Guest Nomad: Festivals for Pyromaniacs

This week’s “Guest Nomad” is  Lauren Girardin. Lauren recently traveled around the world, sharing stories, photography, and original artwork on Ephemerratic along with Todd Berman, an artist and nomadic educator. When Lauren isn’t traveling, she uses her marketing and communications, web design, storytelling, and strategic planning skills for good causes. You can follow Lauren and Todd on Twitter @ephemerratic.

To most backpackers, Burning Man may be the best known festival involving massive displays of things on fire. But, if you can’t get to the Nevada desert, the world has plenty of other quirky, folksy festivals perfect for pyromaniacs.

Zurich’s Sechseläuten: Burning the Böögg

For the pyromanical tourist, the highlight of Zurich’s Sechseläuten celebration is the burning of the Böögg, a 11-foot tall snowman effigy packed with straw, cotton, and explosives perched atop a towering bonfire of kindling.

There are a host of events during the Sechseläuten weekend, most involving Swiss citizens dressed up in medieval getups parading around town, and armies of horses, camels, and children.

The day of the burn, the Böögg is erected facing the clock face on the Church of St. Peter, so he can watch his final hours tick away. As the city bells ring at 6:00 pm, the townsfolk light the bonfire.

The Böögg dies when its head, stuffed with fireworks, explodes. The faster the cranial combustion, the more warm and sunny the upcoming summer will be. Afterwards, crowds of locals settle in along the Limmat River for barbecues of wursts cooked over piles of the Böögg’s glowing embers.

2010 Sechseläuten: April 18-19

Antigua’s La Quema del Diablo: Burning the Devil

A mix of the pagan and the Christian, La Quema del Diablo is an annual purification ritual that heralds the Christmas season in Guatemala. Though a country-wide celebration, the best place to enjoy the flammable festival is in Antigua, located in Guatemala’s south-central highlands.

In order to cleanse themselves of evil, bad luck, and household clutter, locals set fire to mounds of junk and trash that has accumulated over the year. Town priests at the Convent of La Conception set ablaze a larger symbolic papier-mâche devil, giving Lucifer a taste of his own damnation by hellfire.

After the night of fire, the locals will be purified for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a big day for devotees of the Virgin Mary. La Quema del Diablo ends with smoke, ashes, and the devil banished until next year.

2010 La Quema del Diabolo: December 7

Cheung Chau’s Bun Festival: Burning the Ghost King

Each year, the rural island of Cheung Chau near Hong Kong hosts a huge annual Taoist festival to chase out evil spirits and pestilence. Loud Chinese Opera performances, thundering drums, vegan meals, a mad scramble up a tower in search of buns, and of course, the burning an effigy are all part of the ghost-banishing festival.

The Bun Festival culminates in the burning of a 20-foot tall paper effigy of Taai Si Wong, the Ghost King. Like a Pied Piper of the dead, the Ghost King is first paraded around the village in hopes that all ghosts will follow the Ghost King.

At midnight Taoist priests perform the Great Offering to Ghosts rite, singing and chanting before sending the ghost King back to the underworld by setting it on fire.

Unless you’re suspicious, women should attend in masculine disguise, since tradition says for a woman to see the face of the Ghost King is considered bad luck for a her family.

2010 Bun Festival: May 1

Tags: Antigua, burining the boogg, burning man, burning the devil, cheung chau, la quema del diablo, nomad, Travel, Zürich