I have experienced and even participated in quite a few Karnival or Faschings events over the years, dressing up and watching the parades in Wรผrzburg and Kรถln. Rhenish traditions in western and northern Germany are distinct from the tenor and scope of the celebrations in Frankish Swabia and Bavaria but the party and pageantry are executed in the same spirit.
Customs in Mainz and the Rhein corridor were articulated in their present form in the nineteenth century, partially in protest to successive French and Prussian foreign rule, and the occupying governments were lampooned (the allegory was pretty transparent) with floats and monarchs of the Carnival court. The Free States did not have the same cause for gripes but have equally elaborate spectacles that invert everyday conventions—Narren are fools, jesters while Walhalla is the memorial honouring important figures of the German Sprachraum, especially in the week leading up to Lent. I don’t quite grasp, however, how this period becomes a Fifth Season. The party mood is not continuous—and I imagine would be hard to sustain, and is broken up by the solemn calendar days of Christmas. It just seems strange that the long celebration goes dormant and into hibernation, crossing the weave and warp of colder weather and other occasions, and then come back to life at the end, as Winter is dissipating. Maybe to wedge another season into the year enables that transition, relieved in restraint, once the long and dark season is showing signs of moving on.
