For over six hundred years the city of Zurich has symbolically driven out Winter and welcomed Spring with the traditional Sechselauten, Six Ringing Festival in Switzerland, which is observed on a Sunday and Monday early in April.
The festival originated in the Middle Ages when the trade guilds governed the city. On the Monday following the spring equinox (March 21) it was customary for the cathedral bells to start ringing at six, instead of seven o'clock the usual time to announce the end of the guild member's working day. This first day of change from winter to summer schedule was celebrated as a guild holiday. For centuries the bells rang as a signal to cease work. Gradually the general public sought to join in festivities. Finally the Six Ringing, which started as a purely guild holiday, became an affair in which all of Zurich's citizens shared.
The festival opens on Sunday with a school children's parade and pageant, followed on Monday by a splendid procession of the various guilds, some twenty-four of which still exist. The city presents a gala appearance with bunting, cantonal flags and pennants fluttering from houses and public buildings. Immense crowds from surrounding areas gather to see the procession. School children in regional costume precede a float on which is enthroned a pretty girl personifying Spring, surrounded by flowers, garlands, and numerous attendants.
The colorful procession proceeds before cheering crowds, marches along the banks of the Limmat and comes to Bellevue Platz, where Boogg is impaled above his pyre. Promptly at six o'clock the bells start ringing. Fife and drum bands play loudly the stirring Zurcher Sechselauten Marsch. The people shout with joy. The bonfire under Boogg is lighted. Suddenly the flames spring upward and the explosive-filled figure of the snow man ignites. White-robed horsemen gallop about the fire as firecrackers explode and parts of Boogg fly in all directions, amid a deafening roar of noise.
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