Okay, so Fasnacht is almost over, and after two parades and a whole lot of shredded paper, I’ve learned a little more about it. Such as:
I. Fasnacht has a special purpose. I’d assumed as much, but I couldn’t have told you what that reason was before the past few days. Now, after a little more research and a hot tip from Mathias, I know that Fasnacht is a pagan tradition designed to scare off the bitter winter – think of it as a kind of Swiss Groundhog’s Day, only more proactive. That, then, explains the all the costumes, though I’m not sure why the iconic Fasnacht clown would frighten anyone, much less the great and powerful Mr. Snow Miser.
Vikings, on the other hand, are very scary, and an entire brass band of Vikings, such as the one that performed, loud and drunk, on the risers at the Metalli mall Thursday morning, were positively fearsome (especially the 300-pound tuba player in the horned helmet). So were the pirates, and the witches, and the trolls, and the other pirates, and the tigers, and the communist aliens, or alien communists, or whatever the green men in the Soviet costumes were supposed to be. The drunken ski team was not very scary (the drum major’s fu manchu notwithstanding), nor was the momma chicken with all the little baby eggs following her down the street, tossing feathers on parade-goers.
The band of smelly hippies was terrifying.
All of these, mind you, were the band members, the people walking in time and playing an assortment of mediocre pop hits from the ‘70s and ‘80s (“We Built This City,” “You’re the Best Around,” “Danger Zone”). The crowds of people watching, both at the Metalli and along the parade routes, were even more impressively, if less uniformly, decked out. There were more witches and more trolls, and there were giant, puffy clowns and Oompa Loompas and blue-haired cigarette girls, and virtually nobody tried to get away with a lame cop-out like “oh, I’m just a dude with a bobbly valentine headband and no other costume to speak of.”
As for us, Mia was Cinderella on Thursday, then shifted gears to Fairy Princess for Saturday’s parade. Sarah was a pirate, complete with a headband and a mask and a scary hook fashioned from tin foil. And Max was Clifford the small red dog on Thursday, then donned a princess dress for Saturday’s festivities.
(Got a problem with that, Tim Hardaway?)
II. Fasnacht works. How else to explain the 60-degree weather on Greasy Thursday, the first day of Fasnacht? True, it was back down to the low 30s today, but clearly, winter is on the run. Not that that’s all that impressive, given what a pussycat of a winter we’ve had so far, but still. Score one for paganism.
III. Fasnacht is funded entirely by an all-powerful cabal of Swiss dentists. Think I’m crazy? Look at the facts. The only people that weren’t throwing confetti at us were throwing candy at us, most of it hard candy of the sort that I always seem to pop into my mouth, then get sick of after about 15 or 20 minutes, then bite on, leaving a sticky pebble of sugar lodged alongside one of my many fillings. I hate that stuff, but Mia doesn’t, and she was in heaven, filling her puppy-dog purse with it, along with all the chocolates and brownies and cookies and oranges and gum she could get her hands on. For some reason we can’t quite fathom, some of the floats were also tossing out travel Kleenex and Pampers-brand hand soap for kids, but nobody – not one of the hundreds of people that passed us and handed out free stuff – was giving out floss.
Seriously. Who benefits? Follow the money, people. Follow the money.
IV. You cannot just brush confetti away like dandruff. Especially when you’re a professional, adultish woman and you make a habit of engaging 13-year-old Swiss girls in confetti fights all afternoon. That’s right, my wife, she of the fancy job and the smooth, even temperament, spent Saturday afternoon out by the hockey stadium chucking fistfuls of yellow and red and purple detritus at gangs of high school kids as they passed on parade floats.
She learned this behavior from her daughter – her four-year-old daughter, mind you – who overcame her early timidity and began heaving confetti at band members near the end of Thursday’s parade. Then she started throwing it at the non-playing mascots that trailed the bands, and then at other parade-goers, and finally point-blank at an infant in a stroller – that’s when I stepped in.
Nothing I could do to halt Sarah’s confettish, though, nor did I want to stop it – the look of glee on her face was just too hilarious. To their credit, her victims responded in kind, pelting Sarah about the face and neck and shoulders with their own supply of paper, leaving her with confetti in her hair, down her back, in her pockets. They weren’t laughing either, not like Sarah. They, one suspects, had spent the entire parade being confetti’d, and they weren’t about to take any more of it, especially from some no-account auslander.
And it didn’t end there. There was a pirate ship float shooting cannons full of confetti into the crowd. There was a medieval castle blasting the stuff from some kind of machine gun mounted in a turret. There was an “Ice Age” float (yes, “Ice Age” again – who knew that movie had such a huge Swiss following?) with squirrels showering us from the top of an iceberg, and there were toothless hags dancing along the street tossing it at us, and there were men on a flat-bed truck shoveling it – literally, shoveling it – out of a giant trough and onto our heads.
It was, as Mia so lyrically termed it, a “confetti-quake.” And for what it’s worth, it’s a pain in the neck to get out of the carpet.
V. No, I’m serious about the confetti. I’ve vacuumed four times, and the cleaning ladies were here Friday. I’m still finding the stuff all over the house.
I’m not complaining. I’m just saying.
VI. Fasnacht is rad. I love this holiday. We need to take it for America. I mean really, it’s 20 degrees in Chicago. Are you telling me that a holiday centered around drinking, fried food, and candy – one that, oh yeah, gets rid of the harsh winter as a bonus – you’re saying that wouldn’t go over big?
Let’s steal it. Let’s make it our own. Come on, who’s in?
