉💜
It’s Monday again, which means another Share Your World.
This week’s questions are all about holidays, traditions and celebrations.
Living in Spain — and particularly in the Canary Islands — we’re certainly not short of any of those.
In fact, as you’ll discover, sometimes there are so many holidays that you accidentally drive your children to an empty school.
But we’ll get to that…
1. It’s not yet the end of September, but already shops are displaying Christmas merchandise in the UK. Do you think this is too early?
Yes! September is far too early for Christmas. 😂🎄
Here in the Canary Islands, the shops are currently much more focused on Halloween. 🎃👻
I love Christmas, but I don’t need Christmas decorations while we’re still in September.
Let Halloween have its moment first!
There will be plenty of time for Christmas afterwards — especially here, because our Christmas celebrations continue well into January.
2. What is your favourite traditional holiday in your country?
This is difficult because Spain — and particularly the Canary Islands — has so many fiestas and celebrations throughout the year.
We have Halloween, and then comes Christmas — or Navidad. 🎄
And Christmas doesn’t simply finish on December 25th.
The celebrations continue into January with Three Kings, including the wonderful parades on January 5th before Día de Reyes on the 6th. 👑👑👑
Then, once everyone has finally recovered from Christmas…
Here comes Carnival!
In the weeks before Easter, towns and cities across the islands have their own Carnival celebrations.
Costumes, music, dancing, parades, colour and parties…
The Canary Islands certainly know how to celebrate. 😂
So I don’t think I could choose just one favourite.
What I love is the tradition surrounding all of them — how celebrations become part of community life rather than simply another date on the calendar.
3. Do you think such celebrations are over-commercialised?
I think it’s partly the trend of our time.
Almost every celebration eventually becomes an opportunity to sell something.
Christmas merchandise appears earlier every year, Halloween seems to get bigger, and shops are constantly preparing for whichever celebration comes next.
Sometimes the commercial side can overshadow what a tradition originally meant.
But step away from the shops and you can still find the important parts:
Family. Community. Tradition. Food. Music. Being together. 💜
Those are the things that really matter.
4. Would you like to introduce a new annual National Holiday?
Hehe…
Do we really need another excuse to party?
Spain already has plenty of holidays, and here in the Canary Islands we also have regional, island and local fiestas to remember.
And we learned that lesson rather spectacularly when we moved from Gran Canaria to Fuerteventura ten years ago.
It was September, and the new school year had just started.
One morning we got the girls ready, put everyone in the car and set off for school.
As we were driving, something seemed a little strange.
Where were all the school buses? 🤔
We kept going.
No buses.
Hardly any school traffic.
“That’s strange…”
Eventually, we arrived at the school.
Nobody was there.
Not a child.
Not a teacher.
Nothing.
That’s when we discovered one rather important thing we’d forgotten to do after moving from one Canary Island to another:
Check the local fiesta calendar. 😂
It was La Peña — and a bank holiday.
The girls had been dragged out of bed, got ready for school and been driven all the way there…
on their day off.
Welcome to Fuerteventura!
We’d already lived in the Canary Islands for years, but moving islands meant discovering a whole new collection of local celebrations.
So would I introduce another annual National Holiday?
Absolutely not.
I’m still trying to keep track of the ones we’ve already got. 😂
Gratitude 💜
This week I’m grateful for traditions, community and the memories that grow around them.
Living in the Canary Islands has shown me how celebrations become part of the rhythm of a place.
The decorations change.
Music fills the streets.
Families gather.
Parades move through towns and cities.
Plazas fill with people.
Some traditions are religious, some cultural, and some have changed enormously over the years.
Yes, many have become commercialised too.
But underneath all of that, they still give people a reason to come together.
And perhaps that’s what celebrations are really about.
Creating memories.
Keeping traditions alive.
Bringing people together.
And occasionally giving everyone a perfectly legitimate excuse to dress up, dance in the streets and stay awake far too late.
Here in the Canary Islands, I think we’ve got that last part pretty well covered.
And after ten years on Fuerteventura, we’ve also learned another important lesson:
Before taking the children to school, check the fiesta calendar. 🤣
So this week I’m grateful for the traditions we already have…
No additional National Holiday required! 💜🎉
#ShareYourWorld #SYW #Gratitude #CanaryIslands #Fuerteventura #GranCanaria #LaPeña #Fiestas #Navidad #ThreeKings #Carnival #Halloween #Traditions
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
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