Fire licks at the base of the heaped bonfire fuel, then leaps up toward the cross at the top. The crowd holds its breath, and ever so slowly, the cross leeeeeeans, and starts to fall. The police move in, establishing a perimeter around the fire. Then groups of young men dart forward as the flaming cross droops towards the ground. The youths swoop in, reaching for the fiery cross bare-handed, while the police thrash at them with batons and switches. What was a festival now feels like a riot. Finally, one kid manages to evade the cops and snatch up the burnt remains. He is borne around the square on the shoulders of his friends, who use their free hands to daub crosses on the foreheads of nearby people. Now people of all ages surge forward, dabbing their fingers in the ash. It's Meskal in Gondar, Ethiopia.

The Meskal Festival, September 27th, is a fiery celebration of the day that a fragment of the True Cross came to Ethiopia. According to legend, Queen Eleni of Byzantium found the True Cross by lighting a fire, then throwing incense into it. Smoke from the fire rose up, then fell back and touched the earth precisely where the Cross was buried. In the Middle Ages, the Church of Alexandria bestowed a piece of this precious artifact on the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

The celebration starts at 12:01 am. Chants ring out from each of the ten Orthodox churches in town, and people light cooking fires outside of their homes. All food preparation is done outdoors on Meskal. By dawn, wood smoke hangs heavy in the air. The entryway of each home is strewn with fresh-smelling rushes mixed with yellow daisies.

After a quick breakfast, we tourists head down to the town's central square. Around us people gather in colorful bunches, dozens of deacons from each church. Every church has vestments of a different hue. The priests wear their best gold-thread embroidered velvet brocade, with matching ceremonial umbrellas. Drums and sistrums keep the beat, young boys with brass bugles make a shrill racket, and people burst into song throughout the crowd. Nobody seems to mind at all if a kid gets hold of someone's drum and starts pounding at random- it's a very tolerant crowd, like a giant family reunion.

Every so often, another procession comes from a different church, carefully bearing their velvet-wrapped copy of the tabot (Moses' tablets). They sing and dance joyfully down the street. I'm a bit short, so I can't really see much in the crowd. After

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