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HELVETIA, W.Va. — Because the solar set under the ridgelines of the Appalachian Mountains on Saturday night, revelers donned fantastical papier-mâché masks — a brilliant crimson creature with striped horns, a boar with a floral headdress, an autumn leaf — and marched with gusto in an out of doors masquerade ball.
The celebration included Swiss folks songs, tiny Swiss flags and paper lanterns. It culminated in a parade by the streets of the village, led by an effigy of Previous Man Winter, which was then thrown atop a raging bonfire, in an effort to hasten the approaching of spring.
Helvetia, a group of simply 85 folks, has hosted Fasnacht for greater than half a century. The coronavirus pandemic compelled its cancellation final 12 months — the primary since 1967 — making this 12 months’s celebration all of the extra candy.
Doug Davis, a longtime competition organizer and public-school trainer, appeared buoyed by the competition’s return. “Covid killed the group spirit,” he mentioned. “However right here we’re, recovering.”
Helvetia, like Fasnacht itself, has Swiss roots. The village was settled within the nineteenth century by Swiss and German immigrants, and the buildings function conventional Swiss structure. Hütte, a conventional Swiss restaurant, serves bratwurst, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and potatoes. The Beekeeper Inn is booked months upfront for Fasnacht weekend. The Helvetia Basic Retailer can also be house to a Fasnacht masks museum.
In lots of elements of Switzerland, carnival — or Fasnacht — season is held in February and March. In Helvetia, it’s the weekend earlier than Fats Tuesday and attracts sufficient guests to swell the variety of folks within the city to greater than triple its inhabitants.
Whereas many revelers on Saturday mentioned they had been relieved to see the custom return, some described a way of urgency of their want to expertise what could also be West Virginia’s most uncommon group celebration. Appalachia, mentioned Joe Holmes, an attendee from Davis, W.Va., 76 miles away, is “homogenizing like the whole lot else. These little pockets of uniqueness are simply drying up. It’s an inevitable results of expertise and progress.”
This 12 months’s occasions had been moved outdoor in as a Covid-19 precaution. Attendees milled concerning the banks of the higher Trout Run stream, warming themselves round campfires and having fun with rosettes and Fasnacht doughnuts, conventional Swiss sweets. Guests lined as much as peek inside a log cabin adorned with artifacts from a few of Helvetia’s unique settlers.
And on Saturday night, because the final bits of Previous Man Winter had been consumed by flames, festivalgoers joined in an a cappella rendition of the beloved John Denver anthem “Take Me Dwelling, Nation Roads.”
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