The day's celebrations are marked by the parade of the Soufflaculs, dressed in nightgowns and white cotton bonnets, whose mission is to march through the town with a bellows, chasing away any evil spirits hiding under women's skirts.

Listed in France's Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2010, the Soufflaculs of Nontron have become famous for their comic, caricatured and satirical vision of society.

[1] The oldest known iconography of the souffle-à-cul dates back to the 16th century, and appears to be the bas-reliefs carved on the wood outside the Hotel Brusttuch in Goslar, Germany.

[2][3] A demon is depicted with a poppy and crow's feet, preparing with his bellows to wind a witch whose right arm is in the position of an anal offering.

[4] However, a 13th-century[5] medieval manuscript, a 14th-century cul-de-lampe in Troyes' Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul cathedral and a 15th-century banner of the Compagnie de la Mère-Folle seem to allude to a similar use of bellows before the 16th century.

[2][6] Generally speaking, the character of "la vieille Bouchée" – an elderly, extremely thin, religious and prudish lady who never stops farting in a church – is used as a personification of the carnival cycle.

[13][14][15][16][17] In some departments, a Catalan variant is known as the "danse du feu aux fesses" (or "Tiou-tiou"): participants each light a paper corkscrew hanging from the buttocks of the person in front of them.

[6][2] Le Nontronnais of 16 February 1850 is the first known press title to mention the practice of souffle-à-cul in Nontron: "Autrefois, dans la basse ville des bals magnifiques, que la mascarade des Soufflets était originale, qu'elle exécutait avec ensemble une manœuvre que nos lecteurs qualifieront comme ils l'entendront, que les costumes étaient frais et blancs...".

[19] On 8 March 1851 Le Nontronnais devoted a long column to a description of the carnival, but only described the ball attire, disguises and masks worn by the participants.

[19] In 1865, as evidenced by an article published on April 1 of that year, a dozen or so people dressed up as they pleased: costumes of Don Quixote, the Musketeers, Sancho Panza, the pages of François I, Louis XIV, Mephistopheles, Harlequin and Pierrot were seen around town.

The four-day festivities kick off on Sunday evening, when the Nontronnais are invited to a masked ball held in the large hall of the former Café Italien.

The leader of the troupe pronounces a burlesque formula [...], makes the man stand up and embraces him, while the music resumes with great noise.

[27] With famine a regular occurrence in Périgord, and winter synonymous with food deprivation, fricassee, which is rich in fat and calories, is one of the best dishes of the carnival period.

[29] On Shrove Saturday, the village fair is the perfect place to stock up on meat, hung on butcher's hooks and decorated with garlands and blossoming fir branches.

[32][34] Along with the commune of Saint-Claude (Jura),[35] the tradition continues in the Dordogne and Hérault regions,[36] with over thirty villages taking part since the late 1970s.

[37][38] Although the town of Nontron generally uses it as a genuine tourism promotion tool, the event sometimes comes up against a lack of financial resources or disagreements with some of the successive mayors, preventing it from taking place in certain years.

The investigators met with Michel Meyleu and Gilbert Cibert, co-founders of Les Soufflaculs in 1979, as well as Jean-Louis Dumontet, the association's president.

[31] The Soufflaculs of Nontron have been listed in France's Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 5 July 2010,[45] for "their procession through the town, their Carnival judgment and cremation, and their ritual of circulating breaths".

[31] In 2011, the organizing team is also seeking more international recognition, by launching a procedure for inscription on UNESCO's World Intangible cultural heritage List.

[39]Using a ladder or a large pole fitted with a begging bowl, a group of Soufflaculs wearing red masks, known as the Fous, enter cafés[54] and climb up to the windows and balconies of Nontronnais to be served wine.

[21][39] Massed on the sidewalks, in the middle of the crowd of spectators, the Soufflaculs regularly perform the Soufflets de Nontron song, accompanied by a banda or street band.

The judgment was inspired by Le jugement de Carnaval, a burlesque comedy in prose and verse in one act, written in 1951 by Nontronnais Paul Thibaud.

[61] Some salute Bufador's death with a rendition of the popular song Adieu paure Carnava[61] l. In some years, the condemnation takes place under the gaze of "Baboye",[51] a large statue of a Soufflacul in action, a symbol of the Nontron festivities.

[62] The idea of this satirical farce is to forget about constraints, taboos (particularly those linked to the body when it comes to anal insufflation),[63] prohibitions, the social institution and the law.

[64] Historians compare the Soufflaculs of Nontron to the Fête des Fous, in the sense that these two medieval festivities demonstrate that society was capable of parodying and ridiculing itself for a period of the year, and "ape the rich and powerful of the Church and the Court".

[11][38][65] Everyone was able to mock the most sacred religious and royal practices and conventions, and exceptionally imagine "a world where the last was first, where fools and serfs became kings", and vice versa.

[66] In January 2019, Jean-Noël Cuénod, a correspondent for Mediapart, notably drew a parallel between the fervor of the Soufflaculs and that of the Gilets jaunes in the streets, when Emmanuel Macron had just written his Letter to the French to explain the modalities of the great national debate: "[the letter] from President Macron could only lack breath, unlike the Soufflaculs of Nontron [...], pantless heroes of this festival as annual as it is petulant".

According to legend, the original meaning of the practice was to chase away the Devil with loud blows of the bellows, as the monks of Saint-Sauveur did in their abbey on the site of today's central pharmacy, Place Alfred-Agard in Nontron.

Through Bufador's judgment, everyone unconsciously takes the opportunity to stigmatize him, whether as a cuckolded husband, a mean-spirited person, a member of the clergy or an overambitious politician.

Having also gone to excess on Carnival Day, that same evening he becomes master of ceremonies at the Sabbat, a witchcraft gathering of his servants – witches and werewolves – in an abandoned glade.