Burning winter with Sommertagszug

The first warm day of March used to awaken something in my dad that had been held captive all winter.

I can’t really sum it up in a word myself, but in parts of Germany, they call it Sommertagszug (summer day parade).

It’s basically a spring procession where winter gets marched out, and summer gets welcomed in with children carrying decorated sticks (and a snowman who does not survive the finale).

Back in the Canadian countryside, we didn’t have a parade.

But the same emotions were there.

The snow didn’t just give in and melt. It surrendered in ugly patches, leaving behind brown slush and the kind of mud that could swallow a boot and keep it as a souvenir.

The sun showed up brighter than it had any right to, and suddenly, my parents looked ten years younger at the thought of my brothers and me roaming outside once again.

But my dad was always first out the door.

He’d stand in the garage like a man reading a weather forecast and taking it as a challenge. Then he’d start the seasonal swap with the solemn focus of someone changing a tire in the rain.

First, the snowblower gets pushed back like a disgraced employee.

Then the lawnmower comes forward like it’s been promoted.

That’s when my dad would become unstoppable.

The snow shovels went into hibernation while rakes and spades appeared.

The smell changed, too. Cold metal replaced by old gasoline, damp earth, and whatever scent a garage develops after months of being opened only for practical use.

The yard clean-up wasn’t just yard clean-up.

It was my dad’s inner caged lion, pacing the perimeter again, practically delighted to have a territory to manage.

He’d do a circuit around the property with a weedwacker, half marching and half attacking last year’s dead grass like the trespasser it obviously was.

Mostly, I remember the sounds of spring. The sputter of engines waking up and rakes scraping over thawing ground. My dad cautiously saying, “Watch out for the mud,” in a mindful tone that suggested I had already stepped in it.

It wasn’t a festival, but it was absolutely a ritual. Winter ended because we decided it ended, and the tools weren’t taking no for an answer.

That’s what I miss now. And not just the weather.

I live in Wales, where spring arrives in a slow, damp shuffle, and half the time you only notice because someone says, “It’s not as cold today,” and then you get rained on anyway.

The seasons here don’t really change. They just glide from one into another without you really noticing until you get a sunburn in between rain showers.

The German version comes with ribbons (and a bonfire)

Those were the memories that came to me as I stumbled onto the well-costumed German custom of the Sommertagszug.

It’s a spring procession, basically a community-wide “winter can leave now,” mostly in northern Baden and the Kurpfalz (including Mannheim, Heidelberg, Weinheim, Eberbach, Bruchsal, Schwetzingen, and Mosbach).

The earliest known roots stretch back into pre-Christian spring and fertility rites, which makes me imagine generations of people looking at a grey sky and thinking, fine, we’ll handle this ourselves.

The traditional date is Laetare Sunday, Mid-Lent, which feels satisfyingly specific. Almost as though it's a built-in appointment on the calendar for springtime hope.

The highlight for this driving out winter spectacle are kids moving through town in a parade, carrying Sommertagsstecken.

These are decorated summer-day sticks with bright paper ribbons and greenery, often boxwood. Sometimes, there's a pretzel tied on like a little edible sun, and generally accompanied by an apple or a blown egg.

And then the story turns into theatre.

Winter and summer show up as characters, and they have their little “battle” that everyone already knows the ending to.

In some places, there are “Butzen,” big costume frames worn by people, one dressed as winter with straw, one as summer with fir branches. They dance at the end as if the seasons don't really mind each other.

Often there’s a snowman or winter figure, sometimes papier-mâché, brought along like a culprit.

Then they burn it.

This is where my Canadian upbringing nods in respect.

We didn’t burn winter, but my dad did treat it like something that needed to be cleared out, hauled away, and replaced with louder machinery. Same impulse, different props.

When winter ends, you still have to eat

There’s also a shadow version of the custom that makes it feel more real to me.

Historically, it wasn’t only cheerful pageantry. It functioned as a heischbrauch, a begging custom. Children, especially poorer children, went through town singing and asking for food and useful things because winter ran supplies down to the last crumbs.

Liselotte of the Palatinate even mentions a Sommertagszug in a 1696 letter, describing children going through Heidelberg and asking for what they needed.

This “cute” tradition also carried a blunt truth. Even as winter ends, you still have to eat.

Over time, many places shifted it into a children’s spring festival, with gifts like pretzels handed out. The need softened, but the ritual stayed, like a handprint pressed into wet cement.

That’s the part that feels familiar to me.

My dad didn’t burn a snowman in the yard. He didn’t parade through town with ribbons and boxwood (imagine the looks if he did). He just dragged machines in and out of the garage and acted like spring was a project he could kick-start with enough elbow grease.

He would, however, stand next to a bonfire with a similar parade-like pride.

Different customs. Same impulse.

Placing a label, or a family ritual, on something like the changing seasons is a great way to have something to look forward to while embracing one's heritage.

Not because it changes the weather.

It changes the feeling of waiting. It turns “endless winter” into “we’re nearly there.”

And just like my dad would often do, if winter is just hanging around… drive it out, cut it down, and burn it. Parade optional.

Sommertagszug FAQ

did you know?

There are more bridges in Hamburg than in Venice, Amsterdam, and London combined!

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Words to live by

Wir leben alle unter dem gleichen Himmel, aber wir haben nicht alle den gleichen Horizont.

We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.

 - Konrad Adenauer

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