Carnival

Carnival

Carnival does not always party to the same date because it must always be celebrated before the fast that is forty days before Easter. Carnival Sunday is therefore between February 1 and March 7. Carnival is the festival of children. They dress up, to go from house to house and try to fill their piggy banks. They ring the doorbell and sing the next verse they are given for pennies : "Boller op boller ned, i min mave boller,hvis JEG ingen boller får, så wash JEG ballad " ("Buns it, then rolls, buns in my belly,if you do not give me, I will make the noise "). The buns are a reminder of the days when food represented a symbolic capital since many Danes living on the edge of famine, rarely ate white bread. Today, it's not much food available that distinguishes holidays and ordinary days buns are replaced by pennies. But in the weeks surrounding the holiday, Danish bakeries offer buns Carnival appreciated by children and adults. Often, the Danes buy "Carnival of yards". They are decorated with bouquets of branches curls and small gifts that are offered to children or used to brighten the house. These yards once symbolized fertility, the budding branches representing the coming of spring.

exemple of activity : The cat out of the barrel

children type the barrel

The day we celebrate Carnival, Danish children are "the cat out of the barrel" by typing in turn, with a club, a barrel full of candy and sweets that were hung from a beam . Whoever manages to break the barrel is crowned / e "king" or "queen of the cat. 

 Origins of this tradition : 
Cat, according to popular belief, was the pet of witches and demons and had an evil power. Carnival falling at the time when they began preparing the seeds for food crops, the farmers were trying to ward off evil by driving him. Until around 1850, Danes enclosed a live cat in a barrel and they kept pounding it to the cat runs away at the moment when the barrel broke. Carnival, a festival of adults initially, since the Danish word for "fastelavn" means "day of fasting," marked the beginning of the fasting of Christians which began on Ash Wednesday. However, the festivities began at the "Shrove Sunday" by gargantuan meals. After the Reformation, which abolished the obligation of fasting, festivities of Carnival continued until next Sunday with a parade of riders, games and competitions as well as theater of the battle between winter and summer.