Fasnacht

In the US, car dealerships hang out these really cheesy strips of plastic flags that have bright colors and wave in the wind as a way of drawing attention to themselves.  Over the past several weeks, we’ve had something similar going on here in our small town only its not multi-color flags being stretched across the streets but women’s underwear and lingerie.  Yes, you read right – women’s underwear and lingerie. We are in the middle of the Fasnacht season which is a tradition of southern Germany, Switzerland and part of Austria.  Its a mixture of pagan and Catholic traditions.  Like Mardi Gras and Carnival, this is a build up to the time of Lent which starts 40 days before Easter (Ash Wednesday).  Part of these “celebrations” are to get everything out of your system before going into Lent where traditionally people give up alcohol, sweets, meat, festivals, and some – sex.  That’s what the underwear is about – traditionally men would display their success in this area by taking the underwear of all the women they were able to sleep with and hang them out for all to see.  These days I think someone picks them up at a bargin bin.

Other traditions during this time are huge parades through each town in the area where people dress up in various costumes.  Originally, these were to scare away demons and evil spirits to bring about the end of winter.  Just as with Mardi Gras and Carnival, there can be quite a bit of lewdness however its more about the demonic spirits.  While many think that Germany (and Europe for that matter) has been this place where Christiandom ruled however less than a 100 years ago most people were more about the superstitions, regional gods, and tales of evil spirits.  For many of them, the church just added more tales and gave more fear to them so their faith wasn’t about knowing Jesus Christ but about what they had to do to keep the evils here on earth at bay.  One of the interesting things is how people associate the whole festivals to Christianity but want to be disassociated with the Church so much so that Basel, Switzerland (which has the largest Fasnacht parade in the world) celebrates on the Monday after Ash Wednesday just to show that they have no ties to the Church in their activities.

The common person in Europe (historically and today) has never truly been shown the Gospel for what it really is. For those that pray, please pray with me that they will.

(Check out the Wikipedia page on Fasnacht)