March 3, 2008: Drinking Fish

[xoxoxoBruce]

Not drinking like a fish, drinking fish.... live fish.


Photo by Jock Fistick for the International Herald Tribune
From Belgium

Van Acker, the senior Roman Catholic priest in this rural area of Flanders, is undertaking one of his more unusual pastoral duties: drinking live fish, washed down with red wine.

For centuries, thousands of revelers in this part of Belgium have celebrated the Krakelingen festival - named after the bread that will be thrown to the townspeople. The pageant, commemorating the onset of spring, combines pagan and Christian symbols and culminates in the consumption of tiny live fish immersed in red wine at a ceremony presided over by three men dressed as druids.

The ritual has aroused the fury of animal rights campaigners, who claim it is cruel and anachronistic and have succeeded in limiting the number of people who can down the fish to around two dozen a year. But so far, they have failed to get the practice banned altogether or to force the revelers to electrocute the fish before they are removed from their tanks.

Divisions between French speakers in the south and Flemish speakers in the north are eroding Belgium's national identity, even raising the prospect of the breakup of this fragile nation of 10 million people. Perhaps as a consequence, Belgian municipalities and regions cling ever harder to customs that set them apart from their neighbors.

I respect tradition, but I think I'd find a better tasting one.