The weirdest parade

In the village of Küssnacht, which is on the other side of Lake Zug, they have an interesting tradition. It's called "Klausjagen," which means, in essence, "chasing Santa Claus." It consists of a parade, held every December 4. It's a funny combination of a centuries-old pagan tradition that somehow got combined with the Christmas season. The village used to have a tradition of having a parade with whips to drive out the evil spirits. When the Christians came along and made everything all Christmas-y, that somehow turned into a parade with both whips and Santa Claus. It's pretty famous. About 20,000 people cram into this little village for this parade, so the kids and I decided to join the "fun" last night.

Here was the parade: First, a bunch of guys cracking whips; second, a bunch of guys wearing exaggerated versions of a Catholic bishop's hat, lit from the inside and with very colorful religious designs. I assumed that this would take up about three minutes, but it went on for about 25 minutes. The kids and I were all getting pretty restless. (I've thrown in a couple of blurry pictures below. Conditions were tough for taking pictures. It was dark and crowded and I was trying to keep track of two kids. I think Mary went last night, so she may eventually have better pictures on her blog.) This was followed by the Swiss version of Santa Claus himself, carrying a torch. (He doesn't wear red here and he's not fat.) This was followed by a bunch of guys with trumpets and other horns, but they weren't playing a happy, joyful tune; no, they were just playing a sequence of short notes C-E-G-E-C, followed by a long C. They repeated this over and over again. This was followed by a bunch of guys carrying very large cowbells, which they were ringing. This was followed by a bunch of guys playing some kind of curved horn that sounded more like a kazoo than anything else, but they weren't playing a tune; they were just making noise.

And then it was over. The whole thing took about 45 minutes to pass by. It certainly wasn't anything like the Macy's Parade or anything like that. It actually had kind of a grim feeling to it, which in some ways is typically Swiss. But the kids liked it.