Vodun Days — the national observance

Benin set aside 10 January as the national day of Vodun when it formally recognised the religion in the 1990s, and since 2024 the state has expanded that single holiday into a multi-day programme, the Vodun Days, centred on Ouidah. Ouidah is a fitting centre: it holds the Temple of Pythons, where royal pythons sacred to the vodun Dangbé are kept and carried among the devotees; the Sacred Forest of Kpasse with its sculptures of the deities; and the Route des Esclaves running to the Door of No Return on the beach, the path along which enslaved Africans were marched to the ships — so the religion's public festival sits on the ground of the trade that scattered it across the Americas. Over the days, the convents bring their initiates out into the squares; priests pour libations and conduct rites for particular vodun; drumming and dance summon the deities, and devotees enter possession; masked figures including the towering Egungun and Zangbeto appear from the convents. It is reverent and ordered, not the horror-film invention the word 'voodoo' carries in Western media — that caricature is itself a product of slavery and its propaganda. The festival now draws Beninese, West Africans, and members of the diaspora from the Americas returning to a source of their own faith, alongside other visitors. Some rites are public; the deepest convent rituals remain closed to non-initiates, and that boundary is firmly kept.