Carnival in the Netherlands
The feast was assimilated by the Catholic Church, taking elements from ancient pagan spring festivals and is celebrated in the three days preceding the Christian holidays of Ash Wednesday and Lent.
On what nowadays is called vastenavond (the days before fasting) all the remaining winter stores of lard, butter and meat which were left would be eaten, for it would soon start to rot and decay.
Also there are some indications that the effigy of Nerthus[9] or Freyr was placed on a ship with wheels and accompanied by a procession of people in animal disguise and men in women's clothes.
[11][12] Tacitus wrote in his Germania: The elaborate rites involving masked figures in the Swabian-Alemannic carnaval might have had an influence on the different aspects of the feast.
The Swabian-Alemannic carnaval, known as Fastnacht, takes place in Baden and Swabia (Southwestern Germany), Switzerland, Alsace and Vorarlberg (Western Austria).
The writings show that processions with ship-like carts were held and lavish feasts were celebrated on the eve of lent or the greeting of spring in the early Middle Ages.
[1][11][27] Gradually the ecclesiastical authority began to realize that the desired result could not be attained by banning the traditions, which eventually led to a degree of Christianization.
[11] This change of course became more clear when at the synod of Benevento (in 1091) the beginning of lent was definitively established on the day that is called Ash Wednesday by pope Urban II.
This tradition is still reflected in contemporary parades and at the Brabantian tonproaten and Limburgish buutereednen, the speakers subjects include mocking and ridiculing the local administration.
Often this gave the mass the opportunity to pelt the church ministers with shit, a phenomenon in slightly modified version to be found now in the spreading confetti from the carnaval floats.
Like in other European countries, the two main purposes of the charivari in Europe were to facilitate change in the current social structure and to act as a form of censure within the community.
The victims were subjected to humiliating processions with noise and music through the village, forced to do embarrassing or hard labor or their possessions and house would be marked, damaged and soiled.
According to cultural anthropologist Jef de Jager, The upcoming protest generation saw that its desire for looser manners was honored, at least during the Carnaval days.
Even mild criticism of the political and social system, until then painstakingly smothered by the authorities, suddenly appeared to be possible ...For most adolescent participants the longing for personal freedom appealed most to them; thus, Carnaval became to the South, what the Provo was to the North [of the Netherlands].
[36] The Carnaval exceeded in the 1970s the border that is formed by "the Great Rivers" (the Maas, the Waal and the Rhine), lost all religious connotations and became a secular feast.
As a result, the carnaval in these parts of the country usually lasts only one day with the emphasis on role dressing and feasting, without the social criticism, parades and months of prelude.
The massive carnaval festivities, which suspend the daily life, still mainly take place in North Brabant, Limburg, Twente and the municipalities of Hulst, Sluis, Nijmegen, Over-Betuwe, Lingewaard, De Liemers and Arnhem.
People will dress up as a character, much as seen during the eve of the Christian feast of All Hallows that appears in the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon culture, which though has developed from a different origin.
The changing of positions in power provide an opportunity to criticize the authorities without fear of retribution and are part of the role reversal function of the carnaval.
In fact, these associations took on many activities which the guilds used to organize in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period before the French occupation and are in that sense their successors.
The parades have usual a particular theme whereby authorities are ridiculed and criticized, events of the past year are represented and which are often politically incorrect and used to make people think outside the box or function as a mirror to the society.
Usually a competition will be held to choose the most outstanding contribution to the parade with separate categories for floats, groups on foot and individual participants.
[1] Early elves, whose description depends almost entirely on Norse mythology texts, were a race of beings with magical skills, ambivalent towards humans and capable of either helping or hindering them.
One special revue (called pronkzitting) is an organized event at or before the carnaval with singing and dancing, but focuses mainly on humorous contributions by a variety of local tonpraoters / buuttereedners.
[1] It is traditional that the prince, and his council of eleven wears a fore-and-aft bicorne with (pheasant) tail feathers, in particular in those places that are influenced by the Rhenish Carnaval.
They thought they could escape this danger by dressing during this wedding celebrations and to behave as peasants, and thus appear to be the people at the bottom of the social ladder.
Carnaval ends on Tuesday midnight with the symbolic burial (or burning, depending on the town's tradition) of Farmer Knillis by the Prince and his Adjutant.
The custom of Foekepotten is already seen on a painting by Pieter Bruegel, called The Fight Between Carnival and Lent from 1559 (the man with the stick in the jar beneath the figure on the barrel).
It is believed to be a postwar invention from Rhineland, where women wanted to emphasize the independence they gained to men who had returned from the front after the years of war.
Around this time Germany had a very large number of armies, and there would be young women in each regiment, who served during the day as a sellers and providers of food and drink and took on household chores like washing clothes.
