Kirmes in Germany (Kirmes) — is a kind of harvest festival, which today is celebrated with fairs and folk festivals. It is mainly celebrated in villages and small German towns.
The feast begins with the digging of Kirmes, a straw effigy with a bottle of schnapps that is buried in the ground two weeks before that day.
The effigy is then solemnly carried across the village to a tree decorated with ribbons, garlands and fruits and secured to the top. After a magnificent service and lunch, dancing begins around Kirmes.
Dancing couples give each other a bouquet of flowers, and the couple who has a bouquet at the moment of the signal-shot feasts a pretzel as a sign of victory. On the next day of the holiday, it is customary to visit the graves of relatives, and on the third day everyone is invited to the «funeral of Kirmes».
A comic funeral procession of mummers with torches goes to a vacant lot, where they bury an effigy along with an inseparable bottle of schnapps, glass fragments, the head of a rooster, ham bones and pieces of pie. All this symbolizes the gratitude of the people for the fruitful year and it is believed that the more joyful it is to spend the Kirmes holiday, the better the next harvest will be, and the destruction of the effigy — is getting rid of bad habits and all troubles.