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Strange Or Fortean Annual Celebrations

E

evilsprout

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Reading about Frozen Dead Guy Day in this month's FT, and thinking back to other bizarre local celebrations such as Mike the Headless Chicken Day, I was wondering if any of you lot know of any more days for the Fortean calendar?
 
Me and some of my droogies were discussing frozen dead guy day. We have nothing nearly so interesting to make up for it! However, in our hommurk planners, for some reason, random quotes and dates have been printed - and there is one called "worlds' biggest cofee morning". The aim, i assume, is to drink cofee.
 
I found it a bit late to post it, but late September there was a
Banned Book Week, during which we were encouraged to read
a banned book.

But I suppose it all depends on who banned it and when. :eek:
 
There's the wassailing of the apple orchard at Carhampton in Somerset every year - much drinking, placing of cider-soaked toast in the boughs, songs, and shotguns firing through the branches.... ;)
 
Various games of 'football' including uppies and downies at Workington.
 
Over here in the wilds of Ohio, we have the Sauerkraut Festival, where you can buy sauerkraut pizza, sauerkraut fudge, and deep-fried sauerkraut balls. Held in October to maximize visitors' yellow-jacket exposure.

October also brings the Piqua Underwear Festival. Piqua used to be the underwear manufacturing capital of the Midwest: BVD underwear and the first practical drop-seat union suit (the mind boggles at the thought of field tests) were developed in Piqua. The festival features the "Undy" 500 go-kart race and a "brief" fashion show using local celebrities as models.

There is also a gourd festival in Mt. Gilead, although I fail to see how much merriment can be extracted from three days of dried vegetable matter, and a Twins Festival in Twinsburg, the largest gathering of twins in the world.

I'm sure there must be other bizarre festivals, but most of them are just built around some kind of food item (i.e. strawberry, corn, pork, popcorn.)

Much further south, of course, we have Los Dios de las Muertes--the Day of the Dead Festival, where the dead are remembered with gaily decorated altars, flowers, and crunchy sugar skulls.


"I was a reference librarian in a previous life."
 
JerryB said:
There's the wassailing of the apple orchard at Carhampton in Somerset every year - much drinking, placing of cider-soaked toast in the boughs, songs, and shotguns firing through the branches.... ;)
Click to expand...

Ere, JerryB, lets goe a wassailin' toge'r me'ansum. :D

I know wassailing is a great pastime here in the South West - it all stems back to 'thanks giving' to the apple trees and the Powers That Be for providing the apples with which to make the cider - spiced apple cake seems to be a popular alternative to cider soaked toast.

But why is it called 'wassailing'?
 
It's an Old English word, the meaning of which I forget right now.
 
JerryB said:
There's the wassailing of the apple orchard at Carhampton in Somerset every year - much drinking, placing of cider-soaked toast in the boughs, songs, and shotguns firing through the branches.... ;)
Click to expand...

Is this the origin of the song "here we go a-wostling amongst the leaves so green" I learned as a wee girl? Or is "wostling" (sp?) something completely different?
 
JerryB said:
It's an Old English word, the meaning of which I forget right now.
Click to expand...
Wassail is a hot drink that is made with wine, beer, or cider, spices, sugar, and usually baked apples and is traditionally served in a large bowl especially at Christmastime
Very popular in ours when we've run out of mulled wine!
 
Yes - this is a Victorian invention AFAIK.
 
In Alabama we have the Rattlesnake Rodeo in Opp, and Mule Day in Gordo.

sureshot
 
We've been to the Allendale tar barrel celebration a couple of times- on New Years Eve, a group of men in various costumes march around the village with flaming tar barrels on their heads.
http://www.north-country.co.uk/tarbarrels.htm

The missus went to the Abbot's Bromley horn dance this year (coincidentally featured on Country File on the TV a couple of weeks ago), where a group of people in various costumes dance around the village (for about 10 miles!) with deer horns on their heads.
http://www.abbotsbromley.com/horndance.htm

There are loads of others that I don't know personally, the Padstow Obby Oss is probably the most famous. Janet and Colin Bord have included quite a few in their books.

Surely someone has a webpage on these?
 
The absolute best book on such things is 'Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem' by Quentin Cooper & Paul Sullivan. Very informative, and also very witty.
 
