28 Feb Embracing Spring All Over The World

Embracing Spring All Over The World

How three cultures express the coming of spring.

Viva Colonia, Germany

The crowd knows the song, but I don’t. “Viva Colonia,” I hear, as the crowd pumps fists and snaps open hands to the song. Colonia. The city of Cologne, with the Rhein drifting only blocks away, is crammed into the medieval streets for celebration.

“Es gibt Bonbons,” my German peers had told me in English, before uncertainly explaining that Karneval is a celebration of spring. But more importantly, there were indeed full-size candy bars flying from the sky. Floats and formations of men and women in a regimental dress—Prussian blue coats, with waistcoats beneath, and stockings marched straight from a Revolutionary War movie.

For a New Yorker like me, Germans are lawful until they’re not. In a country where public drunks are unthreatening and legal, the people handpick days to let themselves go. We blow up fireworks illegally on the fourth of July, while the police watch them send New Year’s rockets across the most crowded streets of Berlin. We down Jell-O shots in Manhattan’s Halloween parade, while Prussians on the floats aim full boxes of chocolate over the crowds and into the waiting windows and balconies of onlookers lucky enough to live in a well-placed building. These are very efficient ways of chasing off the bad energies of winter.

I take to it like a sport, snatching boxes before those around me can. German women make me feel short for the first time in my life, but my 170 centimeters can leap an extra five. I don’t even need to yell for the candy. Every time a float comes by, it’s the same—“KAMELLE” screamed like a strange, German homage to Camila Cabello, except it’s Ka-mill-ah, and it’s simply a cry for candy. I am a guest, and I observe that the German cat women, clowns, Batmen, and culturally-appropriated Native Americans are in on screaming at the candy-and-flowers-(and-sometimes-plushie) rain like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

There’s one thing that I’ve never seen in any spring celebration, however. When the political satire rolls in, on floats mounted with crying polar bears, Angela Merkel on a swing, Kim Jong-Un pointing a nuke at racist Asian caricatures, and a hasty #MeToo scribbled onto the backside, I look for the face my German peers told me to look out for.

When he comes, German Flash starts screaming, “U-S-A, U-S-A” while I look him over critically and boom, “He’s not orange enough.”

Holi Hai Parade, India

“Maybe they think it’s a color run,” my colleague, an Indian-American, jokes.

I humor him by laughing as I cull my photographs for the next three hours. For many of students—like me—today’s Holi celebration was our first. I am also “they.”

One step out of my New York City into Long Island’s suburbs, and suddenly there was a university with both space and funding for the Hindu Student Association to share the coming of spring with everyone.

My photographer peers and I came with plastic wrap and bags for our (thousands of dollars’ worth) equipment. (They had come with them and shared with my clueless self.) We ducked around crowds on the sunken lawn, tucking ourselves into circles of students as they threw powder—pinks and blues and greens and everything—into the sun.

“The Festival of Colors,” I learned it was called. “Spring replacing the winter.” They say the blue-skinned god Krishna playfully colored the goddess Radha’s face, so it’s a love story. They say Vishnu destroyed the wicked Hiranyakashipu, so it’s a triumph of good over evil. Either way, the rainbow flew and everyone was happy after the frost. Much after the frost. It was April.

I’m from Queens. I never grew up lacking in Hindu peers, or peers of any religion. We sympathized with our classmates when they fasted for Ramadan and breathed thanks for getting Rosh Hashanah off; and everyone knew what day in February to tell me, “Happy New Year” as I grew my hair out. Yet, it was only the burst of Facebook events about “Holi” as I began college that had me thinking, “Oh. I didn’t know about this at all.”

I ducked out of the crowds of Desi students shouting, “Holi hai!” to take some cleaner portraits. Holi hai, I decided, sounds triumphant.

“We’re from India,” said some students on a bench, as they proceeded to laugh their heads off about how tame this celebration was.

“We would throw mud.”

“And grease.”

I sneezed out purple and ducked back into the patchwork of people.

“Do you celebrate it?” I ask my colleague.

“When I was eight I woke up to my cousin throwing powder in my face.”

Lunar New Year, China/Korea

The lions were frightening.

And they were coming towards the ring of people. They targeted the other children, and I would be next if I didn’t hide behind my grandparents, and—

A large float. The sheep of the year mounted on high, so a police officer backed us onto the curb. His hand accidentally went over my eyes. I felt protected.

Women in unfamiliar skirts would be my favorite part of this parade, because they danced with lotuses. They were Vietnamese but the lotuses were a familiar sight. I shivered and wondered why the hell Lunar New Year was a spring festival when it was still so cold. Was it this cold in China too? I never did ask my grandfather to explain.

A different corner. This year I would face the firecrackers bravely unlike those fleeing evil spirits of the past, crack a silent laugh—no matter where in my life you point, I am stoic—when my mother snorted at the police car that ran over the remnants. “They’re checking for any live crackers left, at the risk of their own cars.”

Credit: Brandon Loo

“It’s Korean New Year too.” My classmate scowled into the half-absent art course as it suddenly clicked for me. That’s why they said “Lunar New Year” in elementary school instead of “Chinese.” Ooohh.

I had dragged my family out because we hadn’t seen our local parade in years. “You’ve seen it already,” my mother huffed, but I suddenly had enough red envelope money for the rest of the year and was in high spirits. I froze a moment when I realized just how many people in the parade weren’t from our Asian community. They were experiencing this holiday for the first time. When did people go from admiring our “exotic” culture from a distance to partaking with too-bright smiles?

I propped the lion’s head over mine and flapped the jaws of it experimentally. Who knew some papier-mache could be so heavy? And now I was supposed to dance with it? “Well,” said one of the Brooklyn martial artists preparing for the parade, “you’ll be back in Long Island by New Year’s, so you won’t be there for the performance anyway.”

This is the song of the sea, and it’s as foreign as the idea of Ireland, much less an actual trip to one. I briefly tear myself from its lure and check my phone for the date. New Year’s, and my culture is an ocean away. Instead, I celebrated another. A week ago I was in a drunken crowd listening to it scream “UNICORN” in German so as to muster enough good energy to chase the snow away. Now I stand on far-off cliffs knowing that my community is blowing up Main Street without me. But I don’t need that. I feel good. I feel new. And the wind may nearly rip me off the crags, but the change is in the air.

Spring will come.