Fasching

   Among Europe’s many pre-Lenten festivals, the Austrian Fasching is one of the most elaborate and enduring. Beginning with the Feast of the Three Kings in January, it ends with Ash Wednesday. In Vienna itself, Fasching has become the so-called Ball Season. The highlight of this period is the Opera Ball, a very formal evening of dance, drink, and supping that puts some of the Second Republic’s most prominent citizens on display. However, the city abounds in such events—greengrocers, firemen, policemen, and various municipal districts all hold their own balls, formal, informal, or in fanciful costume. The celebration comes to a climax in the last week, beginning with foasten, or “Crazy Thursday.”

   Many cultures have left their marks on Fasching—peasant practice, courtly festivals, and the celebrations of premodern guilds and other groups of artisans. There are still some regional variations in Austria, beginning with the name of the custom, which in the western part of the country is Fastnacht. In parts of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg, the season ends only on the first Sunday in Lent with the burning of a doll called a Hexe or witch. Flaming chunks of wood into which rods have been driven are slid down mountainsides.