Straw needed to help bear revival

Hopes of reviving an ancient ritual are in danger of being dashed -by a shortage of straw.

Villagers in North Muskham, Nottinghamshire, want to construct a 6ft-high straw bear costume for the revival of the rite.

The "bear" is paraded through the streets in chains before the straw is burnt following a day of celebrations.

But organiser David Haslam says they are struggling to find enough straw for the event because of the wet weather.

He hopes a farmer will donate the straw for the bear costume, which is being designed and made by a local craftswoman.

"One of my friends has drawn the short straw and has to wear the costume," Mr Haslam said.

"We really need a farmer who has some long straw."

The Muskham Pinkies cycle club are hoping the event will take place on the weekend of 9 October.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/3706086.stm

Published: 2004/10/01 07:41:54 GMT

© BBC MMIV
Click to expand...

and this is the link on the same page as this article to the
Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival

On an unrelated note to Straw Bears, I'm quite gutted I missed the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance this year. I last saw it as a little kid and I'd love to see it again.
 
Cat Festival, second Sunday in May (May 9, 2004). According to legend, in 962 A.D. Baudoin III, the Count of Flanders, ordered the people of Ypres to throw two or three live cats from the tower of his castle. This was an act of renouncing pagan superstitions in which the cat featured largely, often as a symbol of fertility. This centuries old festival was banned in the eighteenth century by Joseph II, and again after the French occupation, but in 1817 it was again observed by having a single citizen, wearing a red jacket, white cap, and ribbons, throw down a live cat from the castle, which often survived the drop. During World War I it was observed by a concert of bells, and in 1938 the festival was reinstated at the current date, with live cats replaced with toy stuffed ones. A Cat Parade was added in 1955, and includes floats and costumes based on feline mythology through the ages.

And of course, there's the Carnival, which involves a host of characters and the throwing of Seville oranges.
 
Campbelltown in New South Wales puts on an annual Festival of Fisher's Ghost.

There's a legend from the convict days that the appearance of the ghost of vanished ex-convict Frederick Fisher led to the discovery of his body and the conviction of his murderer. The legend was reworked in print a number of times, including by Dickens.
 
US town to party with the dead

Bredo Morstoel is the life and soul of his Colorado town's unusual annual festival - despite being dead for 15 years.
Known as Grandpa, the 89-year-old Norwegian's body was discovered cryogenically frozen in a shed in 1994.

But the people of Nederland, a small mining town 35 miles (56km) north-west of Denver, decided to turn the discovery to their advantage.

In 2002, the first Frozen Dead Guy Days festival was held in a bid to attract tourists and preparations for this year's event are under way.

T-shirts and baseball caps are already on sale and garish publicity posters - one bearing the phrase 'It Came From Cryogenics" - produced.

Coffin races

Events include a "Thaw Your Bones" chilli cook-off, live music, coffin races, a Champagne tour of Grandpa's shed, a Grandpa pub crawl and even a Grandpa look-a-like competition.

Among the invited guests for next week's event are President George W Bush and King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway, urged by the town's Chamber of Commerce to take part in the "fun and parody of the weekend".

But they are also being asked to help Grandpa Bredo's daughter - Aud Morstoel - get a visa so she can act as the event's parade marshal.

Her application may be refused as she was forced to leave the US for violating her visa by staying four months longer than it allowed after the discovery of her father's body.

Aud Morstoel's son Trygve Bauge, who is lobbying politicians, embassies and the media to secure his mother's visa, said: "They are trying to deny it.

Clone Grandpa

"They are dragging their feet. They should have given us this a long time ago."

Mr Bauge cryogenically prepared his grandfather's body, which is encased in an aluminium casket and covered in dry ice in a shed.

They are dragging their feet. They should have given us this a long time ago
Trygve Bauge
Click to expand...

It is hoped the body will one day be revived or cloned.

Grandpa Bredo was discovered when Mr Bauge was deported for immigration violations and Aud Morstoel was left behind with the body.

A caretaker replenishes the ice around his body when it is necessary.

During the event, Grandpa will stay at home while the festivities go on around him - but organisers say his spirit will help ensure a party to remember.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 320773.stm
Published: 2005/03/05 00:27:28 GMT

© BBC MMV
Click to expand...
 
