In Colombia, when there’s a holiday, life actually stops. Not just for government workers or people with paid leave—everyone stops. Offices go dark. Banks shut down. Schools go quiet. You won’t hear kids on the playground, and you won’t hear traffic. The country knows how to hit pause, not just individually, but collectively. And that’s not an exaggeration—it’s cultural fact.
Here in the coffee region, cities turn into ghost towns. People head into the countryside to their fincas, whether to rest, celebrate, or just be with the people they love. The only things left open are gas stations, the big-box supermarkets, a few pharmacies, and maybe one or two corner stores if you’re lucky. During the day, there’s stillness. Streets are empty. You hear birds instead of engines. But at night, the place lights up—literally.
Fireworks start popping off in the distance. Music creeps out of windows and into the streets. Laughter breaks the silence, and sometimes singing joins in. Families gather on sidewalks or rooftops, drinking, eating, talking, dancing. I may not always be a fan of the reggaetón, but even that can’t spoil the feeling. Most of the time, it’s just Colombians singing old songs—songs I don’t know but still somehow recognize. Songs with heart. Songs that belong to everybody.
The most unforgettable holiday for me is La Noche de las Velitas—The Night of the Little Candles. It falls on the eve of the Immaculate Conception. And while its roots are Catholic, what you see and feel is something bigger than religion. Every sidewalk glows. Candles are placed every foot, both sides of the street, windows, balconies, porches, stairwells. You don’t need a parade or a priest. You just need a match, a candle, and a sense of belonging. It’s quiet, warm, deeply human. To me, as a secular person, it isn’t about dogma. It’s about beauty. That night, the whole country shines from the ground up. It is, without exaggeration, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
What makes it even more powerful is that holidays here are for everyone. About seventy percent of Colombians identify as Roman Catholic, but these days, they aren’t segregated by faith or region. They’re for the nation. You don’t need a religious affiliation to light a candle, and you don’t need to explain yourself for joining in. People don’t ask who you voted for or what god you pray to. They assume you’re part of the moment. Because you are, that unity is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived here.
Now, I didn’t come to Colombia expecting this. Honestly, when I first started thinking about Colombia, I was so clueless I had it confused with Cambodia. That’s where my head was. It all came back to me soon enough—Pablo Escobar, the old headlines from my Army days, flashes of news from the ’80s and ’90s. But I didn’t know the full story, not really. I certainly didn’t know how much more Colombia was than cocaine. And I definitely didn’t know the darker things Americans are involved in down here that go unspoken far too often—especially the sex tourism. That’s an embarrassment. It’s a stain.
People think American men come here looking for women, and yeah, some do. But that wasn’t me. I came to meet someone—Juliana “Juli” Tabares—who I’d been talking to already. One day, when I said on YouTube I was moving to Denmark (not realizing it was already closed), she replied, “Move to Colombia.” The original plan was simple: spend a few days getting me to settle into Medellin, and then she needed to be back to work after a couple of days. We had discussed meeting in Bali months before this, but the pandemic rerouted everything. She thought she’d be here for a weekend. I thought I’d be here for a season. We both packed light.
But then something clicked. We hit it off. We were both remote workers, both floating in the same weird post-2020 orbit, and what started as a weekend turned into a life. Nearly five years later, I’ve spent most of that time living here in Colombia—apart from a brief stint in Mexico—and I’ve never regretted it. Not for a day.
It’s not just the climate or the mountains or the lower cost of living. It’s the people. It’s the way this country holds time. When Colombia celebrates, it doesn’t do it with ads or sales or divisive rhetoric. It does it with candles, food, music, and community. Holidays here aren’t political. They aren’t performative. They’re real. Shared. Breathed in and lived out by the whole country at once.
The United States has its holidays too. The Fourth of July, when done right, is something to behold—fireworks over lakes, parades in small towns, the kind of backyard barbecues that feel like summer itself. I remember what that looked like in the ’80s. But those moments are harder to find now. Time off in the States has become a privilege, not a promise. You’re lucky to get six or seven federal holidays a year, and that’s assuming your boss doesn’t guilt you out of taking them.
Colombia doesn’t play that game. The calendar here tells everyone, rich or poor, religious or not: pause. Light something. Gather. Celebrate being alive. Don’t work. Don’t rush. Don’t grind. Just be.
I didn’t come here looking for paradise. But I ended up in something close.