Happy Vatertag!

German of the day: Tradition. That means tradition.

“The Führer gave a holiday to any woman who bore at least one child, the men he sent to the front! What an asshole, we see yet again.

The man had to conquer Father’s Day laboriously himself. His choice fell on Ascension Day, a movable fest, lying around quite meaningless in the calendar anyway. And lo and behold, the choice was good! Outside it’s already quite warm and the annoying relatives haven’t taken over your place like they do during Christmas.

Now all that was left to do was fill the event with content. The choice fell on a classic of male leisure activity: DRINK UNTIL YOUR PUKE TASTES SOUR! In addition, howl around like an idiot, piss everywhere and tell dirty jokes. Virtually paradise on Earth, in other words.

Aware of being the stronger of the sexes, the man can also afford to run around dressed like a complete dumbass. He doesn’t get gussied up on his holiday like his haughty wife does on hers, oh no, he puts a buffoon’s hat on his red beet head, wears rolled up corduroy pants and screws a bicycle bell on his walking stick. Dressed like that, anyone can easily see that he’s been transformed into a complete idiot while he and his fellow idiot companions stagger through the forest like containers for Pawian shit.

But because a man is a man, he needs a task. In this case: Pulling a little wooden wagen. On it stands the fuel for the drunkard horde: 50 liters of Pils, 10 bottles of Appelkorn and 30 rubbers, still originally packed from the previous year.

By noon, the weakest are already beginning to flounder, the green slime oozing out of a body orifice that once was called the mouth. All the wagen wheel nuts are loose and the only thing that keeps them going is their sense of duty. That is, to drain the last 20 beers down their swollen gorges.

The greatest joy still awaits the man at the end of Father’s Day: Call home to have his battle axe pick him up from the jungle, drool all over her new dress while she carries him in to dump him on the sofa, and throw the puke bucket at the stupid cat.

Because this is the ONLY day of the year where father belongs to himself. And the rest have to shut their traps!”

German Of The Day: Andere Länder Andere Sitten

That means other countries other customs.

Vatertag

Finally, a holiday for the rest of us.

German Oddity 391. Only in Germany is Vatertag or Father’s Day commemorated by hordes of oddly dressed men pulling little wooden wagons overloaded with beer and snaps through wooded areas (or right through the middle of your town) roaring and swearing and pissing all over the place until they vomit on themselves and pass out but not before having called their wives to pick them up and drag them back home again.

Father’s Day Is Sexist In Germany, Too

Not only are mothers here reduced to cultural stereotypes whenever it is suggested that they might be interested in things like cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons, fathers in these parts are not treated any better.

Muttertag

The German Father’s Day stereotype (Father’s Day is today, incidentally) consists of fathers and other so-called “men” celebrating it by turning it into a drunken orgy of day-drinking debauchery in which mindless Herrenparties (gentlemen party groups) pull their ridiculously decorated Bollerwagen (handcarts) filled with booze and food but mostly booze through the countryside or greener urban landscape. It’s scandalous. To assume that all men are interested in that kind of nonsense, I mean.

I’d like to address this subject in a little more detail but I have to go help my neighbor load up our Bollerwagen. It’s getting on noon and we haven’t had a drink yet.

Lidl Germany has come under fire for suggesting people buy their mums cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons for Mother’s Day.

German Of The Day: Bollerwagen

That means handcarts. Handcarts filled with beer.

Booze

And if a handcart isn’t available on German Father’s Day (Ascension Day) then you can always use a baby buggy or a shopping cart to put your booze in.

Es ist kompliziert. Warum aus Christi Himmelfahrt auch der Vater- und Herrentag geworden ist, lässt sich nicht mehr so recht nachvollziehen. Es wird spekuliert, dass die Prozession der Jünger Jesu zu einem Berg als Vorbild für die Männer mit Bollerwagen dienten.