"The festival of Pailhasses is one of France's most ancient carnival traditions. Celebrating the end of a longstanding rivalry with a neighbouring village, it has for more than 700 years allowed villagers to release frustrations before Lent. Its rituals are about strength, chasing and some form of attack. It is also notoriously secretive."
"Behind the scenes, however, modernity rubs against tradition as women are trying to gain a bigger role in the visible part of the carnival beyond cooking specialities, sewing or organising. Whether this is possible depends partly on a village's global approach to safeguarding its traditions."
"The Pailhasses carnival began as a feud: the villagers from Cournonterral habitually stole wood from the forests of Aumelas, which led to strife until, in 1346, the seigneur asked the local authority named Pailhas to bring peace, and the Pailhasses became the culminating feature in a carnival week before Lent."
The Pailhasses festival in Cournonterral, France, is an ancient carnival tradition dating back to 1346 that originated from resolving a territorial dispute between villages. During Ash Wednesday celebrations, exclusively male performers dressed in white armor with black badger hair masks and feathered top hats chase women participants wearing white with red ribbons. The festival allows villagers to release frustrations before Lent through rituals involving strength, chasing, and symbolic attack. The event remains notoriously secretive, prohibiting smartphones, cameras, and spectators. Contemporary tensions exist as women attempt to gain more visible roles in the carnival beyond traditional responsibilities like cooking, sewing, and organizing.
#french-carnival-traditions #gender-roles-in-festivals #medieval-cultural-practices #tradition-versus-modernity
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]