Every year in Autumn farmers
bring small parts of their harvest like corn, grapes, apples, pears, different kinds of
grains, plums, bread, eggs, milk, honey, jam, carrots and so on to the church. Their
wives make the "Thanksgiving-crown" with the farm products. The
"Thanksgiving-crown" stands in front of the altar in the church.
People pray and
thank god for the harvest. Everything remains in the beautiful decorated church and the
priest gets it all as a present.
The farmers in our country have huts in the mountains. And so they take their young animals like cows, sheep, goats to these huts. They stay there all summer,then in autumn, when the farmers bring the animals back to the stables in the valley, they decorate the heads of the animals with flowers and big bells. When the farmers go with the animals along the street everyone looks at them and they give out sweets which their wives made in their huts.
Every weekend after "Fronieichnam" there is a celebration in "Bad aussee" called "Narzissenfest" ( daffodils-celebration ). Cars and boots are decorated and figures made out of daffodils. There is usually one daffodils-princess who in elected every year.
Children dress up as witches,they wear tights over their heads , pillows on the back and hold brooms in their hands . They go from house to house , go in , open the doors , clean the thresholds ; afterwards they get some money or "Schnaps" and then they go to the next place.
Little children go with a divining rod from house to house and say a short poem. Then they beat you with their rod, but a just a little bit , because it's a custom.
All of you know about the christmas story . And you also know that there were the Holy 3 kind Children dress up as kings who learnt to sing some special songs and say poems. So they bless the house, they have got a piece of chalk and write C+M+B+199 on the front door. (C+M+B+ stands for Caspar , Melchior , Balthasar and the year they came)
There are 2 days in the year where the length of day and night change . On these two days people go to the mountain, take wood with them and make fires.
In the middle of february,all people dress up as "some thing" ( fruit ghosts ,clowns, witches and anything else). They celebrate - most times with a lot of alcohol - and there's also a carnival parade. They are some groups - for example animals, fruits... and they go through the market . People can "watch" them and have a lot of fun all of this time.
There are a lot of groups aged from 10 to 30. The groups go through the town and there are a lot of visitors who watch this tradition. The participants of this event wear special hats with lights inside. This is a commemoration of the founder Harry Mitterhuber.
Christmas is in the Dachstein Tauern Area on the 24 of December, 2 weeks before Christmas families decorate the Christmas tree. In the evening the families celabrate Christmas and everybody gets presents from each other.
People celebrate the change of the year with big fireworks and people welcome the new year. At midnight they open a bottle of Champagne and they cheer and we can listen to a bell of the "Stephansdom" in Vienne. The ORF broadcasts the Blue Danube Waltz on TV.
The parents hide colourful eggs in the house, in the garden and so on and the children hope to find them.