Gernesse

10/07/05:

This is an ancient holiday in Germany. It’s also still celebrated in Luxembourg and the name has transmuted over the centuries into “kermesse”.

Originally, this was a harvest festival, dedicated to a buried god or goddess (minor details are lost to history) who was dug up to preside over the festival. Peter Paul Rubens painted one such festival (and if I can ever find a print of it, I will buy it) called, naturally enough “Kermesse”.

The German name for this festival means “gladly-eat”, and it was a festival of food and drink and conviviality – a combination Bacchanalia and harvest festival. Ruben’s painting captures the spirit of the festivity very well. The French form of the name -“Kermesse” – means “village fair”, and that, too, is a fair enough approximation of the spirit of this festival.

Since the Gernesse was most commonly held in early October, it’s highly likely this festival (and possibly many others like it) were forerunners of the modern popular Oktoberfests.

The history is interesting only because the village I grew up in still celebrated it during the years I lived there. I remember the  frauen all gathering to burden the tables with food, and knew in the days after the festival, we’d be canning over hot, wood-burning stoves and firepits, and the men would be slaughtering the pigs and cows (we slaughtered chickens at need – they were the “living pantry” and fresh meat when we grew tired of sausages and smoked hams and cured roasts) and turning them into sausages and smoked or cured hams, steaks, roasts, and cracking the bones we’d use to make beef and pork jellies and canned broths and such. The Gernesse was the last time for a month – a whole month! – before we had another festival (in our village, that was Elften-Elften, which only lasted a day and not a whole week).

We still celebrate Gernesse, Housemates, friends, and family all descend upon our community centers to eat the fall harvest foods – squashes, potatoes, carrots, rutabagas, turnips, apples, pears, plums, cabbages, parsnips, hams, roasts, bread, smallcakes (sort of a cross between a dense cake and a cookie – gingerbreads and honeycakes were the most common) and cookies, and the new beer and wines.

Music and dancing were always a huge part of this festival – homegrown musicians and wandering musicians who’d stop by for food and whatever largesse we could spare. There were some regulars, who traveled the village fair circuit and knew they’d find beds, food, clothes, and more waiting at each village. Cars were still not very popular when I lived there, but we had a bus that stopped in the village going each way twice a day. These musicians usually came by bus, and knew we’d pay their bus fare to the next village festival (which was in Goettengin the week after ours). Nowadays, we depend on CDs for our music, but the spirit remains.

We can’t take off the days each of our festivities and Celebrations require, so we do them in the evenings and on weekends, tucked in when and where we can have them. Few of us have huge gardens, so our “harvests” are conducted at the Farmer’s Markets and grocery stores. There’s little need to can our own harvest for the winter, so we’re more likely to bless the pantry that will hold tins of food bought at the grocery store, but we still can a few things of our own.

I like to can fruit butters – cherry, plum, apricot, gooseberry, strawberry, apple, because store bought ones so rarely live up to my expectations. I also make fruit jellies and sometimes, in a fit of nostalgia, I’ll make old-fashioned pork and beef jellies and use them to enhance winter soups or to make aspics or sauces from them. I’ve never bought pork or beef jelly in the store.

So, beginning today and lasting until the 16th, we celebrate Gernesse.