Carnival in Europe: A time to smile
It is again the season of folly and fun. The season of masks, music, parties and parades. The fifth season, the silly season.
It’s carnival time.
The season has many names — Fasching, Karneval, Fastnacht and Carnevale are but a few — and it is celebrated from the eastern Mediterranean to the shores of the Canary Islands and across the big pond in New Orleans.
The name likely comes from the Latin phrase Carne Vale, meaning "meat, farewell." The German Fastnacht, or "fast night," refers to the night before fasting begins on Ash Wednesday.
The celebrations can be traced to the pagan custom of driving out the evil spirits of winter and celebrating the renewal of spring. Or perhaps the ancient Greek celebrations honoring their god of wine.
For Christians it became a time to eat, drink and be merry before the austere days of Lent.
The season evolved into a series of street parties and balls with masked revelers who, some say, developed costumes so all classes could celebrate together and poke fun at authority without revealing their identities.
Whatever you call it, and wherever you celebrate it, from now until Ash Wednesday — and in a few places a little longer — this pre-Lenten festival has much of Europe in its grip.
In Germany, the big bashes are on Rose Monday, or Rosenmontag, when more than a million people line the streets of Cologne, Mainz and Düsseldorf for big parades that feature floats, costumes and marching bands.
The Narrensprung, or fools jump, in Rottweil on Rose Monday and Shrove Tuesday, is the most famous of the Black Forest Fasnet celebrations.
The highlight of Munich Fasching is the Tanz der Marktfrauen on Shrove Tuesday, when the market women perform dances on the Viktualienmarkt.
Maastricht is the center of Dutch carnival. Here they party from the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, when an effigy of a city statue is raised on a mast, until exactly midnight Tuesday, when it is lowered again.
In Binche, Belgium, Shrove Tuesday is the day of the Gilles. In the morning they wear orange costumes and masks with eyeglasses, a mustache and beard painted on them and perform dances in front of the city hall. For the afternoon Grand Parade they dress in hats decorated with ostrich feathers.
In Italy the highlights are the Carnevale celebrations in Venice, Viareggio and Acireale on Sicily.
Thousands of tourists go to Venice to watch creatures masquerading in masks and costumes in St. Mark’s Square and along the canals or to go to the city’s famed balls. In Viareggio, giant floats move up and down a main city street, as vast amounts of confetti fly through the air. In Acireale, elaborate costumes, colorful floats and 100,000 spectators fill the city’s main square and streets.
The centers of Croatian carnival are Rijeka and Split, on the Dalmatian coast.
The places to celebrate in Spain are in Cadiz, where celebrations start the Thursday before Ash Wednesday and last until the Sunday after, and on the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
In Nice, France, His Majesty King Carnival rules. Highlights here are the Bataille de Fleurs, parades with colorful, flower-adorned floats, with beautiful women on them pelting the spectators with blossoms, and the carnival parades with the king on his own royal float.
One of Europe’s best carnival celebrations takes place in Basel, Switzerland, on the Monday following Ash Wednesday. The Morgenstraich begins at exactly 4 a.m. when all the lights in the city center go off. In pitch darkness, the musicians of the Fastnacht cliques march through the city. For hours this eerie procession crisscrosses the old town until dawn, playing their strange melodies.
And when you think the season is finally over, the action returns to Stavelot, Belgium, on March 22, where the Blanc Moussis, disguised in hooded white robes, parade through town, stuffing confetti down unsuspecting visitors’ backs.
But that is another story.