Padstow has its well-known May Day festivities, but less well known is Darkie Day, which has been in the news recently as the PC brigade have been getting their teeth into it:
Police race inquiry could end Cornish Darkie Day
By Simon de Bruxelles



AN ANCIENT Cornish tradition in which residents of the fishing village of Padstow blacken their faces and parade through the streets singing traditional songs is being investigated by police after complaints that it is racist.
The event, known as Darkie Day, has taken place at Boxing Day and new year for as long as anyone can remember. Some claim it dates back to the days of the slave trade, others that its origins are even older — in pagan festivals suppressed elsewhere by the Christian Church.



The revellers who paraded through the streets collecting money for charity were filmed by police officers, after a complaint from an organisation calling itself the “Cornish Council for Racial equality”. A file from Devon and Cornwall police has been submitted this week to the Crown Prosecution Service, which will have to decide whether the festival breaches the Race Relations Act. The police action has angered many Padstow residents, who fear that their traditions are under attack from politically motivated “do-gooders”.

David Edwards, a town councillor, said: “There is strong feeling about what has happened and what is going to happen. Will there be a prosecution and who instigated it?”

Devon and Cornwall police used four vans of officers to patrol this year’s festivals, despite the event’s virtually non-existent history of crime. Members of the town council, who have had requests for extra patrols during the holiday season turned down, believe that it was an unnecessary waste of resources. Despite its possibly pagan origins, this winter’s Darkie Days raised money for the parish church, St Petroc’s, and had the backing of the vicar.

Locals have felt defensive about the festival since complaints from the same organisation seven years ago led to calls for a ban. There was concern that the event could become a flashpoint between anti-racism campaigners and the far-right National Front.

The fears were unfounded and Padstow residents claim the festival is just harmless fun and a variation on the traditional West Country tradition of “guising”, in which poor people would disguise themselves and sing songs in return for money or food from richer neighbours.

Linda Reynolds, 50, who runs a newsagent in Padstow, said: “I have always gone out to Darkie Day. If it was even vaguely racist I would be the first one to stand up and shout.

“I was in a relationship with a black man. I can’t think of anybody who has a racist thought on Darkie Day. It’s a traditional event at which people get blacked-up. They are not imitating black people.”

A pub landlord, who plays the accordion at the event but did not want to be identified, said: “I’m sick of all this commotion. Padstow is a small place with a close-knit community and this is festival should be kept for Padstow people.”

A police spokesman said: “We took video evidence on Boxing Day and sent it to the CPS to see if any offences had been committed. We are now waiting for the file to come back.”
Click to expand...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1498779,00.html
 
The PC brigade? That's a very broad brush isn't it? My inlaws have enjoyed this (if I am thinking of the same thing) and I'd say that they were likely to do something about attitudes that cause meaningful hurt.

So they are PC and this didn't bother them.

I know I'm slow and I know I miss nuances. But aren't you ascribing attitudes and making judgements in the same way you seem to be labelling the "PC brigade"?

Baby and bath water?

Why would anyone want to clingfilm people's activities and stop them being a vivid part of life? Folk traditions in the broas sense are part of the culture. Why stop them interacting with it?

M
 
The black-face procession was once a widespread custom - the Mitchell Kenyon films preserve at least one example in Lancashire.

There may be ancient examples of blacking-up but the processions of a century ago were obviously informed by two more recent traditions - the minstrel show and the pageantry of Empire. It is probably wishful thinking to see them as a value-free slice of Heritage.

There would have been few if any real black faces to witness these displays. Curiously, one of the most frequently reproduced of the Mitchell Kenyon films in trailers and as a still image features a black man cheerfully interacting with workers as they leave the factory. At first sight, it seems to be a pleasant picture of racial harmony. However, as the commentary in the actual programme makes explicit, it is clear from his clean white sleeves that the black man has not spent the day in the factory. Probably he was a circus performer placed in the frame as a stunt and to publicise the show where the films would be shown. :?
 
It is probably wishful thinking to see them as a value-free slice of Heritage.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, James Whitehead. It's what I was trying to say and tying myself in knots over. :)

These things are part of the culture, not fossils.

