GINGERBREAD FAIR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1942, Page 4

GINGERBREAD FAIR

NO LONGER HELD IN PARIS. ATTRACTIONS OF HAPPIER DAYS. The gingerbread fair, held every year for the three weeks following Easter ever since the days of PhilippeAuguste in the twelfth century, is not to be held this year, even in modified form, and provide some cheer for the suffering population. This, the most important of the Paris fairs, was held on the circular Place de la Nation and along the fifty-yards-wide Cours de Vincennes, which stretched in a straight line for three quarters of a mile eastwards to the Porte de Vincennes. Everything imaginable in the way of roundabouts, sideshows, stalls, was to be seen here. The big “place” and the wide avenue were filled with a dense crowd which clowns, acrobats and loud-voiced showmen, helped by the modern microphone, tried to tempt into the shows to see the fattest woman in the world, the man who could lift a cannon, a lion-tamer who would make his beasts perform while motor cycles thundered round a “ring of death” above his head, a girl who walked on the ceiling, or a man ready to risk sacrificing his own glitteringly bespangled child whom he would encircle with a ring of deftly thrown knives. Other booths provided opportunity for amateurs to try their skill against boxers or wrestlers, champions all, and a hundred-franc note was waiting as a reward for the soldier who could keep on his feet for two minutes against the wily holds of a thick-set gentleman in pink fleshings and aweinspiring leopard skin drawers was waiting to try on him. Acceptance of the challenge, marked by the catching of a glove thrown from the platform, invariably drew a big crowd into the booth. ( Fortune tellers seated in discreet tents or curtained caravans were ready to be consulted by ladies or gentlemen, and would even do part of the crystal gazing, putting themselves into a well simulated trance, in full view of the public before retiring behind the red velvet curtain to get down to business and predictions. Highly complicated roundabouts wiould roll you from side to side as you were whirled round, or take you up and down diminutive mountains in trolley cars. Others offered you white chargers on which to go at one and the same time giddily round and gracefully up and down. All roundabouts blared out music from ornamental organs on which graceful carved figures turning their heads from side to side beat measure to “Prosper” or long selections from “Faust.” The gingerbread, which gave its name to the fair, was served at innumerable small stalls. The most popular form for the gingerbread was that of a pig, on whose side you had your name written in sugar, and, if you were not too shy or self-conscious, you could attach the pig to your buttonhole, as everyone else did, and let the passing crowd know that you were Jean, Louis, Emile, or George, bent on enjoying yourself at one of the world’s most delightful, happy fairs.