Yesterday evening, as it was getting dark, the whole village gathered to mark the end of the Fastnacht season. In our area, the tradition is to celebrate this by having huge bonfires. This symbolizes the beginning of spring and Lent, and also the chasing away of the snow (if we had any, ha,ha)
Lent btw is an ‘old English’ word for spring... then we wait expectantly 40 days, 46 if you count Sundays, till Easter. Easter is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox. Wow...gotta love how nature plays a part in this...God never seems to be too far from His creation.
... Back to Sunday night.....this is an evening for all the villages up and down the valley to create their own huge fires...we are talking stacks of wood and brush piled as high, deep and wide as a very large house! Not your nice little bonfire on the beach while your bopping to the Beach Boys...this is serious fire. And the Germans really get in to it...they love their fires...they have fires and torches at Christmas for night time wanderings, the fireworks for New Years are all shot off in the streets for at least an hour or more, there are fires at every gathering to roast wurst or stockbrot over with your self sharpened stick that you cut yourself from the woods, and every home has candles that they really use. So these folks know how to “do” fire.
Half of our family had this flu bug raging through the house, so I took the healthy crew (the oldest and the youngest) and we had a blast. The whole village, it seemed, had turned out for this and it was only the Rümmingen folk, as every other village has their own celebration. I was pleasantly surprised with how many people I actually know and how many are more than only “wave to buddies”.
We stayed long enough to for the kids and friends to have a good game of hide and seek in the shadows of the fire...and of course there was wurst and long sharp sticks...but that story is for the next post.
