We celebrate winter in St. Paul. Since 1886, our community has come together in the face of snow, ice, darkness and numbing cold. The Saint Paul Winter Carnival, a series of wintertime rituals, parades, and outdoor activities for the shack-wacky, passed the 125-year mark when it kicked off its run this past week.
Anyone can have a corncob festival or Grand Old Day when the sun is beating down on green lawns and wavy lakes. But it takes something special to celebrate winter, the season that sets us apart and challenges us to answer the visitor’s complaint that St. Paul is “another Siberia, unfit for human habitation in the winter.”
That jibe is credited to a visiting New York journalist, circa 1885, and our carnival is said to have been St. Paul’s response. But we know the bitter truth: he had a point. Every winter, many of us think or say or possibly act on the same sentiment. Why else are those flights out of MSP so full in February?
We don’t pretend that winter in these parts isn’t a pain. That’s what makes the Winter Carnival so good. It gives off light, heat and camaraderie when we need it most. It gives winter its due, but does not let winter pound us into submission.
The events of the Carnival and its legend, penned during the Depression by one of our own at this newspaper, summon us to battle winter with crystalline ice sculptures, fire-breathing parade floats, wintertime foot races, and mythic characters representing the battle between the cold of winter and the promise of summertime heat.
We crown a “King Boreas,” a “Queen of the Snows” and members of the red-clad “Vulcan Krewe” because it helps us get through winter. It may be kitschy to some or material for Hollywood’s next mocumentary. But to us, it’s therapy. The Saint Paul Winter Carnival helps us get through winter.
So we hail the king and queen, we admire those zany Vulcans and we flock to Rice Park to admire the ice sculptures. We battle winter by reveling in it. It has been that way for 125 years. St. Paul will always have winter and, we hope, will always have the Winter Carnival.
Long live King Boreas!
Copyright 2011 Pioneer Press.
