Party like a Swede
Two peoples not known for being the life of the party. One already has a holiday.
New Orleans has Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest and the cultural gumbo that is Creole. Lafayette has also perfected Mardi Gras, has Festival International and a French-Canadian-outlaw lineage that basically invented the party.
Baton Rouge? We show up for the Saturday before Fat Tuesday and call it a season. As for our cultural personality ... well ... there's a reason I previously declared Baton Rouge the vanilla in the three-city Neapolitan ice cream that's sandwiched between Chocolate City and the Cajuns.
Which is exactly why Baton Rouge should embrace its inner Swede, another group not known to be—uh, well, how do we put this—fun.
Meet Midsummer—Sweden's biggest holiday outside of Christmas, a centuries-old celebration of light, long evenings and pickled herring chased with aquavit shots. Sweden is a perfectly lovely country that's given us IKEA, ABBA and an unwavering commitment to sensible decisions. ABBA sold 400 million records and somehow made it look like a responsible career choice.
Baton Rouge gets this.
The proposal: Midsummer. June 20. North Boulevard Town Square and Rhorer Plaza. Purple and gold flower crowns optional. Beignet fingers and a Sensation Salad, mandatory. Cypress Coast's Mid City Blonde or Oxford Rum's sugarcane delight stands in for aquavit. Someone find a harmonica player. The red maypole goes up at dusk. To give it a dash of hot sauce, turn Southern's Human Jukebox loose to do its amazing thing.
We're not stealing anything. We're recognizing kindred spirits.
Leksand has its maypole. We'll take that crooked red stick thing.
Laissez les bons temps rouler—or whatever the Swedish is for that. Skål!
—J.R. Ball
