Thursday Links

2 Responses to “Thursday Links”

1. Alex
   August 28th, 2010 @ 4:21 pm

   I admit it, I clicked on the link. And, honestly, I… kind of want to shake Cracked and yell at them to stop making things up. I know this isn’t supposed to be taken seriously, but part of me just wants to yell ‘wrong, wrong, wrong’.
   Germans are horrible with Halloween. Why? Because we don’t do it. There’s a teeny tiny bit of Halloween celebrating that has made its way over here in the last decade or so, but I have only once in my life seen someone wearing a Halloween costume – the one and only time a kid rang my door to ask for sweets. We do have Fasnacht though. Fasnacht, Fasnet, Karneval, depending on what part of the country you are in. The time of fools, total abandon, shameless indulging, and turning the world on its head. While a lot of it these days is just stupid costumes and young people taking advantage if an excuse to party, there is a whole Narren(fool)culture. There are organisations who, for a week, take control. Where I grew up, they close the schools and university, storm city council and put the mayor and other local VIPs on trial to defend their actions throughout the year. It is most definitely nothing like Halloween, and how dare they equate that inane little plastic holiday with something that has been established since the Middle Ages as the time in the year when the little man can give the ruling class a piece of his mind. Yes, Cracked never did actualy compare Fasnacht to Halloween, but, as I said above, there is no Halloween here.
   Fasnacht is also taking place during winter, and mostly in the streets, so a furry costume is a pretty smart move. Dressing up as historical or fictional characters, or as stereotypes, is also rather common. Yes, there are ‘Indians’. Not necessarily politically correct, but, hey, Karl May’s Wild West books featuring whole tribes of noble savages, the most famous the Apache Winnetou, have had German children turning pages for well over a century, of course they want to dress up as their heroes. That is not supposed to be David Hasselhoff, but someone cosplaying German comedian Axel Schröder. Your average crappy cheap costume is produced in China, and probably sold all over the world. A historical costume doesn’t have to be Robin Hood, just because the cloths would fit. And people dressed up in ridiculous outfits as mascots or something else for commercial purposes don’t have to be connected with Halloween or Fasnacht, and are infinitely more common in the US. That is e.g. not ‘holy fuck’, that is the Sarotti-Moor, created 1918 (thank you, wikipedia) as mascot for a chocolate brand; I admit that is not the best costume I have seen of him though.

   Sorry for that, I’m afraid my localism decided to run riot and point out that we already had traditions when the Western world didn’t even know America existed, so stop talking about things you don’t understand, you little brats! I blame pre-excavation separation anxiety for this bout of patriotism.

2. Kivitasku
   September 4th, 2010 @ 11:24 am

   American comedians recognize foreign cultural affair as anything but ridiculous and mockable? Not likely to happen… Sorry you were upset. :(

   It’s strange, though, since I could swear the most horrible Halloween costumes come from the U.S. – or at least, most of the horrible costumes. Pretty sure they came up with those superhero outfits for kids with the muscles sewn in. Uhhh…

   I’m sort of sad to see that while frivolous Halloween-themes parties are on the rise in Finland, there are fewer and fewer – if any – “virpojia”, kids dressed up as witches going from door to door asking for candy and giving decorated branches in return, a Palm Sunday tradition. I guess, though, since I come from the capital area, it could just be that kids don’t dare to anymore. It’s weird though since I grew up in a restless area (by Finnish standards) and we still did this.

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