Work hard, play harder

I need projects. Not so much in work life, but in my personal life I need topics to dive into, books to investigate, motorcycle history to learn about, ancient city’s to explore. Once enthusiastic I can easily spend hundreds of hours on these topics and as a result I’m always busy.

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A red thread through my life has been carnaval: a new project every year. Together with friends we spent hundreds of hours and many euro’s on a carnival-float for the parade that lasts only 3 hours. The next day we take it apart, throw it away and stow away the rolling frame for next year. Where I live, the village Schaijk in Brabant in the Netherlands, the whole celebration of carnaval is centered around the parade. I started out when I was 5 or 6 or so, but at that time participation was all that counted. Later at least we contributed to the build and once we got our own carnavals-club in 1988 we created our own floats. In our village (called Moesland during carnaval) we had rules that maximized the height to 9 meters, and width to 4 meters, but the length was open: this resulted in floats of easily 15 meters long.?

In our group of friends we had a lot of creative people and as a result already in our first year we achieved the 3rd place from 15 participating clubs. Highest entry for a new club ever. Still! The year after we became first and this is something that is, for us, more important than receiving knighthood from your king or queen… If you live in Holland you might know about carnaval, and you might even have visited Den Bosch or Maastricht. That is not what we mean with carnaval. The beauty of carnaval is that every village celebrates it in their own way each with their own unique focus: selecting the ruler of the village for 5 days, focusing on local music or what many people think: drinking. In our case it’s all about building the float to have a beautiful parade together.

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And of course there is ‘some drinking’ involved. The whole point of carnaval is an old catholic ritual where you have one last abundance weekend before you start fasting for 40 days until Easter. Not that many people practice their religion these days, but traditions like this one we keep alive! Drinking then not only happens during the parade itself, or during the 5 days of carnaval, but also during the evenings we worked on the floats. I’m not so much a drinker myself. In our little community of 7.000 people at least 1.111 people participate in the parade every year, which also means the youth is ‘off the streets’ for 5 months in winter time. Not doing sneaky stuff they should not be doing, but working together (sometimes with multiple clubs in one barn or factory hall) on their float, evenings in a row.

As a kid I participated about 8 times, as a young adult we built 10 floats (of various beauty) and last year was the first time I participated as an individual. And I loved it. The parade itself was OK, and I actually won, but working on the project was what I loved most. In my workshop in our barn. Because I love doing it, and I only have 2 modi (0% or 110%) of course I spent way more time and budget than I should. But hey, I loved it.

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So for the 2024 I already had a new idea in my head the day after carnaval. Not to go nuts I had to wait nine months before I allowed myself to start. That enabled me to find inspiration, gather materials and work out my plan. But I do have one rule: it’s ‘only’ carnaval, so don’t take it too far. However, carnaval is the most important thing of all the non-important things in life! And I have another lifelong rule for myself: Aim high, have fun! So I went a bit crazy this year and it cost more time, more budget and I’m not sure how to get it to the parade start. That big. But I absolutely love working on it.

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Nine weeks to go until the parade is finally there again. The metal construction phase is completed. More than enough days left to finish it on time, work on a costume and arrange transportation. Once I get it at the starting line my work is done: I hope the spectators enjoy the parade, great if I win a prize again, but the building phase is what counts for me. I enjoy every minute of it.

So in case you might think now that you understand carnaval, I’m afraid you are wrong. Carnaval is different anywhere, is not about drinking and is really nothing like how the northerners celebrate it in Den Bosch or Maastricht. My advise is to not even try to understand it (and therefore don’t judge us southerners based on what you see in the news.) Just enjoy it, like we do, each in our own special way.

Alaaf.

Interesting links

-?????? A (Dutch) documentary I made with a small team on how we all grew up here with Carnaval: https://youtu.be/wKftBkdb-TY?si=JyVqE2OK2iXcfOvJ

-?????? A movie showing the best 11 floats created in the 66 years we celebrate Carnaval in Schaijk: https://youtu.be/mBK-awKZAqU?si=I6yMbJlQOLl_d2JS

-?????? The website that has ALL the information about the parade in our Moesland / Schaijk (Dutch): www.deoptocht.nl

-?????? The making-of of my contribution for last years parade as Figo Frenabis: https://www.basgriffioen.nl/overig/deelname-moeslandse-optocht-2023/ (A new making-of of the 2024 contribution will go live after the parade in February)