Today is Hallowe’en---at last. It seems to have been going on since Labor Day at the beginning of Sept. Preparations started with decorations for sale in the shops, quickly followed by the appearance of pumpkins anywhere a pumpkin can appear. Then came the costumes, and how New Yorkers love their costumes! Hallowe’en used to be about kids going out and ringing doorbells for candy. Now it’s about everyone dressing up to mimic their favourite television personalities. And I have to ask myself : why?
Throughout the year New Yorkers dress up in costume. The list of parades for this city is longer than my monthly shopping list. Starting in January there is the Three Kings Parade in Spanish Harlem and the parade for Chinese New Year which may run into February along with the parade for Lunar New Year in case you missed the fact that Chinese New Year starts on the Lunar New Year. February also sees the President’s Day Parade. March of course sees the St. Patrick’s Day parade but if that isn’t enough for Irish Americans there is also the Irish American Parade followed by the Greek Independence Day parade and the Phagwha Parade celebrating the triumph of good over evil. Phew! April has the Easter Parade, bonnets and all, along with the Sikh Cultural Society Parade with headdress of their own and of course there has to be an April Fool’s Parade so New Yorkers can dress like their favourite fool. Then with better weather coming along we get into the thick of it: multiple Memorial Day Parades in May are followed by Cuban Day, Bronx Latinos Unidos, Dance March, Global Marijuana March, Turkish-American Parade, Haitian Flag Day, Norwegian-American 17th of May, Martin Luther King Jr./369th Regiment Parade, Haitian-American Day Parade and Greater NY Good Neighbor Parade. Are you beginning to get the hang of this? June is the month for Gay Pride parades but also for Hare Krishna, Puerto Rican Day, Children’s Evengelical, the Bronx and Mermaids in Coney Island.
I am tempted to stop there at the half way mark as you no doubt have the idea by now. Indians, Dominicans, Pakistanis, African Americans, Caribbean families, Brazilians, Mexicans, Poles, Nigerians, Muslims, and Hispanics are all getting their own parades and dressing up accordingly. Then, in November, will be the biggy of them all, The Thanksgiving Day Parade. The floats for this are inflated outside my building causing all sorts of havoc in the streets but not as much havoc as the parades themselves cause.
Back in London we had Notting Hill Carnival for the Jamaican and other Caribbean population, the Lord Mayor’s Parade and the Trooping of the Colour for the Queen’s Birthday. There were probably Chinese New Year goings on and Gay Pride certainly had parades but I really can’t think of anything else. Reminders welcome in the comment box.
I realize that New York is a melting pot. But if it is a melting pot why haven’t these people melted into the general population? The Statue of Liberty is standing out there saying, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” NOT “give us more reasons for parades every other day of the week.” Pride in your ancestry is one thing but dressing up in costume and marching down Fifth Ave. ? As someone recently said, my grandparents didn’t get on a boat and come all the way over from Europe just to be faced with a nation of Immigrants!
So I have come to the conclusion that it has nothing at all to do with pride in one’s ancestry but rather the innate desire to be another person, to re-invent oneself and to let go of your persona for that brief moment. To dress up and be someone else.
Maybe New Yorkers are fed up with being New Yorkers?
So then I have two requests for future blogs: one is - a further development of what these parades mean in the NYC and American (as being two different things) cultures, and two - see what people think about the Thanksgiving Day Parade!!! See what they think about it as the final NYC parade of the year and how it represents the melting pot...
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