If you live as we do in the Northeast, March is a month known for being a tease. On some random day you look out to see the sun shining, robins flitting around the yard, and step outside to find that the coat you put on is way too heavy. Just 24 hours later you wake up and put on a tee shirt expecting the same, only to open the door to get the paper and find a sheen of frost on the grass. It's not uncommon to fire up the grill on the deck one day, and the space heater in the basement the next. The calendar may officially say it's Spring, but like tariffs this year, it's on one day, off the next.
Still, hope springs (see what I did there?) eternal, and it's hard not to shift our mindset from hunkering down and shivering to turning our upturned faces to the sun. For sure there are the official markers of Passover and Easter, and their intrinsic promises of rebirth and redemption. But around the world are more secular celebrations, some situational, some more formal, timed to the change in seasons.
Ten years ago we went down this route, timing our trip to Amsterdam to be there when the tulips were in bloom. Two years ago we didn't so much time it as lucked into it, as the cherry blossoms popped out in Japan just as we arrived (global warming had accelerated the explosion). This year, unless we hop to it, we're probably too late to catch the following, but they are still happening.
Take the events in Castrillo de Murcia, a tiny hamlet in the Cantabrian mountains in northern Spain. There in June they hold a festival called "El Colacho," which translates as "The Devil." It starts with a man dressed in a yellow devil outfit whipping fleeing teenagers to the sound of a drumbeat. Were that the main event it would be strange enough. But as part of the festival parents place infants - real ones - on mattresses in the streets, and the "devils" jump over them. The idea is that by leaping over the babies, the colachos protect them from sin and disease. After each jump priests bless the babies and young girls scatter rose petals over them. All this leads to the event's more informal name: "The Baby Jumping Festival."
Or you can head to Gloucestershire, England in May. While the first written evidence of this gathering dates to 1826, it's possible that the annual Cheese-Rolling and Wake started even sooner. There, at Cooper's Hill in Brockworth, a 7 to 9 pound round of Double Glouster cheese is given about a one-second head start, after which competitors race after it and try and catch it. Since that doesn't usually happen (the round can hit speeds of about 80 mph) the winner is the first across the finish line behind the cheese. Injuries are common, as it's a steep and uneven hill. In fact, in 2023 Canadian Delaney Irving won the ladies race despite falling across the line unconscious, and only learned of her victory in the medical tent after she woke up.
And while it's a little later in the season, the Boryeong Mud Festival in Daecheon Korea is one of the largest warm weather celebrations in the world. Originally a marketing ploy staged by the cosmetics companies that utilize the mineral rich local mud, it has evolved into a sloppy party that attracts over 2 million visitors. Held on the mud flats along the beach, there are mud baths, mud slides, mud painting and mud massages. The top tip from the organizers? Wear old clothes.
None of those interest you? There's the Merrie Monarch festival in Hawaii, one of the most important hula competitions on the islands. The Calaveras Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels Camp, CA is based on the Mark Twain story and features, well, frogs. And you just enough time to get to Thailand for the annual Songran festival in April, whose centerpiece is a giant water fight with squirt guns and buckets.
While I love to travel, our schedule this year looks to keep us more local. So I guess we'll stage our own rite of spring. Feel free to join us where you see the smoke from the grill rising from behind the house. And if you must, bring along some cheese and a water pistol to add to the festivities.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford is looking forward to seeing green. His column appears weekly via email and online on Blogspot and Substack as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
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