For any feedbacks or comments, please use our contact form

Carnival in Lucerne

The Fifth Season
 
The Swiss are known for many things, most of all for banking, the fabulous scenery, watches, cheese and chocolate. This could be sufficient information for visiting tourists, but not for the expatriates who, no matter how briefly, have made Switzerland their home. What really interests them is learning about Swiss customs and traditions, anything which might help them to understand the culture and the locals better.
 
Concentrating on the winter season, it is obvious that the Swiss are crazy about Alpine skiing, but this is also the time when they celebrate their biggest and most popular festival - Fasnacht. Some of the most passionate celebrators of this carnival are in Lucerne. Located in the shadow of majestic Mount , Lucerne is famous for having the best of mood and music, the most colorful and jolly parades and the most elaborate masks in the whole country. In comparison Basel with its stand-and-watch parades can look boring and Zurich and Bern have become only recent and tame followers of the Fasnacht tradition seen in Lucerne.
 
The Lucerner version is famous for its chaotic “march-any-direction-you-like” street parades and the so-called Guggenmusig. But before I tell you about the carnival and the parades, let’s look at the history of the celebration.
 


The History of Fasnacht:
 
Fasnacht is a pre-Lenten carnival from the Alemannic folklore found in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. If you don’t follow the Western Christian Tradition or the religious calendar, Lent is the period of the liturgical year, leading up to Easter. This is the time, when believers prepare through prayer, penitence and self-denial for the annual commemoration of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Conventionally Lent is described to be 40 days long and it represents, according to the Bible, the time Jesus spent in the desert, where he endured temptation by the Devil.  During this period many believers also fast and Fasnacht is often related to this ritual as the eve before fasting when people celebrate and have fun. But Fasnacht is not only one night, it stretches into a six-day all-out carnival, starting on Dirty Thursday (Schmutzigen Donnerstag) with a loud Bang (Urknall) at 5am and ending on the morning of Ash Wednesday (the first day of the 40 day Easter fast).
 
The most important days you need to know during the festival are: Dirty Thursday, Fat Monday and Fat Tuesday. This year they are on the 16th, 23rd and 24th of February (The dates of Fasnacht vary each year according to the phase of the moon). Friday, Saturday and Sunday in between are not official carnival days, but there are a lot of activities going on these days, in part simply because they make up the weekend.
 
The official Lucerne website says that Dirty Thursday derives its name from grease. “Dirt” also means grease in the dialect and therefore “fat” Thursday. On that day, beside the normal carnival fare of greasy sausages people eat different fried desserts similar to doughnuts and carnival cakes. A typical local dish is the Luzerner Chügelipastete, made of many layers of dough, filled with meat and cooked in sauce with berries and rum. These traditional foods, high in calories were made to build up some fat reserves before fasting began at Lent.
 
Güdis Montag and Güdis Dienstag (Fat Monday and Tuesday) come from the word “Güdel” which means stomach and belly, so these last two days were designed to fill up your belly before the end of the carnival.

Beside food the Lucerne Carnival (Lozärner Fasnacht) is focused on its parades and the Guggenmusic. 
 
Fasnacht Parades
 
The opening of the Carnival on Dirty Thursday cannot be described better than on the official Lucerner Fasnacht website: “When on Dirty Thursday Brother Fritsch with his followers arrive at 5am on Schweizerhofquai and open the Fasnacht carnival with the loud bang (Urknall), the city of lights on the river of Reuss suddenly transforms into a gurgling Witch-pot. Hundreds of Guuggenmusicians start drumming and blowing their pipes and playing their brass instruments. Thousands of people start filling the small streets of the old town, dressed in colorful costumes and wearing elaborate masks. This is how the “Fifth season” in Lucerne starts and its residents, who are usually self-controlled, for six days turn the city into a center of joy coated in just a little bit of carnival madness.

Tsitaliya Mircheva

www.luzerner-fasnacht.ch

 

back