Americans are fond of ‘celebrating’ the ‘diversity’ of their
country. But actually, compared to
Europe, it is pretty much one mass-marketed culture from coast to coast. Europe -- residually, at any rate
-- still has genuine diversity of cultural traditions of a kind unimaginable in America.
Thus, take Shrovetide
(a word most Americans can no longer even define.)
In America, Mardi Gras is basically just a time for people
from various regions to go to New Orleans to get drunk. Culturally, it is quite
comparable to the Superbowl; its
religious significance (as Shrove Tuesday) is nil.
In many parts of Christian Europe, Fasching still means something; it is observed, in different regions, in multiple different
ways, with traditions going back to the Middle Ages.
Rosenmontag -- 1836 |
Mardi gras (Fastnacht)
to be sure, by those who remember that we then faire gras as a last indulgence before the forty-day fast that
begins on Ash Wednesday; but likewise, especially in northern Germany, Rosenmontag.
And even, in Braunschweig (Lower Saxony), especially, a
festival on the Sunday before that:
the Schoduvel (North German dialect -- literally ‘scare-devil’),
going back to folkways intended to frighten-off such imps as Jack Frost, and eventually blending in
with the Karneval. Little
did the revelers realize that they have more to fear than the ills of
winter: much closer to home, they
have been nursing a nest of vipers, now for years.
For now this genuine European diversity is under threat from those who adopt
“Diversity” as a banner, using it as a club to bludgeon European dignity and
history. Most recently, today in
Braunschweig, the Schoduvel has been canceled owing to threats of violence from the Salafistenszene -- not something the police take lightly, given the events of the day
before, next door in Denmark. A
couple of weeks before that, a parade in protest against Islamist violence was
forbidden by German police owing to … threats of Islamist violence. (The links/grün/bisounours coalition failed to notice the irony.)
Schoduvel -- Doomed by Diversity |
~
Folkloristic footnote:
The variegation of traditional European cultures is not only country by country, but
region by region, in Germany in particular. We earlier glanced at Ripuarian richness:
For a Plattdeutsch account of Shrovetide festivities:
Aschermittwoch as well is marked regionally with particular
traditional pageantry:
Strohbärentag |
[Update 21 November 2015] Yet another Christian festival, canceled because of an Islamist
terrorist threat:
Le traditionnel cortège pour
l’arrivée de la Saint-Nicolas à Vilvorde, dans la grande banlieue de la ville,
est supprimé.
Annulé |
[Update 24 Feb 2017] Good news! Brunswick in Lower Saxony is merrily celebrating the Schoduvel, under the defiantly jaunty slogan (and beneath the focussed gaze of hundreds of policement,
"Helau, wir tun es allen kund : der Schoduvel bleibt frei und bund."
http://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/braunschweig_harz_goettingen/Braunschweig-155000-Jecken-feiern-Schoduvel,schoduvel620.html
*
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weiterblättern
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*
[Update 10 mars 2018] Meanwhile in France:
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