In Germany, the
official fifth season is anything to do with Karneval, a few days of drunken
spring debauchery that used to have religious undertones and a smattering of
royal bashing. These days it’s just drunken debauchery. I’m not being glib
because we have a similar party in the U.S.: It’s called college. But Germans
love the fifth season because it’s when the rules allow them to be silly and
unrestrained. Note the irony in being silly and unrestrained only when the
rules allow. Germans don’t see that irony. They love Karneval.
But it’s not the real
fifth season in Germany. Not in a real season sense. The real fifth season
occurs in that no-man’s-land between Christmas and New Year’s. You’ve always
quietly felt that the year ends shortly after all the Christmas presents
are open and the new year doesn’t get going until that first feeling of dread
back at your desk. The Germans have always known that it’s actually a different
season and they’ve even given it a name: Zwischen den Jahren. Between the
years. It’s one of my favorite sayings because it’s so perfectly right, in a
German precision kind of way (but without faking the emission tests). It’s not
this year and it’s not next year: It’s between the years.
Perfect.
Unfortunately my
second least favorite German phrase always rears its head between the years, refusing
to leave, like a subterranean worm in Tremors. “Guten Rutsch!”, or have a good
slide! We all assume a good slide into next year but without a direct object in
that sentence it’s hard to know. Germans love it as a parting phrase between
the years – on the phone, at the counter and, with a wink of the eye, while
putting you under for a colonoscopy. There’s an apocryphal story that it comes
from Yiddish which, like the definition of apocryphal, may or may not be true.
I’d love to end on an
upbeat comment about Zwischen den Jahren but the only remaining footnote is a
negative: Karneval follows just a few weeks after Zwischen den Jahren.
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