M
 
Probably going a bit OT, but just before the email notif brought me back to this page (with its 'PC or not PC'), I was reading this:
Every now and then, some dispute flares up in the United States that reminds us that sensitivities over language in that country run especially deep.
The specific occasion was a meeting of the Sacramento City Council last week, reported in the Sacramento Bee, in which one speaker, to emphasise his point, said “I think we should call a spade a spade”. A Councilwoman, African-American, objected to this vigorously, saying it was an “ethnically and racially derogatory remark”.
Most people know that to call a spade a spade means that we should avoid euphemism, be straightforward, use blunt or plain language. Most Americans also know that spade is a rather outmoded derogatory slang term for an African-American. Putting the two ideas together, though, requires a person whose sensitivity to possibly offensive language is greater than their knowledge of word history. (Nothing new about that, though: remember all the fuss in Washington in 1999 over the word niggardly, and all those in the US who think picnic refers to the lynching of a slave.)
First of all, the spade in the expression isn’t the same spade as in the slang term. The first is undoubtedly the digging implement. The second is the suit of cards. In the latter case, the allusion was to the colour of the suit, and originally appeared in the fuller form as black as the ace of spades. The abbreviated form spade seems to have grown up sometime in the early part of last century (it first appears in print in the 1920s). Though they’re the same word historically—both derive from Greek spathe for a blade or paddle—the one you dig with came into Old English from an intermediate Germanic source, while the card sense arrived via Italian spade, the plural of spada, a sword.
An oddity is that to call a spade a spade is a mistranslation. The original was a line that the classical Greek writer Plutarch wrote some 2000 years ago about the Macedonians. He intended much the same idea—suggesting that the Macedonians were too crude and unsubtle a people to do anything other than use blunt words—but he used the word skaphe, variously a trough, basin, bowl, or boat. It seems the medieval scholar Erasmus misread it when translating the line into Latin and Nicholas Udall copied him when making his 1542 English version. The phrase has been in the language ever since.
If Erasmus had got it right, we might now be telling people to call a trough a trough, and Sacramento would have been spared the recent fuss.
Click to expand...
From The http://www.worldwidewords.org website - look up 'Spade'

I think it's sad when modern attitudes are applied retroactively, as it were, to ancient customs.

(But then I'm a paradox unto myself, because I don't have that attitude towards fox hunting, which I'm agin...! But that would be going really OT!)
 
More on Frozen Dead Guy Day:

US town to party with the dead

Bredo Morstoel is the life and soul of his Colorado town's unusual annual festival - despite being dead for 15 years.

Known as Grandpa, the 89-year-old Norwegian's body was discovered cryogenically frozen in a shed in 1994.

But the people of Nederland, a small mining town 35 miles (56km) north-west of Denver, decided to turn the discovery to their advantage.

In 2002, the first Frozen Dead Guy Days festival was held in a bid to attract tourists and preparations for this year's event are under way.

T-shirts and baseball caps are already on sale and garish publicity posters - one bearing the phrase 'It Came From Cryogenics" - produced.

Coffin races

Events include a "Thaw Your Bones" chilli cook-off, live music, coffin races, a Champagne tour of Grandpa's shed, a Grandpa pub crawl and even a Grandpa look-a-like competition.

Among the invited guests for next week's event are President George W Bush and King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway, urged by the town's Chamber of Commerce to take part in the "fun and parody of the weekend".

But they are also being asked to help Grandpa Bredo's daughter - Aud Morstoel - get a visa so she can act as the event's parade marshal.

Her application may be refused as she was forced to leave the US for violating her visa by staying four months longer than it allowed after the discovery of her father's body.

Aud Morstoel's son Trygve Bauge, who is lobbying politicians, embassies and the media to secure his mother's visa, said: "They are trying to deny it.

Clone Grandpa

"They are dragging their feet. They should have given us this a long time ago."

Mr Bauge cryogenically prepared his gradfather's body, which is encased in an aluminium casket and covered in dry ice in a shed.

They are dragging their feet. They should have given us this a long time ago
Trygve Bauge
Click to expand...

It is hoped the body will one day be revived or cloned.

Grandpa Bredo was discovered when Mr Bauge was deported for immigration violations and Aud Morstoel was left behind with the body.

A caretaker replenishes the ice around his body when it is necessary.

During the event, Grandpa will stay at home while the festivities go on around him - but organisers say his spirit will help ensure a party to remember.

---------------------------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 320773.stm

Published: 2005/03/05 00:27:28 GMT

© BBC MMV
Click to expand...
 
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