Helvetia is the kind of place where you can buy locally-made cheese or honey, but there’s not a gas station in sight …
… where there are no ATMs or credit card machines, but the folks at the tiny store in the post office will lend a certain ill-prepared journalist $40.
And, where once a year, on a mid-winter’s night, people celebrate the holiday of their Swiss ancestors.
Fasnacht literally means “eve of fasting”—marking the last Saturday before Lent—but in Helvetia it translates into feasting, costumes, square dancing and effigy burning.
The overall experience is like a cross between a fairy tale and a pagan ritual. The Brothers Grimm have a run in with high priestesses, if you will.
“And we dance until midnight,” says Eleanor Mailloux. She grew up in Helvetia and owns the Hutte—the only restaurant in Helvetia. Tonight she’s flitting around, seating patrons while wearing a pink feather boa, a purple, gold and green sequined mask pushed up on her white hair.
“And then at midnight, we have an effigy of Old Man Winter hanging in the center of the hall and we cut him down and we take him out,” she continues. “We have a huge bonfire, and then we toss Old Man Winter into this huge bonfire and we burn him. Oh yes.”
The Hutte is a traditional Swiss restaurant, patterned after those dotting the higher altitudes of the Alps. Deer heads are mounted on the wooden walls, and under these an unexpected sight -- belly dancers from Philippi shake their bare midriffs to Middle Eastern music. Not exactly a Swiss tradition, but the haunting music adds to the magic eclectic-ness of the evening.
“Okay, they were a little frowned upon, you see, because after all!” Mailloux exclaims. “But they are biblical in origin, as you well know and I find them absolutely lovely girls and just delightful and I’m thinking of taking lessons myself. Oh, that’d be a crack!”
Mailloux is 91 years old, by the way. Later that night, she is spinning around the dance hall with other costumed revelers. The variety of costumes—more creative than most Halloween parties—makes for a surreal scene. There are tree-people, a frog, an elephant, a deer and many that defy explanation.
Zach Snyder is from Morgantown. He’s wearing a large, paper mache head with flashing blue and red eyes, but he’s not sure what his costume is.
“Once you start, they kind of take a life of their own and decide for themselves what they’re going to be,” he says.
Two scenes emerge: Outside the dance hall, there’s already a raging fire going, waiting to burn Old Man Winter. People gather around the fire for warmth, talking, laughing and drinking. It feels like a college party.
Inside the hall, dancers of all ages twirl and reel. Some of the dances are slow, some are fast. A caller begins a square dance.
The crowd is a mix of locals and tourists. The tourists were charmed by the town, while even the locals seem to still be in love.
Eleanor Mailloux says she still enjoys living in Helvetia.
“It’s fun,” she says. “We have so many festivals. We’ve got the Helvetia fair, we’ve got the ramp supper, we’ve got the chicken supper, we’ve got the Swiss national holiday, we’ve got the Swiss day when we all hike up the mountain where the original settlers did. We have a lot of fun.”
Heidi Arnett is the town’s postmaster and a longtime Helvetia resident.
“I like living this far away from everything,” she says. “It’s like you calm down as you get closer to Helvetia. And then you build up to go to a little bit of a town.”
Paolo Marks lives in Pocahontas County, and this is his second Fasnacht. He says he loves the mix of mountain and Swiss cultures on display, not to mention the addition of the bellydancers.
“It’s such a mishmash of cultures,” he says. “And I guess you can find that lots of places. But mostly I think you find that in cities. Like in a big city like New York, if you go to Brooklyn or something you have all different ethnic groups. And you don’t think you would see that kind of thing in the country. So I think it’s unique in that sense.”
Finally, the moment comes and a circle forms around the effigy hanging in the middle of the dance floor.
All night people have been ducking under Old Man Winter’s hanging body, taking care not to hit their heads on his cracked rubber boots.
He’s wearing a rubber monster mask, but the rest of his body looks very flammable.
Surprisingly quickly, Old Man Winter is cut down and the crowd follows his handlers out to the bonfire. Eleanor Mailloux is among those watching.
“And you know there is something very druid-like about this burning,” she says. “I have seen people who go into almost like a trance. You know, we’ve had a rough winter and here we are getting rid of it all. And it’s just a wonderful thing.”
The crowd celebrates the effigy’s fiery demise, hooting and hollering around the fire. It’s truly a weird scene, to see a full-sized body thrown on a pyre while observers cheer. This is the end of winter—what the whole night has been building towards.
That night, it snowed six inches.
The funny thing is, nobody really seems to care. And Helvetia looks even more magical under the snow.