The Difference Between a Street Full of Orange and a Rainbow Flag

A few weeks ago, something beautiful happened.

Almost overnight, streets transformed. Flags appeared from upstairs windows. Orange bunting stretched between houses. Supermarkets filled entire aisles with themed merchandise. Neighbours who normally exchanged little more than a quick wave over the hedge suddenly found themselves watching matches together, discussing line-ups in the supermarket queue, or celebrating late into the evening after a dramatic win.

Watching supporters from across Europe travel to the United States for this year's World Cup has been a reminder of what sport can do at its very best. It creates temporary communities. It gives strangers a reason to smile at one another. It invites people to wear their identity proudly and visibly, if only for a few weeks.

There is something deeply human about that.

One of my favourite moments wasn't even a particular goal or match. It was seeing Dutch supporters applauding Morocco after a deserved victory. Before the tournament, there had been plenty of concern about the fixture, especially given the tensions that have surfaced in the Netherlands during previous meetings between the two nations. Yet amid the rivalry, there were also countless moments of genuine sportsmanship. Fans recognising good football when they saw it. Celebrating the joy of the game itself, even when it came at the expense of their own team.

That, to me, is what fandom can look like at its best. Passion without hostility. Identity without exclusion. Pride in your own colours without needing to diminish someone else's.

And while watching all of this unfold, I found myself thinking about another celebration and comparisons after seeing posts from Dutch social media pages from a magazine like L’Homo.

In earlier months, across the different Dutch cities, many of these same streets had looked different. Rainbow flags were there before orange ones. Parades took over city centres instead of victory processions. People dressed brightly, loudly and unapologetically to celebrate another part of who they are.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the mechanics of these celebrations aren't actually all that different. People decorate their homes. They wear colours that represent something meaningful. They gather with others who share that identity. Families make memories together. Businesses join in. Entire communities become more visible for a short period before everyday life quietly resumes.

Yet the conversations surrounding these events often couldn't be more different.

One is largely described as festive.

The other is still regularly described as political, provocative or unnecessary.

Of course, football and Pride are not the same thing. Nor should they be. Football celebrates a sport. Pride exists because generations of LGBTQ+ people had to fight simply for the right to exist openly, to love openly and to be seen. Their histories are fundamentally different, and pretending otherwise would ignore why Pride matters in the first place.

But comparing them isn't about suggesting they are identical. It's about asking why we instinctively experience one public celebration as completely normal, while the other is still expected to justify its presence.

I don't think the answer lies in the celebrations themselves, I think it lies in familiarity.

After enough decades, traditions become almost invisible. We stop noticing how expressive they really are because they've become woven into the fabric of everyday life. Nobody questions why supermarkets suddenly become entirely orange. Nobody argues that football supporters are "forcing their hobby" on everyone else by wearing jerseys for weeks. Nobody worries that children might see adults painting their faces or waving giant flags through town centres.

Not because those celebrations are any less visible, but because they are familiar.

Somewhere along the way, we collectively decided that this is simply what football season looks like.

Normal isn't natural; normal is familiar.

The same pattern appears everywhere once you begin looking for it. Christmas lights cover entire neighbourhoods. Carnival transforms cities into giant street parties. Formula 1 weekends paint campsites and grandstands in team colours. Comic conventions fill conference halls with people dressed as their favourite characters. Music festivals become temporary villages with their own unwritten rules, traditions and costumes.

We rarely question these displays of identity because they have become part of our cultural landscape. They belong there because we've always known them to belong there.

It's much harder to extend that same generosity to celebrations that arrived later, or to communities that spent generations being told they weren't welcome in public spaces at all. It reveals something important about how easily we confuse familiarity with neutrality.

The things we have always seen stop feeling like expressions of identity. They simply become "normal." Everything else becomes noticeable. And once something becomes noticeable, people begin debating whether it should be there at all.

I wonder how many of the traditions we now cherish once felt unfamiliar to somebody. How many celebrations were once dismissed as making too much noise, taking up too much space or changing the character of a neighbourhood. Probably more than we'd like to admit.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet lessons that football teaches us every tournament, even if we don't realise it. People are happier when they can visibly belong to something bigger than themselves. Whether that is a national team, a local club or simply a community of people sharing the same excitement, there is comfort in recognising one another through colours, symbols and traditions.

The instinct itself isn't unique to football.. We all want moments where we can say, "This is part of who I am," and have that met with a smile instead of suspicion.

Imagine if we extended the generosity we so naturally offer football supporters to other forms of celebration. Not because every celebration has the same history or the same purpose. But because every person deserves the freedom to experience joy in public without their happiness automatically becoming someone else's controversy.

You don't have to wear orange (as a supporter of the Dutch team) to appreciate football. You don't have to wave a rainbow flag to believe someone else should be able to. You don't even have to fully understand why a particular celebration matters to another person before recognising that their joy doesn't diminish your own. Belonging has never been a finite resource.

Every time we make room for someone else's celebration, we don't lose a piece of our own tradition. We simply make our shared spaces a little richer, a little kinder and a little more representative of the many different people who call them home.

Perhaps that's the real difference between a street full of orange and a rainbow flag.

Not the colours, not the people, not even the celebration itself. The difference is often nothing more than what we've collectively decided feels familiar.

And maybe it's time we became just a little more curious about who gets to decide what "normal" looks like.