Well, I suppose these events are a bit like solstices and christmasses "How did you hear about today's event?" (it's the Gala! it happens every year!) but still take place just once a year? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll I love his Christmas Not Just Once A Year short story with the mechanic angels whispering "Frieden, Frieden" (Peace, Peace) all year round...
Personally, I quite like that kind of tradition (not necessarily accompanied by mecanical angels, I´d take more real ones just for a change http://salvoblue.homestead.com/wings.html). In a way one knows exactly what to expect which gives it that childhood feeling of delightful expectation and then ditto repetition and there is often something touchingly human and down-to-earth about local feasts: people in homemade costumes, schoolbands in uniform, that kind of thing.
Indeed, your local labour leader does not seem to have hired a very good press person if he has not yet gathered it necessary to attend. (Of course, a labour leader need not come out of other reasons to take part of a Miner´s Gala, does he now?) He could have had a ball at the gala having his photograph taken with the rescued chilenan miners, maybe adding some miners´children whose heads he might have kissed photogenially.
The Beer Can Situation you describe immediately reminds me of Midsommar (summer solstice) in Sweden. In my childhood it was still a feast for kids and their parents with folk dances around the Midsommarstång (may pole) but nowadays it seems mostly to be about everyone getting drunk, including the kids. I still find it lovely, though (the feast;) and will go back to Stockholm and take a steamship to one of the archipelago islands where people dance on the landing-stages in the light summer night.
I also think, I prefer your pictures to the imaginary ones of your local labour leader!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-07-10 05:04 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll I love his Christmas Not Just Once A Year short story with the mechanic angels whispering "Frieden, Frieden" (Peace, Peace) all year round...
Personally,
I quite like that kind of tradition (not necessarily accompanied by mecanical angels, I´d take more real ones just for a change http://salvoblue.homestead.com/wings.html).
In a way one knows exactly what to expect which gives it that childhood feeling of delightful expectation and then ditto repetition and there is often something touchingly human and down-to-earth about local feasts: people in homemade costumes, schoolbands in uniform, that kind of thing.
Indeed, your local labour leader does not seem to have hired a very good press person if he has not yet gathered it necessary to attend. (Of course, a labour leader need not come out of other reasons to take part of a Miner´s Gala, does he now?) He could have had a ball at the gala having his photograph taken with the rescued chilenan miners, maybe adding some miners´children whose heads he might have kissed photogenially.
The Beer Can Situation you describe immediately reminds me of Midsommar (summer solstice) in Sweden. In my childhood it was still a feast for kids and their parents with folk dances around the Midsommarstång (may pole) but nowadays it seems mostly to be about everyone getting drunk, including the kids. I still find it lovely, though (the feast;) and will go back to Stockholm and take a steamship to one of the archipelago islands where people dance on the landing-stages in the light summer night.
I also think, I prefer your pictures to the imaginary ones of your local labour leader!