The Burning Man Meme is Spreading

I live in a small village outside Geneva.   The entire population of the commune is about 1100 people.  (Communes are important in Switzerland, as they run the school, and the road repairs, etc.  Swiss politics is interesting and intensely (painfully) local.)

The burning man meme has spread to our commune.  Hurrah. 

The schools here are miltantly non-establishment, as you might expect given Geneva's history.  (Calvin, Knox, etc.)  Unlike the arse that the French made of it with the headscarf ban, the Swiss have a simpler approach.  Pupils can wear and believe what they like, its the teachers that must be neutral.  It's a simple but profound difference. 

One of the consequences is that the schools do not actually officially celebrate Christmas, but have a sort of lay festival instead which commemorates the local Savoyard soldiers getting a pot of soup dropped on their head when they tried to invade the City of Geneva in 16 something or other.  Actually, its a bit more complex than that, but you get the idea.  It's called the Escalade, and consists of eating a big chocolate model of a cooking pot, and singing a slightly dreary song that recounts the details.  (French is a beautiful language, but they are not by nature good musicians and lyricists.  Except for Jaques Dutronc, who is hilarious.)

Anyway, Easter.  The whole Jesus on cross, he is risen, salvation thang is not really a lay festival.  So what did we do?  The children of the local school built a snowman (very good post modern one with lots of interesting angles and attitude.)  Then the children all sang a song which seemed to consist of jumping up and down a lot in a circle, but then primary school events are like that. 

Then they burnt the snowman at dusk.  With a couple of fireworks to go with it.  Heh.  Burning man in the Geneva countryside.  It was very evocative.  Geneva was pagan before it was Christian, and I wonder how many wicker men got burnt around this neck of the woods.  (Lac Leman has been inhabited more or less continuously since the last ice age.)

So, the Burning Man meme is spreading.  Interesting how pagan rituals are OK, where established religion is not.  I suppose if the Gods are no longer worshipped, then only the ritual is left.   Not that my five year old son cared much, all he knew was that this was exciting and different.