Basel Fastnacht Children's Parade or "Get them while they're young, Evita!"

In the mid-winter of 2002 I traveled to Basel, Switzerland to spend a week with friends and to attend my first carnival celebration., the famous Basel Fastnacht. As a German and Russian teacher, I had taught about this midwinter festival with pagan roots for decades, but I had never attended one. Karneval, Fasnacht or Fasching never really interested me much, but learning about it in order to teach it did lead to a fascination with the holiday. I was fascinated by its ancient pagan roots and by how Christianity adopted this pagan tradition and adapted the customs and food to the Chritian faith. This ancient pagan holiday became a pre-Lenten festival with its customs and traditions left intact, just understood with a different spin. It wasn't until I attended a celebration for the first time that I fell madly I love with it. Indeed, those few days with Andy, Wayne and their daughter, Olivia, may have been the most fun filled three days of my life.

The Children's Parade takes place on a Tuesday, and is just one day in a four day celebration. It is not one organized continuous parade but a series of a hundred (or more) parades that range in size and scope from two parents pushing a constumed baby in a stroller or pulling a toddler in a wagon to more organized brass bands made up of older kids and adults. The usual Cliques or adult clubs are still marching and playing fife and drum as well. 

The parades are higgledy piggledy all over the city! You can't escape them, even if you wanted to, and who would want to escape the utter cuteness of those countless cherubs? Parades crisscross each other on the same street. Stand on a main street. They pass by. Go down what seems like an empty alley way. They are there in no time. In among the spectators are parents with costumed children, as well, sometimes on their shoulders for a better view and sometimes curbside on their laps. 

Groups of little cowboys, princesses, pirate, bumble bees, and smurfs play in the confetti and chase each other and their parents with it. Older children are interviewed by Swiss TV about their day. Mischievous little boys and girls team up with each other. One approaches you to offer you a candy, and his or her partner in crime unleashes a big scoop full of confetti all over you. Older children are also pulled in larger wagons and toss candy, oranges and shoot confetti at the crowd from confetti guns just like the adults do. Seeing a toddler dressed up like a strawberry on a parent's shoulders pass by an old person in a mask being wheeled down the street by a son or daughter is not only touching but telling. Just like the love of the Jersey shore, the love of Fastnacht begins at the earliest of age and lasts a lifetime.