Talk:Sechseläuten

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The members of the guilds of Zurich parade through the streets once a year on the third Monday in April (unless postponed by Easter). They wear the traditional costumes and carry traditional equipment related to their trades.

The day is a half day holiday for the city and some of the canton.

The parade culminates on Bellevue Square where at 6pm sharp a fire is lit under a styrofoam statue of a snowman, called the Böög, which symbolizes winter.

While the fire burns the horsemen of the guilds ride around the fire. The head is charged with a strong explosive and throughout the body lesser explosives make e.g. the arms blow off with a bang.

When the head explodes the time is logged and if it burned for a short time, winter will be over shortly and warm weather should ensue. If it takes a long time, cold weather will continue for quite some time. It is quite uncanny how in many years this prediction has been quite precise.

Having lived in and around Zurich for decades, I am able to verify these facts based on being personally familiar with the details of this event due to its annual recurrence. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scottyphus (talk • contribs).

all true, except for the "uncanny precision". people have actually gone to the trouble of demonstrating that the Böög's "prediction" is, in fact, uncorrelated to the weather that ensues. The age of this "tradition" would actually be interesting. The oldest recorded times on de-wiki date to 1974, I don't know if the time was logged before that. dab (ᛏ) 21:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Is the böögg really deriving from a carnival figure? carnival was banned from zurich during reformation (only the "immigrants" from catholic parts of switzerland do celebrate it(in very small numbers)) so this connection is no longer visible.