Spring Fervor
I may be practicing anthropology without a license, but I would submit that if you really want to understand Northerners you need to take a hard look at their spring time behavior. I don’t mean to get too clinical, but take any folks coming out of 5 or 6 months of long winter and I think there’s some post-hibernation rituals in need of some frank discussions on the couch, so-to-speak.
Take, for example, the good folks in Zurich, Switzerland. Roundabout spring time the Swiss, I’ve learned, like to gather to burn a “snowman-like effigy” they like to call the “Boogg.” Yes, on a stake. Over a large flaming pyre! I don’t have a lot of Swiss friends who could really unpack this ceremony for me, but part of the tradition, it seems, includes stuffing the head with explosives in the hopes for a good and timely explosion to portend a warm and sunny summer. (We might remind groundhog Punxsutawney Phil of these details should he ever ask for a raise.) Behavior like this might prompt a good neighbor to delicately ask if everything is OK.
My inner researcher got a bit of an itch on this subject, when, years ago, I happened to be in Bulgaria in early spring (late winter) and the good people there were beginning to hang strange red and white dolls in their trees. Actually they were everywhere. Of course needing a little enlightenment, we asked our translator and quickly learned that these were likenesses of the infamous “Baba Marta” — the Grouchy Grandmother of March. Far from exploding her head, the more diplomatic Bulgarians felt that by appeasing the old crank with ubiquitous voodoo ornaments she might consider powering down winter a little sooner.
But if anyone has any doubts over the primal effects of springtime, you really need to take a hard look at what this season does to the otherwise button-downed British. Each spring, it seems, the folks in Gloucester, England unleash their wintertime caginess to join in the century-old “Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling Race”. I’ll admit that the idea of chasing a rolling round of cheddar down a hill did not immediately impress me until I learned the high stakes of this pastime. Able to reach speeds of 70 miles per hour, the race was actually shut down one year — not because of injury just to cheese racers, but to the spectators. (Apparently a high velocity 9-pound hunk of curd can really do some damage.) If that’s not evidence of the judgment-addling condition of spring, I don’t know what is.
I must admit that I had always assumed that stoic Vermonters were above the fray when it came to this sort of thing. Granted you might make a case for a slight uptick in shopping cart aggression in the grocery aisle. Or maybe even a decrease in that courtesy left turn we Vermonters afford to the first in line at green lights. (Even one of our town member’s spring-time habit years ago of hanging political pronouncements from his tree is still acceptable behavior in my book). But overall I assumed a more year-round, even-keeled behavior, until my wife reminded me of our family’s springtime paper boat tradition.
For reasons I can’t remember, our clan has, for a number or years been in the habit of engaging in a paper boat race in the thawing creek behind our house to usher in the season. I hesitate to say that our tradition is anything as exciting as cheese rolling. But what has always perplexed me a little is the extent to which this pastime has summoned such barbarity from our children. In fact I don’t think I can recall a time when things have not gotten pretty ugly. Bombing each other’s boats with rocks, sacrificing bodies to the muck, raucous battle speeches — all of which I think could be perfectly acceptable behavior in Switzerland, it should be noted.
If there is an explanation –and maybe some justifiable finger-pointing — for any springtime emoting I have been counseled to understand that it’s because spring in these parts is pretty much a bipolar season. The time of year sees about as much constancy as my old 73 Volkswagen Beetle from college. Take any sun-starved population and then subject them to cruel pendulum-like weather and we should be happy, I am told, that we are not bowling rounds of cheese at each other.
If there is a better metaphor for the season it would have to be the green snowman my kids made one exceptionally flaky spring. “What’s up with the color?” I asked my guys. A closer inspection explained their Hulk-hued creation: grass clippings from the mowing I did the previous weekend. In that moment the good folks from Zurich seemed a lot less crazy.
