The right costume for carnival
The way to the right costume on the occasion of the feast of the meatless season is not so easy these days. At Christmas and Easter it's easy - for one thing, these holidays are completely commercialised and you don't have to dress up, except maybe as Father Christmas, Knecht Ruprecht, Christ Child, armadillo or Easter Bunny to scare children, and for another, there are at least holidays as a highlight, which is not so true for the fifth season (except in Cologne, where public life comes to a standstill for a week - and for the pupils in Bavaria, who have extra carnival holidays).
Short preparation time
So what to do when the Christmas offers disappear from the shop windows and advertising banners on the screen to advertise New Year's Eve firecrackers for one day, so that winter rigidity then sets in on the smartphone, which is the only connection to the outside world? The older ones among us will remember: when there was no permanent radiation from mobile phones always worn on the body, we made our own costumes. We looked in the wardrobe for discarded clothes from our parents, sewed a cape out of strips of fabric with a pedal-powered sewing machine, or stuck cardboard boxes with craft foil, drilled holes in the sides and tied them together with cords. Ghosts, cowboys, robots or wild fantasy animals were born.
Just as plastic Christmas trees are offered at half price in summer, the specialised trade lacks the final kick to offer costumes cheaper after Halloween so that the appropriated mainland citizen of the All Hallows Eve (All hollows eve), which has not been exported in and out of the USA, can also appreciate brilliant costume ideas.
The hot tip for a quick disguise
Maybe the former aerobics queen has to squeeze into her orange leggings, leave out the bra and put on the yellow top, finally put on a green summer hat, and there's the free fruit salad costume with two plump oranges and bananas, decorated with apple.
Or the mullet-wearer who only gets up from the sofa to put his beer away and tell his wife to put another one down while he's away. He is advised to paint his crumple zone in the middle of his body brown and add black stripes vertically; not because vertical stripes make you slim, but so that the viewer of this painterly work can recognise its wearer as a barrel.
And then: off to the street festival
In 2020, visitors to the parades will still be able to freeze. Because there is one thing that climate change cannot do: make the Lenten festival fall in the summer. From Damme, where the northernmost and, apart from Osnabrück's Ossensamstag, earliest procession (on Sunday) takes place, to Basel (the Cortèges are the southernmost, latest and longest-lasting processions (Rose Monday to Ash Wednesday)), the fence-sitters and accompanying foot groups without heating can expect to hear their teeth chattering as they accompany the touring bands.
The way a children's day-care centre in Erfurt has now made it into the national press is better: Banning costumes, cancelling carnivals and stating that preschool children are frightened by playmates dressed up and feel uncomfortable themselves when they run around as lobsters, bees or elves. It is irresponsible in terms of the needs of ethnic groups to play cowboys and Indians, robbers and gendarmes or witches and wizards. It is obvious that children do not feel comfortable when they are forced to wear clothes they cannot identify with, because nothing is more important to adolescents than political correctness and the support of narrow-minded educators who do not tolerate fun.